Whirlwind of Records! Snoop's New Missionary, Mercedes Moné's New Japan Title, Roblox’s Blox Fruits, Fortnite's Live Events, & Polkadot's The Spammening!
Bits of Signum | 12.21.24
Over about a week, we were on a whirlwind tour in California, and honestly, it has been so exhilarating that I don't know where to start. Many people will ask what all of this has to do with Polkadot. Simply, we care about empowering developers and creators, who are increasingly one and the same. They are also the ‘New Superstars’ - the script has flipped, and the broadcast model that dominated TV, film, and social media is over. The new model is about the developers/creators/players as Superstars. The big picture is that this is about the audience, most of whom are creators themselves, are the center of it all. We believe Polkadot will provide the security layer for creators’ rights in a decentralized world, and it will all be happening in the background like an AWS server. A datapoint this week that backed our thesis - The Spammening - when Polkadot smashed the record among all blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, for transactions per second recorded on chain at >128,000. Jay of the Kusamarian and developer Erin Grasnick explain. Here we go -
The Game Awards Eve - Frame & Pixels, CAA party, with Signum Growth Dot Play and Immix Law as headline co-hosts - thank you, CAA and Derek Douglas, for including us. Fallout series Executive Producers Jonah Nolan (The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Westworld, Christopher Nolan’s brother) and Todd Howard (Bethesda, Fallout Game Creator) discussed the path that led to Fallout the game’s adaptation as a movie. It was a story of Jonah’s deep passion for the content and Todd’s trust in Jonah to tap into this passion and create something new for the big screen. After the fireside chat, it was a lot of fun to reconnect with collaborators at Gamefam, Ricardo Briceno and Alli Guglielmino, the Roblox War Tycoon Creator, Kizmotek. along with UGC creators across Fortnite, including JJ Armstrong and Grace Lind pictured below, Tommy Hall and Andrew Tempkin of Gridsnap, and Chris Hui of Super Jump Games. Signum Growth Dot Play Theme: invest in games with transmedia potential paths.
Los Angeles: The Game Awards with the one and only, Mercedes Moné, The CEO of AEW, and first cousin of Snoop Dogg, who performed - Sending huge thanks to my new favorite innovator and Fortnite enthusiast, Cordell Broadus, along with his business partner Shiv Jain and the Death Row Games team. Congrats to all of the winners, especially Jonah Nolan and Todd Howard for FALLOUT! Viewership across all channels worldwide came in at a mind blowing 154 million. See analysis below from Super Joost.
Los Angeles: Snoop’s after The Game Awards to celebrate his album drop Missionary
Watching Snoop celebrate the last 32 years, when Dr. Dre produced his first album, was truly EPIC. The energy was palpable - sitting so close to such a legendary talent felt like plugging in to charge my own creative battery. For hours on end, he was simultaneously singing, dancing and receiving a steady drumbeat of guests in camera-ready mode. The album is a layered retrospective that taps into Snoop and Dr. Dre’s first production 32 years ago and also brings in a maturity and depth that folded in some Easter eggs like Sting.
In one of my favorite lines in Last Dance With Mary Jane, featuring Tom Petty and Jelly Roll, Snoop reflects “it's a family affair” which seems to be a thread that runs through his life as a performer. There is no question that the talent DNA runs deep in this family, and it started before Snoop. For us, meeting his son Cordell at Epic Games’ Unreal Engine developer conference was as exciting as meeting CEO Tim Sweeney for the first time. Our thesis on Epic Games is based on the power of the flywheel - the game engine, Unreal Engine, plus the UEFN Creator Platform, wrapped in a package of Distribution, the Epic Game store.
Even though our conviction in our positive investment thesis on Epic Games has only strengthened since we first wrote about it after the first Marshmello concert in Feb 2019, the reality is that we have leaned-in more on the Roblox platform. Why? Diversity - diversity of content, diversity of players, diversity of developers. Cordell, Shiv and the team at Death Row Games are challenging this very concept, and again, the way they champion diversity and women in gaming also runs deep in the family. Cordell and Snoop opened their presentation of Best Ongoing Game at the Game Awards with the statement, “This year, my father and I started Death Row Games with the dream of bringing minority stories to the gaming world.”
And in the film about the new album, Dr. Dre says, “There’s a Dre and a Snoop Dogg in their bedroom, a 16 year old kid who is going to come out and be even bigger and more spectacular than we have ever been - that’s what I’m hoping for.” Snoop’s response without missing a beat - “yeah he or she is out there.” This reminded me of my walk with Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney at the Unreal Engine Developer Fest. In reference to the UEFN Creator platform, Tim commented that developers at the conference are just like Epic when they started two decades ago. He commented that they are going to be even bigger than Epic so he wants to be a part of that. Finally, it reminded me of one of our mantras at Signum Growth Dot Play: the power of UGC lies in the fact that there are 15 year olds in their bedrooms, with studio level tools in their hands. We haven’t seen that before.
We expect Death Row Games to bring something new and different to Fortnite UEFN, and Signum Growth Dot Play wants to be a part of it. When we met Cordell at Epic’s Unreal Fest, we challenged him to collaborate on a fashion game, starring the one and only, his cousin Mercedes Moné. If Dress to Impress can be one of the biggest games in the world across all platforms (over 5 billion visits and only a bit over a year old!) what could we create with Mercedes, who as a child dreamed of being the world’s greatest wrestler of all time and a fashion designer? With a history of running through brick walls to get what she wants, Mercedes aims to change the perception of women’s wrestling to one of athleticism, strength, leadership, and artistic craft. Her mantra - Be the CEO of Your Own Life. Developers - bring us your ideas - lets do this!
Mercedes Moné Still Breaking Records - New Japan Pro Wrestling Title Defended
The Mercedes NJPW Strong Style Evolved match was more than just a title defense; it was a testament to the resilience, strength, and unbreakable spirit that define Mercedes Moné. She continues to remind the world why she’s the greatest at what she does. Stay tuned for Mercedes’ match against Mina Shirakawa on January 5th in Tokyo as they compete title-for-title at the Tokyo Dome.
In Other Kinds of Records - Roblox Games and Fortnite Live Events Are Crushing It!
Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen significant spikes in activity, which should only grow through the holidays when kids are at home. As our own James Purell pointed out in his LinkedIn post (follow him if you care about Roblox!), “Roblox SHATTERED its previous record of 10.5M concurrent players, soaring to an unprecedented 11.5M people playing at the same time!” As a comparison to Fortnite, we have really only seen these kinds of numbers at Live events such as Snoop’s Times Square concert. At this concert celebrating the launch of Fortnite Remix, The Prelude, there were 9.8 million people in attendance online, plus another ~1.5 million in-person, pushing the total attendees (physical + digital) close to 11 million concurrent viewers. This was followed by another record breaking live online event, when 14.3 million players gathered in Fortnite for a concert with Snoop Dogg, Juice WRLD, Ice Spice, and Eminem.
Back to Roblox, of the 11.5m concurrent players, two games dominated - Dress to Impress, a newer game, came in at 1.8m, and Blox Fruits, a long-standing game, broke the platform’s record of 2m concurrents for a single game, at 2.4m concurrents! At the time, this was higher than all of Fortnite at 2.2m and matched the biggest Steam (Valve corporation) games of 2024 - the high was Black Myth: Wukong at 2.4m concurrent players.
All-time highest player counts for Roblox games:
🍎 Blox Fruits: 2.4M (⭐ new entry)
🐾 Adopt Me: 1.8M
👚 Dress to Impress: 1.8M (⭐ new entry)
🐾 Adopt Me: 1.7M
🍎 Blox Fruits: 1.6M
🐶 Pet Simulator X: 1.4M
🏘️ Brookhaven: 1.1M
As James said, “what we're witnessing isn't just a trend - it's a fundamental shift in how games are made and played. User generated content isn't just competing with traditional AAA gaming giants - it's winning.”
Roblox: A Case Study for Unexpected Innovation
Yes, Roblox is a platform to build games, but could it evolve to become a multifaceted tool, with applications ranging from gaming to education? Case in point: a 13 year old daughter of one of our community members and investors is a Latin student who recently used Roblox’s Bloxburg to build a 3D rendering of a Roman Forum for an academic project. The result? A high quality model that rivals professional software. This unexpected use highlights how a platform like Roblox, with creativity and player agency at its core, can transcend their original purposes, opening up new avenues for creativity and education.
Game Awards - A Note on Being Precisely Wrong and Directionally Right
As many of you know, our mantra is ‘merge onto the highway of behavior that is already happening’ because it is really difficult to change behavior when it comes to new technology adoption. Often, getting the direction right, even if the precise calculation at any given moment is wrong, is the way to win in investing over the long term.
Understanding why and how large audiences gather has always fascinated us. The Super Bowl. The Oscars. Friends back in the day. We wrote earlier about this year’s Super Bowl LVIII, which delivered the most-watched telecast in history with a 123.4 million average viewers across all platforms (thank you Taylor Swift!)
On the game awards, Super Joost’s Joost Van Druenen commented -
The Grammy’s, which peaked in 2012 with 39 million people watching the event, has since declined to 16.9 million, or less than half. Similarly, the Video Music Awards has dropped 67 percent to 4.1 million viewers, down from 12.5 million in 2011. And the Academy Awards show a 58 percent decline from when 46.3 million watched it in 2000 to 19.5 million today. Collectively, all awards ceremonies have declined to about half since The Game Awards first aired in 2014.
The report also concluded that The Game Awards has been bigger than the Super Bowl for three years. There were many comments in response, pushing back on the way these numbers are calculated and whether they are comparable. Taking a huge step back, we believe the below is directionally correct. It is inarguable that the traditional gatherings have been cut in half over a decade, while we are confident that The Game Awards audience continues to grow leaps and bounds.
