Activision Blizzard Q3 2021 Investor Call, Jen Oneal Leaving Blizzard

[OrangeJuice]

You're right that session length & interval are commonly part of engagement metrics. It can be a lot more too though and they never define it anywhere as StillMcfuu already mentioned. Player retention can be also part as well as conversion rate ( % of cashshop users).

Retention improves by itself because the worst month is also the best month which is the release month. First month everyone joins and most extreme casuals leave after finishing story. The loss in the following months is lower so retention naturally improves. In this case people wouldn't even need to play more to report improvement in engagement.

All of that means the same thing its just semantics. Their belief is that the more time you spend in game, the more likely you are to spend money. Thats all it is and why its used.

[Beefhammer]

You clearly did not get his point, so i suggest you re-read what he says.
MAU is the sum of players across all games for a month.
In order for MAU to stay the same, while releasing two new games, the other games active players must go down.

D2 and Hearthstone launched. Blizz has reported a massive increase and sale due to this. MAU does not move.
In order for MAU to stay the same, there have to be decrease in wow activity that mirrors the increase in D2 and HS increase.


Previous years: World of Warcraft = Wow Retail
This year: World of warcraft = Wow Retail, Wow Classic, Wow Burning crusade

This is explicitly worded to make it look positive, and are comparing the current portfolio of 3 world of warcraft games to the previous 1 world of warcraft game that existed "outside of a modern expansion".

The exodus hasn't come from WoW, and it doesn't matter since it's all one sub and there is heavy crossover with retail.

Again, this shit only matters to forum keyboard warriors wanting to claim WoW is dead, when it clearly isn't. You'd think if knowing player count was important, why don't investors seem to care?

[mbit]

All of that means the same thing its just semantics. Their belief is that the more time you spend in game, the more likely you are to spend money. Thats all it is and why its used.

Its not the same because as said you can have good metric with bad results. Tree of savior has perfect retention with 700 people playing. Is that success? I would prefer 7m with low retention. Conversion rate is also vastly different across games but even if everyone pays it can be less money. The most successful game currently is gacha garbage with less than 1% conversion rate. They simply have rich people dropping over 100k on the game rolling for jpgs. The only way to make sensible use of metrics is to have the full data set. Otherwise they can tell you very little.

[Eapoe]

Jen Oneal sounds like the typical "I can't do this job because it's too hard and there's also systemic toxic masculinity and patriarchy everywhere".

Sounds more like she feels she can do more outside of Blizzard and work for betterment in the whole of the gaming industry, not just for AB.

[OrangeJuice]

nope, that is how many people log in AT LEAST ONCE a month, they still can measure engagement by how many people log in weekly or daily...
or how many people log in COMBINED with something else is still an option...
simply put we have no idea how they measure engagement, for all we know it can be how many people killed world boss every week, or how many people log in daily, or how many people log in on saturday at 5PM when it rains...

MAU is someone who logs in once a quarter. Ya engagement can be considered the count of people logging daily, which can also be said the amount of time they've spent logged in. It means the same thing. Whether you login for 1 min or 1 hour a day, they want to increase that number. They might track the specifics themselves but the consolidated data they report is just called engagement.

[FelPlague]

Hmm, yeah that first statement up there looks fun.

can you show me where it says they will launch in 2023?

[StillMcfuu]

While it does count multiple products it also means subs are above say 9 months after legions launch which kinda hampers the notion many have that legion was the last time they had decent subs and that retail/classic both have sub 1M players.

A lot of people seem to memory hole that Legion wasn't really worth playing until 7.2 with Broken Shore and Tomb. Legion probably saw a massive release and a precipitous decline much like WoD, but Nighthold in 7.1 and then the devs finally getting their shit together with 7.2 and giving a ton of great content, changes to Leggos, and making the AP grind not a freaking nightmare brought people back. Legion would have went the way of BFA and SL if not for all those changes and content additions.

I'm also not sure what you are saying, I believe a sub is just a sub, regardless of if the player is playing retail or classic. I'd expect base subs to be higher when the same sub is supporting 2 games, not just the one.

Not sure if you were insinuating that if I had a sub and I played both retail and classic that would count as 2, I doubt it, but it sort of sounded that way.

[Lolites]

MAU is someone who logs in once a quarter. Ya engagement can be considered the count of people logging daily, which can also be said the amount of time they've spent logged in. It means the same thing. Whether you login for 1 min or 1 hour a day, they want to increase that number. They might track the specifics themselves but the consolidated data they report is just called engagement.

thats a lot of words for "we dont know what their *engagement* is but they want to keep it high"
and no, MONTHLY active user is not someone who logs once a quarter, technicaly MAU number is 1/3 of people who log once a quarter (by their approach) so MAU is not realy someone, but if you want to pin it on someone its someone loging in once a month

- - - Updated - - -

It's always something else with the doomsayers.

yeah but it keeps getting less amusing and more annoying

[Myradin]

So Jen is stealing 1 mil of our money that should go into development n give it to some rabid anti-male org that she will head, totally not stuffing her own pockets.

The earningscall says D4 n OW2 need more development (money) n this is what she chooses to spend on?

This is the real interesting takeaway instead of the weird MAU debate trying to turn positive numbers into bad.

So because Jay left they appoint a man and a woman to show their support for equality. This co-leader stays for like what, a month or two, then leaves and donates a million dollars.

At the very least shouldn't they be assigning a new 'token female' co-leader?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

A lot of people seem to memory hole that Legion wasn't really worth playing until 7.2 with Broken Shore and Tomb. Legion probably saw a massive release and a precipitous decline much like WoD, but Nighthold in 7.1 and then the devs finally getting their shit together with 7.2 and giving a ton of great content, changes to Leggos, and making the AP grind not a freaking nightmare brought people back. Legion would have went the way of BFA and SL if not for all those changes and content additions.

I'm also not sure what you are saying, I believe a sub is just a sub, regardless of if the player is playing retail or classic. I'd expect base subs to be higher when the same sub is supporting 2 games, not just the one.

Not sure if you were insinuating that if I had a sub and I played both retail and classic that would count as 2, I doubt it, but it sort of sounded that way.

7.2 (March 2017) came out less then 9 months from legions launch august (2016) so the subs would be above its numbers.

As to the classic/modern subs, many will claim they have next to no overlap and player counts for both are sub 1M.

[Doffen]

While it does count multiple products it also means subs are above say 9 months after legions launch which kinda hampers the notion many have that legion was the last time they had decent subs and that retail/classic both have sub 1M players.

What graph are you looking at?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

What graph are you looking at?

No graph, the transcript.

With deep engagement across both Classic and Modern, WoW's overall subscriber base is stronger than we typically see at this point after a Modern expansion launch.

https://investor.activision.com/stat...e-8bdf66c8bb32

[Ihavewaffles]

This is the real interesting takeaway instead of the weird MAU debate trying to turn positive numbers into bad.

So because Jay left they appoint a man and a woman to show their support for equality. This co-leader stays for like what, a month or two, then leaves and donates a million dollars.

At the very least shouldn't they be assigning a new 'token female' co-leader?

Seems she plans to visit other companies too..

[Doffen]

No graph, the transcript.




https://investor.activision.com/stat...e-8bdf66c8bb32

Typically being the keyword here.

[unbound]

World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade.

Imagine everyone screaming dear murder, and its still making more money than similar periods of "successful expansions".

Yes yes, its the 1mil people remaining each buying 5 tokens per day, right?

As i have said before, the game has problems, but its literally a tiny % screaming dear murder on every possible platform, while the true casuals dont care, and the better players dont care also, they just do their thing.

lol

What does "strongest engagement" mean? Seriously. If it had the highest average MAUs, they would have said that. It's a meaningless phrase.

Net bookings means that they are getting a lot of micro-transaction money. That means that they have more whales than before which doesn't mean more players.

"Blizzard revenue of $493M grew 20% YoY, driven by Diablo II: Resurrected." - So that means a portion of the declining overall MAUs was due to a new property. Yes, any game you launch counts as a MAU. If you launch 5 of their games, you count as 5 MAUs.

Stop buying PR. Stop ignoring the parts of the information that don't play to your narrative. The overall evidence debunks the notion that WoW has a wonderfully healthy playerbase. Blizzard making money does not equal players.

BTW, tokens are *not* the only micro-transaction. /facepalm

[Pann]

No graph, the transcript.




https://investor.activision.com/stat...e-8bdf66c8bb32

I'm sorry but it is a massive leap to say that sub numbers are now higher than they were during Legion (or at any other point in time for that matter) based on such a vague statement.

[Chadow]

World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade.

So that statement has nothing to do with the health of WoW? Lol. Misrepresenting facts to investors is fraud, a lie in the context of this discussion, and something that will get them in a lot of trouble with investors and the SEC. If WoW is really not on track to perform better then "non-expansion" years that would be a lie and not just "A spin on negative news".

What is "engagement" considered to Blizzard?

Honest question

[OrangeJuice]

No graph, the transcript.




https://investor.activision.com/stat...e-8bdf66c8bb32

They aren't saying WoW has more subscribers they're saying that the subscribers they do have are spending more than they have in the past.

[potis]

lol

What does "strongest engagement" mean? Seriously. If it had the highest average MAUs, they would have said that. It's a meaningless phrase.

Net bookings means that they are getting a lot of micro-transaction money. That means that they have more whales than before which doesn't mean more players.

"Blizzard revenue of $493M grew 20% YoY, driven by Diablo II: Resurrected." - So that means a portion of the declining overall MAUs was due to a new property. Yes, any game you launch counts as a MAU. If you launch 5 of their games, you count as 5 MAUs.

Stop buying PR. Stop ignoring the parts of the information that don't play to your narrative. The overall evidence debunks the notion that WoW has a wonderfully healthy playerbase. Blizzard making money does not equal players.

BTW, tokens are *not* the only micro-transaction. /facepalm

Enough with these dumb ass quotes and the passive hate, yes they are wording things pretty, but they cant lie about numbers, cause its insanely illegal, you have words, their stockholders have papers with numbers.

Engagement means exactly what it means, people logged on the game on one of its 3 versions once for a various reason and it has been highest since every expansion at the same period of its life.

If some are in TBCC or Retail or Classic, its irrelevant to them, they made money.

I dont care about MAUs , i am not a Blizzard fan boy, i dont care what they do but i am also not an idiot, believing they would give false numbers to stockholders when they have so many eyes on them.

We get it, you want the game to fail more cause you cant accept that its not, their numbers dont lie, they made more money and had more activity on the versions of World of Warcraft, does Retail has less active players than before? It does, why does the millionaire care if Billy is playing TBCC or retail again?

[Neufab]

World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade.

I don't think WoW is underperforming based on reading the information they gave.

What if you also base it on the information they gave at the Q3 call last year?

"Blizzard had 30 million monthly active users in the quarter, down from 32 million MAUs in the prior one. But the company said that engagement with World of Warcraft is at the highest level for this stage of an expansion in a decade"

Something doesn't add up.