Creative
Company
Documents about Creative
Two & a Half Gamers64 min
From hypercasual to hybridcasual - The Voodoo story (#70)
The mobile gaming industry is undergoing a structural shift as companies move away from traditional hypercasual models toward hybridcasual frameworks.
- Voodoo has shifted its business model from hypercasual to hybridcasual, reducing its output to approximately four game launches per year to focus on longer-term retention and monetization.
- The hybridcasual strategy involves adding meta-game layers, such as base building, unit upgrades, and gacha-style progression, to simple core gameplay loops to increase player lifetime value.
- Mob Control serves as a primary example of this transition, evolving from a simple hypercasual mechanic inspired by Fireballs 3D into a deeper game with a metagame that contributes significantly to its revenue.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers56 min
Boost your UA with channel diversification & high performing creative frameworks w/ Mistplay (#67)
Loyalty-driven engagement serves as a primary engine for sustainable user acquisition and long-term lifetime value in the mobile gaming sector.
- Mistplay operates as a performance-driven loyalty app with a team of approximately 200 people, leveraging data analytics as the central stakeholder for all product, sales, and commercial decision-making.
- Effective creative testing requires a high volume of output, with the team aiming to test 10 to 14 new creatives per week, totaling 40 to 50 per month to combat creative fatigue.
- When evaluating new UA partners or testing campaigns, the team typically allocates a 1 to 2-month window to move through learning, optimization, and scaling phases.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers59 min
Creative trends Q1 2023, Mobile games Soft launch Sonar, Meta enhanced interaction in admon (#64)
The mobile gaming landscape in early 2023 is defined by a strategic pivot toward risk mitigation, characterized by reliance on established intellectual property and aggressive, often deceptive, creative advertising tactics.
- To combat rising user acquisition costs, mobile studios are increasingly utilizing high-production influencer partnerships and narrative-driven ads that often feature altered or deceptive gameplay.
- Publishers are shifting toward risk-averse product strategies, favoring long-term soft launches for hybrid genres and franchise-based titles over high-risk innovation.
- The industry-wide transition to full bidding, specifically within AdMob, requires publishers to diversify ad stacks to protect eCPMs and maintain portfolio health.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers53 min
11 UA & Creative tips, 🦩 unleash your inner UA flamboyance (#59)
Modern user acquisition strategies rely on a rigorous synthesis of technical precision and aggressive creative experimentation to combat rising costs and market saturation.
- Prioritize long-term metrics like Day 30 or Day 90 retention over volatile short-term indicators to ensure optimization decisions support scalable growth.
- Establish a rigorous data health check to resolve misconfigured tracking and inconsistent reporting across mobile measurement partners, which are primary drivers of high cost-per-install figures.
- Implement a high-frequency creative refresh cadence to combat asset decay, utilizing a structured anatomy consisting of a compelling hook, gameplay, and a clear call to action.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers51 min
two & a half gamers session #47 - Creative trends 2023, 1 year anniversary - kudos to you
Mobile gaming user acquisition in 2023 is defined by a strategic shift toward hyper-casual mechanics and deceptive creative concepts.
- Mobile gaming development is shifting toward a philosophy where core game loops are designed specifically to match high-performing marketing creative concepts.
- Top-tier strategy games like Kingdom Guard and Top War are integrating popular mini-game mechanics directly into their tutorials and narratives to align user acquisition hooks with actual gameplay.
- The industry is moving away from purely deceptive advertising to avoid player backlash and poor retention, opting instead to embed proven ad mechanics into the core product experience.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers63 min
two & a half gamers session #22 - How to predict game performance? What is Tilting Point's secret?
Tilting Point maintains a competitive edge in the mobile gaming market by integrating rigorous data-driven analysis with a collaborative approach to developer partnerships.
- Tilting Point evaluates potential publishing partners by requiring a clear product roadmap, viewing the absence of one as a primary indicator to decline a partnership.
- The company targets an 85% confidence level in their ability to scale a game before committing to a full publishing partnership, though they acknowledge that predictive LTV models often fluctuate once UA spend reaches 45k–60k per month.
- The UA team is structured with dedicated managers for specific game portfolios alongside network-specific representatives who maintain direct relationships with platforms like Facebook and TikTok.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers52 min
two & a half gamers session #17 - the creative framework, tips for inspiration, recession & games
The mobile gaming industry is currently navigating its first encounter with a significant economic recession, prompting a strategic pivot toward shorter-term return on investment and tighter capital management.
- The creative production process should follow a cyclical loop: competitor research, assessment of past performance, brainstorming, brief creation, production, testing, evaluation, and iteration.
- Performance-based creative testing consistently shows that lower-production-value assets often outperform high-end, polished visuals, proving that data-driven results should override aesthetic preferences from art directors.
- Mobile gaming teams should prioritize the CPI (Cost Per Install) versus LTV (Lifetime Value) equation over artistic quality, as the primary goal of creative assets is to drive measurable performance.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers56 min
Creative trends Q3, Merge mansion Japan, Admon tips, Habby: Souls review (#87)
Mobile gaming strategy currently centers on aggressive user acquisition through high-frequency creative refreshes and the strategic adoption of successful, genre-agnostic hooks.
- Mobile user acquisition strategy is shifting toward genre-agnostic creative hooks, such as physics-based puzzles and animal themes, to lower cost-per-install regardless of core gameplay alignment.
- Habby’s idle RPG 'Souls' generated $13 million in revenue between its August 2023 launch and the report date, maintaining a balanced 50/50 revenue split between Android and iOS.
- Technical stability is now a primary operational requirement, as publishers must meet strict Google Application Not Responding (ANR) thresholds to protect organic traffic from SDK-related crashes.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers60 min
two & a half gamers session #6 - Supercell rant, why do fake ads work? UA fundamentals Q&A
Supercell’s recent financial performance, characterized by a 45 percent revenue increase to 2.24 billion dollars in 2021, masks underlying structural challenges.
- Supercell reported a 45 percent revenue increase to 2.24 billion dollars in 2021, yet the company faces structural stagnation due to a lack of new global title launches since Brawl Stars.
- Supercell is pivoting toward PC and console markets to modernize monetization and user acquisition strategies that previously prioritized brand purity over aggressive performance marketing.
- The mobile gaming industry is facing significant disruption from privacy changes, specifically the impending phase-out of advertising IDs on Google platforms.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Deconstructor of Fun71 min
TWIG #283 Anime correction, Applovin speculations, Ad creative trends and Ubisoft’s xDefiant
The gaming industry is currently undergoing a structural transition from the era of blitz scaling toward a model defined by operational efficiency, profitability, and strategic consolidation.
- The gaming industry is shifting from blitz scaling to a model of operational efficiency and profitability, evidenced by major workforce reductions at companies like Ubisoft and Pixar.
- Private equity firms have become the primary exit strategy for established studios, highlighted by the $2.8 billion acquisition talks involving Keywords Studios.
- Hyper-casual games currently lead the mobile marketing sector with an IPM (installs per mille) of 48, driving a trend toward 'mashup' creative techniques that blend gameplay, animation, and user-generated content.
Deconstructor of FunMay 2024
Naavik71 min
Fortnite Creative Origins
Fortnite Creative has evolved into a dominant user-generated content engine, fundamentally shifting the platform’s engagement model.
- Fortnite Creative now accounts for 35 percent of the platform's total player engagement, marking a fundamental shift toward a user-generated content model.
- Epic Games distributes 320 million dollars annually to a network of over 25,000 creators to incentivize ecosystem growth.
- The transition from a basic playground mode to the Unreal Editor for Fortnite has enabled professional-grade development, though it has also created a steeper learning curve for creators.
NaavikApr 2024
Two & a Half Gamers56 min
Brawl Stars' UA & Creative Strategies, Game Review Radar vol4, GAM not dead yet? (#106)
Brawl Stars has successfully revitalized its market position, doubling year-over-year monthly revenue seven years after its initial launch.
- Brawl Stars achieved significant growth following its global launch, with US daily downloads increasing from 7,000 to 40,000 and sustained revenue gains driven by a shift toward standardized UA creative strategies.
- Supercell has expanded its UA strategy beyond YouTube, increasingly utilizing 'altered gameplay' creatives—where scenes are constructed from game assets—which now account for approximately 60% of video creative output.
- The Google Ad Manager (GAM) partner ecosystem underwent a major shift around December 20, 2023, as Google restricted video inventory for third-party resellers, forcing companies to adapt their monetization models.
Two & a Half GamersApr 2024