2.5 gamers x Live AM(F)A #7 - Ask Me Anything @ December 19 5:30pm CET

going live now yeah you are live perfect thank you very much well recording failed yeah R what are you doing here I'm here here yeah you're there H but you are here twice that's your imp wor it's okay it's okay it's why uh we see you there yeah we see you there twice so that's fine can I just leave no no no don't worry it's okay oh you just left so it's fine okay we got rid of we're live I live it's working I'm getting I'm getting this this error or should I just of course of course you are oh my God that's fine okay I'll I'll come right back I'll come right back don't worry if it should be fine uh on the on the live if you disappear then we'll just you know get get you in hello people are here hey perfect okay did she did did he just disappear again no no he has said to leave so don't kick him out but yeah

we can start yeah where did he [Music] go I don't know this is great so we have so hello everyone yeah yeah welcome everyone to our live AMA podcast from Two and a Half Gamers we were supposed to be joined by special guest arson who is the CEO of original games uh to help answer any questions you had about game development but he just kind of left yeah so if you have any questions type it into uh the comments here uh but maybe we can just kick things oh here he is yes is it working welcome back yes there we go should be it was it was bugging out it was saying like you need to restart yeah there wor don't thust everything you read on the internet yeah exactly exactly all syy welcome to the live AMA podcast what's going on man good good to see you guys thanks for inviting me I'm glad I'm here and so we're uh like the last time you were on

right yo it's it's saying audio video frame error should I just leave it can you still hear me can you perfectly you're perfect okay but I can't I can't use the app so I'll just like no worries so the first question we have here let's just start uh what's the best game of 2025 Arsen yeah I mean listen guys mergin that came out two years ago it's still the best game it's a great merging game um about restaurants and you guys should all play we're having a sale actually starting today is we got the new workshop up so you guys got to take check it out there's a new promo was that good was that written down that's perfect that's perfect no worry no wor it's good I'm just is there anyone listening I can't see it is yeah it is it is it is it oh we're live sorry yeah don't worry there are no rules AR any only no [ __ ] ansers so it's yes I'm just uh pinging our friends in uh in our like channel so they

come and uh we have another question what's the basic the game of 2025 what like 2025 is not there yet 2024 no vas 2025 what 20 oh 2024 okay are we talking about all games or just mobile games honestly I don't think there is any room I I would say and I said this to to Gan uh I think it's Cy B go I really like that game I really like pretty good like for me it's definitely from mobile side it's Pokemon TCG by the way have you seeing this what I'm just going to share this record whoa is that six million in a day because expansion exactly I I I I I check it and I I played it because I was like okay well they're charging me for the subscription anyway so I might just

play the game so I started opening packs and and I like oh let's let's check actually the the Sor have Revenue whoa okay makes sense new content new new so they record out out of nowhere that's fine areni what what if you had to summarize 202 uh 2024 in the merge market like what would you say are the big things that happened this year I mean I I think uh mer the merge Market is changing right because uh microfun and moonactive just killed everyone else um and I think what microfun did is they made their own game twice and it still killed everyone else um so I mean that's kind of that's what I'm paying attention to in casual is like uh how do you make how do you take this kind of matching formula and keep going with it so um th those guys are crazy and um I think okay just say the last thing because I'll ramble on about this it's like the production quality of microfunds two games um is

like it's it's scary how quickly they're able to continue maybe we're just too small in Portugal I don't know well you are definitely small in Portugal it's they're coming from China so and they have all the resources in the world yeah all the resources in the world and they're killing it like that's we discussed this so basically you have travan which is or was I haven't checked the numbers recently but it was the top top one game in merge category but then you have microfun and they have two games two games combined are way bigger than yes four okay way bigger than the whole Travel Town combination so oh interesting so yes and we're paying very close attention um we're doing with our small size it's very difficult to make kind of rash big decisions we but we you know it's all about economy in those games and that's what we're focusing on I'm hoping we can get a big boost on um

mergin in our game um in in February we're really changing the economy but it's um it's just interesting because it's like you see these teams as like 80 people making a casual game or hybrid casual game and I'm like why would you need so many people I got it I got it now you now understand okay y yeah well you can you can do a lot of a lot of stuff on the creative side now with the the AI stuff uh really changing the whole landscape we just discussed it by the way everybody who's listening there's a new episode coming on Monday about crates okay yeah okay few things let's start with the questions let me just C this uh travel towns not anymore uh oh sorry downloads wise not anymore yeah Revenue wise also no way gossip Harbor M microne kill it no more Travel Town leader look at merge Mansion dying on the fourth spot

yeah there you go just saying okay uh that was a question let's start with the questions okay yeah how charge fist can make money as a game I have no idea what you're talking about I don't know what that is so it's I also don't but we have S so we'll check so it seems it's a game that's only driven by downloads from kayak which casual yeah hyper casual casual so the question was also followed by the ad frequency is low and the game has no depth I mean so Felix I guess that's the one for you so it's kind of a trend that we've noticed like with a couple of the new like find the cat right like Agave games is kind of the same because the game doesn't really have any depth but they don't have any I AP sales either really but what they do is they have really good long-term retention so I think the can you go to find the cats and just look at the long-term retention because what they do is they remove

the intrusive ads and they kind of count I think on that people are a bit fed up with ads that are spammed so they stick around for longer uh I guess that's my hypothesis so I I think there is actually something to do that because yeah if you could put and find the cat here as well see if it's kind of simar pretty good retention for a hyper casual yeah very good because the thing is you if you can get people to stick around for longer you don't need to have the same ad frequency so yeah it's kind of similar metrics I'd say because the day 60 retention is 7 and six% which is quite interesting retention is really good yeah retention is really good but yeah it makes sense so basically you are just you know changing the mat here and playing the long game and not getting the shortterm revenue that fast so that's I guess the answer for the question yeah but so I'm playing I'm playing this charge Fist game and it's every level there's something different ah okay so it's one of those like we have everything thing like yeah I mean

it's it's it's the same mechanic but they're always adding they're adding stuff and I'm getting my first ad now which is looks like it's 30 seconds unskippable okay nice yeah thankk you much I can't I I can't I can I get that doing the Lord's work um continue hi Joshua then how do you guys feel about web based games also potential for games on platforms like Discord Reddit YouTube uh um yeah let me start a little bit so direct to Consumer is the trend of next year also this year so everybody's trying to slash the 30% store margin down any way possible so I'm quite bullish on web games to be honest myself because there's still this this this big thing that nobody keeps talking about which really bugs me which is dungeon and fighter which is a game that on browser that I don't know how many billions actually and uh this year is finally launched on Mobile in China

into something like 800 million a month for its first month so these games are live and kicking it just people don't talk about the revenue and don't see them in the charts and I guess even the big like newus and all these other agencies that do the pie charts of the whole industry probably don't have that relevant data to kind of track this as accurately as I think it should be tracked so yeah I guess we'll return there in some form or the other because it just it's % less taxes on get rid of that graph right there if you can um also webbased games um and the whole UA around web g webbased games it's very similar to mobile and it's not actually that crowded you can do a lot of interesting stuff on the web uh based games um different campaign structur in terms of U acquisition in terms of UA yeah yeah because you can use the landing page PES you can use different

things you then but you kind of move from not only doing or working on the creative uh refres optimization but you also work on the uh conversion optimization on that landing page I've seen games uh which are web based they are testing landing pages because they convert differently and it's you can have short one you can have long one you and these guys were testing 50 cre 50 landing pages 50 different landing pages so again you know the that's the the way way how to do stuff on the on the VAP in terms of the US it's really it's it's definitely not dead and it's going to be quite quite big in terms of the potential uh platform like Discord read YouTube oh that's more like the games on there that platform actually I've seen the the games but I haven't played because yeah Hest we we we got drunk and had dinner and you kept talking to me about telegram games what's going on there yeah I I think I was just showing your pictures of people I know no no um I was uh it's a good it's a it's it's

something that's on my mind um and I actually have some some numbers I can share oh yeah off the Record so um so the the thing with telegram is it's an incredibly good um messaging system like I've been using telegram much more recently um and like I have like the one person on WhatsApp I think it's Felix and it's like I'm like I'm always like like how how do you use this um it's missing half the features I'm looking for so it is very popular but it's not popular in the US and kind of Europe um which are you know which contain countries that have have money um but you can buy installs on telegram um and let let me back up to say folks that aren't familiar so like telegram does have apps now um they called them mini apps or something and like our our our unity game runs pretty flawlessly in this mini app you know it's got some issues but we haven't really invested the thing is you can buy users there for

less than less than a cent um you can so that's that's sexy right um telegram has a built-in uh bit their cryptocurrency wallet inside so that means you can buy you can see how much if users have money and then you can buy them um you know you can buy if they have a wallet uh that has money in it um that but that goes up to something like $10 but on the the other hand if you can if you can buy for $10 a player that has that hasn't spend M crypto like that might be a valuable player if you're doing not not casual game so what I'm looking at and kind of this might be maybe I'm too old but the point is like the Facebook effect that um games like um Farmville and then C kind of Candy Crush blew up on is sending hearts to each other through uh fa Facebook so whether it's Facebook profile post or messenger whatever if if I can make a game that spams everyone 's contact list

on telegram hey you know get a heart and merge in that would be very um that would be very cool so the features to do that do exist on telegram um I haven't seen a good example of a casual game like a normal casual game not like a weird web 3 you know scam game um I haven't seen a good example um but I think like no hamst yeah but I mean you know they made a lot of money and those guys are brilliant um but it's like I don't think that's scalable you know there's also like raccoon combat nowadays whatever it is um I'm just what I'm trying to figure out is should we should we work on making our casual game work on telegram because it does have people in in in the demographic we want which are kind of um enaged women um Discord you know I took a look at Discord it's really interesting um I think one of the things to look at is what are the biggest discords and they're all like YouTubers and games right so there's no like there's nothing interesting for kind of real

casual gamers for casual most probably no it's Discord was always built more for midor right uh rather than just Community basically yeah yeah yeah okay we have so many more questions how I feel combat whatat I made that up that's not real would like that game raccoon comat questions about it already yeah yeah don't worry so we have any upd Happ Happ new game Copa compliance which is being implemented from 1 of January which I guess question for me all right so applin has decided that everyone will not need to stop sending Copa non- Copa compliant user so basically kids that are below 16 they can't even send a bid request to the app and SDK anymore to Max and this essentially will impact game developers because if you're getting impressions for kids you need to actually take a stand on this so you

need to have a CMP implemented and they even don't want these signals to basically cover they got C for a legal perspective this big publicly traded company so uh by January 1 you need to stop sending uh yeah users or impression requests for users that are below 16 so what's the Practical implication for game I mean if you're out in trouble outfit seven you're dead or what I mean like I mean you can you can still send it but you can send it to only the kids network so there's specific networks that specialize in advertising for Copa users which is basically advertising networks for kids same as like you see on like Cartoon Networks the same type of ads right so it still works but it's not the same uh cpms so CPM no it depends right like what kind of game you have right I don't think it's going to affect original games that much right but you know outfit seven is gonna yeah it's a big potential thing so

everyone needs to have a CMP you need to stop sending it otherwise App 11 probably will be threatening to switch you off I should imagine if you keep it for too long so goodbye talk and Roblox goodbye talk yeah so then then you have no they monetized right they're good they're good what's up with ever games they're scaling like crazy in word games what's that can currently nothing new has happened in word for like four years so yeah uh maybe pick another one in the meantime I find the game okay in the meantime I find the way also how is the word game Market looking currently PP single player okay another one uh hey thanks for your work and answers I have two questions when do I need Google Certified CMP where to soft launch impuls like app okay so first one you go and then second one for me yeah so uh when do you need a certified CMP about a year ago yesterday yeah I was say yeah like about about a

year ago so yeah uh I would recommend to use the Google one if you're a bit short on cash because it's free the opt-in rates for the Google one tend to be between 80 to 87% if you have a better cash to spend I'd recommend with going one of the paid ones where opin rates tend to be between 93 to 95% so yeah you usually have to pay yeah some sort of amounts per year uh per user for a CMP but yeah really get that set up otherwise you in trouble um I have it okay wait let me answer let me answer the the second question is where to soft lunch impulse like app us if yeah us uh just you you will get for apps it's just basically us uh nothing else uh is that relevant in soft line you need to get the numbers right and if it doesn't really work in us it's not going to work anywhere else to be honest so yeah that's my go to go to so thanks for

the tip here o games or orever games definitely seems to be scaling up there's sharp hockey stick here with oh it's not slow hockey stickar slow hockey stick 24 million downloads last month and revenue Wise It's also went up pretty sharp with like 1.2 million in IP Revenue the main driver behind it is zenor relax puzzle which is scaling in us where it's doing like half a million a month and if we uh downloads downloads wise cuz word game traditionally is all ads right so a lot of lot of Revenue come on no no no it's where the Wonder is like it's like all revenue pretty much check the category it's weird because it's uh this just looks like a clone or yeah this is this is definitely going afterward

Scapes yeah you can see it the the dial on the bottom and then the the words on the top my guess is that they have probably figured out some I see even the icon they have probably figured out some like defining feature uh like like differentiator feature which is better or they have something similar yeah strategy or some kind of like yeah Shenanigans in the on boarding that are that is connected to the strategy so word Scapes is still second place uh New York Time games Word number L look Zen is on the fourth spot yeah is on the four so there's definitely something there especially the game was launched in last year's February so thanks for the tip we'll definitely look into it and pick it up at some point yeah nice okay I hate word games my dyslexic ass just [ __ ] short yeah problem with

you can't read and he has really really fat fingers it's just the worst combination okay uh so why did match 3D game start using the find the cat mechanic uh in the creatives happy match coffe or triple match City oh my God happy match coffe is just it it's really following me all the time it's it's crazy stuff they were using happy MCH CFE was using pimples before that grows creatives and like pulling [ __ ] out of your ear now it's it's F the cat mechanic besides the CPI reason well that's the main reason V that's the main reason that's the main reason there's no other reason like because the find the cat is I think we like Felix mentioned it on one of the the episodes it's so easy to understand uh and it works really well in terms of the the cpis and cre the and that that's that's basically it I mean I don't see any other reason hon and the triple match CD I think that was brilliant move

because that triple match 3D landscape is just as expensive as match free it's that that's the case so which means you need to really decrease the cpis whatever it takes and this is this is it like I think they will just change the the trend again like they they did with the pimples and I think there is the the dragon capes Adventure from Century games which did the same thing they did the the pimples and then they had these different small circles again nothing to do with the the actual farming game that is so now this is the this is the trend basically but I think it's like you got to understand that like on those games okay you get the catchy ad you click through and you get another catchy game it's not it's not necessarily that they're looking for cats in in in the matching games right yeah it's like it's like a weird Paradox I'm still trying to get it because we we do lot of um mislead um ads I think

actually all of them look those features are coming soon sure because I think the thing is it's a fun game like yeah exactly it's it's it's all about um like what then you have in the game if you have misleading but it's actually at least a little bit connected to the to the game then the players kind of forgive you that I think we saw this different um reviews in the in what what was it white out survival or was like the last time you checked oh this was absolutely nothing that the game was absolutely nothing uh what I saw in the in the creative but it's actually good game and I I started playing because well why not I didn't expect Forex though five star review five star review exactly five star okay okay okay okay so it is recommended to disable major and 17 plus ads if even if your game target audience 18 plus

I guess so basically no so it's like usually social Cino ads right or like those type of ads so usually they have high CPM but like usually what I say is like you look at complaints and ratings if the ratings drop then you have to do it and you'll lose money right but have that be your norf star and guide like just by rating and if that drops and his ads as a culprit then you should remove them but so besid besides um besides like there's also political stuff um I mean the the that's another thing that sometimes people complain about and yeah you you know um that's also worth looking at and thinking about you see really a lot of Impressions coming from political ads I mean well for the for the election there was okay I would I remember we would get like why are they showing Trump as oh my God like this kind of thing and then imagine that's the first thing that people see on your on your review of

like your stupid cat game stupid cat have a St Mouse game yeah that's if you don't have a stupid Mouse game yeah yeah yeah yeah probably have a cat game this this question I think is for you perfect so does getting into the top charts for a category significantly increase organic growth uh would it be worth running Break Even or slightly losing campaigns to maintain a top 100 Precision in a category I mean I'm sure like let me put on my game developer glasses here I got to do this at least once so I mean I don't think I don't think categories matter anymore just like like nerds like us that look at it right um I think I think the question is about the question is more about um or like percent of organic so yeah if you can get in the top top 10 top 15 maybe that does something um but not like it used to and by does something I mean it gives you a big organic boost but I think like to to get in there you're not

running you're probably not running break even like if you have to run Break Even to get in there you're going to be running minus yeah but yeah so I think I think that the quick answer is don't worry about it I'm hoping you guys agree because we don't we don't worry about it I do agree because uh it this was the strategy what like a few years ago a few years ago meaning 20134 so it's quite a long time ago uh it's it's not worth it it's really expensive and it's the questionable results are always um on my mind because you get into the category um rankings and what's the what is the uplift what is the real uplift it's always the only thing this was kind of let's say rentable was back in the days when hyper casual was so hot because you would want to be the company in the top rankings to be as advertised as the one that's there so you can share you can share LinkedIn post oh we top one also if you're a publisher and you're looking for people are sending you the prototypes then that's

true I mean I think hyper casual games also have cool icons that are kind of you know eye-catching um but you know if I mean we so I just looked at the top word games it's like it's the same thing it's it's like even the same game yeah yep um what are your thoughts on love and deep space we'll cover it it's coming we'll cover it but I will need some more time to process mate and Felix into this ivly Nikki I mean but I'm not but it's fine I mean we can we can do it because it's basically you yakob and four other listeners no no no and and Chelsea Chelsea it's I think you're on the same board with with Y so it's yeah four people and and John John right for sure so yeah there so you can actually be together yeah we will we will it's a good it's a game that we can't really exactly we can't just go like stay away

from so yeah we will I got to play this game it looks good Told You So we actually uh we have the the discussion there's one one fan that actually said um answer the question so sh up shine said I would say if your game has potential to retain users being on top charts will def definitely help you grow organically in the long run kind of true but it's very hard to actually get different gen have different Organics exactly and different cpis yeah cars I don't don't even say cars that's super low CPI anyway so uh do you do anyone play Ludo King these guys touched one billion downloads recently we wanted to cover it last year or on the we cover at some point the whole Ludo category super interesting are making multiple Millions a month there we'll get to it at some point H I

think we we can do the whole Ludo category like we did in merch and match free by the way if you if you didn't watch and listen to the match free category which just dropped three hours ago go and watch it and please share all the comments it's really long but it's really great and for those that finally watched it you can write your review because only now you have finished it now you have finished yeah exactly yes so thank you very much um okay uh is it advisable to Target India market I know ecpm will be pretty low but it will definitely to help to grow ma well you can't really pay team with so let let me say something that not a lot of folks uh talk about or think about um because I I love thinking about the tier three tier four GEOS as like it costs us more money to store the data of

that user and to attribute the user than we'll make um so that you have to also think about that the cost for attributing the install on upside is seven cents and you buying these insta for free free cents so you now need to make 10 at least 10 cents to be break it's not even break even you need to make like 14 cents which India and yeah so honestly for those those that you literally turn of attribution for those countries perod right so but the other thing keep in mind and it's not because you know those people suck or something it just they like their their phones may not have as much space as you're used to for us phones so they'll they'll play you for two seconds and throw you out instead of coming back and then all your Loop systems start start working um or your retention systems there's there's like all these extra things that you have to think about that may you know you may have lower hanging fruit elsewhere can I share can I share a story when I

actually made money in the Indian market from ads which was really by accident so I was working on a pu G and H they like they had some users in India right and then they did some like UA and then it just shot through the moon right and then wasn't profitable turned off the UA and then a week later ecms Quin tippled and I was like what the hell is going on here and is the Caba World Cup in India that was buying up which is this sport in India that bought up all the Impressions and ecm's just quintile and after that it was the what's it called they play cricket the Cricket World Cup yeah in India and then like that like it cpms were super high for five weeks we bought users on the cheap before without even knowing this and then it was a nice little profit so yeah wasn't that one of those stories like hey I need your imprs how many all of them yeah

exactly okay that's anyway yeah the cricket is really really big in in India obviously so that makes sense so mik our dear friend from Pixel Federation is asking uh what are your archero two level and power I'm actually on oh you're 12 I'm actually nine right now I haven't played for a while level 24 Island 12 okay one sec I'm 19 19 and and nine so there you go mik what what's your level Island two Island two level 16 fix numbers oh you are not level 16 we just made it up man like if you're level 16 I no way no it's I don't buy that like it's that's like that portion it's it's ter like the ratio doesn't work it doesn't one what are some good social features for a PVP single player word games that can be implemented with main goal increasing Organics

engagement uh PVP single player word games I mean got to put on my VC hat yeah to my hat you you should do the VC VC glasses VC got do I got to do my VC glasses and be like stop making word games because it's a incredibly difficult category that you can only do in one language which covers a small part of the world there we go VC yeah problem with the yeah PVP if it's synchronous and I guess this is not synchronous is asynchronous asynchronous uh still like those things are kind of hard to do especially without power progressions because with power progressions you can at least do like social helper mechanics those those help really well like you can borrow your friends hero for a day or something like this is common with like AFK Arena stuff and like all these other power progression games which I guess it's not the case here so I would do that organic wise there are no really like social helper me or like any other social mechanics like all of those like invite your friend and something like they

don't really work I'm honest here like this doesn't really move any needles last thing I think that work pretty well it's like still like within your ecosystem and like cross promotion like watch two episodes behind you'll see how that works out for you oh yeah so yeah no really good answer here I would maybe very difficult try to do it completely differently I when I when I'm hearing about W games and then Publishers picking up all older W games I just I just do this very hard yeah it's really hard really expensive the cpis are also high and you need to make it work on the iip and that's just and the thing is guys the biggest game in the market is the New York Times game which makes four and a half million a month and this is the biggest one compared but they have ads they have ads as well there's also other so let's say wordscape wordscape is three and a half million and that's that's that's the ceiling that's the yeah exactly no there we go let me pull

it here but the thing is look it'ses easy to make I guess it's easy to make but then ex make it's it's like match three man just hidden under the surface yes yes it okay so right me phrase it's really hard to make a good word game it's easy to make a w game yeah okay exactly okay um your thoughts on getting hyper hybrid casual Games published through publisher being a solo def any thoughts on smaller Publishers like Apple deal which let you keep 100% intellectual property uh who cares about intellectual property though yeah intellectual property won't save you it's about the whole contrac thing and like what's the fine print yeah the fine print and the the whole like IO that you sign there um whole IO whole IO we don't we are not discussing whole IO what are you talking about so so so happy with himself oh so the thing

is that uh if your game's great like if you're building it solo and you can run some like really base like these day one retention numbers or something actually Publishers will compete for you yeah yeah between each other not really that you you know yeah but y suan here is a solo Dev so I'm I'm pretty sure like he doesn't really have so much money to actually but here here wait can I do the the the trick no this is this is the game developer go to the go to the networks and be like hey can I get $1,000 doll in credit and like they might give it to you if you're nice and there's enough networks that it might work and it has worked because then you can just do simple CPI campaign get numbers for your game and then you'll be super hot versus random for those guys they true because you will have the the numbers already and then some num hey yeah these are numbers yeah go okay that's actually pretty good before you sign anything

which gives you a lot of Leverage but I mean I wouldn't don't sign anything anyway ex like if if the game is good you'll figure it out right away and then don't worry don't talk to those guys they'll scam you the promise of 100% intellectual property won't help you at all yeah it doesn't mattering well I mean why don't we why don't we explain why yeah please yeah go go okay me so like like there's never been this cessful lawsuit maybe this Nintendo Pokemon thing but Pokemon is not an indie game um where intellectual property matters in in games y there you go exactly so we then thanks guys for crazy stuff looking forward for more insights on the channel trust me you guys are a daily hot talk on the office floors thank you very much really appreciate it really appreciate it oh by the way um there is merch coming so you can talk about us and ver where the the merch of Two and a Half

Gamers so that would be even crazier and hot talks coming so yeah keep uh yeah I will keep you posted okay so oh mik again what what fake ad you love so much and would you like to have real game alike I have exactly the answer for that I what did we discuss before oh yeah of course so dear listeners we are airing this on Monday because we just recorded creative Trends episode like five minutes before the the live episode and we have we had so much fun seriously this crazy [ __ ] is going to be there you go and watch it definitely it's is this Sora no no proba don't know don't know no no this is not Sora s i just launched like a week ago this either yeah this is Runway a month ago so this is definitely different but wow aliens hugging

children okay I definitely want to see this game yeah so there's going to be a more and more influx of these very interesting AI driven ads like completely Ai and it's going to turn the whole thing upside down well what do you mean it's going it's already here man it's not that big of a scale it's still bulk of the thing is Royal match pin puzzles stuff like that trust sure yeah but then um Royal match already started doing it we we saw it it's getting there it's getting there but overall share of voice I think it's something like 5 10% currently I just I just mentioned on the on the episode which uh which we discussed uh that I did few creatives with AI for Merch game and decrease the CPI in in us from 120 to 35 okay I will I will we also had success with we also have success Runway um nice but uh I

think it wasn't anything like aliens with little children no no of course no aliens no yeah no no aliens thank you for yeah you can share with that that's useful this is better oh there we go yeah this is better my life has changed completely yes after watching this creative my life completely changed Absolut yeah that's that's that's what what it is so so yeah this is what you want to see delicious and and it's it's it's going to be more and more of these like completely bizarre AI driven Creations but so on on this on this topic though you're still seeing ridiculous AI ASO stuff like AI um icons and nor you still see it yeah you still see it and it's I think I think what is it the white out survival I still see it um I I we haven't tried anything with that yeah it's like honestly you can you can make an icon easily any any any but I mean like ridiculously obviously AI like these

like these videos it still works I think because it has like this fun Factor also catches the attention it produces stuff that you never seen before just because it's unnatural and people find it interesting that's it right so but when is that gonna end should we should we all jump on the trend now before it runs out okay currently it's like the right time have to jump on it yeah yeah yesterday was already too late uh but it's still going to last for some last year no no no like it's it's it's happening for a month basically and uh I already can see quite big success and the thing is the trend is is that I can build creatives by myself that's that's the biggest win that's the biggest win so you don't really need 10 people in the in the creative team you can do it on your own like that's that's a huge change literally I follow few of the like content creators that their base content like anything they do is just basically this AI videos that has like literally millions of views nonsense

sometimes nonsense like thematically based nonsense that's it Oh Mr Nonsense I have one video already with two and a half Gamers AI stuff which is dropping in next week or so because it's going to be just you know thank you very much for 20 2024 this is what you can look for in 2025 everybody's going to [ __ ] their pants so and it's all AI it's it's us Ai and the and the Viking this the music the music I shared with you guys so it's going to be a combination oh see I'm I'm super excited it's going to be all of crazy stuff anyway so let's get back to the episode and the questions what do about subscription based brain quiz games like IQ Masters they're killing it it's a game is that is that Alin ah Alin uh yeah they're great they're killing it right now especially with a bit of AD Revenue so

yeah play IQ Masters great people are just doing those things uh yeah yeah we we know that guy I know that guy um yeah they're like I'm just adding another Revenue type thing is is like another Revenue style like we've been you know battle pass type stuff we've been looking at it and I think the inevitable is going to happen you have to do it the very important thing about all of these SL apps is that they masquerade under under education training whatever category which but I mean even in real life like people think this is you're getting you know smarter yeah yeah I know we had the impulse episode about this how this was debunked by science like numerous times but it still works as basically course I mean I think it was debunked by if you play the game exactly doesn't matter but yeah it works it works this trend still works definitely I heard that uh you know uh merge games help you develop cognitive like fight cognitive right so we got

yeah yeah I mean that was that was an old school like solitary ad we got to get back into those it's true there's a signed to article actually no we had an ad I remember the previous company it literally said based on scientific research Solitaire improves your you know whatever IQ whatever lowers risk of heart attack whatever it was scientifically research gets improved yeah look uh so uh uh hey guys what is the minimum number of ads video you should have for soft lunch minimum 10 or 20 no like seriously I think at least four different concepts which you're going to run through those in a week so you need and way more ideal scenario you have anything between five to 10 and then you can start running the the campaigns and remember in soft Lounge it's going to be limited countries and um you need more creatives

in that case so you need to produce it doesn't really need to be anything crazy it really needs to be around the game play anyway because you want to kind of test the the retention and all the kpis and if you use misleading ads you you won't this [ __ ] so yeah it's multiple iterations on the gameplay and then just different takes on the game play so but yeah you need you need quite a lot making a wicked movie length episode should be illegal thanks for breaking into Chapters at least uh we worked super hard on that episode It's the episode The yeah the the match is probably the hardest we've ever worked on an episode and that's why it's so long we want to make a really comprehensive episode covering the category in gaming that has earned the most revenue and is the most competitive hence why it's so long and also uh you can expect uh few of these coming next year for sure because we kind of um we think of course

like it's not going to be possible to watch it on one time but you just you know break it into pieces and then just uh listen to it or watch itting there for you exactly H but the content there is just it's worth it's worth it for sure you know that's what we like to do yeah if you bank on Organics better have an ins L TV because everything Google Play is an ad placement virtually iOS number one icon for search gets 30% traffic but uses only search brand nowadays just one of the previous comments yeah thanks Manel from True um firstly moved from D zero to day seven and now from day seven to day28 is it just their Monopoly which leaves no option to adopt new camp structure and they make high Bida this is a question or answer is it's kind of question and answer um look uh uh it's a new thing because of the like longer attribution

setting and uh it works for games that are kind of um optimizing for two years Payway period you can you kind of if you if you're optimizing for 30 days payback you you can't you can't use day 28 campaign structure type because you need 45 days to actually get out of the learning phase we we um we have we have a casual game I have had some success with that day 28 on on app Lov but I I think yeah our game is not built for two two plus years it's built for a year and in that case it's but it it sort of works like it's not completely a failure it's not it's not it's it's just not going to work for all the games and look for for for Apple it makes sense because you need to spend 45 days and then you can't touch the campaign any you can but you need to spend and get the data and again uh it's all about like the the those 10 15 purchases per day that's it so it's

definitely creates high ABA for for them because you need to spend 45 days until you actually see or just starts to to do any optimizations on the campaign level so yeah makes sense I think uh others will follow if you think about it it was already on the Google for basically years but nobody was using it because by default there was the 90 days attribution window which whoever put it there by default was 90 days and a lot of people didn't even touch it then there was the the best practice to go from to like 14 days which is basically two weeks not really 28 days but again two weeks or one week so you could change it and you could change it to 20 28 days as well it's going to be just three weeks period so that's that's basically I think also Facebook is going to move into that direction quite soon maybe not 28 but 14 for sure also I think we can expect a lot of great stuff from Facebook next year yeah is that a gut feeling or you have I mean I also but

it's a gut feeling it's it's educated guess let's we participated in we participated in in like a Facebook two-day seminar where they seemed smart yeah that's all I can say were they wearing suit were they wearing suits or t-shirts uh it was both and they had smart people say stuff but I mean it sound it sounds like I mean like between the lines I think everyone gave up on scan so uh they're all kind of fingerprinting their way to the top yeah yeah pretty much uh Felix I guess this this one for you no this is UA right but we can do from both UA and admon so what's working better in the last quarter iron Source or Unity ads on the admon side it's Unity uh because they also have really good reach on Android iron Source traditionally is IOS strong and really not that strong on Android in terms of ecpm yeah in terms of the UA uh what's working better in last quarter iron Source or Unity it's

uping yeah but I think like I mean I I I have specific like data that that I won't share but I'm saying like uh yeah the Apple oven but I think iron source and unity as a as a whole are going to be pushing Unity as yeah kind of the front um even though in my experience iron source is better um but I think I think they're going to be they're going to be unifying on unity and whether that means it's the same thing iron Source in the back no I think when we were at upface they said uh like they're doing some changes on Unity algorithm to actually go forward and just move uh at least closer to uplo which is going to be very hard thing to do but yeah it's it's going to be Unity more and Hest with those two I always had terrible results with iron Source slightly better with unity but it's like now I'm I can't even scale Unity that much anymore so it's ridiculous all right next next question I have for yakob and aren I found that

resolve is the key to motivation which can be stronger than both habit and will power how would I set goals in my game to build the players resolve poetic question I like it a poetic it's basically player motivation questions which like on first surface look sounds like optimizing a p of Exile character but uh uh this is yeah I guess a good site to follow to kind of check this is the Quantic Foundry taxonomy because the guy has a very very good player taxonomy and by specific motivations he have specific games as a reference so you can get very specific features that way to kind of compare and cross compare what you're talking about because just by having these General motivations as they are it's very hard to describe for just like yeah do this do gas so uh yeah I guess it really depends on your player audience genre and I would definitely recommend going to that site checking your genre and then comparing it with

the motivation Matrix do the questionnaire it's there free for like five to six minutes and it will spit out games and I guess based on the features of those games those would be the ones I would use let me so I can do I I have I have my final prop which is a clown so and I I don't know it's not related to the question I just we're almost out of time but no so I always um I always think about um so outside side of the science you you know gaming is a lot about emotion this actually really painful um uh it's um the crow no the crown is very pointy and painful it's metal anyway sorry uh so back to the question so gaming is very emotion yeah I mean no the guitars my my my my company my my my team made this for me anyway so so Soo think about it think about it from an emotional point of view and a lot of

times you know g games games you can kind of break into two things like a slot machine or like like a poker game which is very social like a chat room um so uh most games are these kind of random number generator uh slot machine experiences and those impulses are are kind of almost part of the motivation is like okay well why why am I going to open the Goda because I want to see what's in it um and then I think the other the other point wanted to add is like um I always think about game economy in in uh three parts so kind of like your your energy to your energy to play your energy to progress and then kind of your third energy which is um qualifying you U whether qualifying means you have a cool prop all right I I've somehow worked this worked it into the answer so um if it's about customization or something something that's not directly connected to your game progress but also direct just just about you like you're such a good player that you're getting these cool sunglasses um if you think about it

in that triangle of those energies I think that's also just those are natural motivations for people they want to see progress but they also want to um kind of appraise themselves they want they want to be able to look at like that there we go do you think the mini games category has a promising future in terms of the monetization what do you think about P2P like pay to play mini games what are they talking about instant games like we discussed with Jindo and now the the mini games last time Felix no Wi-fi games yeah that's that's what I think okay that's it's already making a lot of money so I think it's interesting ons on ads It's ADS I think the question is if there is some potential in terms of the monation in I don't think so there's space for more of these to like have like five six Jindo blue kind of like I think it's a trend which will die

quickly yeah I guess Moreno Corner did an invented it in one blow and that's it just remember Jindo blue went from earning close to half a million a day to now it's like 18K a day right so it's still pretty good still pretty good pretty good that's why gen so is it normal for users acquired through Google campaigns to have lower ltvs compared to for those from other yes yes and you remember this if you run CPI campaigns on Google you you you are better just throwing cash out of the window because those players will be just absolute trash and fraud seriously on the tias side and the the whole value optimization it's better but still it's lower than everywhere else it's cheaper but it's also lower the LTV so you find the you find the right balance and that's fine but yeah it's uh it's absolutely normal and I've seen it multiple

times has anyone tried dra ad campaigns on meta if so how effective are they um I've tried Rand those if you don't have really high percentage of the ads um split so anything above 60 to 70% it's really get it gets really expensive quickly and it's really not scalable that much or maybe it's because of the the high season in terms of the Christmas so I'm going to revisit that very early in January because it was great for a week and then it just died because cpis Rose super quickly and if you have that definitely go for it so there is also I'm me Mo in the mobile game developer can you give us more I guess info about the road map key steps to take after developing and Publishing a game is it good work with the publisher Mr AR yeah you you answer this on a publisher maybe but answer but like what like what's yeah but what's what's the question like can you give us a road map I don't think we can give you a road map man or key

steps to take after developing and Publishing a game that's a very complex make another game yeah that's a very complex topic yeah you can join our slack Channel and we can discuss it there because we have three more minutes so we need to answer all the the rest of the questions all right let's do speed round let's do speed round uh do you believe in Q5 this year uh no hasn't been anything for two years now it's Black Friday weekend okay next one yeah no no no it's it's all all of us so I guess I say I say no my hope is yes but reality check is no I don't think it's gonna happen yeah Hass asked the same question about Adas campaigns how do they perform compared to Google T uplo comparison to all of these two it's worse now but I haven't run like 100% ads uh game on Facebook ad Ros campaigns yet so I can't really judge but in terms of the scaling and like first results was quite FL creating a lot so uh then we have what's your opinion merging hidden objects with

match 3D mechanic I saw a few games but only Triple M city is doing good well I think it's going to be quite an interesting next uh step in the the M 3D right I think I used to do hidden objects um like for a living um I worked on like Zing games and stuff like that and like they're really expensive to to do so you know you got got take the plung if you want to take the plung because the artwork is like it's all 4K retina oh I mean yeah it's gonna look like [ __ ] you gotta like you still gota you know boom boom boom because people are going to play I mean if you look at the the cat finding game it's all very Illustrated um and that I mean maybe that's a little bit easier um but to do the real the hardcore Hidden Object stuff it takes a long time like like one of those scenes is maybe two weeks of work for a human maybe it's less it's like an AI won't be the future it'll be the simplified hiden object kind of shenanigans what's happening with the

match C going forward definitely I think you're I think you're limiting your audience if you're just focusing on find if it's if you're just doing wor Waldo versus you know looking at beautiful kind of artworks you're limiting your audience but I mean these games are making so much money I shouldn't talk but it's like um I'm just saying it's it's it's a bigger leap than doing matching games great answer nice question for yakob do you have a c in Pokemon TCG of course as usual [ __ ] are you crazy day one day one really all right [ __ ] hell who will be at PGC London I will oh I'm going nice I see you guys there I'm not going but yeah you should meet beautiful unforunately I'm going to be just me and Felix yeah yeah more kids on the on the on the way man terrible ision don't don't make KS it's a trap all right take us home all right take us home oh thank

you very much again for joining our live uh ask me anything also AR you thank you very much for coming this was a beautiful chat also guys uh on the other side of the the microphone thank you very much for joining us again thanks for asking questions please keep doing so and if you if you want to join our SL channel that would be amazing join our slack Channel see you next time and happy holidays thank you very much bye bye bye all thank you