3 life changing UA tips from 2023, how to revert ad apocalypse? Review Radar vol 3 (#95)

cool those were my little tips to turn that front upside down with yacob's help but I can't stress enough like yeah get those hard placements and on live Ops it's a big game changer yeah you're missing out definitely if you're not doing it and if you have already had placements in the main game yeah okay so shall we go to the radar then oh yes we shall uh last time we did it was a pretty long time ago actually this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast two and a half gamer sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our day-to-day user acquisition game design and AD monetization jobs we are definitely not discussing the latest industry news but having so much fun let's not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously oh my God thank you yob for spoiling everything welcome everybody this session number

95 95 uh this is a very special episode but before we dive into it my name is mat lerich I'm Felix braberg and I'm yier and we are your hosts and we also help companies to grow on the UA ad monetization and game design side so uh you know you can always give us a call you are already doing it uh from time to time sometimes you need uh another person to make an intro but don't be shy we we don't bite usually well we'll see I'm the like Channel don't try to charm the listeners mat I'm looking at the docket right now and in our script you are under your topic you have the most like Cosmopolitan Girl magazine title and like I just remember back to the deconstructor of fun talk in Istanbul when you're walking around with a big like Burberry scarf like you're such a

little little so M's topic that he written down is three lifechanging UA tips from 2023 and then his second topic is how to lose 13 kilos in 13 weeks yeah but yes thank you very much uh that's what I'm going to talk about oh man you're going first man like need to hear this yeah well we can we can we can do that there in that way but there's like way more important question because I mentioned this is a very special episode do you know why Mr you have most Cosmopolitan headline tell me tell me I don't know yeah you don't know episode 94 it's 95 how is it yes I'm the sentimental one yeah I can see that yakos yakos because he actually pays attention

I was actually wrong a little bit because I thought like we posted the first episode on January 16 but it was January 14 so this is our second anniversary episode my friend no we our YouTube account was created on January uh Fe February 13th yes because we started I start YouTube yes we didn't do it from the start and which I still didn't upload the first episode to this stage I always thought we started it on my birthday and I thought that was really nice and now but that's the YouTube that's it just we one one month before that so yes this is actually the SEC yeah second anniversary thank you very much guys for listening and that's it for today thank you cheers what about your uh 13 kilos in 13 weeks sorry yeah that's that's going to be on like uh I think that's going to be main topic for episode 100 okay that's that's the magic number

okay so I'm going to talk about these like UA tips from 2023 I'm also going to ask you guys about a few things as well but before we go into this uh interesting topic which is where we call it bring your own [ __ ] uh but I'm going to call it boys because it's easier it's easier okay so I'm going to talk about these tips uh you are want to talk about some admon interesting stuff yeah right I mean basically everything is dying right now it's looking doubly bad so I'm just giving some good housekeeping tips on making it look less bad but still going be pretty bad okay so less zombie mode yeah okay sweet Doom I mean I I can't stress enough how bad it's looking right now it's it's pretty not great it's [ __ ] show on the UA side as well like there there was basically no Q Q5 yeah there was no I mean there was there was a Q5 for admon but it was EX exactly the same as last year and it was two

days on Black Friday yeah yeah okay amazing people have no money like you know they have it's it's not that bad but it's I mean Jakob has to reuse his Christmas tree after Christmas for heat no it's it's a fake background you don't remember fake background you see there's like no nothing is moving on that tree how do you do that with a fake background that's amazing oh these AI tools these days oh my God it's amazing watch it on YouTube okay we're doing heavy on the [ __ ] now so just oh come on like what are you talking about Remo yeah we have uh the third version of review radar our fancy kind of review thing where we look at the [ __ ] that we reviewed before and try to keep up with it because we keep it on our radar okay very cool so mg ma girlfriend what do you have for us this week know no no no so who who was the

the second best UA manager on the on the podcast last year I think it was y most of the time yeah most all the time so that there the question like what do you remember from 2023 that stuck with you the most which was quite maybe surprising or it's like oh well this seems like a very good hack anything that comes into your mind yob that I was talking about is like okay this U wise yeah UA wise yeah yeah it's it's very Felix I'm going to ask you the same question so you you have you have Head Start you think real life hooks on creatives good yeah very very good yeah I think so Felix ad R campaigns on app ah nice it was mostly Google add that I was talking about but appin was one of the yeah that's that's one of the the best ones but then on app it was mostly about the the hybrid Ras or Blended Ras Blended yeah Blended nice okay you were

actually paying attention so regarding the creatives uh I wasit what is your topic MCH what is your topic it's uh you life change most lifechanging uh tips from the 2023 at least for me to be honest uh and we can go girlriend yeah I go yeah thank you very much so honestly I was having like a lot of this different discuss questions about creatives how to iterate creatives and like where to get inspiration basically so honestly where to get the inspiration which is always the hard question maybe even like the hardest one so I do dig a little bit deeper into like where to actually get the inspiration from so obviously competitors well know sheit Sherlock uh we also talked about this like super fast creative research which is copy of your uh competitors one to

one don't invent the wheel put it all put all of them like their top three or five uh creatives into into your concept um ideation and just go go go with it just no [ __ ] around like iterating or like yeah don't invent the wheel just use whatever works the best for for a compan and start there and uh ini Tom Tom H also kind of posted about it on LinkedIn it's like hey man like thank you very much for reading uh this uh tip in my newsletter and posting it on LinkedIn and he was like wow I actually read it in a book I like okay that's very good uh it's very good to hear but okay let's let's go back to the creative inspiration so we have the competition then we have a non direct competition which can be you know I mean obviously there are so many overlaps between different uh genres these days uh but go G play yeah yeah exactly exact it's like yeah it's it's not as easy to

kind of like spot different different genres but yeah fake gamepl uh so yeah you just look outside of the your genre to to get some inspiration there is like overlap between match free merch should be shooter versus strategy and even like simulation and idle that's what I've been seeing quite a lot lately and like idle mechanics working quite well in simulation which then comes down back to Golden goblins golden go BLS and Township and all of the other the farming games as well so that's like that's very important then we have obviously the hyper casual mechanics we talked about it million times before million million times before but we see it in top four we see it almost every Evon is is using it the same thing other other games as well and then we have YouTube and Tik Tok Trends so yakob again question for you do you remember which game we talked about at the yach party in Busan that uh Haven from

Century games mentioned that it's like top in US Neil Neil wrote about it in his uh article it was the coloring book oh with top the chart and I was digging into that like why the [ __ ] like suddenly out of nowhere there's like top one game in the US a coloring book well a meme on Tik Tok that was a simple meme or trend on Tik Tok which lasted for a week or so and it should uh the game right on the top in top spot yeah similar case with save the dog think in save the do and uh hard Dumb Way to Die Dumb Way to Die as well as soon as they started doing the their like interesting organic social media strategy and executing it they were at the time top one two or three without like any in Us in downloads without any paid UA budget I mean obviously you need to pay your team but you save a lot of money to

actually get top one us a lot of money so so that's said and yeah can I ask a creative question yes so remember in 2022 when we started this that your thing that you rage on was ASMR slicing and that was the best thing what was the best like ASMR slicing what was the as ASMR slicing of 2023 I was just about to say like there is this thre there was this trend on YouTube ASMR oh my God God just about man honestly stop stop this uh no um it was mainly dancing and and uh an AI you know what was like ASMR slicing on uh in 2023 US president playing War uh Minecraft do you remember that it was abs absolutely amazing and you you could

use these things in in creatives I used it for one game on Tik Tok it was around like uh elections and it was kind of problematic so I got banned but you know like that's that's the part of the experimentation I guess so yeah but that's like also the like memes and hype kind of AI [ __ ] inspiration where you can just go super crazy can wait for this year's American elections creatives oh yeah yeah yeah I can you know we already kind of uh kind of see the the use of AI in in Slovakia about like politics so it's interesting but also our former colleague also used AI for um dubbing Harry Potter into like weird East uh Slovakia [ __ ] which was quite popular here but that's it's another story anyway so that was that then we I can we can talk about the fake CS a little bit if if we want uh because now I think it's a whole new level of of

fake ads running around and uh I mean we can't touch the Frozen City white survival again but I think the most important part on the U side was to actually think about the the mini games or the altered gameplay or whatever you have in the UA and put it inside the game from the gate goal and create like a FAS Farm example illusion yeah for yeah we kind of talked about few times you have multiple games in one game and that kind of opens up a lot of new possibilities on the UA and creative side so you are actually using whatever mini game or hyper casual kind of mechanics you have in the game it's just the you know it's not the main let's say storyline because there now for example there is this dream detective merge game uh which was published by Century games our friends and they have immediately from the start

bombarding me with the mini game which is a Tap Away takeway type of mini game for there are a few few hyper casual Studios that already kind of like launched this game and it's doing so well so they they just put it in so this is this is quite um an evolution in terms of the fake ads it's not only about duct taping everything on top of everything and then I would say the creative winners uh and iteration on creatives I'm getting this question a lot so finding a creative winner is obviously not easy I mean I think it's easy in UA anymore uh but how you should iterate on a Winer so in Ideal World you understand why you're creative resonates with your target audience you can then dissect the parts that work well and those that don't didn't and try obviously replace those uh with something that is a little bit closer to your targ this is Ideal World sometimes

absolutely weird [ __ ] works the best and you don't you have no idea why you have no [ __ ] tell me that people know why exploding work and I think yeah froze she's nice I see that smile on his okay now he's she's you froze with like amazing amazing look I mean anyway so what can you do itate on the first three seconds change the hook change the hook like y mentioned real life people at the hook amazing that but that's just like a it sounds like the best tip though is taking the best most successful UA creatives and making them into your foui whatever is like like yeah yeah 100% the daily low CPI and then running just not that easy to do need to code another game yeah and also you need to well it's the that's the game design part that you need to think about like uh what how to motivate players to actually play those mini games you know because obviously

you want if you are showing those in the creatives then you want to motivate them or you want players to actually play them so they're not kind of you know misled because of you know you have it in the game but yeah yeah of course be sling CRI that's what that's all about anyway so yeah just a few more tips for iterations take your kind of the winner and then add the real life footage there in the hook or slap an influencer on top of your winner creative ugc for the win or you know doesn't need to be real real person it can be an AI that works quite well still and it's going to work quite well in this year as well uh it's it you can have multiple new Creative Concepts out of one creative just using different people then we have different elements hand emoji sounds in videos you can use

trending Tik Tok music and adding it to your ven creative you can also use Tik Tok um Editor to uh to put like different filters different emojis there as well captions whatever else and obviously cut it into pieces and create like two three four short creatives out of of your 30C cinematic trailers so so that's that happy happy trating happy New Year and uh yeah I just shut up now it's mostly about creatives it was mostly about creatives because that's most important part in the UA maybe you can leave a couple creatives in the show notes no nope I can yeah I can but isn't isn't it these days not only about the creatives but creatives with the mini games in the game themselves yeah it's it's a combination of uh creatives and then the flow of of users and then like the onboarding of the whole game

basically yeah so it's not like you can't say like oh well you know we brought the players in and now it's your job game to to retain what I'm trying to say is just like having killer creatives isn't enough these days it's not enough yeah it's not enough you need to connect it with the product and by product it means like actual game play yeah pretty much yeah because the then like the expectation flow it's it's perfect broken yeah broken in the middle yeah if it's not yeah if if you see something in the creative it's not in the story it's not in the game then you just write uh reddit reddit comments about oh where can I see the the levels I saw in the Hero Wars creative well my friend is not coming it's not coming anymore so yeah uh that's that and then there's also this announcement about The Tick Tock panel discussion I'm moderating on Monday on PGC which is actually exactly where you're trying to hear this because we're publishing this on Monday and we are going to be at PGC most probably moderating the panel with Sam from Lesar

is the co-founder and then Dimitri from space ape games we're going to talk about the Tik Tok loue strategies for for new titles we're going to talk about Chrome Valley and then we are warriors so it's not going to be Adventure but we are warriors what time uh 2:30 p.m. UK time you should all you should all be [Music] there why are you attending games from from Barcelona 2024 share insights and knowledge have all gaming experts in one place networking great lectures meet new people to learn more about the industry games forum is one of the best places to get mobile marketing Insight see all the conferences and panels staying up to date with the market I'm going to meet their amazing people the experts in their fields insight and networking register now and join 500 UA products and Apple Managers at games from Barcelona February 7th and 8th and and one more one more thing we actually get

a discount code for games firm so everybody who is trying to get to G to games form in Barcelona I'll put the the co discount code in the show notes and use it use you're welcome just uh tell games Forum two and a half Gamers sent you yeah exactly easy okay who's next who is next because you know because what because because you'll need more time oh you can if you want you can go don't worry don't worry so everything is looking bad on ecpm side side right now like bad bad let me say that again like everything is looking bad and we have like a double whammy of headwinds right now on the admon side it's like it's a it's January and that's traditionally when we have like the lowest ecpm because all the marketeers have spent all the money in

Q5 which didn't happen yeah it's not true actually I see still like some companies big company spending serious money it's also kind of the fact that people assume the consumers have less money because they spent it all on like Christmas stuff you know like the most depressing day statistically is when credit card bills are due in mid like in January but so that's usually what happens so usually we have really bad ecpm in January so they usually you expect usually say usually one more time I'm going to myself but usually it's even like it's worse than normal right and that's because also at the same time Google came out with those notes that we covered the came out with the changes that we covered before which essentially killed gam by saying that on the 20th of January all the adct demand is going to be completely cut off that means a in all the auctions where you had gamry sellers admob won't or Google bidding or an admob won't be bidding against addex inventory which is a chunk of admob and Google like bidding inventory yeah which which means that in the kind of in the mediation setup they didn't know they

were bidding against themselves that artificially inflated kind of the average adars and then also at the same time they're going to be outlawing uh from the 20th of January um the use of admob placements and gam uh placement refreshes where essentially Publishers used to make new placements and then that used to boost kind of the algorithm and for a day and a half you increased revenues by a lot which is kind of brings me to my first point but uh I'm getting a lot of questions right now uh if you should stop admob and gam refreshes and what I'm advising everyone who asking me who's asking me is that the juice is simply not worth the squeeze so lose basically Google said exactly Google has said that uh if they catch you they will cut off Google demand for a week anything from a week to four weeks and in the long run it's just not worth that risk can you just replace it with something else there's no Google like no one can replace Google there's like it's so big it's all Google or just gam

Google all Google okay that okay that sucks yeah so the enforcement dates uh that Google has said that they'll start with this is the 20th of January which is a bit in disent like disingenuous because they say they have a 30-day look back window so actually the real date is the 20th of December they start looking from so so you're already most yeah yeah most people stopped on the nth like 19 and I heard a couple people like yeah we've been going the same space I'm like that's Brave and like what do you mean I'm like there's a 30-day look back and they're like oh so yeah the party stopped effectively 20th of December and I'm speaking around to a lot of Publishers and they're all feeling the pain like I'm hearing numbers anywhere from 15 up to 45% like decreases on Adar all depending on how dependent you were on gam refreshes so it's pretty not looking great uh we'll just have to find new ways to

boost ad revenues uh without taking and Google Al yeah exactly I I know it's Amazon what it's Amazon you you're always talking about Amazon uh yeah Amazon can't save us yet because they still don't really bid a lot on intials and rewarded but they can save you on banners um maybe you know the meme with like the office thing like make better games with better placements Yeah Yeah so basically exactly this brings me right back to what I wanted to talk to so like right now everything is [ __ ] now he gets thrown out of the window but you're not alone so don't worry yeah don't worry just make better games don't wor yeah end of my segment no so I just wanted to share some things that I'm doing right now to make things look teeny tiny bit better and don't worry Remo on the last one I'm going to call on you because you have the insights there to make everyone's frown turn upside down are you making video games yeah St by St you know how to make better games

right so the first thing I always want to tell Publishers about is that if you actually have apps and not games uh meta automatically blocks you on rewarded ads uh because it's only for games which is very stupid but they keep being insistent on that that mobile applications cannot have rewarded ads period which is weird but if you reach out and send an email saying hey I have rewarded ads in my app can you like Whit list it for me then they do that um why is it again this [ __ ] so dumb and the Annoying Thing is now because meta has laid off so many people it's so hard that unless you have like their top tier uh of account management which is 5K a day in earnings from meta like it's really hard to get someone to talk to you so like but why is it like with all of these ad networks like half of the functionality is hidden between you need to contact them yeah literally yeah okay okay let's let's think about REM why why do you think that is because they're

making money off it people contacting them exactly and that's why podcasts like us like have actually like grown in popularity because no one talks about it like you know when you first log into Unity like the dashboard like they hide making placements like and then you can only make 10 placements and then you have to ask for more and then on iron Source they hide making placements it's just like it's just yeah all the Hoops which brings me to my like other point outside of meta so you can have actually do this by like messaging and making a ticket uh what I've heard of people doing in the past is they make a ticket a week last time I did it it took like three or four weeks like made four different tickets and then finally they were like you know this is this guy's too annoying let's just silence him yeah like yeah yeah but yeah keep the face when you actually do this like when you actually get that unlocked uh on Android they're still super strong and AD Arps increase by anywhere between 15 to 35% if you add meta to a stack where there's no no meta on Android so it's a really good tip it's just uh you need to deal

with their bureaucracy which is you need to help them make money you know this brings me to my second point which is exactly what Remo is talking about that functionality hitting behind ad Network so lift off lately I've seen grow quite immensely in terms of share Revenue if you move them from the bidder to placements and the thing is you can't make placements anymore inside of their dashboard you actually have to reach out to an account manager and they make it for you and send it to you this is particularly true for some reason on level play mediation it just really like kind of doubled share revenue for me which shocked me a lot and definitely something worth trying out the increase is not as big on Max mediation but on level play it works really well so definitely try that out if you haven't and if you're working with liftoff uh another thing uh which is back to Ma's Point since he's I guess are you the second best or third best

admon manager I don't know I don't know I'm probably the yeah the worst so the wor anyway you broken clock is right twice a day M but anyway so as we've talked many times on this podcast Amazon is amazing uh for banners and they're starting to grow now on intials and rewarded video but they're still really strong on banners so now when people are implementing their cmps that means Amazon actually is allowed to bid on European inventory because before they just refused to do so so make sure that you reach out to you Amazon and make sure that you're sending them the like CMP strings so essentially they can bid on your inventory that will mean that they probably will be your biggest Banner partner globally or second biggest right behind Google and also in terms of Tam Partners I was doing a deep dive on all my clients and other different Tam partners for those who have not kept up Tam is essentially where you can reach out to dsps that are working with Amazon and if you strike a direct IO deal uh they

no longer are charged the 18% kind of tax for using the Amazon piping to show ads in your game or app and basically you have to do a direct IO deal and then the drops to a couple of scent instead of percentage so looking at Tam the best kind of partner I see on Tam for banners is mobile fuse so I've been looking at different ones and and normally what happens is uh like Amazon typically makes up maybe direct demand like 25 to 40% And Then There usually a bunch of other Tam networks that makes up the rest but the one that sticks out is mobile fuse on bounders and it seems to just be taking up nearly 25 to 30% on a lot of my clients which is quite nice to see so mobile fuse is definitely on the top of the list for Tam so really takes quite a lot of share of Revenue so make sure you're working with them I'm not getting paid to say that by the way that's just what what I see uh yeah nice have you been there yeah I

know uh also since this is a low ecpm time this means that each and every impression that you get is less valuable than a month ago right so this is also a really good time to experiment with bid floors on interstitials particularly if you have a game that's monetizing a lot with iaps where you have minority ad Revenue that means that it might be ideal to give up a couple of those intitial placements that you're getting on a low ecpm and actually in favor of yeah keeping people in your game and keeping retention higher so basically bid floors is when you experiment saying like I will not accept an intitial impression unless I get at least X dollar I would typically recommend starting at five and AB testing and seeing if it actually increases or decreases your overall Revenue so you have to take into account I AP Revenue but shouldn't this be segmented or something like wouldn't this pretty much uh ban interstitials in your game in like low paying countries then yeah but

you can do it by country you do it by country okay well you didn't say that you know you do country but like I was thinking from a US perspective but of course like yeah you you do it by country and you look at your where your average is by just taking a look at that but also typically you wouldn't see a lot of I APS from low like lower tiered countries right so you do it in the countries where you're actually earning a lot of iaps because that's when you can actually increase it uh this last little tip I have I've been talking to a few developers and noticing this more and more there's not a lot of developers that are doing events and also incorporating ad placements in those events and I can't stress enough how good this is for overall like ad revenues during events and I want to call on the second best admon manager in our podcast or I want to call on Remo because I just want to ask you for some

tips maybe you can share with the audience of your experience because I know that you have done this from a game design perspective can you maybe share the top three things that change your life when you designed event driven ad placements in 2023 yeah it was in 2021 Cas yeah probably um so it's liveops uh mainly and what we want to do is we want to increase ad placements during some liveops you want to put your mic into your mouth and I want to hear what you're saying it's important yeah yeah come on that's what we want to do so the important thing is that usually liveops things tends to run temporarily which means the temporary thing doesn't really have that big of an impact on your economy or is already accounted for so having uh it gives you a lot of opportunities to have literally free ad placements because for instance in a normal game you usually like normal economy you usually allocate the budget

for ad placement so let's say you give the player your daily resource budget and let's say 20% of that goes through ad placements let's say whatever you click your daily Quest you click your whatever reward something it gives you I don't know 800 gold soft currency and 200 gold is logged behind watching rewarded videos as an example with live Ops driven by ad placements you can do for instance with whatever you can do some kind of Arena event boss event whatever some kind of thing where you give player whatever tickets for instance every five hours the ticket refreshes you can get there and if you run out of tickets you can give one for at placement or you can you know revive the player for it or whatever but but main point is you don't really give them more economic value you just speed up their event progression where they would go there anyway so the the whole thing is that they just finish the event sooner with the end placements so you don't giveing any more can make that's

just one example where these really shine I've seen 20% increase on Impressions done by these on overall Impressions I mean through liveop events that had head placements but it needs also kind of a clever design there it's not that like let's slap it all over the [Music] place okay so 20% M 20% cool those were my little tips to turn that front upside down uh with yacob's help but I can't stress enough like yeah get those hard placements in on live Ops it's a big game changer yeah you're missing out definitely if you're not doing it and if you have already had placement in the main game yeah okay so shall we go to the radar then oh yes we shall uh last time we did it was a pretty long time ago actually when I was looking it it was actually episode 80 80 sh yeah which was somewhere between September and October I don't remember between 79 and

81 something like that so to get record straight the last game that we checked on the radar was actually Monopoly go o too bad we are not covering that anymore that would be amazing timing now oh my God oh my God yeah so yeah we're covering a lot of games actually today but uh yeah somewhere kind of special episodes and yeah we increasing the cadency here with like all these games to keep up with but yeah before you start can I always ask ma did you hear any rumors if uh Monopoly go is profitable after your attack piece last week not it wasn't attack piece I had I had a call today and like they asked sorry attack LinkedIn post is it is it is I was well it wasn't attack it was just question like like the question that's that's

that's it yeah I'm just stirring the pot I I thought it was a good episode until today nobody said anything except oh well they're profitable you have no idea what you're talking about thank you very much for that argument it's it means absolute [ __ ] to me because they're like zero data in that doing equivalent of petting you on the head yeah like yeah it's like nothing so thank you uh and until I hear any numbers assumptions rumors I have no idea whatever then that this is just it okay yeah so let's start them with the radar uh as usual we're going to I'm going to try to scheme over it as fast as possible even though it will take some time show game play and the graphs now yes um so first on the list is uh our special hom Games episode in August 2023 number I think these are the only this is the only company who didn't listen to the podcast that much because there is no growth there's no growth

guys come on like come on like uh episode 7 76 and we have a fight for America which is the tower defense game from hia that we have been reviewing was kind of quite interesting and yeah looking at the charts here you can see the downloads We review it in August so the download downloads okay yeah these are downloads the downloads kind of stabilized and they're still pretty nice something like whatever 40 50k a day downloads yeah this is this is the game as as you remember where you pretty much you know you go through America through each state and yeah and there's you get sub you getal yeah anyway what was theame come back come I want to see the I want to see what's the the game yes what is this another tower defense game looks exactly like what you just playing uh Army defense okay yeah I don't know

what's that and I don't know where's the click inst just click somewhere just so we see where like loin and cards yes oh man yes y yeah so yeah you can see this is the game play if I let's say stand here the tower is going to be built and like it's it's still we were talking about it that it's kind of it's kind of hybrid like we were looking at hybrid it was a hyper casual mate yeah but it's it's kind of more hyper casual because the economy wasn't kind of that strong and we can see it also in the chart here in the meantime as I'm kind of killing these things uh yeah looking at the revenue so I was right it's making something like 5K IP Revenue a day and it's pretty stable like on the other hand which is very good but I haven't seen any can giant updates within the game maybe because I like didn't really play it before or like Yeah by the to sensor Tower thanks for the the access to to the the chart you're seeing yeah

basically yeah so this didn't uh seems really move anywhere which is also pretty positive because as you will see a lot of games that be talking about actually declined pretty heavily yeah but if you decline from 15 million to 5 million we still more than what you're seeing here yeah so you know I think I calculated like yeah add revenues here were like 75% if memory SS me correct yeah something like that so uh last thing I'm going to always tell is the December Revenue monthly revenue and downloads so for fight for America it's something like 1.5 million downloads and something in 150k IP Revenue only so that's there but like yeah pretty good job at keeping it kind of on the same same level like I would say that's okay um next one on the list is attack hole again from H games that we covered which seems that it uh declined uh steadily where we again covered it some

in August it was doing like something like 2 K IP a day now it's doing something like 97% on ads yeah yeah like as I said but even even the downloads kind of yeah went a little bit down something like half of it but yeah again seems kind of stable but yeah not not that growing anymore let's say where was the sorry this one yeah if you remember you were eating these uh bullets and growing and growing and growing and having different avatars and their skins and stuff like that but yeah with both games like the economy definitely wasn't like uh robust enough to be called hybrid so I guess that's there we'll see what comes out from hum SP forio later because I know there's definitely initiatives to like move to hybrid but haven't seen anything materialized yet so let's see um moving forward we have our f favorite Empire takeover which is the outlier in the

list because we look at it in September 2023 in episode 77 and actually for December it made half a million in iip on 20K downloads whoa and add Revenue here was a whole who in 1% yeah so uh it's actually a uh I I played the game a little bit it actually reseted my progress like throw me into like a new world uh they have that Christmas event and there's still like uh the usual kind of [ __ ] on on stuff that's happening within the game uh I think they even like somehow changed their funnel a little bit because I remember I saw some kind of chained angel that you need to kind of oh yes free or whatever like here's our favorite tower defense game playay that we have there and yeah for those not knowing about this it's a Forex game so don't be you know misled misled that's a

very yeah it's a very cor yeah as we say because I don't think so I have the map in this this exact play through yet no no I don't because or or or do I oh do I here you have there we go already run out of my P Shield so I'm going to get oh killed probably very soon yeah getting back to the point like where you're this is just like the the usual kind of Testament to like how Forex games are durable if they kind of run at some point and you know these people here are so invested they will keep just fighting over so that's there but if I understood correctly uh guys from Empire take over are making a new game yes they mentioned that they mentioned that in the in the LinkedIn comments uh below my post about their episode so yeah hopefully we'll going to we'll meet them this year oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's that's happening yeah

sending regards and like we'll be glad if we can meet somewhere there China Joy okay even before I hope so yeah yeah so Empire takeover episode 77 now we're moving to number four which is uh nothing else than my perfect hotel from seg games that we covered in September 202 you could see this was episode 78 yeah uh you could see the explosive grow there where it was making something like half a million downloads a day yeah okay and then in December they break broke the decline with something like again 600 700k downloads a day the5 that's uh that Q5 end of the year Spike and this isn't only seen on downloads it's both seen on Revenue where the game declined to something like 20K at the middle of December and then at the end of the year like climb to 40K a day 70% of uh the game's Revenue was ad Revenue yeah uh it was regarding

regarding December downloaded was 11 million and the revenue something like 1 million in IP Revenue I checked the game and like one of our friends mentioned to us like they're still heavily updating the game uh for instance they added this nice skill Tre where they got that from yeah where they got that from of course looks like Hobby and they changed a little bit the currencies and like the the progression guys are really trying hard and you can see it that the the game's getting better and better still even afterwards uh where do I have it somewhere here yeah is nice yeah yeah so this again is just the usual kind of scene here that like this is the difference between like some of those like games trying to get hybrid or not hybrid at all or hyper casual ones and the hybrids which are can still run running strong so you could see that for those who don't remember this is how the game

looks you're managing your hotel Empire there's lot of stuff happening at rewards all over the place there's this kind of a big map that I think they again added one more kind of Hotel on top there and then uh the important things were that they give you hard currency in the daily quests I think this is like one of the main changes together with the three that I'm currently showing on the screen so yeah it's still going strong don't just like write it off yet uh that's very nice okay continuing further we have Mr Auto fire that we did episode 78 with MAA in September sorry 79 uh 79 and regarding Mr Auto fire uh it did something like 350k IP Revenue in December and 50k downloads uh you could see here regarding the chart that uh it seems that the UA or let's say the downloads for the game are kind of turned off

because I think we already talked about yeah mentioned on the podcast you mentioned it yeah Revenue Wise It's kind of St quite stable yeah something like 10K or yeah 10K a day with those like usual spikes I guess those weend like it was on top of this quite a lot of AD Revenue yeah yeah of course that that's like to be expected yeah so so that pretty stable the interesting part is that uh what I saw I think here here I have it that there's actually uh she ton of new games on the account that I've seen yes because last time we talked with M that was just battle Badgers and sword game now there's games such as super run Royale downhill cat pic Cosmic Miner zombie Survivor 3D yeah so I think the survive super run Royale is the one that he's having quite interesting numbers from the discussion I had with with

Mika but yeah he said there pretty pretty promising results one of the new Concepts and I mean I don't know the name but the super run Royale kind of describes exactly what I'm seeing in the in the creative side it's like that one so seems like guys are not really border and like you know working their ass off uh with so much kind of yeah welcome to the game develop yeah exactly that's how it should be so fingers crossed with all these soft lunch games and we'll see what happen afterwards um next one on the list uh Alien Invasion one of our favorite October 2023 episode 81 and this G is a [ __ ] beast yeah still going very strong December Revenue 2.1 million I AP only and 2.5 million downloads see here steel Revenue if we go to more granular granular view you can see it's kind of pretty stabilized so that's very good and download wise again still very

stabilized so this game is still like killing it going very strong for a hybrid casual game I think we can assume that it's like 50/50 yeah yeah so that's there I think I don't have it or do I yeah no I don't unfortunately don't know if I have it somewhere here but for those who don't remember it was the game where your main point of and the game play was attacking scientists and other kind of living creatures with an alien and eating them and having more and more meat and upgrading yourself Invasion says a lot by exactly it's exactly what the game is all about the interesting thing and remember that always they had the game with a different team with a fish team and that didn't work out and they switch it to that improve executed and then took off so yeah very very interesting story if you want to watch it get back to episode 81 um continuing

further we have top troops yes and there's interesting moves there uh is I've been following that quite as the game was soft launch from April 2020 I'm going to just zoom here for the last uh let's say a half a year yeah six months so this is the like October was the downloads glob launch and these are downloads and the game can scale pretty nicely in uh Christmas period at end of the year like 30 35k a day now it still can stabilize like 25 20K a day downloads regarding graeven we can see a small but steady increase that's that's been going on it's growing I mean it's the active user base stick but it's it's growing what the active user base um there yes no you just go to the

report and say download at the top you can change that to active user base now ah yeah sorry yes yeah growing as well so what is that now 170k 170k let me just do quick some quick math here yeah you can do decimals in the meantime but regarding Revenue it's scaled to where's it coming from yeah the worri like you have your time uh there's 50k I I'm shocked like who are you who are you who the [ __ ] are you 50k IP Revenue a day which scaled nicely from something like whatever 40K after the launch but uh yeah I think a lot of people were writing this game off uh currently and it still seems to be kind of holding strong yeah you know the main problem is like oh well this is small for Zinga yeah it's small for Zinga because it's under take to which bought Zinga which owns social point which has the game on

portfolio yeah this is the game for those who don't uh remember uh it's the merch game that has the kind of the battle Legion automated game play and they added the merch meta on top of it like the main kind of a let's say uh the thing that that we think is not really fitting for the thing is that the merge mechanic loses value later down the line and becomes very very annoying and you can see here like just like the unit progression that you need to keep up with it just like exponentially increases the amount of units you need to hold together because of the merge kind of you know 3 three three 3 3 3 three and actually you want to have five because then you have the bonus again so even more units and so on so forth so yeah but it's still holding steadily so my guess is that like the retention still is good we've seen the increasing user base there they've also added a bunch of new ad placements yeah like looking here uh like they definitely added like more units and more uh yeah

some challenges so like yeah the game is going as as it should it's just that it's not just crazy high for Zinga that's that's that's that's the can can you open up uh nord's uh top 11 just uh just put it in the apps yeah can just just finishing finishing this one uh the revenue was 1. million in December IB and 700k downloads okay because yeah just go just add the top 11 because yeah in there exactly this one yes just going to like yeah can you compare the revenues no because if that's look yeah okay yeah so three times more it's like three times more like 60k a day okay that's what I wanted to say yeah okay yeah we'll see like uh probably still profitable it's making it's making money

it seems but yeah well that's questionable that's questionable but that's questionable but what's not questionable it's not moving the needle for Zinga that's true question but yeah anyway like fingers crossed guys maybe maybe this can you know steadily scale no no worries there uh moving forward and this is something that's kind of personal or sorry before we go into this which I didn't say yet there was an episode about Moco yes so in episode that wasn't numbered actually because it was a special I special yeah yeah with supercell games you never know when they get killed and we can even play them so we need to review them as fast as possible because that's how it works so supercell released a close beta for Moco that we got access to if I remember only ma Got access yes so I had to review the game based on Ma's videos or whatever you know it's a part of the podcasting job yeah yeah that's that uh Moco is a

action RPG uh similar to games like I don't know Diablo or stuff like that uh it was like a first game in this category for supercell I think the close B main takeway is it's not killed yet yeah it's not killed yet or at least we didn't heard about it because you great it's nowhere to be seen or played on the stores it was a close beta it's not CL beta it looks so good yeah it was very good it was very nice they had that nice play on the gear that you don't really you know it's pretty much like a streamlined version of uh action RPG that we talk about like some really nice mechanics amazing art amazing kind game play very social heavy and got techno gloves yeah got techno gloves so yeah this was October 2023 and yeah we just can't wait what will happen with all the supercell games we we're going to definitely going to keep a close eye on it this was really good yeah and now after this one let's get back to the

other thing which is where it is Warcraft Rumble November 2023 episode 84 December Revenue 7.5 million no ads in the game so that's definitive and 1.2 million regarding the chart as you see here it's kind of it's dying D slow slow that because it's doing you think it's because it's the most complicated gameplay never explained to anyone uh that's for you uh it's it's let's say more advanced gaml of clash Royale but uh for for barcraft nerd it's hard as [ __ ] you said you said it's hard it's really hard it's really hard yeah I take that um actually I've been playing it all the [ __ ] time from launch regarding Revenue that's even more obvious that it's dying yeah it went through something like whatever

1 million IP a day to something like 100k last week which is like oscillating between 100 and whatever M wish they had some Revenue now yeah that won't do any other Revenue man uh anyway uh basically no UA man there's no UA yeah there's no U but my mest grab with the game is that there's literally like no meaningful update in the meantime and the game was launched in November so you have November December January that's your you know sweet spot where you always always like in three months you should have some kind of major update it's nowhere to be seen I'm sorry there's nothing there uh there has been like uh the new unit there was like the Sylvanas one that they launch with and there's this kind of a chimera one uh which might yeah guys at my guild are still kind of active there and U yeah that's it like uh there had been some bad balance changes they change these kind of surges that they don't make them every three days but every second day or

one day or whatever kind of spread them out a little bit but they didn't give you more gold it just spread it and uh yeah that's pretty much it they're definitely bombarding users with like very nice offers the offer system works pretty well that I must say but other than that uh yeah there's nothing like I'm literally playing it every day there's nothing and I'm just slowly upgrading all the units doing like stuff that I should and uh yeah but there's like no new thing to look for there's y yeah like if this continues for a month I I will pretty much have everything like of course I won't be able to beat on XL like the last level here but that's that like the dungeons that been rotating are still the same all the same and promis there would be like the comp Cooperative rates at bcon and you know no word about it nothing or or maybe I'm just not following the form trying to save Diablo 4 I don't know like but if if this continues for another month the

game is going to die it's already I mean yeah it's already kind of yeah let's see anyway moving forward uh then we had a special about estoty episode 86 EST in November 2023 uh by the way guys at the they have the idle breaker game on two accounts which kind of interesting to then uh evaluate yes but anyway uh I found out it's a partner studio uh they share knowledge but it's different companies but yeah okay okay okay oh but like it's kind of it says ay ay it's just they're in different cities V and yeah yeah but like how we had this discussion on likee exactly the same are they growing growing uh so this is the main main game account if I understand correctly download wise like yeah they're growing a little bit is something like 10K uh yeah a day I don't even count the revenue or whatever here like it's just

like so small it's like obvious it's a soft lunch game they they they [ __ ] to something like 5K a day in no not bading about not not bad like now it's going down steadily to like 3K a day uh but yeah that's it like uh no no big moves there uh if I where do I have the game here if you remember the game was uh survival teed and kind of more close to their little big uh planet was the game or Adventure I always misspell it sorry um so they're like iterating on their core mechanic from from that game and they actually have three games as we covered that so they had the idle breaker then they have the Mars Survivor and then they had the West Escape uh these games are all in soft launch I don't know if idle breaker is in global launch probably I guess it's I don't know knows maybe but like the mar

Survivor it's like yeah like the traffic there is kind of very small the revenue is literally like nothing there on IP side so these games these two games are definitely in soft lunch still nothing can changeed with them and uh idle breaker game yeah this is it um it's uh scaled a little bit to like 6K day IP and that's it and it's still having something like that okay downloads where it is here it is so my guess is that guys are still iterating heavily with the game or maybe idle breaker is the one that's like used some kind of like for the learnings but yeah I don't know and you know they can be doing like three other games from the other big Publishers like for SE games or whatever so we don't see all the games that they're doing this is just the games on their account that seems they're trying to kind of test and like iterate but yeah anyway fingers crossed hopefully we'll get the guys from from on our podcast to tell us and call our [ __ ] and assumptions that' be great yeah we

would really like that um moving on there's the Souls game from HBY that we covered in November 20123 episode 87 uh it's actually pretty big on Revenue 4.3 million uh I in December 800k downloads in December looking at the trend the downloads are pretty stable from the launch seems like the usual kind of heav HBY Playbook and revenue wise it's even more stable at around something like whatever 150k let's say 13 40K which is easily 200 yeah we'll see uh for those who don't remember the game is pretty much like a more uh gorgeous version of AFK Arena uh very very nicely done possible AFK Arena is by the way also releasing their own like second version of it so this be an interesting battle

uh the important change in hubby portfolio is that this game already overtook arero in IP Revenue S as the number two on HUB portfolio not Archer anymore Survivor IO which quite yeah yeah but like you know keep in mind arero is what April 2019 Global launch or somewhere there so that's we of time um but yeah even downloads wise it's now like two times bigger than Archer or three times yeah so this game seems to be still kind of not that like that big of a Kind Of Money Maker as I would say HBY would expect but still like yet yeah yet yet good scale because last time when we looking at it the meta game was very very shallow compared to AFK Arena which all that kind of system they already built during the time like the the main set of features they have like very very good and drill down to the last but uh yeah they just kind of

needed more system my guess is they updated the shono system in the meantime that I didn't saw but uh yeah we haven't seen big moves on the revenue yet which you'll probably see okay and the last game on the list December 2023 episode 88 nothing else Zen let Zone zero amazing that's AB the game that nobody cares about that nobody cares about that could be the biggest game except the thing is like man like like I said so many times man like the cultural re relevance of this game is like it's so small it's the same user base right it's just the same users that are like being chucked around in the same style of games spending exorb amount of money yeah so before you write this off uh this is I'm not writing this off hoyo wor uh our favorite guys that that g sheit impact and honai St with your favorite I love me in there come on I like hyper casual games mate so this is uh yeah the guys that

are making premium free to playay games that looks like you know console style quality to platform and yeah the rumor is that this is supposed to release this year we don't know when this will second close beta that we played in December that I got in they're going to kill it iard I heard this rumors they're going to kill it because there's not not a big T to addressable market for this game yeah but uh the user base complained that there were no ads so they're going to take it back and uh rework it as an idle arcade game yeah but to be honest like let's let's let's get this the record straight uh yeah even I said that like the big kind of fear is that they are pretty much slowly canalizing their own portfolio here because there's just not enough players for three kind of similar games for similar target audience so but this is I mean it's different than it's definitely different because this is

action based this is very kind of you know inut heavy and uh the G progression system is completely the same as honai gen Shin but like the game play is different definitely yeah so so we'll see like uh yeah I'm really curious because now I guess it will be the Moment of Truth for hoare if they kind of you know step out of their Shadow or just be somewhere there stuck with their business model that works for genin and then like every second game be return with the revenues that genin and honkai is making course yeah of course but but you know the question is like where can you go from there then can you just do these games and that's it like they need to diversify eventually you need you always can do horse CS I think they had cat girls in it if I understood correctly but yeah anyway uh that was it from the radar um thank you Remo yeah we'll keep all the games on our kind of

a future sites and afterwards yeah we should yeah we should have even more kind of sharp eyes later after our discussions with our friends uh from oh yes so yeah just wait until we can fire these things up even sharper insights after next week Tuesday because two and a half Gamers is teaming up with Kali and bassadors for an amazing after party after PGC on Tuesday we still have some tickets left so if you want to attend and hang out we don't oh we don't we don't don't even yeah don't don't even say that anymore that's why I didn't push it because we we just released like first tickets today uh and are they already gone yeah they're all like everything is gone basically from day Zero do we need to get someone with a clipboard outside then like most probably yes honestly like it's it's over booked like it was like after 30 won't show up right

so yeah yeah we're counting with that with that actually and it's still it's yeah I think everybody will have the same idea then yeah yeah so don't worry yeah it's mention on the podcast which immediately overbooked yeah when we listening to this uh feel free to reach out or say hi we all see each other at PGC is not that mean in person no it's just to me because I know him no like the big surprise is that the is bringing his own fake background with him into in London if you see a guy with a Christmas tree defitely yeah that's definitely okay okay okay but anyway thank you very much for listening please uh hit the Subscribe button because that's really important to us and uh keeps us going and uh it also kind of you know notification are good for you guys as well to remind you that we are having a new episode so you can jump right in and

then watch it on YouTube and listen on Spotify apple or whatever and see you in our slack and see you yes you know like byebye so thank you [Music] cheers [Music] a