Bytro Live: The Home of Grand Strategy Games & innovative TikTok UA approach

uh BJ and the team Yen who support us here really strongly and to really enable us to um to uh lift the campaign performance ultimately by employing great creative right yeah dccx um yeah tell us about that a little bit because don't not a lot of people know what is DD CX yeah so the the goodness starts with ttcc for us where uh we got a lot of Tik Tok creative challenge Tik Tok creative challenge [Music] this is a no [ __ ] gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail powered by our ad monetization game design and user acquisition Triple Threat expertise welcome to the two and a half Gamers the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles

let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously tune in now and stay 2 and 1 half steps ahead of the gaming industry just you know organic okay welcome this two and half Gamers thank thank you very much for coming we are in Hamburg and this is a live episode my name is mat lerich my name is yier we are your host and we have two special guests guys welcome to the podcast thank you so much thank you can you uh do a quick intro and tell us where the [ __ ] we are and uh I will tell why we are here you're the [ __ ] at vro yes right uh home of grand strategy games so welcome to vitro thank you my name is Julian I'm Chief marketing officer managing director of the company nice po managing director oh okay it was also on our podcast uh last year games com oh

yeah yeah wild appearance wild appearance someone threw me in there yeah hi MJM uh I started six months ago here time flies as a chief product officer here at pyro uh okay in brro Labs can you tell us about the company a little bit more brro is on the market since 2009 we started out as a browser games beho if you like okay right so so the very early days of uh when things uh applied shape in the mobile not mobile even online sphere and we've been focusing a lot on desktop web games and games that are PVP first and foremost they pay like in a tabletop kind of way um you play and move units around and play against other players over the course of weeks and months um okay try to defeat them yeah okay so it's certainly a very special kind of genre um and it's also focused

around quite a core audience um at the same time we've been able to really expand in the last couple of years when going to Mobile yeah uh what's what's happening in Germany like going browser first and then mobile afterwards because it's you Eno games Travian games as well right and what who else like that's a very good question yeah I think few more maybe like like very very kind of AE core audiences sister big point I think my personal opinion um Hamburg back in the days what was what like um Istanbul probably is these days so it was like the epicenter of new game development um and Innovation back then primarily happened on the desktop web side of things um that's probably one of the reasons that I see um as to this question I'm not sure if you have another one also you now when thinking about new games

thinking about web first and then mobile or the other way around crossplatform cross our games it's important to notice our games have been crossplatform ever since and fun fun fact when we move to mobile we actually meant to move to mobile web in 2017 we tried to save some fees there okay moving to Mobile Web that's the big Trend now exactly being uh a little bit your your different kind of HTM 5 game on that end so the the Strategic counterpart to all the other HDML that didn't work out too well I how hdmr 5 and the games you have at the bo like how how how yeah how could that work quite some technical work on it since years we have we have moved from java to HTML 5 in what I believe was before my time in 2014 or so and back then it was and it still is kind of

a promising technology if you like yeah um so it enabled us to really Port our desktop versions of the game easily to mobile and make them accessible uh in a native kind of rapper that we use these days but it wasn't even meant to be it was the companion app in in the first place planned and then the success over runners in a way yeah yeah yeah to we we built the whole thing on app more as a companion to the for the existing user base we thought it might make sense for them to play while they're absent from their PC turned out then um some of the marketing managers that sit silently in this room had the idea to also run marketing campaigns on this and it turned out to be really working well at the time and driving really incrementality I think these days desktop and and desktop web for that matter is quite underrepresented in most companies because most of the innovation in the space is also happening on mobile

if you ask the meta team like hey give me like this and that feature oh wait a second please for these people still exist like meta team I mean like Facebook team you mean html HTML 5 team I was there by the way at the time I was there cambrid I no no I was building games for HTM HTM 5 format for Facebook at at that point and I remember vividly when it was killed during Cambridge analytica SCH and suddenly the communication stopped I was kind of going into like the Facebook people and the representatives they don't exist anymore yeah they disappear what I mean is on the um ad side of things right if if you ask for Innovations on PC it's like we don't have any P that work on PC we're all mobile right and so it's really hard to scale a platform that is not really being innovated on the adet webite and so this is for me one of the reasons that we are way stronger these days on mobile of course also being a

smaller company with around 90 people we have uh have to have a pivot in in that sense and so if we have to choose between the two you always go Noble of course okay so we're talking about by Trend what kind of games you have you want to go for that yeah so all our games are Grand strategy in a way it's a combination of 4X uh we yeah yeah yeah you hav't seen we're going to be a little bit deeper in this topic yeah please continue but combined with Battle Royale in a way because 50 to 500 people go in and only one comes out as a winner more and and that makes things interesting because players have stake into the game they can really lose something which is quite something fresh in the totally streamed gameline world we having at mo mobile at the moment a lot of um what JM says also coming from the sandbox character of the game so you can't you play in rounds and every round rep play you can play another country and you can kind of

design the flow of the game really how you would like it to be as long as your position allows it for you rounds being like completely new games because when I open the game like you know this is your game to do that and but I can join like a different kind of a server even in parallel yeah exactly we play two at once or 10 we have people who like poker like poker players and um depending on what's happening it's always a new situation you're coming in is only bots around me like bot players or are people really like uh heavy pay users or already mastered the game then the situation is totally different in the beginning do I app or do we fight against each other it's the simp yeah um Let Me Maybe add a little bit on mat's shoulders so hopefully when I'm speaking you see the game play yeah in the post prodouction but I was playing the game a little bit and it feels very very unique uh I'm talking specifically about the Supremacy 1914 but if I understand I wanted to get to like you have not only

one game but yeah there's the call front lines game and then one more uh which is like one is World War I World War II and little bit of more of like a World War I World War I yeah but but it's still kind of with the theme of like World War II World War I setting is it's yeah kind of like steampunk feel sish so there's Iron Order that you talk about and we also co-publish uh or we publish conflict of Nations for compani okay which is um from those titles the biggest one in terms of Revenue yeah so genre expertise is definitely there that's very important genre expertise engine expertise weary engine that we build on uh few questions that immediately comes out top of my head how do you deal with let's say these games having same audiences or these games live in parallel with each other or how did you deal with this kind of like yeah cannibalization and stuff like that so we have found in recent research um that players really play multiple game rounds um as we just discussed in right and

this is also true across games so every game kind of enriches uh the the universe of the um you know match free games match fre games are but in this case like no no because the concept here is super unique in way as you said like it's like 500 players 500 players in like standard Forex there's like one Guild it's like on a server like normal but here it's like as you said the Battle Royale component to it it's like work pick your country and go yeah exactly because what would be you say your typical kind of a This Server map lifetime until you actually win like in usual sense like what like two months 3 months well this depends we have speed Maps where it's just depends on the settings if you run really run some action now you can have a speed map running for a weekend or something which is quite intense so no stuff like this but also uh this usual speed it's around uh two three four weeks depends on the speed level because Normal Forex if I understand they live for what like half a year or something until they combine with charts and kingdoms like let's take

whatever like last four or at least these ones because that's the thing like immediately to me when I was playing it it screams like oh this is Forex because there's like itemized time this is like the first thing that you see like time is itemized okay this sounds like Forex then there was the itemized resources like in your inventory okay there more more Forex marching speed okay there's a map players Forex but I I don't think I got to the point where I've seen the hospital mechanic the hospital yeah but I guess it's there somewhere uh on that yeah uh we saw a lot of iteration there but uh the one thing I was kind of surprised I didn't see boosters for increased marching speed or something maybe I didn't just saw it because I saw production boosters uh units kind of recruitment or you know creating units booster but not production because like immediately I attack some guy in North Dakota whatever see in one and a half hours that was the first timer the game Throw at me so I think your game is a little bit more laback therefore it's m the strategy component is much more kind

of taken into your face rather than just you sending immediately whatever 20 battles immediately like you have started Forex exactly exactly and we also approaches a little bit different between the games they're not just pure reskins they work on the uh background a little bit different some some of our games a little bit more hardcore when you start it uh so the the macro is more hardcore micro and micro that yeah so they feel quite different on the long run for example call of War you have uh terrain which is super important for your battles like a game play Dynamic y Supremacy doesn't have that so the Mark was very important especially the battles which composition you have and in Supremacy for example the micro is huge yeah so it's even punishing if you invade too many countries at once even if you win stretch it's punish you because the economy will be directag down so there are different approaches to the game play here yeah yeah because the the UI itself on at least on the

mobile I guess on desktop PC looks a little bit different and it's kind of it tells you like somehow we jam it all there but it it looks a little bit like idler if you go through UI that you have like lot of rows lot of stuff you do that there but which is great because again it brings the Strategic elment like for for mobile kind of's say mobile first game it would be it it is seen in the app that this was not done for mobile it was coming into the M yeah yeah but that's great like I think it's very unique I never saw something thing is like the question is like where this did come from like how did you come up with this idea yeah yeah that is the original M was I stole from it I was like I heard it was coming from Bard gaming yeah right so it wasn't my time so I cannot tell you originally you're looking at me you should have the wisdom of the ancient you should you should we need to ask Christopher probably where the original idea came from or some of uh of the game design crew but apparently uh there are board games out there that are very similar yeah it it's has a lot of

elements over board RIS to say that and then they toate it on that formula for yeah 15 years now yeah really and to get it more more perfected so that the end game and it's it's pretty pretty nice to play and Prett pretty encouraging when you Inn I don't think so they even have like a direct competitor or followup after you you don't not really no we quite in a niche more each of your kings have their own castle Yeah Yeah up to this point yes up to this point yes and it's kind of a curse a little bit but I like is it capped because like it's most most probably not so many people can play it is capped from an angle of from various angles that we are aware of so one is the current the current engine certainly is not top-notch when it comes to terms like Fidelity okay and we're working on that we're actually these days transitioning the games to Unity um and Supremacy being the first one that we will have be uh have live going next year on the unity engine we uh pay

tribute to that um we also have um limitations when it comes to the accessibility of the games um where it's quite difficult at this point to get into the games for the average player uh especially the guys that sign up from Tik Tok that have seen can we stay a little bit there because I think um sure the there's this kind of like do2 something written on your hand yeah on the bottom left you will see now will put that in post production thank you very much Jes why should I there's aot there's a lot to the camera yeah so there's a lot of kind of tasks that pretty much can dynamically walk you through the game like do this send a message to play check news can of walk you through let's say like the first tutorial was this this was added later was it yes absolutely it's screens okay that's great because it literally this was also the one thing that they oh this is a Forex because Forex is work like this that they navigate you through their massive UI through he like click here click there and by sometime you

will you know create the Habit you will do yourself blah blah blah and the question is have you ever thought of using let's say the latest Market Chans that we see on the market where people are implementing mini games into Forex genre to on board a lot of users through the fake creative funnel which is fake creative fake store screenshots fake onboarding fake gameplay and eventually unfold the game into a Forex which has a nice high LTV core even though we're getting hyper casual traff basically absolutely so when I look into our game design Department there's three different drafts of how we want to change the tutorial uh it's more about the impementation of the technology as being said not being in unity limits us a little bit in ways how what we can do attractive to the market um so this will be a big step for us on the company to go there and uh then we will go for different tutorials as well and makes it easier to have exactly those starting points um there we already like have this in the pipeline basically yeah you

you said three different tutorials can you yeah so different uh ideas or philosophies because as being said this is a Sandbox and you can approach it in a totally different way as well so uh at the moment we have kind of a starting map with some AI around it that's reacting to the player and there's a lot of potential in my opinion as well uh how they guide you to that situation that they get the game then you go into the wheel map more or less so like you had in your last podcast yeah exactly like that's something having already in a way but not that figured out or designed out like we want to have it and when we build that bridge in front of it like with a mini game or something on top it would be awesome but for this we need a new technology okay because I think like because of what we saw basically where an 8-year-old game was able to dish out like multiples of its Revenue literally scaling to half a million a day because of these like on boarding adjustments they literally like these guys they literally like the total battle for episode that we're talking

about for everybody listening where they like simulate the Forex experience between the town and then pretty much release the players into the wild now you do this same thing not in the safe space environment but in town which I could imagine would also greatly work for your model exactly and way we doing it a little bit like when you're coming into a new map there already NPC factions around you uh that they're designed in a way to guide you a little bit and that won't just roll over you uh but we still want to do that even better that they're guiding you more toward important in the game but that's not too easy because you can do so much and every game can be so different some are totally only about diplomacy diplomacy and some other games are just about whatare from the beginning on or find the right mix or economy so it's it's difficult for us to find the right way here as well like which one to pick to I guess the one that has the best ab test result well that will be but what what are the three different ideas if you can talk about it uh yeah one idea was like like this sandbox one so had them off the rails let them explore a little bit

more in all directions um this was the biggest one another one was make it more narrow it's like you on Rails and you kind yeah on rail scripted basically yeah but even harder than we have it now um the other one was was something in between with with that mini game attached beforehand yeah we still have to figure out but at the moment we still you want to ask okay at the moment we still will uh um yeah looking to other challenges for for example given our monetization of our late game for example it's a lot of what is the the UA team saying always wants the beginning of the game for sure like because like it's it's coming from from them like what what it's actually worth no no but this is this is like let's a little bit kind of get there because I think this is really important for what you said like late game monetization because when eventually win the Battle Royale game you kind of lose the investment that you put into the Dr and to start over so you pretty much have a reset mechanic on a much stronger cycle compared to theual

Forex which I guess is a pay Point here yeah it's a it's it's good or bad at both in a in a way but you have a natural exit point we don't want that yeah and we don't have an ongoing progression meta game around yeah between these rounds round we we just leave exactly that's what we missing what we are actually producing at the moment we going into a Hero Collection meta game around it when you level up your generat and your hero and and the the like the resources whatever the investment transfers between the game station exactly you deploy them in the game they're bound to some Tech Tree in the game so at day five you can have a day five gener for example and they're leveling up and getting new skills and you bring them from game to game your crew is getting better and you also have different ways to approach our game so when you're picking a nation that's near to the water you can go for the Admiral perhaps and combine it with an aircraft General and when you're playing Russia it's full force this is this is starting

sounding to me like Heroes of M and Magic 3E you know you choose a nation you play a map and you transfer only the Hero level to the next exactly there you go inspired by that direction that's a great game and this is something our teams are working full fles at the moment on because we see a lot of uh yeah potential how does that translate to UA how does that translate yeah what this guy want to know for for you is like which mini game do you want to use or how kind of the interactive component because the guess is basically that these two guys will tell you which mini game to pick because their creates will tell you that's probably how the situation is going to end up so that's a very complex question over there of course it is of course it is the analytical component that will also enable us to Leverage What Happens late in the game to um to leverage it on what happens early in the game but that being said um the beauty of being part of a bigger group uh in stillfront is also that together with other Studios we can explore these kind of ways of new onboarding methodologies and with Dorado

we have way more data we have more data also we together with Dorado games who co- develop um conflict of Nations we have set up a pipeline to test Al mini game tutorials we have the gates mechanic very that's what he wanted to hear I no I didn't because like everybody has the gates yeah but what's like what's what else what else what else wait a second there are no Gates and Gates if you compare let's say the last four Gates and total battle Gates those are completely different miname gam plays even though it on the surface look the same Fair no fair no two gates yeah no two gates are same um and we we have screened all everything that's on the market right now plus what we have seen on our ADS works well like random country selection like beer pong like mechanics for Country selection that works really well click wise and and gamifying this aspect more in Min games but this is just in

the concept phase and this is uh still to be developed right now per you shouldn't follow every success video tell them about the Feats I mean this is one of the more recent iterations but we come to the UA part well there's no UA part and then game design part it's the same part basically the same part you can you can talk about it yeah tell about it come on I mean this is like this so that's an evolution the best thing I heard supposed to start with the ethics that we have at vitous like iterating fast he's going to be playing the B on right that's awesome um and and just trying out uh stuff and and see what sticks uh and that's that's how we've been um able to really be creative on the marketing side forever uh like in early 2021 when on Tik Tok we were one of the first advertisers for some time uh top three Advertiser from the D region there you go with our kinds of games it's very

B that's amazing we did this with a typical Lai creative right so like thinking hey what works on on Tik Tok why shouldn't we just capture gameplay and comment it a little bit turned out that people found it really interesting how we commented on on Country shapes like how or narrow was it narrow or slim what what was it um one Province white white yeah yeah yeah exactly and and it turned out I mean Chile is quite a meme um if I didn't know that as of recently basically the Chilean Empire and whatnot is on there and the same is true for actually uh Norway Norway uh feel spoken to yeah and so during these days um in Tik Tok we were shipping like 10K installs for 50 Cent each and uh we um really had to um

to load balance um when in Norway the schools closed and the kids were starting to play Supremacy okay yeah quite a remarkable thing so we were iterating on that end and then um went further jumping specifically with conflict of Nations World War I on the domestic policies politics situation in us we had like a huge Idaho clip um that was going bananas on Tik Tok um um and the most recent thing that worked really well was to introduce like a casual setup situation where you play together with your girlfriend and she's screwing you and uh she was always having her feet like in the in the as a hook basically like ni feet as hook it's called the feet cohort here the feet cohort retained a little bit worse but not so bad after all especially if you consider that on on average the players really not on

average but uh players stick with us for for years we have we have cohorts from 10 years ago that's still monetize these days I think you're very good at like being able to fulfill like the niche fantasy like not not not many games as I've seen that like as I said ever seen something like that but you know we are facing a um specific kind of innovators dilemma at the same time we want to go broader we realize that on this Market you need to go bigger go broader or at some point you will need to go home yeah like what they're like basically put as much casual on boarding as you can SL so you got to marry Innovation with what makes you truly standing out and that's a tricky part yeah it's Cur and bl yeah so this n is good for us it protects us from being overed Red by the big players but it's more of a little bit of a prison itself as well we just have to do the right things sound easy we'll see yeah I think is easy how you kind of by the way one one thing because Felix is not here

but there are EDS in the game which is never rewarded Ed Tower yeah Felix yeah come here come to Germany so as as last time even we were told by the guys like some Forex guys that we talk to like ads are definitely not worth it like can you talk a little bit like how to implement like rewarded videos in ads and like how how how role does that play in your design also how much money you make on that because if if it's like five a day n maybe it's not relevant that much eight eight eight yeah that's that's okay Marita we talk again I think we we can integrate them better much better they playing that especially with some new meta features that uh those have a much bigger role to play to these features as well so um maybe to to start a little bit from the beginning you have like a rewarded ads tower that we um innov on lately we earlier on had virtual

currency in there so a hot currency which of course is not what you really a for uh now with the inventory system that we have um we have changed that um and I think you caned UPS there they are speed UPS exactly which is the best thing because like you already paid for it you just speed up in yeah yeah but what I think we could do way more uh also with regards to leveraging ltvs really to make sense of what kind of of user are we looking at are we looking at a user that is not going to iip at any point and can we make segmentation yeah and and can we Leverage The PVP aspect of our game so that we just give him like 10x the amount of of boosters that the else would get and make him way more competitive this way or like give players from tier 2 tier three countries this this leverage on what can they get from from ad revenues and make that more popular LTV at the same time from the ad players while lifting LTV from I players and Wales that have more competition

again I I will play a little bit of Felix card here do you block any competitors in the funnel or like how do you that that's that fact because that that was the worry we always got from like Forex kind of friends that you have like you don't do that because like other Forex is will just FL your no we usually when we see that we I I think we do that so yeah okay so you're blocking to you we need to cut this off I I don't know I'm still yeah no we usually uh cut that out yeah cut that out yeah okay I guess there are not that many but still like if I would be like a Forex you manager I would go for other Forex exactly if if you're worth 20 CP then you don't want to give that that's what match free companies do immediately yeah immediately that's everybody like oh my God like this player is like high LTV no like you're not leaving you're not leaving hands off the cookie chops but of course it's like a wack all game

right because uh you got to be optimizing this basically three times a day yeah but if you block the you know the best source of traffic then then of course you shoot down your ecpm so it's as you said optimization but then like who's like what's the best source of traffic then for the for the UA part of equation very smoth sneaking very go very smart they are also great also no but I saw I saw in Sor Tower like Facebook Tik Tok yeah but that's basically and maybe Google Google Google on the Android side very strong of no surpris is there Facebook I'm very strong um Sur Tik Tok Tik Tok the source of all creatives yeah with ttcc and TTC X um and then we're also building up video networks as of lately as of L okay okay greetings to Iris here yes uh we we're working on on expanding that um here the key is like we're very strong

on ugc creatives as I explained so and and everything that ugc we Master quite well we have ways to go horizontal and vertical uh quite fast and quite efficient but when it comes to fake gameplay when it comes to play worlds we're really lacking and we're a little bit behind this is where we um specifically rely on the power of um our Outsourcing power that support us on that end also on the cooporation with the SR marketing Hub uh VJ and the team y who support us here really strongly and to really enable us to um to uh lift the campaign performance ultimately by employing great creative right yeah dccx um yeah tell us about that a little bit because don't not a lot of people know what is TT CX yeah so the the goodness starts with ttcc for us where uh we got a lot of Tik Tok creative challenge Tik Tok creative challenge exactly from Tik Tok that we are obligated to test and

that we can then um basically identify by performance what really works scale on that um use variations of that you can imagine that with uh our games having Maps yeah and you have the chance to really address check players with the check I I I saw to creative challenge video like oh the Georgia just taking over what the [ __ ] like okay you can go really relevant which is super critical these days at the same time this of course comes at a cost um you got to be expanding on the creative cost side quite a bit for for being competitive and when you have like a wellworking creative we try to get as many V variations out as possible and this is also where um with tdcx like the marketplace and Tik Tok um is coming in handy where we have um externals that support us against charge um are you using the ttcc or TTC x videos outside of Tik Tok of course not of course not but we know

then what works and this has much creativity on our end yes and yeah I I do the same I do the same thing I do the same water's flowing down the elow here and then uh yeah yeah it's just like it's unfortunately or fortunately you can't use it out the Tik Tok but you can you have the tools to make it again like the same and does it work also that good outside the well you were side person I had it on presentation so it it works exactly the same way you have the because the Tik Tok creators they use your own assets right you so you have them you have those assets you just need to see like what exactly like what what's the concept yeah if it's a person if it's a man or female it's like what kind of like text they use your options my AI exactly my AI guy steps in and then there you go there you go like but like it really works it really works

yeah the other way it doesn't work that well kind of not very and do do you have much sorry virin but do you have much uh kind of like fake stuff in the Creative Concepts or is mostly like you said like directly taken from the game other model it's really um strictly around the sandbox concept where really like we explore the various angles that players can take and kind of bringing them in into a day-to-day kind of setup mhm that works really well um so we fake gameplay wise we as of lately have transferred the very first concept that has been looking really tremendously um into a little bit more modern form and shape but this is not really fake game play so this is pretty much underdeveloped as of yet okay yeah because like my my listening to this guy for last two three years it's always kind of like all in or all think with this kind of whole like fake game play

Creative store screenshots icon G play H the moment you can jump on this train you need to like ride it to the end but now you have the luxury of custom product pages on Facebook uh Facebook on iOS or custom s listing on on Google so you can B on the traffic Source you can play around with yes yeah needless to say we're trying to use it as much as possible also um but this is also more adding increments right it's not really not game Cher it's like a an overhead cost that you need to be able to account for yeah that's that's what we also heard by the way that like fake whatever you see there like it's not like Silver Bullet like yeah you'll scale to Millions immediately it's more of like it's part of a onward push towards like small changes around the whole funnel and then it clicks and there you go yeah and as you said I am not sure that it's really easy to get off of that dope again right if you if you want to change the game if you decide like

hey we try another kind of mini game or so I'm not sure what the algorithms on the platforms will tell you when this fails and and you end up with the you know holding the back basically at the end of the day yeah right so but the upset are are quite clear here and uh oh they are also like the guys from from SC said we saw what Evon did implemented the pool to what they were decreasing the revenues and everything they implemented pin and start increasing again like hm okay I guess there is something in it yeah yeah true um and um also it's it's a lot about prioritization as JM said we have quite many projects going on at the same time and while marketability is getting more focused right now and upper fun optimization is getting more focused we also try to work on the other side of the LTB curve and optimize the late game yeah um so we some also need to place our bets a little bit there so much

potential yeah definitely systems and vectors you need more vectors you know exactly you need to be very smart in how you do things here uh and try to really learn fast and trying to get a feeling of what works what sticks and then go into it um you don't have the benefit of of a huge cway you can have a team that's just working on on boarding mini games that's just not cutting up but that's also the beauty of having a a small or more agile Studio that you can on day-to-day basis see changes and and work on changes and but the thing is like the mini games are going to work on mobile what about web yeah as I said web is like web is like 5% to 10% so it's us SP us Revenue but not revenue revenue is yeah is not that small but uh it's also I mean when you talk about mini games are we talking about uh callop integrated minii games or are we talking about UA tools right

if it's a UA tool then for for web it's just not relevant yeah so it doesn't also really influence revenues that much if we're talking about another kind of loop to the game of course this will also affect revenues from desktop um and steam more like and do do do do it also the other way around as we see like lot of companies push these days that like you came from the desktop web environment to the mobile and now we see a lot of people kind of trying to get people from Mobile to the web to kind of somehow nudge them to go into the as as we've been there 2017 exactly why shouldn't we try to do that right now so we're definitely working on that um I have some some good examples that but it's more best practices for it basically the same as custom product pages as live of cards right you need to do this Shenanigans yeah you need to be there um you need to do a little bit at20 don't overdo it and and work on that yeah because we

seen like lot of very interesting things like for instance AFK Journey when we like sending you WhatsApp messages like go check this blah blah blah yeah yeah yeah so WhatsApp is definitely one thing that we're looking at a lot right now um pretty inter web to app is one thing that we look at a lot okay CPE um is is one thing was that uh cost per engagements um and CTV we just test it but yeah okay no wonder because do I get it right the people that are let's say cor players that as you said like 10 Rounds once like when they go on whatever Holiday Road weekend trip they bring their mobile app as some kind of extension and play there but they still maybe play on their PC synchr that was the original idea M right now for many it's also uh the weapon of choice to play on mobile and they only know mobile but then if you play both versions of the game they are vastly different the gameplay on mobile is just so different from the gameplay on PC it's really like when you

have a big map you have way better control of everything that's where we still need to showing the way where we need to insist on mobile and make it more also the audience is a little bit different so on web the audience much older I cannot see that tiny screen anymore or something this but maybe the m is this I'm including me as well yeah when I play I mean including me now as well you're getting on my big screen to S whole units around and do the B and for me mobile just when I on the way so yeah but but also actually on on mobile out plays are quite old apparently like 50% are above the age of 40 so I mean like the theme and like it's like you know kind ofense history based hardcore strategy so yeah like when I was like at school like I I didn't even care about history at all I cared a lot but like I built literally

like modos World War II planes with my father but that's that's the thing but that's that's not normal it's not normal it's not normal that's interesting as well with the setting yeah so um a lot of our players especially don't perfit it as a World War I game or something like they don't care about the setting it's just really kind of a like a PVP game yeah it's a war game somewhat but they don't care if it's World War One or World War II or something they don't to reskin to something else audience is like 1914 yeah what is that yeah yeah but then then like the creative kind of spoke to them yeah exactly right and that's that's it's interesting to um explore these different facets of why players are playing actually the game and it's so vital these days to also really understand like what's the motivation first of for clicking on the net and then converting into a pay user even I would yeah I would kind of assume the Tik Tok players wouldn't be that high on TV because of the young

segment I mean you know that the Tik Tok audience are not that young kind of I know not anymore yeah so I think that is kind of semi true probably I mean it has always been more competitive on the CPI that's true um but as of late I think also quality wise pick up quite a bit is one of the best channels for me at the moment so but you should just get better now if people get older yeah yeah easy time place for you time place for us exact Prett much yeah um very sure but then uh why not running more UA on web you said it's quite small it's just tricky the price situation on the web is not that attractive uh Native advertising platforms are they only source we yeah but they're more like the only source we really use next to Facebook also a little bit Google you YouTube no no sear

really I mean search yeah you little bit of Po marketing of course but you just said like Google is good or Google is good for for mobile very strong as I would assume I use I use YouTube and search for a lot of like browser games or pc/ Steam games as well kind of works take a note yeah no I mean yeah the YouTube uh um YouTube traffic on average has always been a little bit underperformed it's it's It's tricky because of the all the tracking and analytics kind of shenans uh as soon as you can figure that out and just again like feed the algorithm what whatever that means no like if you can send like that you events to to Google YouTube and like the all ads like it kind of works afterward we're actually more on the influencer side even yeah that's what I want ask have you have atire influencer marketing yeah we're we're running on

um 5 to 10% Budget on influences um some some like World War History Channels and YouTube and stuff like that it's it's a little bit more crazy there's all sorts of stuff really that's skew towards male audiences somehow that's also a little bit more uh from from an art style perspective brutalistic so a little bit anything rougher on the edges is certainly something that's somewhat attractive mhm um like weapon no no that's not Weaponry chests are not actually something that work really well but like um I'm flying around a a bus with my uh helicopter or crazy stuff like that right um so weird awkward things that um awward things work always boys like in the end you want like what like competitive males basically we want uh to all of them all we want all of them uh and on on the

influencer side I specifically feel it's easy to get access to incremental audiences that otherwise would not ever see your ads because um Facebook thinks they like something else more um and and for that matter I think the source is highly relevant and probably going to be more relevant in the future um as we also have more and more influences everywhere right at the same time it's also quite tough to scale unless you're like super broadly uh appable that's where the Min games comes in maybe maybe yeah uh for us it's really like it's up to this point it's quite kep because you really need to have the negotiation process and everything is yeah so it really they do you all by yourself or you have an agency you don't need to name the agency but still actually our barkeeper Max is is doing uh the show with uh together with cilia and nice yeah and but we also have

agencies to to be told so okay can't can't cut all the mdan to this Shades is too painful yeah I know I know it's like unreal unreliable that much yeah okay and then what we didn't kind of get into that percentage of iip versus ads uh no the thing my guess is like and and web and web like what's like if you if you can tell okay so we have 60% on mobile 30% on web 10% ads that's 100 10% you're asking for the sness multiplier in other maybe maybe maybe I think like 15% I'm already overshooting yeah I was I said 10% that's two 10% 10% close okay yeah like you don't want even that much revenue in this kind of game you rather have much more stable IP Revenue talking with metame thing because IP

revenue is just much more stable because people are invested which means they don't leave that fast St you know so that's why everybody's doing hybrid because it is yeah but still trying to P picture like okay how much money they make if it helps frying the fishes then why not have more um giveaways for the at crowd yeah that's still 10% uplift is kind of nice always yeah why not I mean yeah but I would like that the the game has a robust economy even currently like to begin with as I said the only kind of issue is that at some point the kind of game around ends where you it leaves that I guess is the pain point that needs to be sold but other than that it's pretty deep like with all the like itemized Forex currencies and everything there like all the boosters that you can imagine pretty much so like usually all these Forex they have some kind of a I always call it like shotgun to the Head mechanic yeah at some point so I don't think so I experienced your yet but like let's say last last time we covered the total battle guys like they had their Hospital thing which was like yeah these

troops are going to die or resurrect them pick your you know poison or or the like relocation thing with like you're going to relocate your base somewhere else otherwise your guil that already kicked you off for in activity going to kill you immediately or stuff like that so the pressure is developing during the matches for sure because you're getting into alliances and they push you in and out that's that's a whole Game of Thrones thing going on so uh I could imagine it some sleepless nights when I going deep into a match so that's a problem as well yeah how to protect people from not sleeping you you you don't even have uh do do I get it right you don't even have this kind of like peace Shield mechanic in the beginning or something like you like just straight up core no why waste time we had it at some point to give it like there's another forx staple mechanic yeah yeah exactly yeah so when you begin you're you're in an area where you cannot immediately be attacked there's some AI around you usually so so but we are also experiment with some mechanics that would help you at night perhaps some Buffs or WS or something like this like

the Engish old boing like you're still protected and then like so because like the hardcore crowd knows that like at 2: in the morning everyone sleeps right I'm just yeah except us because we always record 4: a.m. who there you are exactly and and one thing is also you compensate a lot for your skill uh with your money here and our very good good player experienced player they pay less at the more because they're just getting so good at the game so they can have the perfect Synergy between the units and yeah because they're not accumulating resources through the metag game progression yet yes exactly we're missing those permanent or this invest that could do on the long the power progression basically yeah vectors the v v vors vectors any any new game with the pipeline we will have a new title coming up next

year that's still under disclosure okay uh under disclosure outside of disclosure whatever my get a strategy one yeah it's a strategy one going to be exper it will be quite similar but what's what's the difference then at least if you can if you can it will be on Unity technology is the difference technology if you look at stuff like response times uh at first impression first user experience also from uh responsiveness of of layout um then this is quite a significant determin presentation uix this opens a lot of possibilities for us even when it comes to the pipeline with the units um bring in new content FAS that will help us a lotr games are on internal engine yes okay yeah then then it's definitely like a step up yeah Mak sense yeah especially especially with the content for Life Ops we bring new content like special special units like uh flame tank

we had or some some special uh shock troop Zeppelin whatever uh and there's so much more in our pipeline but uh yeah we are missing a little bit the tool to make that even in a speed where the users like to have it they really rip it out of our hands so to to be clear we're just we're just swapping the front end engine the back end is working pretty fast yeah exctly this is where all the magic is happening and those are very big steps like even though it's like we're just like twit te like yeah yeah I was there I've seen it firsthand like yeah yeah we we had uh two or three of these transitions ourselves and it's like you got to manage expectations with the community and then like everyone's angry and then yeah there's a dip in Revenue but then they all come back and yeah so so we know also a little bit what we're um what our task will be in the coming months M easier said than done than yeah that's true but

definitely it's like uh super unique for me regarding what you have there and like the whole setup systems and like the whole kind of a yeah as you said like metag game will be can edit later but even this kind of a as you said you get better at the game therefore you pay less because the skill based kind of game playay gives you the option to kind of just beat other players with skill that's like I I don't think so I've seen it anywhere yet and it will be gone soon set M thank you very much for coming okay any any find clever way to keep call anything you want to share with with our listeners if you're hiring not hiring you want to where they can find you yeah can def find you we're hiring a head off monetization and game design not going to be is going to be apply now to join the crew yes now

going to share we have position we hiring nice that's it okay yeah thank you very much for hosting us here yeah thank you for sharing all top insights that it was very fruitful exactly and uh for you please uh well subscribe uh share the the podcast thank you very much for coming cheers bye [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]