Call of Dragons review - 4X strategy games deep dive, User acquisition & Game design breakdown (#62)

[Music] welcome everyone this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast two and a half Gamers session number 62 we are sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our day to-day user acquisition game design and AD monetisation jobs definitely not discussing the latest interesting news but having so much fun let's not forget this is 4:00 a.m. conference discussion wipe let's not take it too seriously so today it's only two of us it's yakob REM and myself M lanich Felix is out sick so get well soon Buddy uh so yeah what's happening on your end this feels a little bit weird yeah I guess we did one with Felix before we yeah and it was me in Santa Barbara as well so not the year year after I'm in Santa Barbara Felix is out we are here so I guess we can uh yeah it's it's two of us from Slovakia

speaking in English we should should switch to Slovakia that would be great people would appreciate it definitely I know I know I know so what I'm going to do is I will draw Felix uh into our YouTube visual design uh because why not so with AI withi image to image AI not AI I was just it's going to be my drawing skills my drawing skills yeah we'll see we'll see so I wanted to to change the the layout a little bit uh but then I was like no no no no no it's going to be better he'll be he will be with us all all the time so since Felix is out we wanted to do a slightly different uh session but we are going to discuss call of dragons uh the game you briefly touched in the touched on in the flam booy and the UA episode and this game has zero ads so it's actually great time to discuss this game

we not having Felix here yeah not having Felix here so thank you very much Felix for getting sick now we can uh we can talk [ __ ] about the games without ads thank you so uh so yeah as as I mentioned call of dragons are going to go go through the game design part first this time uh yakob is going to talk about some Forex games comparison numbers and [ __ ] and then um I'm going to talk about UA and creatives and then uh there's going to be a very interesting and nice segue to to a big tribute to vivaa dirt League guys because well you guys are great I love it yeah and they're pretty much becoming their own source of UA I would say yeah it's it looks like it's a it's almost like a new UA channel uh but yeah we'll get there so why do we even talk about the call of dragons well it's actually easy because we talk about interesting games right after the global launch and H this was in our backlog for a while

and it's interesting case because they launched the game and by day I mean farlight games which is a publishing arm of lit games so they launched this game on March 28th and uh already making 14 million a month um not bad yeah I see 16 16 oh well look so I was I was looking into this yesterday so uh it's already old news I guess so this is uh what they wrote in their um description so call of dragons is MMO fantasy Conquest game from the Creator creators of Rise of Kingdoms offering an incredible strategy combat experience you can TR translate this is a [ __ ] Forex game nothing else nothing else ah yeah it's pretty much like an upgraded version of Rise of Kingdoms I would say it's like very very

like you will see as I will show it yes so yeah it's going to be again a lot of visual stuff uh creatives and also gam playay and then comparison to rise of Kingdoms yeah so let's move on um the thing is that this will be a little bit of a Forex special because I want to go like in depth with what mechanics these games have and what's the current state of the market because this is in the end uh one of the biggest Revenue like IP Revenue only categories like s are not really their thing sorry Felix yeah you I guess that's why Felix got got sick because you were talking about no ads for for Vu games he was really pissed and now Forex games no ads oh yeah so Forex games uh before usually people in the west associate them with stuff such as game of war R of game of war and mobile strike from machine Zone day but this is pretty much long gone

and now as we see I I'm I need to show the for um the the creatives from Machin on mobas withon sweger so I hope they can find and then you will see it right here yeah they they had that like Super Bowl ad with Arnold which was like like 200 million views on YouTube or something it was just amazing how that that game was almost everywhere so that's that's the the joke we were always uh discussing you you open up a fridge and there is Arnold forzen Egger because of the mobile strike ads but as soon as they closed or like turned off the the the UA the game was also turned off game died immediately game died immediately which is not the case these days I would say like these days like the Forex games are made a little bit differently but yeah let's look at the the market um so I pulled up the revenue for just those 30

last 30 days currently so call of dragons can be included on like equal footing compared to the others so if we look just from the last 30 days Revenue the top game is three kingdom tactics I guess uh Chinese game that we don't really kind of have the representation in the west then in the second place our favorite puzzles and survival the game that we all know from the fake yes that's been that's been running around then we have aony which is if I see this correctly the only game from American company and all all the top 10 other Forex games are from a Chinese company yeah uh except f plus which is headquartered in Switzerland but it's a Chinese company anyway uh then we have on Fourth spot top War battle game uh our usual kind of contender one of the inventor of the

onboarding alternate game play as before yeah fifth place rise of Kingdoms sixth place uh state of survival uh Seventh Place age of Z Origins eighth place Lords mobile Ninth Place last for Fortress underground and then 10th Place go of dragons which is 16 million uh the top game was 35 million per month and then let's say rise of Kingdoms won 29 million a month LS mobile was something like 60 million a month keep in mind that this kind of FL a lot between months because you have events and stuff so it's not that big but but still those games were Global launched quite a while ago right but there's also 11 plays wild cards yes which is you can guess white out survival exactly of course so yeah Forex category is pretty much very very big red ocean

where you get stomped by all these like very very heavy super big teams that are pretty much running like fifth itation know I didn't even know or see like the free kingdoms tactics at all I mean I don't see their ads me either izzles in survival it's mostly in China or let's say the revenue is coming propably from there I guess so looking into our Fair dat and you don't see the chain China Revenue so yeah I know I know but yeah we'll see but it's still like really really big uh you impressive the Lords mobile which is like [ __ ] old old game and it's still like yeah yeah that that's true and they are the I think they invented these like Mass battles what I call types of creatives because they were the one with the like Garrison against like attacker yeah yeah so good so so good yeah okay

yeah uh yeah the other the other kind of a name for this category that's been used around the industry is not only Forex but also March battle because you have these kind of marching armies on the map that are kind of marching each other so you can also find this category under that name uh the other list that I wanted to Broad up is uh not the last 30 days Revenue but the overall Revenue lifetime Revenue I mean because that's a little bit more important because rise of Kingdoms is not really in its Glory Days anymore or let's say at its peak it's in Decline that's why we are covering this game because L actually has an answer to that and they I guess are not that aggressive with you anymore there but looking at overall revenues according to our data tools if you around that top 10 list again it looks a little bit different because rise of Kingdoms is at the top with 2.2 billion uh in overall lifetime revenue and then we have game of war and Lords mobile both in 28 and 16 billion none of the

other games listed are reaching Beyond 2 billion and all the others are reaching after 1 billion plus so there you have such as games such as threee Kingdom tactic state of survival Clash of Kings Kings of Avalon Mafia City Mobile strike and Guns of Glory so again uh only like what's there Machin Z through Epic War and machines through game of war so no no other American company again or let's say Western company all all all are from China so very heavy kind of a China dominated category I guess we could say even in the west like because these games are definitely not making Revenue in China like some of those like for instance the what is there not making or making no not I mean not the most of the revenue is coming from China from from from games that are run by Chinese companies okay yeah because I think

from what at least from what I saw for Call of dragons the US is the top uh top one by far by far there's like for example call of dragons guys of Kingdoms the same it's like 90% or 95% is coming from us which is ridic I mean ridiculous when we compare it to White out survival that was like South Korea first then very close uh us and then there's other countries but very different um interesting finishing the charts here uh if we compare rise of kingdoms with uh call of dragons regarding the numbers uh rise of Kingdom will soft lunch at April 2018 uh and call of dragons of soft lunch in August 2022 so it's pretty much like I saw the I saw soft loue of call of dragons in December 2022 but I I was assuming uh this was also

because one of our favorite tools they don't see the open Beta so I will talk about it I will talk about it okay yeah but what what what this basically means that in my opinion is that they had this great and outstanding game called rise of Kingdoms which they pretty much pretty much destroyed the Forex category by the time they launch it and and scaled it up and now what they did they pretty much took the engine the everything they they got and like put it on steroids pretty much the I'll show you like how it looks like the production value is through the roof because now they can actually concentrate on that very very hard 20% that makes the thing like polishing and making it better and improving on their old formula because they they already had like the best game in the category so they're trying to top themselves currently uh so you'll see pretty much what you but that's usually very hard job yeah it is it is but uh to me this also seems a little bit of a more play

towards uh crossplatform because the PC client like I I don't know why but I wasn't able to to make it work on two different emulators because I got stuck into the Sliding Puzzle verification that didn't let me through finally so [ __ ] you up yes finally some games you can't play on on your goddamn PC so I I download the PC CL directly voila yeah easy okay yeah and it's so optimized for PC like it's two and two and a half K resolution two and a half Gamers yeah exactly and it looks marvelous looks like some kind of a new you know game coming out from CD project or whoever blizzard like very very polished like yeah I'll show so that's that uh regarding the numbers uh rise of Kingdoms is currently making something in vicinity of 500k a day or I would say that's what they hit there the thing is

that if we compare it to the like initial numbers with rise of Kingdoms it's pretty much the same also Revenue per download on iOS is something like 520 or something like that which is also the same on Rise of Kingdoms like it's actually a little bit higher after like a month on Call Of Dragons It's like 535 and then there was like 5 something on iOS only yeah so are you aligning this by or is just like months month after launch okay month after launch yeah so I would say it looks definitely very promising rise of Kingdoms at some point scaled very very heavily uh if you look at the download chart so I guess maybe this will be the same tactic but the other thing is that maybe this time we won't even be able to see it because like honestly like the PC client is so damn good right yeah and and and actually they have this promotion in the game that will give you this kind of

special Avatar with fire frame or whatever yeah yeah yeah that if you play on PC client it's like if you play on PC Clan you get like this Avatar like very very nice skin for it's it's in for every player it doesn't matter like where you play like go switch to PC and you get it and I have seen a lot of players having that Avatar so I guess a lot of people are playing it from PC which we won't see anymore so we we see 14 million on mobile but we don't see the the rest of the revenues so they can be they be making so much more yeah they can be making so much more especially now that we're talking about Viva dirt League making very big UA pushes for them on core Gamers and PC Gamers oh yeah O Okay so so this all makes sense now oh yeah 100% that's one of the bigger differences but sorry let's actually look at the beauty here yes please so looking at the game as I said uh 2.5k resolution I hope won't destroy our

stream here and it will even yeah I'm not sure yeah I'm not sure upload is fine so I have way better internet connection here than I I had last year but I'm sitting next to the road so uh if you hear cars ambulances and all of the other [ __ ] then that's me yeah so we have this gorgeous City uh it's [ __ ] slow okay yeah it I hope don't move don't don't move don't move the camera too much yeah so we have now it's fine we have the usual Base building like as I said there's nothing really to it compared to rise of Kingdoms it's very very similar what happens here is that you like imagine something like Clash of Clans uh like very very similar gam play to this point until you leave the base after you leave the base it's it's that March battle like big big battles on the map one really inter tidbit here is that

lately when we were reviewing Forex games or let's say looking at them and their special onboarding funnels a lot of those especially new ones implemented those fake ads with the you know fake gameplay or whatever they put there like the storm shot uh from fun plus the newest One have it uh Kingdom Rush uh the top four one has it all of like pretty much all of the new ones have it as some kind of a something of a very very mandatory thing this doesn't have that at all it's like they don't don't give a [ __ ] you're downlo Forex it will be Forex and you playing Forex yeah nothing else so it it it's actually no Shenanigans no shenans because there's no Shenanigans or or the sniper one I think like the sniper one even L have it l have it in the yeah yeah they have it yeah they have it themselves with the sniper sniper game play exactly but this one this one doesn't have it and and I think it's great because finally especially on PC client like there's

yeah the onboarding smooth anyway it it's great and the graphics are just gorgeous so yeah we'll see and I'm looking at storm shot revenues and uh it was flat like five million since they launched now it's 7.2 already so they are definitely on to something yeah but these guys are what like First month already yeah already like in first month uh my guess is and and this is my guess again that a lot of people that play Rise of Kingdoms will switch to this game I mean the Clans and the players because it's just a like overall life upgrade for them I guess the whales and like the very very big Clans they like to start from fresh even though they kind of sacrific there before you know whatever they have there this would happen if Clash of Clans actually made new game instead of the the town two right or the base two or whatever was that yeah yeah so so these guys actually went for it and actually made the second game here but but my guess is that it's it's not only because of the like

gameplay functionality and and the design it's also because this like very very good PC client very very good crossplatform functionality and like all of these other things that enables them to scale completely different yeah this looks super good really really good yeah because if we if we compare it with the rise of Kingdom's client which I'm just showing over the screen currently it looks like a mobile game yeah okay true you you you you can see it like the design the layout and everything it's pretty much the same like if we if if I put it down for a little bit but you can see the difference in in the visuals 100% it's it's like not comparable currently because that's like what five years difference but still like yeah can you just uh put it on the the whole screen yep let's try yeah okay yeah it's these look like uh like a noob game versus the the pro uh exactly and even even like if I zoom in out of

the map here uh look something like this like it's again a little bit washed out I think I have the highest textures there that I could have but it's still like looks like you know something that's kind of old and if you look at the map that uh call of dragons has it's like nice visuals units are moving there's leaves on the trees being fed by the wind sea everything everything is moving nice yeah yeah and and you have grass there you have you have pretty much everything there's so much graphical settings there like actually like I actually want to play this game as a PC Gamer like why why would I not want to like it's it's so good it's so optimized for PC experience and the monetization fit so well into it also I'll get to it later but it's so smooth it's much more smoother than a mobile I can yeah I can imagine but look so I think uh what they do here is uh actually getting loads of the mobile

players and then reporting them to to PC client easily definitely because on PC the UA is I mean it's still possible but it's not as um Advanced I would say let's call it Advanced as mobile but still uh if you combine UA on on PC and browser maybe uh and then with the UA stuff it's it's like so so much Synergy yeah we'll see but my guess is like again this is I wouldn't wouldn't be surprised if let's say 30% of their player base could be playing it from PC or even more even more I think even more even more we'll see because why would you well if you are a Forex player like why would you play the game on on your small mobile phone when you can because you're on the road that's the only thing sure but then like okay uh you can in the meantime like do this like tasks and and [ __ ] on mobile but then you sit down after after work uh in front of your computer then play

Go destroy your enemy Alliance base exactly yeah and you do that on on PC yeah exactly it it's much more like everything is just much more smoother and like more enjoyable I would say um looking at the game playay itself as we continue as we talk about the base like as you see here it's like super smooth just the transition here just just move out into the map and the base like it's so so good so uh the base building is like very very easy like place like Clash of Clans you build uh upgrades you have these super high long timers of like two days 20 days whatever days you have uh Curren time is a currency in these games so you have these speed ups that are either specific or non-specific non-specific of course are much more valuable because you can speed up everything the specific ones is just like you can speed up only building you can speed up only training units you can only speed up research so on so forth so this is usually the main kind of a

culprit when you're looking at the game and you see these things like time as a currency that it means it's a Forex pretty much because like no other game uses this if I understand correctly I mean no other genre um yeah but there's [ __ ] T of stuff uh what lilit added regarding comparison to rise of Kingdoms is I think a little bit more power progression to the heroes because Heroes were the first thing they innovated in Rise of Kingdoms in the first place which Forex didn't had before or let's say didn't have that flashed out and they flashed out even more so if I go into my heroes I not only have their you know talents and skill threes that you need to pretty much equip for every single hero which have completely different use cases in the field their skills this is again completely the same as they have it in Horizon Kingdom but you also have the artifacts and the artifacts are even active skills so they are much more fleshed out than just the normal inventory you have in Ryon kingdoms and of course they're behind another

gacha gacha Pool again so is there any any game out there that we will talk about that don't doesn't have the the G pools I don't uh I don't know if lately we we talk about something without gacha pools it's just like so efficient as progression model and monetization model so well I guess uh brawl star removed G pools yeah brawl star removed that but we didn't talk about that game yeah yet yet yeah we'll see we'll see what happens with supercell soft lunch game the squad Busters if we can talk about the that's kind of closer to braw Star but yeah let's see let's see uh continuing here um as I said you build units you build resources you kind of get the resources and Y yada the usual kind of Base building stuff and then we switch to the map and map is what makes Forex games interesting because players are the content and players are driving the game

itself the game is basically just a platform from them to kind of have their playground so usually what happens you have these like like I told last time like houses with shields that you usually use with Forex game it means like those are kind of early players that are still protected by the game not as soon as my shield is over then I'm [ __ ] you you better join an alliance let's say so you see here that I joined this like Alliance that was near my place because I had no other choice if I didn't want to move and then I have all my other kind of alliance members around me we have Alliance base and so on so forth and then there's other alliances that are competing against us for resources uh we already survived uh this kind of attack today from French Alliance and had to coordinate and defend our Fortress in the chat which was kind of nearly demolished so we needed to call help from the other Alliance here from the right side of the map here and this is all it is around Forex Forex games are about this kind of

social D Dynamic around the map when one Alliance wants to destroy another there's a fight against resources so on so forth y y yada the other thing is that there's active exploration that if I zoom out very very high like you see here you see that you're slowly cutting out pieces out of the map and exploring them you have this kind of special mechanic that you have these Scouts that has to explore areas you send them there and then slowly you chip away from the fog of war and explore the whole map have to say that the map like what you see here is actually very very big like if I go here yeah the thing you just saw is just like a segment of something and it kind of gets bigger and bigger the thing is that reminds me the the the beta version of Diablo map we we explor like very very small fraction of it but actually the map is not that big uh because of some kind of afterthought it's it's that

big because what happens is that it concentrates players and pitches them together it's kind of a similar concept to Hunger Games so what happens here you have this first layer of the map at the edges and then you see this kind of a Garrison that sells level two pass and what happens currently because this is a fresh server and fresh map no one is here in this kind of inner circle of the map and alliances need to fight their way through pretty much occupy this PA and then move to the other side where there's more richer resources better rewards enemies and everything and during this yeah and during this process you pretty much need to like like you see here like our whole clan or Alliance need to pretty much move their asses down there occupy the pass prevent other alliances of kicking our asses and then move Inward and during this process of course Alli es will eventually die and

kill each other so people are pretty much uh yeah nudged to go here into these kind of Slaughter passes where they will pretty much fight over who can take control over it and then move inward so this again the whole whole thing is build around that you need to have this kind of a social interaction friendly or not friendly if you don't like it or like it otherwise you're just food like there's no way you can play this game by not having an alliance it's just like yeah sorry it's it's all about that the other interesting thing is that of course as you can see these kind of resource not so there's kind of gathering stuff you need to have resources then there's the like random enemy stuff I think it's like just not really that important rather teaches you but what's important regarding the enemy are these kind of mini bosses that the whole Alliance need to kind of destroy and it take so much time to kill these things so that's there but again it's like think of it some kind of world boss in world of warfare or something you need to Rally your alliance and then all

the like people from there gather their army there and then destroy the boss get some reward so on so forth we already have this like this is going to be our first goal set up by our so we're already trying to take down this bear so the alliance playing is the main bread and butter of this game um regarding the resources uh you have still more and more as you move forward you have gold wood and rock and Mana whatever but pretty much they have numerous soft currencies numerous materials numerous stuff there like so much resources I don't think any other game has like yeah how does that tie to demonetization the thing is that it's bottomless that's that's the main point from it like these games have the most like most depth regarding spend depth within their economies just because of that and that ties to this mechanic of units hospitals and destruction of property which is very signature which we can talk around now so what happens is that if I let's say let's take some enemy so if I have this enemy on the map

imagine it would be another player or whatever and I want to attack it so I first need to create some kind of a squad of units so let's say I have level one and level two Mages and a mage hero so let me send him into the fight and he will fight and there you have the marching part of the game play you see these lines around the map as like they are moving and destroying we can use the active element and send a nice Fireball there way where is it there it is where's your Fireball didn't there it is okay defeated anyway uh so what happens we can either continue fighting or even move the hero on the map or do something else with it or we can return him back so what happens now we see that our Hospital got active because some of our troops got injured so they need to be healed back to full health because they pretty much just get stay of severe injured whatever cannot be used for fighting and they

they get to their hospital and then they're pretty much rejuvenated and the process completes uh the thing is that before in Rise of Kingdoms if and in the old games of the old Forex genre like this this is like one of the big changes I know it's kind of small but it's a big change so what happens here is that hospitals in Forex games before and in Rise of Kingdoms they have capacity and what happens that if if you had more units than your capacity and your units were defeated in battle and pretty much severely wounded and there was no space in your hospital they died that's it goodbye to months of grinding your troops are dead yeah so so this was one of the very very kind of big pushes or pressures regarding monetization within these games that you would need to like really really fast rejuvinate your troops because you lost them completely and this is pretty much the destruction of property because if we go

back to rise of Kingdoms if I look at the units here they cost resources and they let's say just 350 swordsman takes like nearly three hours just to build and then later on I need to upgrade them to swordsman 3 swordsman 4 sourman 5 research blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so it's like very very big investment the thing is that hospitals in uh call of dragons look Works a little bit different because what happening here is that uh where it was written yeah hospitals are actually with without with unlimited capacity but what happens here is that they have these different ratios of units dying if they're in like different encounters meaning that a percentage of defeated units will automatically die so there is still some destruction of property but I would say it's not that severe and the other thing that's kind of Genius they did is this resource healing which means that hospital will

heal for free some some units that's like arbitrary number here but you can use resources to speed it up instantly which means you can buy the resources through money if you don't have them so I guess it's a little bit more streamlined compared to all the other Forex games where if you didn't have that capacity or you just were pretty much floored as as the saying say like to zero you lost like months of progression into your game I not that many games uses this mechanic I think like another comparison would be like golf Clash where you have the betting mechanic where you bet soft currency when you go into a battle and if you Lo lose it you lose the you know the soft currency there but here it's like even more cut throw but yeah this is one of the main reasons why these games can absorb so much money because you can can lose value if you buy something you speed up something you you know bought the resources through money and then you lose the troops that man money vanishes

away there's no progression to show for it in the game so that's kind of very very cut thr um the other thing is that as we said our favorite gacha they have uh a combination of Shard gacha and kind of a unlo gacha oo looks nice some kind of a nice hero here which is is it legendary or is it not legendary oh it's epic anyway so we got EP hero nice uh but as you see here we unlock the hero first there's no shards and then all the other Heroes were shards so they using a similar system like let's say a little bit of modification similar to the system that Clash uses where your heroes are leveled through shards so first kind of combination unlocks the hero the first Shard that gives it to you and you can actively use him in battle and then later down the line if you want to upgrade his skills you need kind of duplicates of that hero which means the G again is absorbing duplicates which

you are using to upgrade hero skills and then those skills are doing more damage and Then star ratings and more power progression so on so forth so yeah the gacha system works great there heroes are great also because you have different Heroes for different functions in the game you have Heroes that would like defeat enemies you have Heroes that are good in PvP you have Heroes that are just specially for building stuff you have Heroes that is just for Gathering stuff like resources and stuff like that so it's very very properly set up gacha with like very good depth and width so yeah hands hands down for little for making this this run they know what they are doing they they don't yeah they know yeah they have like years of experience from R kingom but I think they were the first who can Streamlight it this much like through the gacha system but yeah it's like outstandingly good um regarding the monetization itself as we talk around it let's look at some examples that I think are kind of just like very very smooth so let's say we have this um yeah build build unit we're building something so let's speed up

time of course why not so the game offers us for instance instantly the inventory timers that we have in our inventory but if we scroll downwards it's already offering us the ones that we can buy it's so seemless very very nice regarding the offers one offer for instance is already kind of sitting there on the screen all the time it's like just sitting there uh I know that a lot of offers get kind of pop was it for 999 cents yeah yeah yeah this is for 99 this is their conversion offer because it's kind of noer yeah legendary hero 99 Cents it's like what 90% conversion yeah and you can even play the intro video if you want like looks so good does it oh yeah would convince me yeah it wouldn't convince me to buy it but it looks really good yeah yeah on PC just like it's just much more smoother uh yeah then you have these like other things like you can see like so much more offers so much more

stuff that you can buy so many like vectors of like spending money systems and vectors very good love it and and like they have like what like five different battle passes or whatever and like o five different like why is it what's the difference just different resources in them because one for this one for that one for that uh yeah this is I think just events like these are all the events events that are running here that's like so much stuff they have there and like definitely like this is a community-driven game it's like yeah that that that just works different like you said last time Mar trench deep yeah maren like this is the trench this is ex the okay so just to give people some kind of understanding what we talking about like these games have spent deps of like 120 150k and that just means that they will give you a competitive level it doesn't mean that you the game and you have everything it just means that you can now you can you can play

you can play yeah you can play on the highest competitive level like it's it's like so big so much stuff let's let's continue to UA because we will be here forever uh which is fine I mean uh at least uh you know this was uh we know and we knew you you need to go last because you talk always you always thought it's good so I think uh from the from the US perspective as we touched upon the soft Louch and I was looking into the soft Louch numbers in in one of our favorite data tools it was uh said that it's it was sof launch in December 2022 but I will get get there uh so at the end of the month 28th of December um in lot of countries actually which was Brazil Indonesia Philippines turkey Mexico um Colombia as well Peru Argentina Spain port Portugal UK um Canada and Australia so basically latam

uh southeast Asia and TI one right off the bat and the F in in the first three days it was 50k installs and 32,000 revenues and like when I was looking into this uh it made me think the game was already tested out in beta testing um for a long time so as you said uh they actually soft launched the game in August 2022 uh so I guess uh they also know what the [ __ ] they are doing thanks to rise of Kingdoms uh but they already made 400k in January and uh the top one goo for for Revenue was Canada and top two can you guess Philippines okay 400k man there's like mice nuts for Forex game of course but in soft Louch dude in soft lunch come on in soft Louch for for this game it it makes more money than like 50% of the game out there this was only

soft lunch and uh the same thing happened in February just uh one month before the global but in in February man it was the the revenue wise based countries Philippines Indonesia and Brazil seriously it was followed by Australia and Canada so I guess uh definitely not the the Classic Soft Louch we talking about maybe maybe these were the whales from Rise of Kingdoms they want could early and just use VPN could be yeah could be uh but then you know they added iOS in March and then immediately went Global so as we discussed at the beginning at the top GEOS iOS versus Google play in terms of revenues like top one us and I'm I'm looking at last 30 days which we're talking about is like 16 oh well it was actually 17 17 million in the last um few months so I guess 14 in this this month nevertheless us like 5 million and

then second is France with 500k that's the scale you get with these games so so much different so it's us France Germany Canada Singapore UK Thailand Australia Switzerland and Russia on the top 10 spot interesting that this is IOS but like such a big difference and then Google play us again 2 million and then France on the second place 400,000 again that's like so such a big difference but then we have Germany Indonesia Canada Philippines uh UK Singapore Brazil and Australia so so why is um like why is here us on top one uh by far and the white out survival is Korea and then us right behind so I guess we already discussed at the beginning it's just a completely different type of strategy game right or like why why do think it's uh such a big difference the the thing is that white out survival

is a little bit more it uses that Frost Punk team that's one thing and this is kind of a as Forex as it gets and people in us are keep in mind that people in us are very programmed to play Forex from the days of machine Zone because they were programmed by day super big marketing machine with all hard parteners that this is like one of the best games to play so nice that's a tradition of playing Forex games in the US okay and um if we are talking about competition so I guess you already mentioned a lot of them but then I was looking into Um Kingdom guard obviously top War I don't think you may mentioned Kingdom maker but I guess like in terms of the comparison because it was you know developed by scopely and launched by scopely but in terms of revenues it's just super small yeah those are those are the guys that did the original Clash of Clans the Backyard Monsters ah okay nice and then I was comparing it

to to White out survival so when we are talking about retention we all also got the the retention benchmarks for our friends from game analytics and benchmarking tool so it looks like um the top two% of games their retention in the strategy games day one is 52% day seven is 27% and then day 28 is 15% so when I when we are looking at uh call of dragons Survivor um white out survival top war and King no maker on iOS uh call of dragons is 52% day one 20% day seven day 30 is 6% and day 60 is 4% anything else top four actually top four has even lower retention so day one is 46% day seven is 15 day F day 3 is 5% day 60 is 3% but then when I looked at Day Day 90

retention obviously right out survival is 7% and then the rest is just two or three% who would said that yeah but it's still like a long long long way from like the days where machines on would have like 14% day one and still yeah exactly yeah yeah that's that's what I wanted to say and maybe I I will try to get these numbers and show it on the on the screen as well because yeah like day one was like 20% or something that's that was terrible but they were still making [ __ ] ton of money because of marketing push of course yeah yeah and then we have uh the Google Play retention so call of dragon is 51% on day one uh 177% on day seven and 4% day 30 day 60 we don't have yet but still uh it's when comparing to to other games the white survival is still like 6% they the 90 retention everything else is just 2% uh obviously call of dragons doesn't have have the day 90 yet but uh yeah I

think this this game is uh definitely make a lot of money 14 14 million or 16 million on on the first month it's it's a very good start so in terms of the UA Channel makes finally something different ye like three last three games uh the same thing all over again these guys are relying heavily on Google especially on YouTube so uh we will talk about it in the creative section so then we have very big big big gap uh and then then comes Unity app Facebook and Tik Tok so uh in terms of the creatives uh it's right now when I when I was looking into this game and uh after Staker a legend of slime and even Frozen City it was just so much different for Call Of Dragons It's ugc all the way and uh I know I was I saw a lot of ugc type of creatives for Rise of Kingdoms as

well and uh well it's primarily cringy ugc I I still get this one creative where there are people in the restaurant fighting over some [ __ ] and then suddenly you learn that they are playing Rise of Kings and attacking each other oh I mean Co of dragons yeah pretty much uh so let's see I I might just uh you know share the entire screen and try to try to show you some of the creatives because I think uh for example this where is it the gym gym is just this is terrible and this is even localized man localized okay yes I'm not sure like what is this language I think it's it's either Chinese or Korean I don't but this is it

it's it's so much fun but this is the only only thing they actually they actually do uh maybe this was slightly different um using the map uh and in some of the game playay but I was checking it and it's all like 30 second plus super super long creatives on all the CHS then we have two guys talking I think that was survival could and these are like two guys talking about the game as usual like one minute one and a half minute long we have I mean this was kind kind of fun sure if you caners yeah players yeah very this is just I mean come on it's terrible I don't this looks like worst version of yeah yeah that's what I thought that's what I thought exactly uh we have

I mean they arei and I I think you don't hear the sound but I will show I show it with the sound it's just so intense he's speaking like it's the end of the road okay so he compared it in the video it's all all call dragons yeah because there was a logo of of yeah I guess they used just their uh their assets for for making these videos and then this is just this is I see this specific video like all the time on Facebook this guy playing something and then super random and I know is this what you're talking about no I have like see the same concept but is

like this one I saw definitely this one I saw with making water in the ground yeah I saw that one also like the rise of Kingdoms uh they used all these like and it was definitely based from based in UK these influencers or actors or whatever because of their accent it was so cringy so so so again I guess I don't know maybe they also have this underestimate Farm I like nothing exciting it's Justus this was fun again this is what like southeast Asia maybe Indonesia Philippines or why works so good in Philippines yeah I guess yeah I guess uh but this is like the the whole creative nothing else just uh uh play

PVP it is kind of funny is kind of funny then the classic Dev standard stuff nothing nothing really like yeah right exactly and then um then we have some static images they they use like all these like some to en and whatever else that's like launcher graphic yeah true and then what what do we have yeah I guess that's it I mean it's like nothing too interesting uh but then um again few CGI videos a little bit here and there uh but again relying heavily on the on the ugc no hyper casuals uh IDs or um no Hero Wars type of tower creatives no Survivor iio

inspiration nothing from the current trends especially no fake ads no fake ads is interesting uh but yeah so we have some interesting tidbits here again so terrible actors into ugc I saw already this R of Rise of Kingdoms uh what I mentioned not sure what is happening here but I guess this actor actually not as great in acting I guess because they're low cost creative actors I yeah I'm not sure how this works it's really these are going to get replaced by AI I guarantee that oh yeah the first on the chopping block yeah 100% but maybe that's like uh it's cring more cringy the better performance I don't know but maybe that's the key to success in Forex category I I I don't know I don't know maybe but uh we saw a lot of long for videos so many of their videos are longer than 30 seconds which is great

format for Google campaigns but I see also this across Facebook app and even Tik Tok I me for Tik Tok it doesn't work I guess that's that much but uh definitely great for for Google and also localized creatives so I'm not a localization expert so uh so I can't can't say like what what are the languages there but I I think it seems like there's a lot of creatives localized for Southeast Asia like we discussed like Philippines Indonesia all of these like top top Revenue countries at least from the soft launch I saw also um German language France French and then also I guess Korean and Chinese not sure but uh what does this tell us in these days of uh you know consolidating the campaigns and running Geo buckets and teers um I think they're running uh GEOS specific campaigns since their creatives are localized so I guess you know French creatives in French campaigns Germany German campaigns and y

y y you got it uh which is against uh whatever uh I kind of um kind of use or other companies use as well uh but then we have some some interesting things so so they are using also creators with fund bases to to build ads so this approach turns an average cring UA creative into one engaging V and she T of comments from fans so I think we uh we mentioned it in the in the the flamb booy and UA uh part and session so let me show you this uh this creative actually which is here here and uh we were already looking into it uh in the episode but here so basically vival leak uh and um as soon as they published

this the the the fans were already like yeah commenting a [ __ ] ton of uh if you if you m the volume on that just like you can hear the volume I can I can yeah okay sorry anyway what I wanted to say is that these guys are pretty much specialized in the skits so they are the perfect fit for these games because they have core PC player audience or I would say even not even PC only but pretty much core gaming audience they are able to do these kids like three times a week and it's like you don't even know it's a creative or it's an ad you don't even know until the very very very end that's that's the magic behind it that's the thing and then they have also like few of these videos actually it's not only one video but I I found out uh also this like ignoring the free healing option I mean that's what you were

talking about no and it's the thing that they use the like the the humor and and the like the skits they do it's it's like these kind of gamer jokes like only Gamers would know these things like normal person can't even understand what's happening here but for gamer it's very funny because this is how like gamer logic Works in a way like you know like having health potion being eaten like with the glass itself like that's what yeah so and and they went this I mean this is great yeah this is this is very good I would say it's kind of Next Level because it's pretty much like an Internet TV that's built on these kits and just some of those are turn directly into like a creative yeah so so overall rating or just Maven m u rating as we prob last last week I would say seven out of 10 uh they're running like a lot of a

lot of different U [ __ ] uh I guess uh and creatives could be slightly more Innovative in terms of the the current trends but I guess this is working quite well for them since they're making 140 million a month out of the bat uh and then I I think uh we can talk about the vivala league next time uh since we are already like yeah over problem is that the game is so big that yeah to much to cover no it's like and and I cannot go first next time of course yeah yeah next time you won't go you won't go first that's for sure that's for sure oh but okay so so we have the the vivala dirt leag uh YouTubers guys where we can talk next next time because it's very interesting case like how they started and uh what they're doing and how is this actually turning into like a very big u channel because they're running a lot of of different games not only call of dragons but R Shad of Legends uh War also some War gaming

stuff and like other so yeah we can we can go over that it's it's really I was looking into into that and uh it's really interesting story so yeah overall rating for Call of dragons yob from your end I would say nearly 10 out of 10 probably because like last time when I was talking like I I got the clear missing here like this is definitely an improvement it's like yeah whatever I wanted from it like PC client that's very polished everything super polished everything's like crossplatform connected they have the best game in the category and they are topping it with this game so like what more you could ask for and they're they're not using fake ads no fake no fake ads no fake ads yes I appreciate that also kudos to that H it's definitely very uh very different from from other Forex

games but also yeah I'm not sure like what what amount of money Kingdom guard makes but it's definitely more than than Call of dragons for now for now yeah for now for now for sure all right thank you very much for listening uh I guess uh see you next time Felix going to be healthy maybe we'll see yeah we will need to watch few more ads to get him healthy yeah exactly exactly exactly all right thank you very much uh well by the way keep subscribing uh our YouTube uh channel is growing really fast thank you very much for uh for the support and uh until next time yeah cheers bye bye back [Music]