Did Coin Master Just Copy (back) Monopoly Go?

[Music] All right, Moon Active is going after Scooby in a big way. They have launched in a sense it's like a take on a take on a take. So you had Coin Master, then you had Monopoly Go, which kind of used those systems. Now Moonactive is doing a version of Monopoly Go with the original kind of version that they came up with. And coin master was a take on another game, the pirate something. Pirates
ice cream.
No, no, it was a pirate something. Uh
oh, board kings. Yes.
No, no, no. Those are both. It was a pirate kings or something like that. It was another jelly button game. Anyways, everybody stealing from everybody just to be clear.
Everyone uh inspired by is what we'd like to say.
I What I love about all of this is that this is like industrial espionage in open in the [ __ ] open, dude. This like what's good for the goose is good for the gander, dude. You know, [ __ ] Scopely copies Moon Active completely, right? And [ __ ] layers on some

[ __ ] amazing IP, right now Moon Active's copying them right the [ __ ] back, right in their wheelhouse with their [ __ ] IP as the headline, right, of the Coin Master, right? So, it's actually [ __ ] brilliant, dude. It's absolutely brilliant, right? So, I love it. Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know if this is going to be successful. We'll see. But having the Coin Master brand is huge here. But dude, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. You know, you want to [ __ ] with them, they're going to [ __ ] with you. Okay? So, don't Google them, you know?
Hold up. Do you think the brand matters here? The coin master brand?
I don't know if it does. The search is going to I mean, they might cannibalize their existing gig, but maybe they don't care. Maybe they're hoping OnePlus 3. My understanding is that the feeling is and I and I talk to these guys once in a while is that in some ways Scoply, you know, grew the addressable audience like probably moving people away from traditional casino games and putting them in these type of games which is more compelling, you know, like I don't

know there's like all kinds of ideas here. So perhaps I think what I would think is that they're just going after straight after scopely share, right? So they want to maintain their share on their game and then just go after and start stripping share away from Scopely, right? To build their business overall. They're going for the jugular. They're not [ __ ] around, right? And so Monopoly Go better, you know, get back on track with terms of features and stuff like that because I think what'll likely happen, I haven't looked at the game too closely, is that they're just going to be better version of the Monopoly game to some degree would be my guess. I don't know. We'll see.
The IEP is a beach head, right? I feel like we've spent so much time talking about this though. It's the unique combination of Monopoly which was already successful in gambling environments like the McDonald's game or Vegas slots licensing. Like that is a beach head. Like that is a CPI effect that like that is your TAM. That is Jen's fun fact you will see in the first five minutes of her YouTube video which you can catch with Ben Webb. Link link

in the description. But like that that was an important part of this. Like this isn't like this isn't Empire Strike Back. Are you kidding me? Like
this Monopoly goes genre. Like this is small potatoes.
All right. So I'm actually leading towards your point of view on this. So I'm just kind of talking on both sides of my mouth right here. But like at the end of the day, Monopoly Go is at a point in which they are doing insane levels of TV advertising, which we all know is [ __ ] [ __ ] right? And their revenue is completely deteriorating, right?
No. No. So they the Scoply's team pulled it out of the ass this quarter. Like you can look at it. Downloads flattened but revenue went up. I mean don't me wrong the long run trend is still there downward slipping. Okay.
But you can clearly see Javier just like
over over them
and they have a web shop. And they have a web shop called I don't care about the web shop. I don't understand why we don't care about the [ __ ] web shop. It's money. What it actually what Moon Active likely will do because these guys are [ __ ] ruthless, right? Is they are going to UA the [ __ ] [ __ ] out

of this thing, right? They are going to go after every single [ __ ] person that's playing Monopoly Go to get into their game and they're going to spend whatever it takes to get there, dude. And so, like,
yeah, it's an arms race.
Yeah, it's a [ __ ] arms race. And I think I think the Israelis are going to win this one. I mean, I think they potentially could win this one. Israeli Saudi show down now.
Well, I don't mean to be political, but these guys are kind of ruthless about getting that what they need done. I have my faith in Moon Active to get this get this done.
Can't they both win?
I mean, they're kind of growing together. I I honestly don't think that's the goal. I don't think that's the goal
for both to win, right? But they kind of grow the category together. like it seemed like
I mean puzzle I mean you think about the puzzle category and how many match three players there are now I guess can they grow the pie for this kind of a new genre this like
I think they call it coin looter

as a subject coin battler
oh interesting
and by the way love the art style they would have done a different execution if they were trying to expand the market right like they wouldn't have done exactly what monopoly is
they should have done that though like this this is what I don't understand Eric is like you'll admit that Monopoly Go is at the edge of user acquisition and so they're like turning to TV ads cuz CPIs are so high and now you're telling me that the Israelis are going to show up with Coin Master board and they're going to spend a bunch more against the same pool of users. Like this market is filling up. This is not what we should be paying attention to. Like to give you an example like this market is already getting clones. Like just as an example, Peggy Go Clash of Coin is like [ __ ] that series on this list. It's been for a while that this game has been for a while. It's like a app loving stake.
And this has also already beenified.
So the other thing that we haven't covered is something that has like a hyper casual loop to bring people in,

which is Carnival Tycoon, which is basically an idler, which is ripped off from another idol game called Idol Theme Park, which builds in a slot machine. Like there there's a lot happening in the subg genre, but like this is not a good strategy to get there. And you know what are you going to do on the CPI side that's interesting here inex brand matters but it's like what's happening in 4X how started to take in RPG components gotcha character collector these coin looters or coin battlers are now combining all of these different hyper casual things together. I do think that brand matters and you know back when I was on the Hasbro business at EA back in when Facebook started that's when Zenga came out with a ripoff of Scrabble called words with friends and there actually was room in a sense for both because of like the little bit of the innovation that they did there. The interesting thing here is going to be, you know, how close can they get and not infringe on the

monopoly trademark, which by the way is it's only limited to a few different things. It's limited to like the four corners of the board, like the chance and community square things. So, I I think they can still go after it, but brand matters.
Okay. I think I think we're focusing on the wrong things right now, right? We're talking about like these peripheral like design choices and casual games and all this other stuff. We're talking about a UA war, right? We're not talking about like product. We're not talking about features, right? We're we're talking about the fact that this is like UA arbitrage at its finest, right? In terms of how companies are going after So like when you talk about Puzzle for instance, the only reason Puzzle continues to grow is because Dream Games is spending insane amounts of money with 24-month paybacks, right? like insane CPIs, right? And so that's where the battle is being
Yeah, but isn't this the entire mobile industry? Like it
No, I know. But but you guys are bringing up these [ __ ] chachki games that aren't even making a dent in the

industry. These are irrelevant, right? These are absolute mice nuts, right? What I'm saying is that these are the big boys with the biggest budgets that are private that don't give a [ __ ] about profitability really and they're going for the jugular, right? And Dream Games is the same idea. like even though they're private, like they were just basically spending with reckless abandon in order to gain as much share as possible, right? Like it's a different world, right? Than when we were back in canvas days or the early days of mobile. This is like just a [ __ ] gunfight, you know, and and and these guys are ruthless, right? And so and so was Scopway. Scope was absolutely ruthless with their game when they came out against, you know, copying coin coin master and then completely just like burying them on the UA side. That's not what we're because what we're what we're arguing is not necessarily what the intent is. Like maybe they'll have the big war chest, maybe they won't, but even if they do, I'm just arguing that it's very silly because we're already seeing Monopoly go hit a wall. There's also the IP as a moat. So, you got to consider those two things which I think make it a poor strategy. I mean, look,

it's only going to be x number of dollars in development cost and they are going to have a rorowaz number, right? I have a hard time imagining, Eric, that they're going to continue to shove coal into a rorowaz number that's declining. That can continue infinitely. And the reason I'm bringing up these quote chachki games is because I'm trying to show you that in this UA game for coin battlers, we're starting to see the frozen city white out survival playbook emerge in Carnival Tycoon, which is what I'm trying to point out to you, is an idol game that turns into a
game that has a monopoly course. Same thing with [ __ ] Fish of Fortune, which I I want to talk about at some point cuz it's such a fascinating game, but again, you're seeing other people go after this in a bigger strategy. No, they're not scaled right now, but these are the real attempts.
They're bringing like plushies to a gunfight, right? They don't have the means. They don't have a hundred or $200 million to throw a user acquisition. These like Chachki games can't even compete. They're not even in the discussion because they don't have the

money to go after it. Right. Plenty of match three games. There are plenty of match three games that compete at all levels. No,
like just because King exists.
No, absolutely not.
What are you talking about? Like Tactile Games, Lily's Garden, one example.
Dude, those guys spent all kinds of money like
sure they spent money, but I'm saying they exist at all sizes.
Look at Yeah. Again, like again, that is a completely different market, right? We're talking about the big boys going after each other right now. But Lily's Garden survived in the wake of, let's say, the UA war between Royal Match and, you know, another big match three titan, which by the way, Candy Crush continues to like drive crazy downloads. So, I'm just saying like you can survive in this market at different equilibriums. So yes, there are the big boys and yes, there are people there's the whales and the and a little bit of like the minnows that can still exist and make money as a smaller company, but you said that, you know, people like Kavali are coming in and doing UA financing. there's the

opportunity for these games to get acquired by one of the bigger companies who then want to invest in a game that has great KPIs are you know rorowaz positive and maybe their goal isn't to do it on their own but is to wave their ham and say by me cuz I have a product that can be scaled is that like a strategy worth it for some of the smaller ones I mean I think to Phil's point which was astute which is this the new what's working in forex you know it's it's Voltron it's like all of these parts coming together make something bigger. Is that in a sense the strategy that we're now seeing in coin battlers showing up is what was successful in Forex. The second part I would say is that yes like we're seeing a more casual approach to these social casino style games
that are attracting a broader audience but also extracting from the existing games like you know all the big fish casino and all those rest of the games are continued to deteriorate right
so yes I mean I think in essence like

these big guys are capturing not only expanding the market but capturing lots of share in the market at the same time so that's great but it's again a battle battle of the big, right? Like the companies that are gaining all the share are basically, you know, Scopely and Moon active, right? Like
Yeah. And post IDFA, it's it when the market is not growing, when these big ones grow, they actually take it from the small ones.
Animals and coins, which was now bought by Blika, that was a one game. They did what like I I forget, but that was acquired. They are right here number two on this list in terms of downloads in the last year in the United States.
Okay. The part of the reason I was thinking about this Frank Chabau was on a podcast recently and he
it was really
Christopher Driggs
and so Frank is the most pragmatic person I've ever met like he's just brilliant and what he said and it really resonates with me is that you don't care if it's a red ocean if you're a shark right and that's my whole point right there's just a bunch of sharks going

after this in a [ __ ] completely red ocean and they are destroying everybody right like it's so hard to compete you know and that's why I love like this like battle of the huge, you know, that are going after this market with games that are almost identical to each other and it again it is industrial espionage right in our faces, you know, it's like it's brilliant, right? And so that's where the market is right now or that's the biggest part of the market. Sure, people are are maybe winning on on the smaller side here and there, but like can you compete with a 24 year payback? That's not a rorowaz that you can actually bank on, you know, like that's crazy. I want to just add two comments. I think the the art style is beautiful with the latest moon active game.
That's 100%
the art style.
Yes, I I do have to say it is it is really beautiful compared to the previous one. It's really cute. And then I want to give a kudos for not doing any press releases or celebrity campaigns at least yet.
It's in tech testing. It's in the Philippines. I

I'm not surprised that they do it and I will be equally as dismissive with Moon Active as I was with Scopely and Dream. I bet they will not do press releases though. That's one thing that they will not do.
No, they're going to do a brand campaign. Call LeBron, get his agent on the phone. Kardashian,
let's go.
Courtney Cox, Lisa Quudro, you still there?
Oh god, we got a game for you.
All right, I got I got to go.
Bye everybody.
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