How Glu evolved Frontline Commando from guns to girls and gacha

hello and welcome to Pocket Gamer bizzy's YouTube channel I'm John Jordan and today we're looking at the evolution of glue Mobile's shooter series frontline commando so there's been a number of front on commando games over the years looking the first one to begin with obviously so quite like commando the first one was 2011 there's been first versions of it since then there's been some kind of world war 2 versions as well so it's been kind of a quite well populated franchise in of itself we've also done a lot of shooter games there's been other ones that basically use the same technology but do them in different ways so there was some zombie ones and there was famously Jason Statham's sniper X so we all know that Jason Statham but this is the this is the first one this is this is the kind of point in which they start so just very quickly let's have a look at some gameplay so here we go so right start

mission so the two things we'll be looking at the progression is gameplay and also monetization so we can just see here I've got this is like the main machine gun so I'm just I can't I can move around slightly so I can move to different positions but effectively it's kind of a knockin on Rails type shooter so nothing terribly controversial here I was just going off to do so and there's shoot em I can swap weapons you have two weapons at any one time is a sniper weapon so I'm gonna find someone we can okay got health there's other things I can do so it's that so I've got a health kit also do an airstrike

so let's forfeit that because we can see the gameplay is why the aspects I want to do but also look at the other stuff so mission valid and complete it so let's have a look at the what we call the metagame which is what goes on around the game so for that we kind of go into the store so with the game the front like a mother's a series you mean you can kind of get better in terms of skill but the main focus of the game is your weapons so as you can see here and the first one got a shotgun so the ones I've got I've got a shotgun I've got um a sniper's rifle I've got assault rifle they've all got different damage clip size usual kind of stuff so I can buy a rocket launcher so you can see here the rocket launcher is 40 gold credits the SE the UI in this case isn't very good cuz they use this horrible square font everywhere we can

see that some of the things are in the soft currency the kind of dollars which I have a bit of you earn that as you complete missions and then there's the hard currency so I've only got eight of those so they're kind of cool what coolest weapons they want you to spend the hard currency on which probably means you're paying real money to get them we can see this for the steal a loom I can unlock that when I've got to level three so many level two in the game and just cost Daniel to demonstrate it really so there's the guns there's different types of assault sniper shotgun launcher and they kind of get a bit bizarre some of these made up a blitter death 800 so other things I can get items so be kind of saw there's the airstrike stuff interesting me all these are hard currency and there's packs where you get a bit of mixture stuff so you get some armor and there discounts and stuff and the bank is you buy stuff you can see you can get more free gold publishing videos but is it what we

might call in certainly the time was a fairly fairly standard month elation system you had a soft currency which basically you earn through playing the game you had the hard currency which sometimes you earn maybe if you leveled up or did something particularly well but basically you didn't really get very much hard currency and if you wanted to cool weapons you either had to really grind for a long time or just I'm gonna fight it was more it wasn't necessarily a total gated system but it was more like a caged system you also see so there was I couldn't I could log into Facebook and get ten free Gold's but what we would say at the time a fairly standard kind of free-to-play game where there was a kind of an action you can auto play the action at all or anything like that there was kind of a single-player kind of things what you were doing and you know good for the time but but but now fairly old-fashioned so let's go often have a look at another blue mobile games to look at the next one in the series okay so now we're on to frontline commando 2 so these two years later 2013

this game came out and we can already see quite different so the screen the just you use it interface is much better you can actually kind of read it and there's a beautiful things going on here so we obviously got the same thing we've got I got my primary assault weapon I've got a secondary sniper's rifle we can see there's a damage singing on here more interesting we have an upgrade system so you can see here I can upgrade there's different elements so I can instead of just buying a new weapon there's this kind of up rate I can upgrade the lighten the damage effectively I definitely the rate of fire you know and obviously the upgrades are pretty small the the difference just by doing one upgrade is pretty small but obviously that the impact if you keep doing them between an upgraded weapon and operated weapon is he's pretty big what else we got so got some armor that's pretty much the same as before go back so we've got some retailing bit more kind of interesting retailing not

so kind of plain in a sense the the mum station system is the same okay so you've got it got a soft cutting hard currency so that's again pretty you know that kind of basic underlying things been as being is pretty straightforward probably also got there we've got a squad so I've got AI controlled players I can play with so I've got Dutch and ice selves they can do one of them is this kind of like a shooter one of them's got shotgun so I can actually train him up okay so train my squad mates Oh he's also got grenade option so I can train him with a little bit of soft currency so there he goes I can train him again that's a bit of time so at the time got supplies as well so this is kind of thing we saw before in the in the first game in the series we had this kind of airstrike stuff so now it's kind of kind of similar supplies and drones grenade

syringes to revive formal squad members obstacle moves is something that's added added in this medic it for yourself you can get a hot PG so I'm can throw a drone and you can see here I can get again similar kind of monetization and since that the cool stuff is these you're buying with hard cars there's no option to do that soft currency on that side that's where we have with that so the interesting thing here is now there's PvP so PvP player versus player it's actually a big element in terms of retention and getting people to come back the single-player mission is still I guess the main part of this game as it wasn't the first one but there are I can go off and battle people interests new you can kind of see there's I can have some power-ups as well so there's a kind of how well balanced this is is is a massive but conjecture really if you know that whole plate to win if you've got a lot more money you can buy more power-ups and then that depends on the

game of Lee that's quickly so there's um so this is the mission structure so we can see here it's kind of like a three usual three star thing but some of the stuff is lot until you've to stick and break elite I must have the following so my weapon isn't upgraded enough to do that so there's some more subtle kind of gating I suppose of what's going on to this one again my it lets me play on this one her actually Delta 3 stars based telling me my my damage isn't isn't he doesn't recommend doing her this level so it's kind of asking me to level up and the obstacles we have this leveling up system that's kind of the weapon leveling up its kind of system and that's why tasks we do that's kind of encouraging me to spend that soft currency oh you got the monitor this guy here the shotgun with a blade at me still the

same thing with kind of physics positions moving around me autograph definitely much nicer you can see my squad make there is they're even doing stuff helping me out majors makes me feel like a bit more an immersive environment or just part of an age so I want to get out of the way let me just see the gameplay has I mean the basic gameplay hasn't really changed get idea so the game is more sophisticated in terms of the certainly the user interface certainly the user experience certainly the monetization there's different types of gameplay so they're saying that guy's telling me what the thing said the prompt said

beforehand I should really go operate my weapon so so again for the in terms of the basic kind of monetization it's it's gonna step forward that all the basic modulations descent and soft hard currency officers effort for lots of games speak more interesting with the returns have got this kind of retailing thing that's saying in one minute you know there's a pack in its boots limited so I thought one that I should really jump on that kind of quickly energy system that's all pretty standard so definitely a jump forward not a revolution to jump forward from the first game but a good a good put good progression in where the kind of front one kimande thank ties was going have to say um the final games haven't been like super lucrative the glue and they've been kind of good performers had never been Kim Kardashian they've never done tens of millions of dollars in a quarter but they've all been you know they appeal to wealthy a certain certain market and they've done okay so that's

kind of like it's the financial background so let's go and have a look at where we are now in 2000 okay so here in 2016 this is glues latest game shooter game original font actor he was called frontline commandos rivals they've since it's gone live they've changed it to rivals fire so the background of this game is obviously we've seen the frontline commando franchise has been around for quite a few years and there's been doing its thing steadily progressing but glue had it got investment firm ten sentence and is the is the massive Chinese games PC and online and mobile company and they have a very popular game called we fire there's massive in Japan the shooter game and what basically this one which is quite it's called rivals fire and it's kind of like an amalgam of the twos are taking like the best things that glue has learned from its front and come on the franchise and what how kind of the ten set operates it can we fire game so you kind of ended up

with this kind of Soddy doesn't seem like it's in the frontline commando franchise but they're definitely so we can see the from the quite clean look of the front I come on a two-game in the kind of the home screen this is kind of gone up a bit more look at me that's in this is what you've confined in lots of Chinese games just a lot going on so let's try and quickly go through some stuff so we can see here up here there's an email system so email system is is where stuff is I don't know we claim stuff so this angel of death is I think a player are who I kind of lose friends with so that they've sent me some staff I've received some energy system these are okay these are emails from the developer so I bought some login rewards I've got lots of other rewards I've got some important messages nothing okay so there's mail system there's boot camp which is guess when I'm starting out there's and missions I can complete

to get games and rewards is just a lot of different kind of ways and encouraged me to play got this thing here which is the looking like tell me what's going on just even know what that is written is as the event system so this is all PvP stuff so we have mentioned PvP was first introduced in front like a month or two now this is a massive part of this game there's a video I cannot see do the same thing before login with Facebook and get some this gems now rather than the gold system there's a chat thing here which is just a global chat I'm not in a guild on this but guilds as well so gills are obviously a massive part there's a private chat I want to find a players ID to do a chat so Chang systems again for most players just a bit meaningless really but for committed players really important to keep the retention so there's this friend singer says there's the Angel of Death so I could chat with him or her

to death agree to be my friend quite quite and Wyatt did that no there's just mentioned the guild so I can join any guild catchphrase please join so there's a task list I mean just against us so is something else I can claim that now I complete normal stage chapter one its price I get some staff okay so you can just see instead of like there's just a lot of stuff to go through now the general meta game around the game is is much much bigger and you compare it to the first game there basically it was nothing you could go and buy a new gun now there's all this I mean this is what it's going for the scream rain got achieved first place on the survivor rankings good good for them so it's good to go into guns to gum to our an important thing to do that now yeah so you can see as before the guns are this is kind of different types of weapon assault rifles knifing up to any one time then you have grades on them

that's going to this is my basic assault rifle so now what we can see now is then the bottom of the swinging sea as in front of come on there - there was just especially you can up you could upgrade for elements of the weapon and they were kind of bit abstract they were kind of like rate of fire and damage now I'm actually upgrading individual components I mean see here I've got a mo that I can enhance so the Knights come up for limited off a year okay so let's I've got insufficient components okay I need three okay so so I did lay all that up there's level 3 now but then I can level up the entire gun if I've got any XP so got XP thing I just earned from one of those things that I claimed at all XP level up a copy of currently the now you

see my guns leveled up so still those there's gotten our full criteria for the damage critical a critical likelihood of a critical hit click and piercing ability oh and I story there's a tons about so so there's much more kind of complexity in terms of the how they're modeling the weapon and all that much more complexity in terms of how you kind of level it up so the other interesting thing is you can go in to look down right hand side you can dismantle and dismember so you once you get a new weapon you can take the old bit apart and get all those components and kind of sell them off so these poxy there's a new weapon yeah what's in you okay so it's going to the other thing that's a bit different here so we had the squad before didn't see my squad members I can have three other squad members and a vehicle so but what's

interesting about this is before we can add the whole shoot were thing we kind of gruff men here this is a kind of a very Japanese thing a Chinese thing sorry so I've got Natasha who clearly is a a figure who appeals to a certain th genre gender of gamer so instead of having like a like a buddy shoot a guy I've got this kind of quite attractive going sunglasses and showing their navel um so it's lighting very small thing but actually this is kind of this is where previously glue was it wasn't I mean it's a contemporary shooter but not realistic in any way obviously but now it's kind of you can see the whole kind of environment of the game the whole kind of look and feel everything about it is kind of becoming this kind of much more fantastical thing so what can I do with her can i how can i play her gun as well and all that stuff to do that with what we got here I can level her up okay cuz I've got a vest in the jacket so she goes sees no

six let me see her there are stats lots more stats on there on the squad mate okay and then just go quickly going to game that's the ones are going what I did to her now I can upgrade me come on I've got jacket so even the armor now is also split out into different components so the whole thing has been made much more sophisticated so it's couldn't go into a game so here we are so we've got gonna use up some energies got my recommended it's got my currents that's that kind of the same as before you can see equally the bottom you've got possible drop so these are obviously things as a 2p oh that's very useful so we kind of the game is not about is not about weapons anymore it's about components of weapons so again I can buy these boosts but this time remember previously a lot of them were based on hard currencies in this case gems but now I can buy the RPGs or grenades just

play spending my sub currency go to the moon to do battle with that so she's not forgotten me okay next I can also invite a friend so angel death can come with me we've got intelligence reports of suspicious activity at the harbour so everything is going on Fae another unlikely characters are packed with boobs I see we confuse gums together so we have two guns are the same and confuse it together but in terms of the basic gameplay you can see this is this is very familiar sort soldier you can see here there's like two of them have come to straight to water again it's all it's much less and a realistic so these guys it's literally

just walking towards us almost yeah it's like hey don't these grenade guys so I could just get my K ha PG from nowhere so you guys much it much more of a kind of a park ad type thing even see with the it's kind of what's going on on the screen and the prompts I'm game and this much but what I think what Tintin has made me realize is it's not about contemporaries not about being realistic asleep good thing about thinking about what your audience wants which is basically young boys playing these kind

of games I'm just giving them what they want there we go I did the mission that was really quick I want some staff I got some XP I got some gold soft currency I'm gonna give get retail things and retails are quite heavy so again it's a cool weapon which doesn't like anything in the real world it doesn't even limited offer yeah okay so there we go so that's that's the kind of progression of of where glue has gone and isn't the reason I think this is interesting it's much more than where glue is gone to this is who's actually been quite good historically it's very early into free-to-play games and it's kind of being quite always ahead of the game on how it wants to monetize always monetize a little bit what I'm considering it in in an aggressive way that's not bad things but it's always been quite our front about monetization but we can see and okay this is over a five year period so it would be surprising that we didn't see any put any change but I'm particularly now with it with this game

with them rivals fire there's a big shift has happened in the last year or so and probably that's I think a big influence of Asian Games have done very well in this cases and those work for $0.10 specifically but we've seen any general you know Western developers now are heavily influenced by the games they've done very well in Japan Korea and China and it is not so much about their the game itself the gameplay is as we can see has officially not changed at all but it is all about the meta game it's all about how you're adding different elements in so we've got them there's the squadmate stuff came in that's more complex you've got friends coming in definitely the monetization definitely metagame definitely anything you can level up anything you do in the game is about winning lots of different types of prizes so you actually win some currency but before you win other things that are more useful to keep you coming back and back to back it's not just about grinding out currency so a much more sophisticated approach to what makes us play games and we're seeing that throughout the industry so that was just a little overview I thought it was

interesting so share it with you thanks for watching and don't get to subscribe to our YouTube channel if you like this kind of thing and we hope to see you again soon