How Glu has evolved UX in its celebrity games

[Music] hello and welcome to pocket gamer. bu's YouTube channel I'm John Jordan and today we're having a special look at how glue has uh changed its celebrity games over the years so there have been six uh celebrity based games from glue started with two that were unbranded the stardom series and then they went into Kim Kardashian and uh then there was k Katy Perry and then there was uh Kendall and Kylie um and then there was finally the the most current one Britney Spears so but what we're doing is looking at the um how the games have kind of progressed in terms of their user experience um and and graphics and that kind of stuff just very briefly so this is the first game so this was called a stom the A-list this released in December 2011 so we can see it you kind of start off there's no celebrity involved so you start off in a kind of quite a traditional way kind of down at the bottom um you're kind of like a someone who wants to be a star you move to um

I think we in La I think we're in La um you move to some big city anyway um and you basically start off you're working in Star beans I wonder what star beans is so that's obviously coffee coffee place so um actually just finished our shift so we can't really do any work um here but we could we could maybe go and order a coffee we can see the kind of Graphics are actually quite little quite hard to see we can see we spend money and we get getting energy um what can we do over here we can go and chat to this guy hi so we can chat to him going hold for while I want I want to talk to someone with sway who's okay I don't know what that's all about so even I can't even read this know what this guy talking about so I can use hope got enough to charm I not got enough charm currency so I can't do that so cancel okay so um enough of star beans so we can go into the Dive Bar The Leaky cantino which is kind of cool for maybe but not really for the people they wanted to play this who were kind of teenage girls which is what they got with King kashan so this is one it's currently decked out for um for uh

Patrick's Day so what we could do here we could watch TV use some energy so the basic mechanics which been the same for all the game I do something and I get some rewards so I've used some of my energy and I've got these little XPS you can just see the animation is not very good it's very it's tiny I can just keep doing it um great uh what can I do over here I can go and probably order a drink here have a pint I mean what teenage girls have a pint just designed for for 4ye Old Men isn't it um so there we go we have another pint um we can go and play play a video game just you couldn't make it up could you there we go but anyway so using up my energy um um could I go and chat to this young lady hey um so at this point you can't flirt with the opposite sex which is something they brought in with Kim Kardashian hello hello Sarah so the starting of this kind thing is you adding contacts in but if we just look around um the other kind of part of the

of the game it's it's very small kind of graphical inter things in the graphical interface very small you know and they're very RPG like so you see in the top left there's like an XP so what's an XP I mean obviously we all know from playing RPGs experience but for someone who hasn't played a game before which is kind of what they wanted for this thing um this game obviously bit what's XP I don't understand that you know you just want to level up I don't want XP and you can't even see them here in the top left this is your so this is your little menu list kind of your missions so um so you know the B is the B is of of a good game I think the B is of a game that that obviously was going to go on and do great things for for glue but the representation not great and this is hidden away as well no okay so there's got stuff in there Star News yeah so they got this little thing where they have the little kind of you have your um think it's Twitter feed here but you have your little kind of you know your kind of social network within the game you're supposed to rise up you know I've made the e- list great so I get some more get some of this current see

okay so there we go so that was stardom the aist so December 2011 let's let's go on and see how glue changed the basic Foundation of its celebrity games so the big change for glue celebrity games came with Kim Kardashian Hollywood so in between the stardom aist they went to stardom aist stardom Hollywood and then Kim Kardashian Hollywood so um unfortunately Stardom Hollywood I can't get to work it keeps crashing so we're not looking at that one but Kim Kardashian is the big change anyway so you can see here suddenly bit more glamorous I'm not in some sedd dive bar I'm not wearing rubbish clothes this is me the kind of young wannabe aspiring whatever I mean Beverly Hills that's good we can immediately see the graphically things are a lot bigger so we can see we've not got any XP we've got a level so that kind of is clearer I mean the same things are still there we've still got a soft currency an an energy and a hard currency in this case Kim Kardashian Gems or whatever they called um but the you know you can see

the menu is much stronger we can we've got um like a wardrobe so obviously big part of being a celebrity is buying some clothes if I got I haven't got much money about um so I could buy that one buy okay so that's quite a strong part of the game so I've dammed up so I'm so you know something's happened there CU I've changed my dress um and we're kind of going to nicer places I don't actually know what actually doing here um while since I played it but here we go I can find out what's going on there we go use the bus stop to travel to Hollywood so there we go so there we go it's actually Metro but I can go to Hollywood so that's a bit nicer than going to uh star beans and there we go there's whoever he is oh this is the shop I work at so um I can mention Kim you met Kim So immediately you know there's a nice little animation going on there so um use my charm use up some currency and you can immediately see now these things dropping off are bigger much bigger everything's much stronger and the Kim Kardashian brand obviously um there we go I'm being PS

I'm going here I'm going to whoa I'm going to flirt with this chap cool there we go there we go so it's just stuff going all the time got new new contact didn't have to make a contact you know it's kind of all happening there's Kim hi Kim so um I have talent yeah I don't have a mo manager no whatever again so he so immedately you can see just the experience is much richer just the gaml has not changed actually really that much at all but everything's strong everything's kind of feels like you're in you know a version of Kim Kardashian's world I suppose but from a game point of view everything's bigger Brasher more feedback more reward more wow this is a good game and obviously this game has been massively successful um and has done over $250 million of Revenue um so that was that's K col in Hollywood so let's go on and see where else glue went with its celebrity okay so the next glue celebrity game looking at is Katy Perry pop so Katy Perry there she is there's me kind of quite a long way apart there

aren't we her head's a bit odd angle doesn't really matter so what we can see here um it's a bit more in terms of like the kind of visual look a bit kind of more I guess I don't know kind of classic um kind of colors and stronger colors and a bit more I guess kind of cartoon in a way that's something they tried to do if you look at the kind of UI around the top is kind of you know the level thing now is this kind of like rainbow thing and I guess it's kind of playing into this whole kind of Katy Perry very kind of colorful and and kind of outrageous in a in a kind of um color visual sense we've got the energy again this time it's bright green we've got the um two currencies again but this instead of uh Kim Kardashian gems we've got these little kind of cat cat gems the other thing to look at um let's go and see what K talk about so there we go you can see what I'm talking about the colors are much stronger and the whole thing's big I mean this is just like a massive compared to the compared to the original game we were looking out this is just like kind of massive graphical uh kind of prompts and just enormous text like like

we have very strong glasses and the other thing to kind of see is down the bottom right you know this kind of this is the menu system and this is just very big and you know just takes up a you know quite a chunk of screen space really and oh and this comes off and you're just like oh that's that's just ugly so obviously we can go into we did K col go and we could kind of buy anything go buy that okay oh my Bo I've not any trousers on okay let's check out no no don't want exit Okay uh go out without any trous me and don't what this this uh the light bulb thing is the inspiration so this is the other thing Kat Perry pop is much more about the music they had this inspiration met to you building up um and I took this big do an office visit so it's kind of a text message from Katie so again there's kind of a lot going on but it's just a bit clumsy more clumsy than Kim Kardashian um Okay so

okay so again I'm getting missions to do things going on use my travel use the travel app in the phone that's this is how I travel now I do it in through here instead of doing it there's a nice little little kind of um Metro System I was using in Kim Kardashian um what can we do going oh going the wrong place um so here we are in a club um I can't do anything in here cuz it's not on Mission let's go let's go where I'm supposed to be going shall we management here we go so another big thing popping up okay you just step by have you been yes okay A little bit of dialogue I climb my way up the greasy ladder um I've talked to some I got to talk to some more

okay I can use some charm okay little favor yeah so got Quest complete so we can see there getting the rewards so it's kind of very much like it uses very much kind of the uh the kind of what was going on with Kim Kardashian but a bit visually um more over the top and just some some weird UI things going on in the game um uh oh goodness and this this thing is Bonkers um there we go we can kind of see as well in the top right there's this record thing so that's kind of gives you another another kind of progression thing you got this fan situation going on there this is the same with all these games and got we got here some chat systems that's just other players in the game

um okay so I'm waiting for Simone to call oh there the charts nothing going on there not done anything yet okay so that was Katy Perry so the interesting about Katy Perry was it was in a sense a strong a stronger concept game in terms what they've been trying to do with a Katy Perry rather than aim kardashan is is in a sense the kind of like the the ideal celebrity brand that she doesn't really stand for anything she's just like one of those celebrities who just kind of like flows through celebrity life and don't you know you don't really know what she's what she's standing for so the game just is a celebrity game which is why it works so well on the basis of the celebrity games had done in the past with Kat Perry was was much harder because obviously she's a singer so um they didn't have any of her music in the game but um they tried to do something quite clever um with Katy Perry as a as a kind of character and incorporate some of that in the game and it just didn't work I mean we could argue for whatever reason it didn't work but it it didn't work so that's um Katy Perry pop which was one of the failures for glue in its

Celebrity Game series so let's go and look at the last game in the series or the current game in the series and see how that changed things okay so our final game in glue celebrity series is the current one Britney Spears American dream so this is my character in the game similar to the other games you're kind of like a young wannabe star trying to rise up the ladder of fame um this time with Britney Spears is help so we can see in in terms of the look of the game it's much more like a Kim Kardashian so it's not this kind of slightly over the top overly colorful kind of Katy Perry kind of CUNY thing this this is just more of a of a kind of standard um kind of just a kind of a you know a standard kind of game a celebrity game kind of look it's a little srel there it's a nice little touch isn't it so it does look better than Kim Kardashian you can see we're in Hollywood and just look at the user interface so we can see there's um all the elements that we've seen in the other games are there but they're kind

of nicely um represented so we've got like a little in the bottom right we got this little phone thing so there's something going on here what's going on so we can see there's a message for me so my single it's finished at r 27 okay my there's a wrap for sweet burning my single didn't get any votes cuz that's not connected to any Facebook I think so there's that there's the Wardrobe system oh so this is interesting this shouldn't be happening so this is a very bad thing that glue that glue does oh goodness this um kind of very weird for celebrity game it's probably not going to load anyway um so it's just it's just fired up a a mini game ad for Game of War it's not going to work anything let's do kill it okay okay so that was odd so glue does that it's very bad I don't know why glue does that particularly because it's a war game in in a in a game that played by celebrity girl so you think the um conversion rate would not be good so anyway here's the what I was trying to show here's the Wardrobe system so that's all kind of straightforward um

you buy stuff in there so um there we go so so this is my manager she's calling probably something to do okay okay so um Aston Cole is my Nemesis in the celebrity wab world which is again something they head in in Kim Kardashian by the way we're not showing um Kendall and Kylie because it's a portrait game so the graphically is kind of harder to show so I decided not to choose that one show that one because landscape stuff is easy to show um so um so we got the the kind of mission list at the bottom again that's kind of much nicer to see than we saw in Katy Per was this massive great horrible translucent box um so it says here I've got to go to um The Loop in Chicago so instead of Katy Perry we had to go into that weird phone app thing um here we're just going to go uh select here Chicago the loop that's how we travel in King card there's a more complex kind of thing where you got actually had to go to the airport and do it they kind of got rid of that it's much cleaner now um so I remember what I'm going off to do

I'm going to do I'm going to pop 40 so here we go so just DJ type chappie there we go going to wck the radi start with star bonus and this is this is how the miss the kind of mission stuff works in the game and we saw this a little bit in the first one Donnie okay's my okay this is my song so there's a like Katy Perry there's obviously the song elements so you go and create a song If you see in the top right hand corner there's a little you probably can't read it a little um little kind of square that says death death everywhere that's my single sweet burning um you can design all the the artwork and stuff nice touch um so I go in here this is how I do I'm using up energy discussing my influences and we can see oh rewards good so we've seen all this before these are nice big rewards un like the first game perfect smile so the first ones in the series had very small little kind of rewards now the screen is filling with the rewards this game is making me feel really good I mean I'm not you know I'm just using up my energy I'm going to run out and my oh oh oh oh okay so run out of energy so I can go

obviously spend money I can convert some of my I got 44 Britany gems I could convert those to energy if I wanted to um it's not a good deal I could to go the store and buy some um but um so at the moment I can't do anything more that's my contacts um so that I collect all that stuff but now I just kind of wait till the energy so it's going to take 3 minutes 5 4 three to get for to recharge to one we can see here this is down the bottom left you can see this mission is going to last for another almost hour um so it will recharge I can go back and fill it up but because I'm quite early in the game I don't if the mission just ended now I would pass the mission um although only I wouldn't obviously have um I wouldn't have five star it so um that's the game but you can just see kind of graphically just looks nice there's everything you wants there um you can see in the top this all this idea of XP is gone it's just I'm just a d d list at the moment um and we just see yeah lots of things

to do all kind of nice in the right place oh I I can invite a friend so here's my keyboard player Let's uh let's call him he's just going to sit there don't know what he's going to do um so yeah so in terms of the progression of the game glue started with a good game concept not very well implemented for its audience so it was this kind of scuzzy game where you started out at the bottom level in a kind of in dive bars and stuff so young teenage girls don't want to play that no surprise stick Kim Kardashian and Glam it up worked really well went a bit wacky with Katy Perry um didn't quite didn't find the audience for whatever reason I think there was some other gameplay problems beneath that and when it launched and such like um and kind of a a bit I think kind of back to form with with with Britney American Britney American Dream whether the game will do as well as Kim Kash that's the interesting thing it's kind of hard to see that game kind of really burst on the scene and collected an audience and um you know Britney Spear isn't a Kim

Kardashian in a sense she's not got a TV channel she's not always on she's not always in the news so you know it's kind of hard to see another game would reach that the Kim kashian level of doing a quar of a billion dollars of Revenue which that game has but in terms of the gameplay the Britney Spears is is is at the Pinnacle I think of glue's celebrity series um and they've got more coming out so they' got a bit of a different thing they've got they've got a cooking game The Cooking Dash game with with Gordon Ramsey they've got obvious Taylor Taylor Swift another kind of um musician kind of a celebrity so be to see what they do with her lots of other kind of kind of ones they're playing with Nicki Nicki Miaki um that could be fun couldn't it um but uh yeah interesting to see I think the progression and how they cut over time they they are kind of streamlining and learning and these you know learning these games and there's obvious a lot more going on behind the scenes in terms of the mechanics and The Meta game and the retention and mization all that kind of stuff but in terms of just basically looking at the user experience definitely going in the right direction I say even if you're not a teenage girl probably the Britney spe fans aren't now they're a bit older aren't they um but it's kind of quite a fun game to play you know you don't have to worry about it too much you go in

and buy some clothes and and do some kind of idea about music and stuff like that and it's it's it's a good mobile game so that was our our look at the progression of glue mobile uh celebrity games thanks for watching um don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so we do a lot of analysis of free to playay mobile games so if that's your kind of thing do subscribe and you won't miss anything and hope to see you again