Hybrid casual Tower War: The evolution of core gameplay, growth & creatives, admon excellense (#93)

as was pointed by one of our select Channel Heroes yeah her Heroes exactly Heroes it's about the game called galcon which is uh the game that was released on July the year before 2008 and this game was on mobile but it was also inspired by a computer game released in 1987 called Stellar Invasion and here we are back to 1975 what yes this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast 2 and a half Gamers sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our Day-Day user acquisition game design and AD monetization jobs we are definitely not discussing the latest industry news but having so much fun let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously hello everybody uh welcome

uh this two and a half Gamers my name is Ma anich I'm Felix Brer and I'm yier and we are your hosts and we also work as a consultant so if you want to get help on the UA ad monetization and game design side give us a call and this is session number 93 and you know as yob in the latest episode we have a new hybrid on the horizon do you remember what's is the G name of the game we're going to talk about today well you should it's Tower war and again it's say games name of the game is hybrid casual hybrid casual yeah hunt for hybrid casual feels like we should rename our podcast to this week what say games did uh no no no well we'll see yes we talk about SE games a lot but you know they're doing some interesting [ __ ] so like we just have to talk about it's very very interesting so uh yeah what

should we start with uh should we okay so I just want to tell our listeners that this game was developed by Petra Company Limited and the company started like 2021 and it seems to be uh the case that they're actually working only with say games so and very closely because they have few games in their portfolio and their website and it's the Tob tactical Conquest we're talking about today and then they have War regions tactical game or what was yeah tactical game and undercover game because they don't have it on their website which is a States Builder and honestly I'm more EXC mean that a different studio is working on it in s games portfolio it's not true because in the I played the game and in the first loading screen it's Petra as well okay so it's again P it's again again it makes all the sense it's just different uh kind of okay I have it all

in my hisory I know I know you have so it's quite and honestly I think the states Builder is going to be even like bigger than what we are going to talk about today uh based on the game playay at least all right yeah we'll see yeah we'll see I have so many I have so many questions for Remo I think you should go first and both me and Marty want to know is what happened in July to September 2023 with this game he doesn't doesn't even know he doesn't even know I'm also curious about your like levels and like how far you got into into the game yeah let's let's do that so um before we dive into the actual game playay progression mechanic and stuff like that let's do a little bit of History lesson as usual as usual so is this like a history lesson podcast yeah because I'll I'll prove it to you this podcast I was really looking forward to it why it is so important I was looking forward to to it too Remo you anyway

so why are we even talking about this game uh to World tactical Conquest because it's scaling like crazy your crazy it's not like crazy we okay it's scaling pretty good let's say it's scaling pretty good it's growing it's not it's growing it's growing scaling like crazy what was doodle Magic from Zer to 200 300K over basically okay okay okay but what happened you see there that's that's what I wanted to know you see a you see where B jumped up yeah but September no they September is your July man July July just yeah nothing not that much yeah so from September end of September it's taking something like 150k downloads a day and then regarding Revenue this game has been in soft Lune from June 30 20 sorry June June 24th 2021 it's important it's very important keep in mind it's June 24th 2021 and it has been you know continuously iterated I found even a

game play from like two years ago it's exactly the same game so they have been iterating on the progression very hard uh and now we see that it's spiking to something like 33 which is definitely more if you talk if we take into which is Our Kind of Magic cutof Number where the hybrid kicks in million a month I a month Revenue so that's there um but yeah what it is uh it's that T thing that we talk about what do T thing it's empire takeover yeah I'll get to it it's the Mushroom War score gameplay or whatever game play the tldr is that you have these towers and you rote the resources of those Towers into different towers and you try to take over the whole map that's like dldr basic gaml the thing is that we've seen this already in Empire takeover I don't know how many episodes before you can find it on our pot where the game called Empire takeover use the

same core gam playay to lower the CPI because in the end it will turn into 4X our favorite trick and it's still making something like 500k only on Android because I don't know why their account is not paired here with iOS but it's something like six let's say 600k a month in iips EMP takeover episode number 77 yeah exactly and the downloads literally there's like zero downloads there's like nothing and it's de money or we like to call it it's very impr retention and thing is that this game was soft launch June 30th 2021 which is 6 days after the tower war game Oh I thought it's the other way around actually no no no it seems this is not the thing because the game play is actually exactly the same regarding the tower core gameplay yeah yeah it's it's exactly the same gameplay little bit different visuals but like the main

principle of course Tower War kind of focuses more on it and expands it later but Empire man I have Goosebumps why why the [ __ ] yeah because that's very interesting yeah and and keep in mind 2021 2021 we're now in 2024 talking about this so um and now it's scaling now it's scaling yeah now it's scaling and I was I was digging deep into this Rabbit Hole of like what's what's happening with this thing and yeah thanks to our favorite slack Channel which is ours uh we got some in yes thanks our favorite s Channel which is two and a half gamer SEL channel so you should definitely join I think t-shirts made up with that logo that that slogan that's hilarious yeah we of course get some backround info for people that are more focused on the genre thank you guys uh as always so I was trying to dig into this like how big is this like where's the source of this because if I look on say games portfolio there's actually two games that mat already mentioned yes which is War regions which uh unfortunately

suffered a little bit of usual shark F honestly this is not even like scaling it's like it's not there yet it seems like it's going down currently and if you look at the game it looks exactly as you would expect it's the usual kind of a tower War gam Play Just translated into some kind of a more polished map thing with upgradable gacha already like The Clash Royale gacha so the thing is and why I don't think I I thing it's not scaling yet is a uh they started because if you think if you see the graphs they started running the UA at the same time and the exactly the T Tower War had better cpis and like better scalability kind of like or marketability like and this is like way more core yeah it looks way more midcore it's usually like like the supercell team of like UI and polish exactly yeah yeah yeah so that's there you see it here uh and then there's the other game

called States Builder man this is going to be really and this is actually again the same core gameplay but it's put into a simulation yeah kind Resource Management type of like exploring thing it's really interesting and so did have you played the game not yet just looking at it if you then play the game there's like so many different like things in in terms of like the template like different special off like so it's so if I compare it to the tower War it's way more advanced in terms of like the monetization kind of features not there yet I think is it a lot deeper or core gameplay premise is the same uh I would say it's like a a simulation game like it needs to go deeper because like you know idle mechanics and stuff like that but uh they are currently just kind of scaling up a little bit something like 50 60k a day yeah not bad yeah not bad and revenue wise again 7 to8 in IPS but

yeah just wait we just we just need to wait H this is how it looked like with Warcraft Rumble as well it was just like afterwards then it can catches up uh the thing is that war regions was soft launched February last year February 2023 and Stat Builder was soft launch March 2023 and this brings me to the thing that I think I finally understood the say games template which is that they don't have a template they just use the core gamls all over the place and put different progressions on top of it because it's the same cor game play that we see with the tower war with the war regions with stat Builder they just change the progression because one is built as like gacha whatever army game the other one is built as some kind of a whatever this is like Clash Royale Shard gacha progression is here which is different to Tower War I'll explain that later stat Builder is an idle economy Resource Management game so same core gameplay premise different progressions actually so yeah this seems to be kind

of working for them and yeah so can you just kind of explain a little bit for like a noob no game designer type of person because I have no idea what you just said oh really okay I didn't want to there was a lot of clever words and I didn't want to sound stupid but I didn't understand any of that come on okay so let me ask few questions to take the title of the second best game designer on the podcast yeah um do we know the difference between the states Builder and War just by looking at it from this one image well uh you have different systems in the in that image you are not and different vectors different resources and different currencies and yeah this is this is let's say the one thing that's like immediately catches you up here you can see that there's like no Resource Management it's like yeah that's internal Resource Management meaning like you need to win the battle but you don't really need to care about wood or whatever something something because Co

a simulation game yeah yeah yeah and here for layman's terms we have something wood we have planks we have trees we have you know you know yeah and if if you uncover the the other um tiles of the map then you have more more even more yeah basic core gameplay of like simulation game is resource progression because you you know chop trees into wood blocks and then you turn them into planks like resource conversion you have one resource that's converting into other like different resources that's like the main thing and this pretty much creates a different meta progression because somebody here is like the pleasure for them is in optimizing these things in being efficient in progressing earning more resources here uh The Meta game is about upgrading units getting strong conquering stuff and so on so forth so that's like an example how progressions can yeah exactly different audiences which means different CPI

which means different um well the CPI call yeah calm down a little bit because the CPI of course different audience but also different kind of visual style yeah like let's let's dig a little bit deeper into the rabbit hole then because the interesting thing is that there's actually another game called state iio which was we yeah we talk about it was so November 2020 and that's actually uh the original developer of mushroom Wars which was AC acquired by azour games in September 2022 State Iowa soft lch in November 2020 and it already did around 80 million downloads and just like something under a million IP Revenue we talked about it we want you know when fight for America fight for America fight for America so again same core gameplay premise different execution and that's going to have even

deeper yeah yeah because the thing is that there's also another Tower game called uh conquer the tower from Game World 3D which was uh soft lunch guess what October 14 2021 interesting very in year 2021 pretty much everybody was doing these games yeah pretty much so and you see like there their switches that they have these kind of active abilities there a little bit slower but progression there this is definitely dead this is a dead game yeah this is like you know it did something like 15 16 million downloads and that's it like it's it was IP game 2021 different different but just like and I was digging even deeper because so it's mushroom wars yeah it's mushroom wars mushroom wars was first released on PlayStation 3 in October 15 20 2009 but then right in second sentence

as was pointed by one of our s Channel Heroes yeah her Heroes exactly Heroes it's about the game called galcon which is uh the game that was released on July the year before 2008 and this game was on mobile but it was also inspired by a computer game released in 1987 called Stellar Invasion and here we are back to 197 what yes so went deep huh yes I really went deep so just to demonstrate this it's very important guys it's about execution not ideas you see the same idea was going from literally like 50 years and here we are here we are now talking about it okay yeah yeah so it's very important everybody has ideas execution is the only thing that matters yeah yeah

gloriously yeah and games makes money uh ouch and let's let's go to our favorite game now finally to the game play um Jesus [ __ ] Christ how you can even be on 72 where are you 64 or 67 you're 64 I was yes I was playing it like Mr Blondie oh he's like 10 no no he need to like 20 something the number 27 27 I 28 ah i s my God and and which TI Mission are you uh let me check I think it's like very very close to what you are because I was playing both actually yeah even PVP but on PVP I'm like bronze two or something okay I don't know what I'm on on PVP ah at least I'm better on anyway uh the game okay so then 20 22

secret mission so the game has very interesting spins on the idea because the thing is that yeah it's pretty much like we played the Empire takeover the same game from the beginning but then it takes some kind of very interesting spins let's let's look into it wait wait just wait a second do you see the uh the guy or whatever is on the left hand yeah left top corner I have a lot to talk about adverti in the game which is interesting because I don't have it I don't have it guys I don't I I had it first first few levels and then it disappeared basically okay I still have it you paid yes there we go that's why okay but I only paid once is the like special offer and then but that has remove ads in it no no no no no no no no it was only special offer I I didn't pay for remove ads which was got very bad decision because I was I I saw like [ __ ] million in

into different group anyway uh the interesting spin here is that yeah what they changed like like you see there like I had for instance mines or planks or whatever so there's literally like physical obstacles on the roads that pretty much just take down some of the numbers from your soldiers until you like beat through them then there's the tank Factory which is really important because here in this game there's not only soldiers but also tanks which takes completely different load out and then of course uh there's the usual kind of a road thing like I think that's that's pretty much the same and then U yeah what's there the colors of the enemies are very important as it's defined in the gear directly yeah you have abilities stronger against stronger against yellow yeah exactly just for that and then I think last thing was what like this can boost the monetization component of these kind of boosters that they addit I don't know if Empire I didn't I didn't see this ah because paid but like how

like what no I see I saw the not boosts but the the consumables there's literally like the bombs you can drop bombs I see can drop bombs for advertisement you can speed up the the Boost of your soldiers and like so on so forth so man I don't have like this VIP kind of thing like without ads oh hello uh transation 2 say from the past yeah yeah we're laughing both yakob and Ma worked on this game well not on this game but in the pixel Federation we did the previous one oh okay on degree um okay so the thing is that they add some like iterations and some more design space into the core gaml which on this new design space they base their progression which is very interesting because I think none of the other games have exactly this and this is probably one of the things why game is making so much IP Revenue because it's so deep the economy is very deep I man I I bought this like special offer uh whatever for $6 because I just

wanted to see yeah this is just it didn't make any difference for me in terms it didn't make any difference because it it was just like this like you know where it makes difference if you get into stalemates that's the thing like if you get into stalemates for instance you pushing directly of the same strong opponent suddenly you start winning yeah true okay so it's it's like kind of hidden which is problematic and know also look yeah just go to yeah did you get the Hammer Hammer yes um I have X yeah but there is a hammer yeah yeah click on the hammer and then and can you read the first uh well the the rare kind of thing bridge building speed yeah The Uncommon yeah well are you able to build Bridges no you are not yet not not yet no no no like so I was like okay well I'm 66 Lev I think I saw everything basically and then I I got this as like wait a second you can build Bridges like [ __ ] that's that's really interesting yeah yeah like they have these because you have these

obstacles right yeah because they have the design space for that like you build it into core game plan and then you can put parameters upon that on the equipment so because the progression is kind of let's say very unique here because you would expect normal hobby progression but it's not actually it's not yeah you have you have essentially a 10 slot deck which is soldiers being the soldier itself the placeholder that kind of takes the abilities and stats four slots that's the other thing they have their main [ __ ] gacha hidden it's here summon unit for 25 gems what the [ __ ] why is this not like center of the shop yeah yeah exactly I was like okay well in the center of the shop there's just equipment G usual hobby way this is directly taken from Hobby this is just like borderline hidden nowhere I don't know what and like i i s like two units but then I was like okay well I'm saving the gems for the the gear actually and I

I bought this toxic flame little [ __ ] and I was like [ __ ] okay let's just summon unit and I summon the same thing but then you need this yeah for upgrades which is something that I only only saw when I was actually upgrading the yeah so so it's kind of a hidden I think it's a little bit clumsy guys definitely put this into the shop please like this one on the main screen yeah exactly why don't you have more kind of you know temple on this and everything because the units as I said you have one like main slot holder which is the soldier and then the tank and then both of these have four different equipment slots and these equipment slots like the gear is directly kind of categorized between these for instance our soldier can equip Hammer EG big like binoculars tank chains whatever things oil gasoline or oil yeah gasoline so this is done pretty nicely but this last thing the summon unit like it should be somewhere because yeah take

it out yeah take like you have legary units yeah because merging like you know this is our usual standard hobby kind of template 3:1 merging then if you increase the Rarity it increases the abilities it slowly unlocks them this is like literally taken from the template nothing new here the important thing is that these abilities are there put as abilities into the unit so if I take off this whatever dot dech out of this guy he loses this ability so that's very nice and the ability is like get this stronger against the [Music] red that's nice I know like guys were like scraping the barrel here but it's genius like really good because there's not that much design space in the okay the question is so where would you put the summon unit would you put it on the main screen or would you put it in the in theop and Main like chest like especially like AR Survivor IO has two types of chest because they have also two layers of inventory they have Tech parts and normal normal gear and they

have chest for both of these separately why there's not a big chest for units here yeah sorry summoning units the same thing it can be just same logic as the the gear it is just like yeah but exactly it's not I don't know why because units are upgraded on these like normally you upgrade them through like gold they give like the good thing and this this is really important the upgrades for units they have this like two all units upgrade pad which means it gives bonuses to whole your whole unit kind of selection which is great because Force players to upgrade everything even thing they don't currently using but they try to play on this of course through like this kind of a little bit of ABC system with like against red against whatever this and that so you try to switch because for instance here I never have to I never had to switch honly Yeah if I want to upgrade this guy I need this uh tokens which the game doesn't even explains when you get but you get it probably when you get a copy of like yeah it's the duplicate the it's duplicate for instance our toxic fun guy if I want to upgrade him I can now

actually upgrade him and there we go and then it unlocks pretty much another whatever I don't know prop 25 levels that I can upgrade through gold and then then again another like limit break so the thing is like if you if you go to this uh gear things like there is like plus one to all skills like what are the skills the movement speed or Resurrection or what is it I I don't know my guess is is just like these percentages here the percentage of power which is their kind of like power index do you see here like yeah 2,000 something my tank has kind of similar values here but I don't have a rare tank or whatever so yeah probably here are the tokens that I have it's it's a little bit clumsy like you can do better it's a bit confusing yeah yeah so that's there uh other other interesting things the monetization super strong there's a battle pass system uh right from the start they actually give you two hours of free VIP when you start the game I got it you don't need to watch ads oh yeah in that thing you don't need to watch ad you just click everything like three times reward these secret missions

you can directly play them because these are lck by level but you can push through them even though you're not there by watching an ad they are actually very interesting because they change the mechanic to draw so the lines can be drawn yes and if just please play so good for UA I I'm assuming you have so much to say about exactly the same tactic we' seen with blog gam 3D you have an event Unfortunately they don't use it in the UA that much yeah these guys I guess these guys use it of course they I knew it yeah so a little bit a little bit but it's genius because again it's the same thing that uh you know you offset the fakeness of creative something I I saw the the secret mission I was like oh man this is B je 3D all over again like it's perfect yeah re what do you think from an admon perspective like the the best rewarded placement that I think they actually use is that one to actually watch uh progress with the bonus levels like I think that's the one they have the highest like it's it's the spin it's the spin after PVP or or um or the SEC

we'll show you after we play secret mission we show you why yeah that's definitely like I I watched it every time because you have uh multiple different yeah multiple different items in that and that's like really really you want to you want to you want to do that so not only they have like nice draw mechanic they also put in this kind of nice gate mechanic our favorite one that's the thing yes yeah that's there that like that you can use the like draw thing you can use the gate make draw wherever and then just go through the gate all over again like this yes exactly there we go so there again there is this billboard [ __ ] my life and I think it's because you played on Android I'm playing I have it as well man I have it on iOS as well Android yeah Jesus I see okay interesting maybe go like 99 that I don't see this but I see every [ __ ] intertial all like after every yeah this this this whole thing is based

on a justicial like it's it's crazy yeah you play game for I think it's the most intertial I've ever seen playing a game like it's insane it's amazing because you don't care I mean I care because I I mean I lost half of my life after this the inter this is yeah this is this is it so we have five rewards we Spin and we get one random reward and the thing is that when we get the reward we can spin again yes but it's a better chance because they're less reward now because it takes the one we already got takes out so this is like this is the best I think this this is the best because it it gives you hard currency directly pretty big sums and then and then the chest which is equipment direct equipment yeah yeah so which is got like 15 Gems or something in the shop like the main chest the L chest yeah yeah and Di hero okay I thought it's something else yeah cuz I watched also

so many ads and then in this it I saw you know the the pirate R the game we talked about I saw a lot of ads and I was looking into it and then they started kind of pushing a little bit on on there and on the pirate right I mean it's still like because of our podcast probably most probably no but don't even know we exist yeah they just oh they know we exist what they we're talking about quite uh impressed with our uh previous episodes yeah uh but then um it started growing a little bit but not as much as the other games so I was like okay let's let's take a look and and I think that's it like we pretty much covered the whole game there's also PVP which is like the same as the PVE which kind of it's BS it has better rewards because it also has that spin and and and that's it like it takes like I my guess is these are both 100% 100% yeah they're not real people

yeah yeah there's no way they're that bad because there's no different in skills pretty much like it's you know if they if this is power based and these guys would like whatever legendary soldiers or something for instance look at this guy like he has some kind of a ninja guy so it seems that like there could be kind of these go for the gold go for the gold Jesus Christ I know you got to get the gold bro yeah get the gold but I have like against I have um advantage against red so I need to take him out first oh yeah [Laughter] rude yeah see here I have the bombs like the free bombs yes that's what I got strike I there we go so yeah and and the core gam playay is actually like pretty interesting I would say by itself because it's some kind of like TG of War puzzle I would say and it's pretty enjoyable still it's

yeah it's quite good actually I mean I played a lot uh for some reason I don't know why but uh now I like level 66 it's just same thing all over again yeah so it's like not much to it the interest important thing is that these things kind of flow through each other so at some point you kind of get the like the idea and it gets like you can really minmax this thing then like how much you can you know for here I can switch this because this got stronger then like more flows into it see how like this kind of starts to go down and so on because for instance one thing that people if you're playing this kind of don't understand is that like the towers the soldiers are the same that are flowing through this so you also need to work on your back Towers to power your Frontline Towers we need to yeah if you have Maxs or like higher numbers then it's more powerful basically yeah yeah yeah so like lot of like hidden like meain maxing mechanics you can work towards here and like you see our free guy let's put another air

strike on him rude very nice very nice so there there we go yeah the game's the game's great like I think it's very very nice lot it's a lot of fun you don't really how do you know you play like 10 [Laughter] minutes yeah here we go yeah spin again and there's even the booster there you can you can you can kind of get it there but that's it yeah that's it basically you'll see the game okay where do we want to go just yeah continue with with admon and I will then show you all the F you keep playing I you show us your Advanced skills but since this is the fifth or sixth hybrid casual game we do a deep dive on it's getting kind of clear that there's a pattern emerging from the ad monetization side there seems to be kind of two general ways or two schools of thought uh when it comes to ad placements there's kind of the alien invasion way where you show

compelling rewarded ad placements every 23 seconds which means you're probably showing uh 12 to 15 rewarded Impressions per da and that's it to your user base and you leave all the other AD units alone or kind of the say say games and Voodoo games way where you rely on interstitials rewarded and banner ads but the true backbone of your ad Revenue comes from interstitial ads so basically it's because you when you play Tara War what really sticks out is how many interstitial ads you actually watch like you actually turn in pretty much to yeah you're an ad you're pretty much just watching ads like it after each level you're shown in intitial placement simulator basically exactly yeah it's like episode of Black Mirror exactly that one yeah the main like the main like core gameplay takes about 2 minutes or 2 minutes 20 seconds to like finish a level roughly uh meaning that if you play for 15 minutes you're going to watch about 7 to 18 intertial ads uh

yeah more even more and if you play 20 25 minutes that's going to be even higher right so yeah even if you watch out like opt out of the like the rewarded ad coin booster at the end of levels you're still watching a lot of ads right secret missions uh they offer the same deals and they only take about a minute to complete and then you're also shown intitial ads so yeah probably you're watching anywhere between s to maybe 14 intertial depending on how long you're actually playing so in the last 30 days according to sensor Tower this game made about 830k in iaps uh but from ads I estimate that in the last 30 days it's probably made 2.1 million or about 70k a day so I think the average for interstitials is probably around eight and for banners probably anywhere between 50 to 60 a day uh on top of that the hardest part for me to gauge is just kind of the rewarded

Impressions per Dau I put it at somewhere between three or four because coins is not really necessary and it's only when you start playing yeah the the mini games or like the side games that you actually start watching rewarded ads because you don't really need them to progress no not that much H yeah exactly so I think the spread of AD revenue is there for probably 60% on intials 20% on rewarded and 20% from like you suck you suck so much see this is the hard level the hard level you just made the wrong choice from the beginning but this means according to sensor Tower data that 72% of the revenue on this title is from ad Revenue but we also got to add our little sadness multiplier so you know if this game says on sensor Tower it's made 800k probably it's more like 1.4 1.5 which means that the ad revenue is closer to 60% um so yeah uh uh but I'm quite confident that seg games are earning way

more money from ads on this game especially when you take into account the Google and apple taxes than they are from iips uh just wanted to highlight some like really clever design quirks that like I've seen that like small little things that you just got to have to tip your shapo to do so like at the end of secret levels uh essentially what happens is like you get that skip button right when you can actually choose to watch uh a rewarded ad to get like another turn and the the no thanks button takes 4 seconds to like show and there's so many people that just press whatever's seen at the end of the level and yeah it's just one of those little small things I have a video of it I'll send it to MTI you can put it in post production uh yeah so also one other interesting thing from the ad Revenue perspective is that say games are also utilizing in-game ads uh they're shown on the billboard during gameplay yakob can show it right now it's behind the yeah yeah the back button it's actually hidden behind the back

button so the game ads billboard are in a 5-second refresh primer meaning that they're probably showing maybe 70 to even 100 Impressions per session because you can actually put the refresh rate on these on a lot lower than you can on banner ads because banner ads when you have it on too low essentially Google Flags it as spam and then uh if you have a refresh rate of low lower than 10 seconds so you get a lower ecpm where you kind of get blocked but no such restrictions on this uh the issue with in-game ads is that Phill for a very long time has been a big issue since there's no mediation uh also since there's no click or indication of intent ecpm is also a lot lower because it's purely branding ads right so that means that Revenue will vary based on fill rate but also fluctuate so let's say that uh Tower War makes 2.1 million from ads uh a month I only reckon about 5% of that would be or 100K would actually come from from that billboard yeah now even in January even

less I guess exactly I would say in December that might have gone up to 8% but I don't think it's more than that and now it's probably going to be way lower than that yeah yeah but yeah 60 to 70% from ads it's a not and the thing is I don't mind watching these intertial ads because you can [ __ ] my life man you don't mind because you play 10 levels okay exactly seriously I was level 66 I watched like millions of TI in the last seven days try that yeah it's just like oh so I finish the level I like oh okay I I need to just put down the phone for 10 seconds at least and there's like oh okay and oh wait no no no there's [ __ ] like a player BL no let's let's put it down for another 10 seconds hidden game design the tip on this you know how I do this I play two games at a time so during the time you watch the intertial on one you play the other yes but then you you play on PC so you can't you know do it on phone so [ __ ] off Jesus Christ cheating is not the right wayo cheating is not Thea clever use of

platform mechan play two games yeah I play seven games on my PC at the same time it's poker I have seven tables yeah anyway to finish my little part here like I I don't even know if there's any point to even like grade it I mean it's say games they they really know what they're doing yeah it's know what they're doing you can you can grade it's like up to you 10 surprise yeah amazing yeah see their creatives because I'm sure they have some good yeah some good hooks let's go there are actually yeah good hooks before we start was actually hear uh a little a little bit from our friends from games Forum because we are coming and uh you should come as [Music] well why are you attending games from Bost 2024 share insights and knowledge have

all gaming experts in one place networking great lectures new people to learn more about the industry games forum is one of the best places to get mobile marketing Insight see all the conferences and panels staying up to date with the market I'm going to meet their amazing people the experts in their fields insight and networking register now and join 500 UA products and Apple Managers at games from Barcelona February 7th and 8th okay that was an ad obviously uh and I do like ads I do yeah yeah I I do like ads as well uh but not like uh games Forum guys uh very good friends and we are going to be there so let's meet in Barcelona uh in February and also let's meet at PGC uh in a few weeks actually uh I'm going to be on the panel I'm actually looking forward to going in seeing on that panel it's actually shaping up to actually be an interesting one which is surprising yeah I will call the panelists tomorrow so on the next uh podcast I'm going to

reveal uh the names so we're going to talk about Tik Tok strategies for new launches and then I'm actually in the panel mo mobile mavens on Tuesday on Tuesday so hosting your own panel no no I'm not the host I'm I'm a panelist uh thing so yeah know Tuesday and and wait a second we have a party on Tuesday night so uh and we don't compete on the Monday night yes uh so I'm going to share the the link in the show notes uh we're partnering with qu and ambassadors so definitely come and see us uh we have a DJ we are going to have like a a roof also heated roof basically with the bar and then uh another floor so yeah uh you are all welcome so I also have a talk by the way if anybody wants to oh yeah of course Felix yeah Felix yeah I have two talks [ __ ] off W

really yeah well I have the the Tik Tok panel on Monday and then the the yeah of course but I need to prepare the old show me some creatives yeah yeah okay stop with this [ __ ] so with this [ __ ] but then let's just I'm going to share the the sound as well but you're going to be fine so I'm going to no no no don't worry uh this is on my is on my PC so you're going to be fine so let's start with the hooks actually because you're a very big fan of hooks right y they have so I kind of categorized these into few different things like hyper casual headlines hooks altered game play Gates which are the secret missions basically and then some Empire takeover uh creatives which obviously they are definitely Empire takeovers it's just yeah you can't you can't uh deny okay so let's start with the with the hook cuz this is

obviously it's giant robot attacking oh they have in game play then of course like they just put it in here it's like nothing else it's just on on the top of the the game play this looks like Empire takeover exactly with the same hook I had that like the angel ID in the game play also yes that's true that's true and but it's like this is it basically so I mean with this type of kind of let's say visual theme and the game play you know like I think this is quite old because the tower War um logo logo and the name was the weird whatever but then then we have this one which is a mom talking to her son which is I mean it's quite funny okay it was pretty pretty good hook uh I think and this is a time lapse and they have also the time lapse video uh only without the hook like imagine like it's uh it's quite good uh but this is I mean

you know you can't be that creative with uh with the this type of gameplay it's all all over again everything but you can and you know you saw this basically the end uh this and uh have you paid attention both of you when yakob showed us the old gam playay this was exactly the the visual style of that um yep end a vinning screen old it's very old buil but you know uh nobody cares if it's all if it works yeah exactly and the classic no Wi-fi line no Wi-fi game yes exactly and then AI voice do you just set these creatives in countries with like pricey internet or what no I think no no Wi-fi kind of has maybe some Advantage because you can't yeah you can play like like on the plane basically as

as they showed us on the train but I mean you have internet in your train right so hope it's not fake I actually didn't try playing Wi-Fi did anyone try it yeah I tried but I tried because of the intertial and actually I think I got like pre-cached some of the like ads so I was like oh [ __ ] this that didn't work so I not their first rodeo not their first rodeo yeah yeah exactly and this the same hook but different gameplay okay a little bit this is the time lapse video basically okay uh this is that St yeah this the the time lapsed video without and it's a little bit different the colors I think but it's the same same time lapse but different music as well different gradient of colors yeah yeah yeah different gradient okay fair enough fair enough but it's the same thing just uh different colors okay and then uh then we have this type of like tutorial video which is like this is it

basically it also looks quite old to be honest ah and then you have the please donate to Ukraine yeah and uh that's nice and then Ferrari at or yeah like TVR you had it in your gameplay as well your G ASV but at least they he you know the drawing mechanic and the gates so ah here's the drawing mechanic and Gates yeah yeah and then it's also here which is weird quite weird that's so weird because it's very different game like yeah very different visual style but I think uh so Korean visual perhaps I don't know yeah this is what I've done always like but you know this is the comeback kind kind of thing which sounds like uh re re-engagement which doesn't make any sense G thing looks amazing these Gates like oh man like these Gates and like it's perfect but I don't get different visual style honestly and this is the same thing right you I I played Empire

and takeover yesterday and they also have this kind of Christmas switch they you can actually choose the team there with the Christmas one also looks the same with the white background okay so some something there no we we had Christmas kind of theme with doodle magic as well they had this different things but also like this is the Gat like I I really don't know like why they don't use this gate me again old build h overturn seriously so maybe different name maybe this the beginning this was the beginning of like the like this is how the game looked like before like how it started maybe maybe it Go overturn should I Google overturn game play yeah yeah you should definitely do it and then uh yeah do it now do it now do it now then we have the gameplay with AI voice as usual which is also kind of like I think quite old because looks like [ __ ] honestly but yeah it's not what I expected from the creative side if I'm really

honest really I what did you expect H more like you know it's you see it's raining in the creative I was like I don't know what's happening in here what do you expect yeah tell me more of the mini game more of the drawing like yes okay the gates definitely like that's the most powerful thing you have in the game yeah why why not use it and like using this like Empire takeover thing like you know this exactly the copy of the Empire takeover if you remember and you check the the session 77 like it's exactly what we we show there like why would you even use this like if you have the gates mechanic like even coin Master is using the gates mechanic in their ads like multiplying the pics from coin Master like what the [ __ ] come on that's that's what you should you should like then you have this Empire take over again just like I mean the music is nice but it's exactly like different kind

of uh camera angle like why you have quite good marketability you just yeah and you combine it with your secret missions like that's the recipe for success for sure M isometric 3D visual that's nice yeah yeah I mean it's nice but I don't know like why don't we have helicopters yeah man of course we don't have helicopters I told you like this completely Empire takeover yeah can you beat the red this is exactly it the island things yeah beat theed funny though yeah I know yeah oh those fuel tanks okay yeah proper Army now proper Army now yeah proper Army then we have these like hyper casual headlines kind of things which like can you spot the difference like this is interesting oh I love this mechanic where you captured the like anti- missile system yes that was then you can point it out to destroy it's pretty good it's pretty

this like yeah in the game yeah heing in the game I can't Spot the Difference though so I don't care that's the thing and then we have this capture the towers faster than the enemy and this is also a quite different kind of visual style you also build walls within the road okay yeah it's not like this is not in the game and also like you know the towers they don't send troops so it's not in the game anyway then we have this like weird thing which reminds me the the war regions a little bit because you are capturing the the territories basically and then uh yeah no this just visual there's no like actual functional yeah yeah this is not in the game this is not in how how it works just a altered game playay let's let's call it and this hyper casual visuals is one thing but hyper casual sounds is another yeah directly record your other person

sitting next to you screaming then we have this altered gameplay because obviously you don't send like five troops from the from the tower you send only one and then you multiply it only by like going through Gates so this is but this is what I would kind of also double down on like like I said always like B battles if you if you kind of combine it with also either Gates or even just forget about the gates just send loads of troops that can work quite well honestly then we have also this Al altered gam playay which again so many Concepts yeah it's and different visuals different visuals yeah that's that's like interesting 3D no 3D 2D so they are definitely experimenting also like this is not there yet right you also this like territory blue kind of thingy destroying the other so it's yeah in terms of like UA and

creatives very very pleasantly surprised I mean they could do better though I was expecting this to turn into Forex yeah of course and then there like the PVP kind of thing which I are you ready I'm kind of confused because for this like why would you use this type of PVP hook in in in the beginning but you know try is the play on like the what's it called the game Masters or M could be yeah M Masters could be it could be same hooks there yeah that's true and then I have a very special one for you guys oh which is like what what what I'm looking at and I was like what yes it's a toilet and poop it's a toilet and a poop so we just so there's no there's Towers but instead of gold they're going to poo and there's a toilet which produces tanks yes this is my favorite

C of course it is I mean also it's like you see you hear the farting sounds yeah that's that's amazing I mean like why why not right why not wasn't there like hero was uses this all the time why we couldn't yeah maybe like poop kind of uh theme resonates I guess quite quite then we oh I forgot about this hook yeah it's like voice and You' seen that what was it it wasn't even isometric it was literally just like Unity plane tilted yeah of course yeah like like why would like yeah like that's fine it's like walking to a programmer can you make it 3D sure yeah there you go 3D from wish it's all you need need Prett yeah that's all you need come

on see like yeah yeah yeah of course yeah yeah there you go yeah it's easy easy easy and then like we have these like two Google creatives which I really I I was really confused but like there's those like the the creatives that get like most Impressions so it's like this is this is it so 3d hand playing the game just scrolling not even playing going to store screenshots yeah store screenshots and it's like it's it was like live on Google and it has like iOS button so like okay interesting like all right it's like and this is the same thing right it's like Tower war and this is the one on Apple having a Google button well there the thing it's uh I think it might be just apple on Google ads but okay I'm not sure it was like quite confusing so like this is like all the creatives that uh i' I

saw uh and now making panic I know I know I know uh it's like and this is only one uh one browser right anyway I have all the there like many of these yeah I have many of these of course that's that's why I work on PC because my and bought a new Macbook because my old MacBook died because of this basic like that's called like AB soft tabs you go to wsh there yeah of course like you just start clicking from different tabs and then you just immediately like lose like five hours anyway so I want to just kind of like talk about like uh their like last year basically from January uh 23 to January 24 like how they kind of evolved and like which games they started to push and when uh because if if we look at January 23 it's basically Squad Alpha was making the most money and then they have my perfect Hotel there's also Tower War so my perfect Hotel most I money most I money yes very true so overall

it's like 3 million a month in January which might be like well or like five I guess but Squad Alpha was the top game they had Tower war is like 250 my perfect Hotel 260 uh um th revenues iip and then as we go this's is like black deck kind of ccg uh game which is making [ __ ] ton of money uh I guess like the most is the top one but it's the ccg so it's uh it's not what we are talking about in here not the heavy ccg but like yeah we'll keep an eye on it yeah I mean like 4 million downloads 9 million Revenue which can be like 12 easily uh if we look at sadness multiplier anyway so then and then they started pushing dream Dale in uh like May right then we talked about it as well obviously and they started pushing it even more and then we have but you know like the to of War it's still in there 250k per month

and then uh in August August they started pushing my perfect hotel Dream Dale still top one and also Tower war is starting to increase in terms of revenues and then we have also an increase in Trav war in September but my perfect hotel is always like top one not always but since August top one game in terms of revenues and downloads and dream Dale is kind of in a little bit and then when we look at October it's still yeah my perfect Hotel 1.2 almost million and then T War already getting like close to 700 and then uh yeah November my perfect Hotel again and to war in the second place now in December T war is on on the top of the list and that's like they started scaling this like in the last couple of months or not scaling growing like like we said growing from September right now in games it must be so much fun working there like wow like and if

if you like compare the January 3 million then December 4.5 4.4 but the top month was like August 5 million plus and this could be easily what like seven eight only iip only I man just had another 60% on that at least like 60 70% yeah so they in last to download it's like 90 million downloads during that month for the whole portfolio yeah and like if you look here which is downloads 1 billion downloads in last year and 50 million IP revenues 50 million IP revenues which is 70 and then like yeah plus yes like easily could be like 150 million in last year both like IPS and ads right yeah Jesus Christ this is amaz almost a million a week well done yeah yeah well done the the thing is here which now is still kind of up in the charts on the on

the download side is this like race Master 3D which is [ __ ] my life I don't know like what what is this game but it's still getting so much or so many downloads in the last like year it's just crazy yeah like 12 million a month 11 like a whole year basically so interesting uh but yeah this L what we are talking about basically but then we have this where is this here it was yeah I want to go to the global analysis and I want to just turn off doodle magic because it's still on my radar obviously but then uh this is what is interesting so if you look at the UA channels well what is the biggest Channel you know for up for for them for all the countries of course upav no it's upav it's up basically uh they're mediating on Max makes sense yes that's

yeah that's what I have to say oh that's that's something different yeah so yeah it's it's appin then they have Google and then they have uh Facebook somewhere uh and then integral and Tik Tok so and Snapchat so if if you look at us only then uh there is Snapchat I like I don't know like why still but okay whatever and then there's almost no Facebook in us there's like majority of things coming from from well the things that downloads coming from Apple and then have Google and then integral so if we but it's like if you look into Germany there's quite a lot of like Facebook here and also friends so European countries and some other countries they definitely have Facebook and Instagram and all all the placements so I was wondering okay let's kind of try to look into the Facebook library and try to estimate the spend uh because we have tools which is ad scan and then you can kind of estimate like what kind of money they are spending in different

creatives so I I had to look into sayam uh fan page because you that's that's how you can filter the the creatives as like loads of different [ __ ] obviously but then I kind of uh went down into or found this creatives that I showed you already it's like all obious like really loud as [ __ ] but they only spend like 3K in December for for this like this specific creative so wondering like how much money they spend outside of us because it looks like not that much uh so us when I was looking into the the the revenue split it was like absolutely like 60% coming from from us only and then we have Germany UK and other other countries regarding IP revenue iip revenue yes so the main focus is is definitely us and uh and appin and then a little bit of Google

and then Snapchat and Tik Tok I tried to look into Tik Tok creative gallery for Tower War but he didn't find any interesting that the Japan is so high there yeah yeah yeah like it's small of course but like pretty high regarding all the other relative to other countries yeah yeah like it's UK Germany well us Germany UK Japan and then uh the other other countries it's kind of funny that it's also correlated with the highest ecpm so yeah I mean makes sense I I found one ugc which I forgot to show it but it's not even ugc this is like stock uh girl basically playing the the game with hard like on top of yeah you have yeah because why not but this could be literally used for any game yeah of course yeah yeah that's like of course yeah that's it all right so yeah I think uh that's basically it from uh from the U us side yeah Felix got 10 what's Maven mate nine nine that was pretty good it I

me it has all the like all the creative depth but I think the the main things are kind of missing like the gates yeah and like uh the mass battles kind of thing like overload of units if you if you if you check like well if you're listening to this definitely try this little more you have all you have all the tools and all the mini games inside the game so my my realistic thing is that um the core gam play duration is very good like the parameters and the way they're adding progression is really good but for [ __ ] sake put the unit T gcha into the shop because people even don't know where it is not even like in the shop and the main screen main screen just put in the main screen please yeah so that's there put the tpol on it also like the unit GAA the equipment gacha has like you know usual discount for Temple and stuff like that so you know that's there and then uh what's there I think that's pretty much it like you know for the

small kind of a design space Maybe add more mechanics later because I was looking also like into level 200 or 300 and just I don't think so there's anything there the bridges that we didn't see so there needs to be more uh progression layers later down the line definitely like we seen the yeah new features like what we see in Candy Crash and like Survivor iio you know like more and more and more and you need to go the game is like what like three years old in soft lunch yeah you you you know you need to go now yeah but like let's see I wasn't looking into retention but if you look at retention yeah it says 43% day one day three day 63% I hope we run into some like honestly like there's yeah so the day 60 is 3% or well let's see day 60 is 3.2% day 90 is 3.1% so I guess like it's long tail could be quite interesting I mean doesn't really

93.9% is pretty good 3.1 3.1 but still still quite good right for this type of game and like it says like it's 40 on day one but I know like ma mentioned that this is happiness multiplier so I guess like it's around like anything between 30 to 40% on day one but keep keep in mind the scale the giant scale there 150k down a day yeah it's it's hybrids exactly it's getting there okay right see you next week so see you next next week we'll see see we'll see it's going to be a secret even even we don't know even we don't know yet it's going to be it's going to be same same same fun I think same fun yeah okay see you thank you very much join our slack uh ciao [Music] [Music]

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