Merge Games Market History & Full Overview: Travel Town no.1 Merge game & Gossip Harbor case studies

you can see in this chart I mean they make good money the I'd say gossip Harbor is what made lifetime Revenue 100 100 million not including ads I don't have this is just I AP so I don't have any information on ads or web stores merge magic is you know solid 130 million um but you can see over time this looks like merge is just growing but what it doesn't show you is I've marked it here there's actually a shift where that happened where you you just had Camp merge games and then once the everyone started making grid merge games [Music] this is a no [ __ ] gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail powered by our ad monetization game design and user acquisition Triple Threat expertise welcome to the two and a half Gamers the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles

let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the game it will be a discussion no worries it will full of that jokes I will I was actually [ __ ] it [ __ ] it just started let just welcome everyone this is two and a half Gamers and we have a super big topic and very special guest as well but before we we start welcome again this is episode number 105 yob is that is that correct yeah I guess so maybe guess okay anyway so my name is mat lerich I'm Felix braberg and I'm and we are your hosts and we again as I said we have a special guest Laura welcome to the show I mean do you want to start with like a short introduction about yourself and uh you know why we love you as well yeah that's that's maybe on our side I

was going to say I can guess but you can so I'm Laura taranto I am one of the hosts on twig and I play a lot of puzzle games I've been in the space about 15 years started in web now doing mobile love puzzle games I think they don't get enough like attention and love overall everyone's like I want to do midcourt games but puzzle is where the money is um yes I'm here to talk about lots of merge yes so much merge so much merge so yeah then merge with Felix to I candy and then leave and then we come back we come back up after one hour it's going to be a lot of a lot of fun uh yeah so I guess we did these kind of a deep Dives regarding companies before where we picked like a specific company Mobile portfolio and did all of it like roio Ubisoft mobile and so on so for it was a long time ago yeah so there was long time ago but let's say this time we thought maybe let's do also one of these like uh giant preparation work episode so so because there's a lot of

moves happening currently in the merge genre specifically this subcategory of puzzle we want to look at it a little bit closer really tell me since uh when did you find out about travel town and how how it how they're [ __ ] killing it you told me or something there you go exactly exactly because I'm I'm following this game since last year like a lot when they started like scaling and then uh yeah I was I was there looking and uh at the numbers when they actually became number one which was in January magmatic before they even got B by Moon active so I beat both of you okay so okay is uh a d dig measuring Contest no let's let's let's let's continue because lose I would lose let's talk about let's talk about M okay wait a second so uh guys listen listeners please um open up Spotify uh

video or YouTube because it's going to be a lot of visuals honestly the prep for this episode it's if when I was taking a look at the notes it's 16 pages so um yeah bu clop for sure there's there's a lot there's a lot on mer you know it's funny it's like it it really didn't it's not as old as Match 3 in terms of how many games and um what the what the like the Innovations in that sub genre but there's been a lot of changes and yeah you know Trav Town's particularly impressive because it was started by magmatic which was Flor and floran squared Flor and Florian two wonderful guys yeahor two florians um and I think what I mean I feel like that game travel town now it's being run by moonactive they I feel like that's kind of revitalized the genre and it's really pushing I think it's pushing all the games to evaluate what making what a what a good balanced grid merge game is and I think that's it's it's making it I think it's making

it more interesting and it's getting more eyes than it did before so but on the scale on the scale 1 to 10 how excited are you to talk about merge now Okay match three I'm always a 10 love talking about match three merge I'm usually like a seven I get frustrated with merge games I'll talk I'll go into it later but um it's just it's so easy to make a mistake in the game and make the experience turn into a slug and I actually think Travel Town has not done this I they learned how to make the they tried to really understand what like they took what players wanted what they were frustrated by and then they they made the actual game play something that is really Challen I think it's challenging all the other grid merge games like this is this is the new definition of fun this is how you make merge a success so took a lot of playing before we start diving in here like just roughly uh do we know like roughly how much each of these games make like how much this category makes and like what are the

main slides [ __ ] there yeah it's all [ __ ] there don't worry one of the 16 slides all right the slidings are a little bit different it's there's there's 21 slides but we're not going to spend too much time on them it's fine I have 50 slides that's that's okay okay but fix like half a meal I think it's the last uh number for travel time per day more than half a meal a day we'll get there we'll get there let's start from the start yeah right so merge has been around I mean it's been around a long time so the first game I hope I mean hope people remember it because it's actually quite a good game but spry Fox created triple really yeah I know those are those are not product people I'm your person here just those are candy now 2040 come on 2040 I remember I remember but yeah 2040 made a made a big swing yeah so spry Fox was one of the

originals that came out the original game came out in 2011 I remember playing it on Facebook and then they ported it to iOS uh soon after then I mean merge was pretty quiet then 2048 came out this was Gabriel chiruli this was a guy from Italy I think he was 19 years old and then just yeah I think he made that as like a side project yeah that that started to get attention and then the game that I think everyone knows is Graham games uh merge dragons but it wasn't actually it wasn't uh grandma games initially it was Ry Maza who who is like looking at the Sim social Sim City as inspiration for making a a game in the grid merch in the sorry in the that's like actually Camp merge game uh the camp merge base wait what's the difference this is merg uh what the difference between what G uh greed merch and Camp merch merch I will get into I have for that

too so this is merged Dragon so they took basically Camp they took this huge area this big big island of land and that's your playboard so then you're you're merging basically three plus so you're this is okay now this gets into the math behind merge games differentiates them yes it's also level based but this is level based but they also have the big board on top it the big Camp yes okay so if you look confused no no I'm not confused like I play I played way more merch games well way more games in general than you in your life so that's I mean I'm still I I can catch up with things small amount compared to me okay okay yeah let's continue let's continue the history lesson but I think it you're you're raising good questions that I think a lot of people are wondering which is yeah because we are not product people so you like need to

explain a little bit more merge what what drives me crazy is merge gets like all lumped together all of these games but we um Jacob and I divided them into different types of merge because they have different they have different frustrations and different player motivations so merge three which is the your your uh merge dragons and your merge magic your ever merge merge County that's literally usually you have a big island sometimes you have levels merge Dragon does merge magic and dragon do the levels but that's where your trying to merge three or more uh to build up yes exactly this you're building up your Island you're trying to get to the highest tier items usually they generate something for you this is one distinct style of merge play and it's usually called Camp merge or merge three plus that's how I differentiate them and then you have your merged two variations so the initial start of of merge 2 is usually credited to uh metacore merge Mansion they took like a swing I hadn't seen it I haven't seen

anything like it before the only one that was kind of similar was um you could you could sort of see it maybe in in travel town because it's a small grid like it's a small board but not I I would say that's a that's a stretch so merge Mansion came out and instead of doing this big old Island they basically I would love to think that they were inspired by a match three board and trying to think how do you get rid of that sprawl how do you get rid of all this Land Management uh which which becomes the bigger your Islands the more pieces you have now all of a sudden you're spending a lot of time organizing so how do you get this down to a more like manageable Place space and so that is the big difference between grid merge and Camp merge small finite board you're only merging two so your chain lengths are going to be different and it just this does even though it's not leveled it has more of a level feel so in the same time so sorry just saying like the important distinction maybe people don't understand it on the first kind of try is that the big

difference between merging three or five and two is like a one to 10 I know it sounds kind of a like it's very similar thank you that was very helpful very yeah very good explanation we have a chart that shows the math behind it and how different it is ma drastic later yeah yeah but yeah the explanation sucked man like we I candy we're just but I candy I candy can be angry it's like if I'm not getting enough explanation like come on I feel like that's spicy candy jalapeno candy yeah okay okay sorry I don't want to interrupt but no you're fine I'll this part quickly oh please interrupt it it makes it interesting so merge Mansion kind of St the stage then uh Travel Town came out it was very early this was back in 2020 then we have uh love and pies came out they actually had two releases so they had their initial game which was

not a grid merge game it was I would this is like uh it reminds me a lot of Pepper Panic from uh King on their uh their old their old uh they used I think I don't think it ever really released from mobile or web but they had basically on king.com it was one of the uh playable games U and this is not quite grid merge this is I would say an innovation of grid merge where it's trying to do match three or more it auto merges and then it auto merges again if they similar pieces next to it seems to be like click to match to be honest like just on the surface look yeah a little bit it has like blast inspiration in there too like there there's a whole bunch in this too many things but didn't work I guess when combined I guess not because they they re-released uh shortly afterwards maybe a year year or so afterwards I don't have the exact dates they they said they had like two or three different prototypes in the soft lounge and the merch had the best kpis yeah

so they re-released to grid merge um and now it is your now it is a standard grid merge game and then following uh love and Pi you have your uh go uh Gossip Harbor by microfun they he heavily inspired heavily inspired by love and pies down inspired by Everything Jesus [ __ ] Christ oh my God I mean even the story line you see like such for UA credits like oh you got the daughter you got the divorce you got the like cops like I will show you the creatives makes me puke all the [ __ ] time like that's like the The Bottom Of Everything oh I hate it I hate it we'll get it works yeah it works it's actually I like gossip Harbor is probably my second favorite grid merch game well the game maybe but as soon as I see those creatives it makes me just put bleach in my eyes immediately [ __ ] terrible yeah freezing families come on terrible okay yeah yeah the the B the map Bol the

the like grid merge this kind of let's say I think that that was like one of the correct me if I wrong that they took this kind of customer system for quests when they iterated all what merch Mansion had that was like the big push to make the UI much more streamlined so yeah gossip Harbor has it all and I guess a little bit more robust meta because it's making like what like seven times or eight times the revenue of love and Pi which still by the way is not in Decline we'll get to it but yeah the big innovation is this top bar I would say that is now put it on the grid merge directly instead of just like being in quest and stuff yes 100% the the task versus order based is a is a big difference in these games especially merge Mansion versus uh the gossip Harbor huge difference and it changes how the gameplay works it changes how fast you can progress and then travel town does it even better so now they're it's it it's one of the key parts of making a a healthy great merge economy which leads directly to revenue um oh

this is TR Town yeah Town yeah and then so we have gos of Harbor microphone they made and then they also made Seaside Escape which was heavily inspired by Travel Town heav INSP yeah heavily CL yeah they also also did by the way merch County which was heavily inspired by ever merch yeah I mean look it's a Chinese company they they know how to make a lot of uh a lot of games I guess but fast which fast which are heavily inspired and the thing like it's it's making a lot of money as well yeah so there you go I I'd like to give credit because I think it's one thing if you clone a game but if you clone a game and then it outperforms I think that's yeah I think that makes it very interesting and then it's it's like that's that's like digging in the heart of why and you and it's a question of did they understand the space better how did they how did they take what what one person did optimize it and then improve it to the point where

it's it's outperforming the what they what was initially just a a heavily inspired version of another credit is due or yeah yeah okay uh moving on there's a little bit of midore spiced in into the timeline uh I can talk a little bit about this one so there's currently the only game on the market which we covered in a separate episode before which is called called top groups from social Point owned by Zinga which is a camp merge game with the midcore progression which is doing I would say decent something like 50 50k a day something 50k a day which I think is still pretty decent the question is IP only right yeah yeah it's I only that's placements now yeah okay so now it's even but it's still small yeah but this is as far as it goes because if you look into our history chart uh there's actually two more games which are kind of more

prominent that has been done throughout the years one is merch stories how did that go yeah merch stories didn't go very well they pretty much launched and they shut down the whole studio if I if I understand pla did that in like less than three months or something or four months and uh they actually had a very interesting mechanic where the merge tokens like the soldiers that you were merging they were actually consumable you were losing them in battle and then you actually had to combine them dead souls or whatever it was kind of very very unique I guess didn't work out but I guess worth the try and then we have sales of Fury by metacore which was for long of Fury now it's not merch Vikings yeah it's not merge Vikings it seemed from last month it got renamed uh okay and uh yeah shout out to our friend U who did the video uh which who is working there now our former colleague so yeah yeah from trite but the thing is that the game let me show you is actually a grid merge game game which uh

has this kind of a let's say the base building where you have the grid merge and you merge stuff you merch soldiers you merge resources and stuff like that and then you actually go into battles where the battles are you sending your soldiers on a beach of your enemy which is actually the bottom part of your Camp because you're not only merging the resources on top the bottom of your cam is merging your defenses okay and this game will be sitting in soft lunch next month for 3 years on metacourse account so we had the former category category leader of the merch genre which tried to kind of Branch into midore but I guess yeah it's not easy it's not easy yeah I was also in this kind of a dream I don't think so it's that that like the closest one to anything viable merge wise in midcore is top war which uses the midcore midcore gameplay to kind of cover the you know the onboarding with the creatives everything but I guess

that's that so I guess we can skip the let's say midcore d mid it's it's we are not there yet we are not there I still think that there's one missing piece and as soon as someone kind of figures fig out yeah maybe maybe I agree maybe okay so yeah you can continue Laura all right so a little bit about the the merge market so what what a lot of the um again what I was kind of harping on before is that we don't have different easy to to differentiate ways to measure grid vers grid merge versus can't merge but you can see in this chart I mean they make good money the I'd say gossip Harbor is what made lifetime Revenue 100 100 million not including ads I don't have this is just I AP so I don't have any information on ads or web stores merge magic is you know solid 130 million um but you can see over time this looks like merge is just growing but what it doesn't show you is I've marked it here there's actually a shift where that happened where you just had Camp merge games and

then once the everyone started making grid merge games um the actual if you if you could look at this by percent Revenue you would actually see that grid merge now has the majority of Revenue in the merge space so so yeah so there's been um I think and I think this is I think a lot of this is due to we'll get into some of the game Loops but I think it's they're just dealing with the frustration that players face with the with the different types of of merge Styles um you mean like the never ending Camp oh Jesus this is terrible I could I could spend hours just like organizing this [ __ ] obviously there yeah organizing and you have to remember if you're organizing what are you doing you're moving pieces around that is not a sync you are not spending anything there's no resources moving that is not that you just can't that that makes it incredibly difficult for late term gameplay how do you start monetizing those users and the larger your board the more time organizing less time doing actions and game the Trin it it was absolutely terrible it really but then I was like there's the button the

worst part is that one bad move if you click somewhere and you don't do optimally which means you don't merge five but three and there goes your progression and suddenly you know that's inent down yeah yeah so was that 50 mil a day or 50 mil no it's 50 mil a day right so I wish it was 50 mil a day day no no no the whole all the games all the games combined yeah yeah all the games combined into like January yeah I mean all these games right it's not the whole merch yeah like here I have like a little bit more let's say spread out picture here so you can see that if we just go game by game last month IP Revenue only so there's something last 30 days last 30 days sorry last 30 days 17 and a half uh M for Travel Town yeah 10 plus something for gossip Harbor uh 9 plus something merch Manion 8 plus near merch Manion is not even

number two anymore [ __ ] hell guys wake up uh Seaside Escape is nine merge Dragon seven and a half aliam I don't even know what this is I think oh I played it it's it's I see that icon and it makes for it again yeah well it depends how you define hybrid but you're basically doing like little it's like you take a mini game where you're taking apart rings that you like I you the IC hual and it's [ __ ] it's that plus merge plus a c merge they from China I assume okay okay and then you have like a lot of these like uh you know other smaller games such as lav and the Pi still kind of making that you have ever merch there you have merge County which is other microne game then you have merge fables again another microfun game there for instance you have merch in shout out to aren somewhere here and yeah so on so forth but the top of the category is

pretty much taken by uh Moon active now which is microphone microphone and if we combine all the microne games actually yeah if I count it up right they're doing something like uh what 24 20 something million this is just Micron portfolio I'm not they're near half of the they're nearly half of the space combined yeah no no like all this is no no this is March it's monthly the first chart I showed the first Revenue chart I believe was I think that was on daily so they're different so this one so let me see yeah I think the the space I feel like let let me take a look this one this this seems like could be weekly or daily yeah yeah but but nonetheless even though Trel town is the biggest game of the category actually microfun the guys behind heavy inspired games are controlling the market yeah that's true

because they have four or five games right [ __ ] yeah not bad not bad yeah this is this is the one I guess you were looking for sorry oh this is just downloads I was just having a look I mean it's it's what we expect I mean right now you can see that travel Town's doing incredibly well so they're upping upping their upping how much they're spending but we can go into this more when we look at their UA yeah I was looking into that and I was combining merge Manion numbers per day downloads in US and travel town it's like it's it feels like a joke seriously like travel time is like 10x uh downloads then then merge menion yeah um yeah this is an interesting use case you can go ahead Laura yeah I was looking at so if we remember way back when we everyone's like oh my God merch dragons came out so exciting and it was it was super exciting new it felt like a very new mechanic and then they quickly released merge magic afterwards which was very very similar to merge dragons and I had a question was it worth it and looking

back probably not no probably not my my guess here is that like in in the in the in the worst in the worst case they probably took some of the pays out of uh merge dragons and brought them to merge magic which probably didn't didn't uh it wasn't providing as good of of a sink and they weren't spending as much um and also I mean uh you could probably speak to this more but they made two fantasy themed games and I think like I I'm not sure why like the UA creative my understanding for Fantasy theme is like is tough on its own I don't know why you'd want to do two of them but that was like before we knew better right way but and if you combine it with merch it's just like the worst out of worst seriously I think like something like you know the usual kind of when player releas homecapes after gardien Scapes like you know do the CL on yourself strategy but I guess it's kind of backfire that was my question like if they did it just to

create like cement themselves in the merch category just to create another game uh by like it's a common strategy for instance if you take EMP empir and puzzles Z I also did like puzzle combat but at least switch it to zombie team but it's the same game pretty much but I would say it's pretty similar chart right there so not not always works out in your favor like with play RS where you know Guardians Scapes and category right so you play multiple match free games yes you don't play like I don't think like you actually can play multiple merge games like like it's can't merge games no it is so hard especially once you get to end stage because again it goes back to how much time I mean these games just sink sessions a time yeah exactly right it gets really hard yep uh now grid merge on the other hand is possible because the sessions are just a little bit shorter yeah yeah and wait well like if you merging all these items like it

takes a long time and if it's like L late game it takes even more right so actually yes but it also kicks you out so this is where it gets into the balancing that we can go into if you go to the next slide we're going to start talking about this yeah because the keep in mind that you have still the same amount of energy this is the important thing with Camp you have more and more space to manage exactly all right so I I put this as it what so question is we look at the numbers and we're like oh my God travel town is doing so well and it's why and this is like your the best merge games are have an incredibly balanced basically economy that is it is it is Excel it is an Excel game you are playing an Excel game and this is how thank you very much for listening that's that's all we want see you next week I'm feel exting but to give you so I cre created this chart just to show how this works

and how uh when if I mean anyone who's actually who played a grid merge game when you get to like tiers 10 this is just item uh basically a tier fied item and the way I Define tiers is you have your pieces that all go into a chain every item in the chain has a different level um you merge up the levels to get a higher level so that is basically what this chart is and you can see that if you want to make one tier five item you're going to need what is it at least 16 spend 16 energy and that's just not taking into account the fact that certain generators of which you how you get these items have primary and secondary um uh basically merge chains they spawn yes and they also have cool down times so as we're as we're talking about all this stuff all of this has to be balanced correctly otherwise the session play gets incredibly frustrating incredibly incredibly quickly so as a I did U this was merge two this isn't so bad 16 now we get into merge three and this is just easy math merge three

because I didn't even go into the merge fives or merge sevens but you can see here for that one tier five item you need more you need what is it three times you need 18 so you need 18 now pieces to make one tier five item and it um depending on the game I actually don't think they spawn it depends on how the generators work but um I think they up to level three up to level three and that's the good really good point glad you brought that up some of when you have a generator sometimes you do you can reduce the you know the the length of this chain because sometimes you end up getting a higher tier item yeah yeah so you GNA try to Spa there you go so you got you got your your sprig your little piece of leaf the green thing yeah so you got they ended up giving you a level three item and one of the the the beauty that's in travel town is and actually be fair a lot of the other grid MD games do this as you level up your generators just as you progress you get you get level generator um pieces you through level up um you get higher

chances of getting higher items so they try to ease the frustration that way yeah because your economy output like your conversion ratio of energy to like these pieces can actually increases based on the increasing chances of the generators that's the whole point and the only permanent thing within the game generate the resource yeah so this is okay so now I just made a chart and I I can't take full credit the merge two was kind of easy math so just like ah this isn't so bad but gives you the estimated energy excluding excluding secondary pieces and the um the chance of uh spawning a higher tiered item like you're asking for a tier tier nine item that's that's a lot of expected energy drain now merge three I ripped this from Reddit because it's complicated but you can start to see and apologies these these graphs are inverted so the one on the left grid merge the the lowest tier is at the top and can't merge the lowest te at the bottom so the way that you kind

of think about this is a little bit a little bit different because you're building towards a final stage you are building towards a final stage item but the way the chart was done is that it's telling you how much energy you need for the final stage item um so at the bottom you have the log you need 6,500 logs merging five to get your and this is this is from the evermerge Reddit I just took a some we have some very loyal fans that put together spreadsheets of this of course nice it's always happened with these games keep in by the way the number of human interactions needed to actually get these things together not just the energy that's the important thing and the other important thing is why I think there's also like these kind of big moves within the genre is that these things are never told to the player regarding the drop rates at ever never any merge game tells you which are the exact drop rates of let's say my herb hamper or my whatever epic bucket and what was the previous drop rate what

was the increase and this is the balancing sheet that is the secret source that everybody keeps playing to their chest because nobody tells you and that goes for everyone and it's just this kind of a trade secret that goes around the market oh it's like the same thing oh let's just clone this like how high can it be how high it's fine just the game looks exactly the same like how come it doesn't make same amount of money oh hell hello this is the secret Source literally this is the secret Source the drop rates between generators and the balancing of the sessioning and and the orders versus tasks yeah yeah yeah because now we're getting into you still have board issues in Grid merge ERS versus task yeah basically like the drop rate you think is a secret s so like the rate at which they give higher tiered items to progress users that's like the the magic stuff that's what makes hard think it's more complicated than that that's a little bit of simplification I

did there but to give you a better example let's say the drop rates is one thing the other thing is that all of these generators they are actually having completely different timelines how they work for instance this whatever kitchen robot I just SP it there it goes It's already on cool down I could throw literally like 50 energy here into this epic bucket because this is like I would call it like the Baseline generator then you have specific way more yeah then you have specific generators like this one which I keep here hidden because the moment you put it on like empty field it starts spawning stuff on its own without any energy actually and then you have these other let's say temporary generator such as the camera here which if I start spawning it actually disappears because it's a product of other generation so it first needs to kind of create the camera from this generator and then you have like another temporary generator that again Works itself I just asked what the magic sauce was and

now but Jacob's answering your question though it is it is a combination of I'm just giving him crap because he a lot of crap last week yeah yeah he was mean to me and now I'm mean to him I think so in playing these games I thought oh they're all the same they're not all the same they are not all the same like and I'm talking just about grid um the grid merge games travel town is not the same as G gossip har is not the same as love and pies is not the same as merg mention they are if you ask players they would say oh my God it's mer it's the same [ __ ] thing exactly you're right yeah players would be like oh it's so similar it's not behind the scenes it is not depends on which players do have the ones that are making the Exel sheets on reddits or the players like that's what I would say sure sure sure that's a very good point yes but I do you think like there are EXO she already for travel town as well I would guess so yeah and they have good ones that is

they have in my opinion they have the best ones that is why I think I made a comment on twig that it was due to the events the travel town does not have the same events loop as gossip Harbor yet gossip Harbor has the most events they have all the events Travel Town does not they don't have a battle pass yet either and but they are making more money and it it is how I think it is how they change the economy of the game also the microfone they have the EV and all the all the things because they're from China and that's what our friend Haven from Century game said they are good in squeezing money out of players that's why they're super big on Forex games and I think they kind of borrowed this uh strategy for for Merch games that's why like they have so many so many events and livel just like a two two minute search on Reddit you immediately go to theet like this is actually what's what's happening with the play this is directly from the redit it's perfect yeah so just saying whoever kind of prop

scos to whoever did that I just goog from Reddit yeah yeah actually you can find a lot of things uh good things on Reddit y there you go nice okay so we talked a little bit about this I'll just quickly so the merge challenges yep so as we so going okay we'll skip merge challenges we all know there are challenges so for the why why I think the games are not the same so I I just I as a fun exercise okay what was that that switching between the TS oh for the first time you know Ma uses his child for marketing to get clicks now he did the same now Yak did the same to get clicks yeah thumnail this episode JB no let's move on anyway yeah anyway so Travel Town it's it's pretty simple like you merge takes energy energy is the is the one of the main syncs what's interesting Travel Town does not give

away free energy in the shop they are very aware of the fact of where where that Revenue comes from now this is the order system order systems are what we see above with the people asking for specific things you fulfill orders it costs the tiered items at the uh from the merge board you get coins you get tools and sometimes you get like the basically a a a loot box of stuff um and you basically you take coins you then can build you can build out your town the story I will I will say the story is rather weak if if Travel Town came out and they just readed the story I think this would be a much stronger game U and then you keep two players really care of about story in these game when I I would say you're a half gamer dude so you you don't I wanted to find out who poisoned who did the food poisoning in Gossip Harbor okay well divor my husband had

addiction okay you know I actually think if you take these games L Pi has the strongest story travel time is the weakest story we look at performance I don't think story matters ex exactly okay yeah I I think let me put it this way same in match it's the same in match three you can't have you need to have a very strong puzzle engine and then story is a cherry on top story will not save a game just for marketing glob it's like it's for UA rather than just game and but it's expected to have some kind of standard of story you know it needs to be there some people love it some people like me completely skips it and that's it yeah I don't even read that [ __ ] why yeah see you're the same B there so okay okay so you're building up this town um cost coins you're getting now you're you're getting experience you're getting more items so you're basically getting uh things to help you merge faster and you're starting to get tools once you level up leveling up here is how you kind of upgrade your generators so that's how you're spawning out higher tiered items when you play you also

sometimes get energy um now what's interesting is up until Level 12 you are actually on a you your your limiting agent which is like a chemistry term the thing that that you that holds you back is basically coins you you are you can there's en you're making stuff but you have to constantly grind for coins to get the orders uh sorry to get the building done now after 12 that changes coins become super generous because now they've added multi steer multi-stage building upgrades and tools so this the other games do not have they do not have this it's usually just coins that you have to build like basically to build out whatever your meta is they add a secondary currency to this and I think that was incredibly clever oh yeah uh Jacob pulled it up it's these and they have I think they're like um they five levels so it's yeah five and if I understand correctly did you see them ever come out in this kind of a temporary shop I don't think so they're completely yeah

they like I think I once saw them today when I started the game because I I was doing some kind of event they again has this like very nice like we push you to play trigger events like you have just 40 minutes and they put additional resources here for these uh let's say call them tools if you complete quests and you get like you know two breaks out of this one even though it's not there now but if it's like during the period you get it so on so forth so I think it's playing really into that kind of a you know we want you to continue and reinforce you to play the main thing and just like add you more progression if you continue doing it because you run out of energy you run out of whatever resources something something you know where to buy it or where to get it or best thing is this kind of what is the The Joker Joker token in the shop I don't think so I also seen that does gosip Harbor has it I think they has it or or do they have it the the Joker let you up is it it upgrading or or it's upgrading an item right anything you mer with anything I

believe it does gossop H has a ton of like in booster Boosty things actually merge Mansion does too um they have slightly different booster things though I think gossip Harbor has a joker yeah but that's there like the balancing is like outstanding definitely for me when I was playing all these other games this was definitely the most enjoyable one for as as I'm kind of a non super often playing casual games non merch player I I wouldn't say that I I played a lot of merch games before when I was working on them but these days I don't play anymore yeah so one thing I will comment on is I I did a little bit of an exercise that was I can't share because it's too ugly but I took I actually went through and calculated if you look at the orders they ask for two items usually one or two items and they have an output of either coins or tools and I actually did like a sample size about 15 orders and I just put down what was asked for what the estimated energy sync was and what the reward was to see what the ratio was between output and

energy drain and Travel Town hands down does the best you need to remember these players want to feel rewarded if you're asking for a tier n piece and you're giving 10 coins which doesn't progress a task that is incredibly frustrating and as much as I love Gossip Harbor they are they they they're they're out they're basically their their requested effort to Output was not balanced as well I was just through my to the wall if if like come like I'm I'm merging like for 20 minutes and then I get 10 coins what the [ __ ] yes seriously I there there were definitely with h gossip Harbor and love and pies I want to throw my phone against the wall yeah and I think merch sorry Travel Town also has these kind of spikes or at least that's what I like experienced a lot where if you get to a point within the game that you let's say for instance complete a lot of daily quests it gives you a lot of energy on Po and then it gives you more progression within the

main game which gives you level UPS which gives you more energy so it goes really nice into this kind of Spike shape curve where suddenly you move very fast and then you move very slow and then again you move very fast whereas with goip Harbor I would say I was moving the same speed all the time and it gets just a little bit more clunky the more the board gets filled yes as I go all right let's jump to next Loop oh sor some I since yeah I put in some some Stills okay so merge Mansion is what I looked at next we can skip that bit because you you you were so kind to show the the actual gameplay which is better better than my images so yeah the game Loop for merge Mansion is very different and I I I I mean kudos to metacore can you go back to the actual actual merge Loop yeah okay I kudos to them for starting this trend like I credit where credits due however I find game very very difficult to play now especially

when because when playing other grid merge games their Loop is just different you merge you um you get basically event energy you get Battle pass points because they actually have a battle pass it um you now there's two different types of energy so they have Side Event boards which are actually more fun than the main board in my opinion um but then it drains energy start from scratch that's why because you start from scratch exactly now what's fundamentally different about this game is they so this is how I tasks and orders are different orders come up and they tell you I want these things and I'll trade you coins hooray this they tied their meta directly to the items so there is no there's nothing in between your item and building out your board and you're like oh maybe that's not a big deal it's a big deal it's a big deal because it it severely limits the how how many orders they can give at the same time because that's where the balancing will start to get incredibly difficult um because it's gift you in a binary situation where you either has the task completed fully with

all the tokens or you don't and therefore that's the only way to progress the game whereas in Travel Town you go granularly slowly order by order because they're just giving you coins and you need I don't know three to four orders to get there so the also granularity causes the frustration there and what what that and if if you're going to look at again this goes back to balanced economy if if you're going to have uh your tasks based only focused on specific generators and those generators have cool down they're basically constantly putting me in a position where I have nothing to do and I know they're trying to use this as a paino for spend I think it's I mean the game's doing well I I don't I can't see how that's going to be a long-term plan it is incredibly frustrating it's doing well but it could you know be doing way way better yeah it's always that's always the other side of the market yeah it's going it's going well it's like oh but what if you could do way better yeah that's also the big question like if

let's say at some point guys from merch Mansions should upgrade their core Loop there like something for instance if we look back at what happened with um pirate king where coin master came out they also switched from The Wheel of Fortune to slot machine later down the line because it was their corop and they just know that it worked better for coin master so it's a big question like should merge Mansion guys then switch to travel towns kind of order system yes 100% they I would and I mean the what I have hope though is they're yeah the the events are fun because I don't I can't play half the time half the time my board's so filled I'm forced to to get rid of things I don't want to get rid of and I just again this is why it's throwing my phone against the wall because I I'm forced to make difficult decisions I don't think I should have to make but Pedro y Pedro yeah well it's ped where's yeah where's ke I have in the nose like Pedro Pascal do we do we really need to talk about this

again please know but I would I would wager and I put this in a slide after I have a note here they I mean you look at my board go back one look at my board my board is nuts and the worst part is I think they they put the event token which is in the top center that is how you access the event so they actually take up a a a space on my board which I need how dare as a button won help you here won't help you yeah sorry yeah well that's not good no but like if I if I understand correctly sorry the biggest difference between the event live up setup that these guys run is that or also like merch mayor was doing that that they would run these kind of new boards and you start from scratch on the timer rather than where travel town and all these let's say newer games they run these kind of let's

say reinforcement events or events that are still just adding on top of the orders or reinforcing the core gameplay through some additional layer of event style rewards let's say but there's no second board if I get it right yet I I mean I feel like the the night's still young for travel town when it comes to effects yeah but we'll get there to the meta progression layer that's also interesting but move on okay gossip Harbor yeah actually the way what you explained is is perfect that's exactly what gossip Harbor does they they so unlike merch Mansion they have an order system it just makes it makes it easier um what they what they do do is that um when I was trying to figure out I did the game Loops to try to figure out where I think the spend the sync is but after level 15 they unlock something called a generator which allows you to spend two energy instead of one to spawn out higher tier items so that is how they start to address some of the challenges I have not seen that in the

other games yet that would be something that if merge Mansion taking notes I would start to look at some of that yeah we do have some listeners from metacore so guys isn't that something similar to like all casino games have like increase the like energy spend button yes it's exactly the same yes it's exactly the same so maybe Travel Town will do it I'm I think I'm only level 19 or 20 in travel town maybe they have it later but that I mean uh Moon active has that down to a science with Co Master that's very true yeah that's very true yeah yeah didn't even think of that maybe maybe let's see yeah so gosip Harbor other than it's heavily inspired by love and Pi but like they're making like way more money than them than like LA and PI right so like we can we can I think I have it here it goes back to so one of the frustrations I made a little bit of notes one of the frustrations is that I think with L and pies the pacing is is

is off because there's a mismatch between energy orders building and um generating generator cooldowns and I think one thing that Travel Town does is I call them relief orders so you can't have if you once you start to lose your board space and grid merge you're a little bit effed there's nothing like then you can't now you're making these hard trade-offs you don't want to make as a player I can't progress properly in the in the battle pass emerge Mansion I can't I can't I can't actually merge all the pieces of XP I get because I don't have space that means I can't progress what Travel Town does is they again relief orders so as you have specific goals you have these generators that spawn primary and secondary items they create orders that actually take some of the items off of your board trade you for coins um to keep your board clearer and dynamically dynamically that's the important part because I don't know if you have noticed but for instance these let's say these sand castles and these Forks they have a

system that the moment you have three on the board they automatically take them out yes and they give you a good reward for them because their final tier items 750 gold per for this kind of task and you can just keep them there you know the order will come the moment you have three and you will have those because they are a byproduct as a secondary kind of like resource generate yeah yeah amazing it's amazing genius and so that is not what the other games do I think gossip Harbor does it a little bit I think they do it and love imp Pi doesn't do it enough so there are there's a whole bunch of like this is there's a there's a scene in a Legally Blonde where like lwoods the main character was like I just like woke up one day and wanted to go to law school um because it could be so easy and I feel like a lot of people wake up thinking I'm just going to make a grid merge game it's going to be easy it's not easy exactly like oh my God like yeah if you have you seen the the retention curve oh my God it's perfect 20% day 30 yeah and then then I then I

say you know what but have you seen also the $40 cpis in us for for purchase Camp oh no no way yeah just wait for Value optimized campay it's 50 plus oh no and that's like that's only the UA side so yeah like I think it's it's kind of super smart and very important to kind of let the player have always some kind of a board to kind of merge with with because it's introducing the fail State into the game that's not supposed to be there whole merge point of like these merge games that there is no fail State ever you just merge stuff and get enjoyment out of merging there's never a lose scenario whereas if your merge board is just full of [ __ ] and you need to kind of make space you need to get stuff out which means you're losing energy losing money there's a ose scenario we shouldn't be there well then it pushes the spend to storage space and that becomes drain which is I think one of the worst things to do it's like a I think it's breaking every design

principle I hate when storage becomes the main monetization because it just means you've given me too much stuff because your economy is broken yeah essentially yeah one last thing to Harbor I wanted to to to show here uh so gossip Harbor is doing something like let's omit the spikes here but whatever like 350k a day let's say IP only without ads and if we look to lav and pies actually I have it somewhere here here they actually increased their revenue throughout the years like they're not in Decline they actually went to something like 65k a day or something compared to like before where they were like half of it it's not going into decline it's actually going pretty well it just makes seven to eight times less yeah than than insired version of it y I think it has to do with what we're talking about in terms of running running out of board board space and then balancing out how you're doing the

orders versus Pro the orders and progression building out making sure everything's draining so it I think with love and pias I hit a fail State more often than I do in Gossip Harbor y okay uh that was gosip Harbor I think this is the overall comparison of all the merge boards red boards sorry yeah there just they're they're really you know we play them you know we only play well we play multiple games at a time but for players they're actually incredibly visually different um and I think what we at least this happens in match 2 where I also think Travel Town excels is you need to be able to parse where your pieces are very quickly and you can start to see when you put these things on board which ones get busier and which ones are not and I think from from basically a ux standpoint I can it is much easier to tell which chains are together which items are together and then where the items start and end vers is merge Mansion which their items actually go into other grid spaces which

is driving me crazy because it actually blocks things I want to see so I think that if there's one thing to look at and this obviously isn't going to make or break the game it's how do you look at your pieces how do they connect because the art is incredibly important for for these types of games that that's the same exact principle like Candy Crush as like the yeah the the visuals of like how the match ticks actually is very important even though it's as as you say like not really making the kpis but it's very important yes it is and then then you have the comments about the royal Royal match and how like what's how big of a difference it is when you play Royal match versus Candy Crash oh it's so different it's like two it feels like two different games so I put what I think of the main monetization in a little bit so as we talked about Travel Town has like a soup up super balanced economy it's amazing they have they have the perfect amount I think they're actually probably getting majority of their um revenue from energy spend and then secondarily it be some people are

probably doing um coin the hard currency sync on items um maybe generator speed ups but majority energy merge Mansion I would not if someone said to me they got like a a heavy percent of uh coin sync and therefore revenue from storage space I would not be surprised I would not be surprised um I think they have a a less heav I think they would be if I was going to look at it by like what percent of of spend per action in game I'd say it was more evenly split between storage based energy and event energy when the events are active especially the side events um and I think that that that would be my guess anyway that from playing from playing this and then gossip Harbor hands down energy I think it's changes a little bit in the early game um I had a lot more generous energy up until I hit about level like 1011 and then it became very clear it is an energy sync um plus a little bit of a a gem sync and I'm sure they see a spike whenever they have the season pass

start um yeah o that's the end of the presentation last thing I would I would want no no no no no last thing I want to end the product part is with our favorite um rating guy no no no no ratings at the end our favorite guy called Milburn maybe you know him yes that one because there's this other thing that's happening within Travel Town that I also haven't seen in all the other games which is me finish clicking through all the windows that mil Milburn is throwing at me uh is that there's the metal layer system from Monopoly go currently sitting also in travel town so if you go into Monopoly go and you see their kind of sticker layer system the collectible album that you have there oh the notification one that you have to drag through no no no this is this is actually very important because the the things what

these guys have is that you are getting these stickers and they're giving you just more energy and stuff that's there but you have all the hooks and everything that goes into their Facebook group yeah say perfectly aligned with their audience match where you can trade these cards between other players in their Facebook group directly or indirectly through the game because the moment I have let's say more of a like let's say two duplicates of this guy I have no use for it so I just go there and trade with other players and this is their kind of a temporary system of collection of something but it always goes in a loop I think this is like 70 days or what's the I don't know what's the exact time but they run it on some kind of a cycle and then album resets and need to recollect again that's it the only permanent value is this kind of a token that changes with every season that's there if we go to Travel Town they actually implemented the exact same system here with again a lot of yeah with again uh

the hook directly into the Facebook group so choose cards to send to your friends connect to your face trade cards with nice so this is exactly the same layer as Monopoly go has with the big difference that I didn't or wasn't able to find a permanent value that's coming out of it it's just pure energy and resources coming out of these things like chest here and stuff there's not like Monopoly token they can give you here but other than that the system is exactly the same they just you say yeah sorry would you say this was inspired by what was a Diablo game that they basically their seasonal content was you got to play with characters new characters up until a point then the content the season ends and the characters disappear U yeah something like that it's like this was always the big problem even for me when I was doing like mcor merch to add permanency into the game because the only permanent thing you can add are the generators and if you add too much of them like the progression goes Haywire because you know that's that's the only valuable

thing that you get there output of your economy so what else can you get there nothing so they are also basically giving you nothing because these things will vanish away anyway but if you look at the daily quests the offers the you know the events that they are running all of them are tying up into these booster packs which are giving you more and more cards and then I guess because the community as it is as it is uh which is the Casual kind of mostly female population of of Gamers I think it's a great match for them regarding the Facebook trading card kind of style thing so we like collecting things yeah exactly even though they will vanish away anyway doesn't matter yeah I mean I I remember like the redcore Facebook groups like so many EX so many so many players there yeah I don't know exactly when this was added wasn't to find it through like the update timeline but my guess is it would be somewhere after

Monopoly go not before yeah which is one like a year old at at most yeah something like that okay there you go product one finished nice was pretty but it's super interesting are we going to ads yeah we can do ads right can do ads yeah where is where your presentation man come on I no presentation but I did bring a pencil to this gunfight your presentation is so small that we wouldn't be able to see it oh yeah it's very small after getting made fun of so much from two episodes ago I'm not making any more presentations but so uh both gossip Harbor and travel Hound uh those are the only two games uh that have ads currently on the top three uh yeah merge Mansion I did some snooping there is an admon person that joined a couple of months ago inside of the yeah inside of my inside of um metacore so I have a feeling they're going to be rolling out ads because why hire an admon person if you're not going to roll out ads so

we're just going to be dealing with gossip Harper forun just maybe for making presentation small presentation yeah maybe can you do a share screen like we normally do uh sure sure but I check uh so the lifetime revenue of uh both gossip Harbor and Travel Town according to sensor Tower is travel town is around 150 million in lifetime revenue on I gossip Harbor is around 100 so probably with sadness multiplier that's closer to 200 250 yeah something like a lot bigger yeah exactly so uh the games are very similar in some ways uh but the admon strategy is very different between magmatic and microfun does any one of you want to guess which one has the better admon strategy and which one I would say has the worst one stronger on ad yeah yeah for sure and do you guys want to guess what mediation platforms are on because it's quite clear that they're on different mediation platforms as well oh yeah I'm

going to see my way out of here I'm going to take my my pencil get you should be you should be able to guess like what Medi you think TR town is on uh travel town is uh definitely uplo travel town is on level play and Max Max okay I would guess the other way around actually how come is it the we'll probably get to that with the spend right but yeah I mean like honestly app is just biggest for everybody but like you travel town is level play yeah okay now makes this okays uh they have energy replenish when you run out of energy that's C at four times a day and basically really the ad placement really start to come into life after level 10 because that's also when

the unlock the pop to unlock ad placements and when it comes to Travel Town that's it that's like all that's like all the ad placements that they have right so pretty much you're capped here at four Impressions per Dau in the start of the early game which is quite low because not always you actually run out of energy as well right because you're passing levels and if you're good at what you're doing doing you're not really like running out of energy that early in the game so it's very longtail for ads so clear here that ads is not the main like Revenue driver at all and it's like basically added on and bolted on I think as a mere afterthought uh like as the game yeah grew well also you get you get energy every two minutes so you you can only trigger it at energy out you have basically a two-minute window to watch that ad yeah yeah and then if we look at haror uh it's a bit different here so here the main difference on the admon

strategy is that the energy replenishes you also get them but it's at a later stage past level 11 when you're running out of energy but it's C at one a day uh but they have several more ad placements you have the daily specials in store uh showing that one right now and you have the hot stale hot sales in store refresh which I think is an amazing ad placement that you can basically refresh for an ad and then you have pack by the way the you can watch four in a row I've been able to watch four in a row okay doesn't give that much economic value so you can it yeah keep it going right because it just gives you new options and then what what is that gem value I think it's like five or 10 right I think it was 20 actually 20 20 20 and then also you have hack open on the board so sometimes you can open something with a rewarded ad instead of popping a balloon or with like paying gems right that's our favorite favorite but it goes only to a degree because

then the gem value gets too big and you cannot have an placement and it same goes for Trel Town yeah so in terms of From admon perspective right here already I I think there's tons of low hanging fruit already in terms of AD placements and and the one I wanted to ask you go one the one that sticks out most to me which is most confusing for me without the product knowledge that you guys have is why don't they have an ad placement when you complete a level because you always complete a level when you're playing because it's quite often especially in early points of the game why is there nothing to double with a rewarded out placements when you complete a level you mean like the story you mean the order or you complete like you get finish the level one to two uh you go from level one to two in either of the two games then you get like a rewards at the end of these levels right it's usually energy and coins or energies and something else but for for like I don't understand why none of these games don't have a rewarded out placement there it just seems like a no-brainer to me like what would you gain the value of the that placement

would be giant yeah but you could even like make it less right or yeah adding something on top of that because it's a natural break in the game and it would be a good conversion Point yeah but wouldn't that like destroy the whole economy afterwards I'm asking if if it would double this of course it sorry in this in that game if we correct me from I'm wrong Jacob but two of those blue boxes can yield 200 energy right because you can mer them up to get the red potion and that's 100 energy a pop not not always but it could lead up to that's a lot of energy what if you have it and then you basically made the standard that you assume everyone will watch the ad but that would that would kind of it's a granularity problem M that you cannot kind of cut the thing to the point where it would be uh in the same representing the same value as your at placement because for instance here let's take the timer here I can skip eight timer here for an ad for this can pack it's equal to eight gems the moment

you breach this whatever they Define value of one rewarded video you cannot put an ey placement because just like too much of a value yeah and can you can't make the the box or the chest to half right if you just change the whole like no box or a box it yeah all right another item but yeah and the other one I was also thinking about is kind of a take from um from uh the idol genre right like what we're talking about like this tiered items that when you're like getting items out on the board and they're usually like the lowest level of items uh I would want to see what it would look like if you had an ad placement that would give you odds of getting higher like like stuff on the board for a fixed amount of time let's say five minutes after watching your rewarded out and you could rewatch that and stack it like you do in most idle games to get higher likelihood of getting higher matched yeah gear everybody's rolling that in their

heads so question so that means like for for a certain amount of time a generator would spawn higher items if they watched an ad or higher likelihood of getting like higher like yeah higher match or higher tiered items that's so hard to communicate to players that you know you have a 10 percentage Point increase in getting tier three items for 30 minutes I mean I think I mean some of them have Bo yeah double zero production right maybe I mean we do have players that build these spreadsheets they some of them might some of them might yeah I mean I would test it yeah but then what would be the additional ad Revenue you would get on this uh just want just wanted to go for a couple critiques also is like on travel town you can tell They Don't Really Care as much about ads because their end cards on all the ads are absolutely terrible the end

card it's like 60c like rewarded video 40c rewarded video and it's really annoying end cards like whoever's managing that tighten up these end cards cuz they're super annoying and they don't on Gossip Harbor because they actually probably care about these end cards but yeah need to tighten it up so they care about end cards but they don't care about like how the creatives look like and what is the concept freezing family is [ __ ] hell come on like this retention this is a retention if you have bad end cards has a retention issue right sure sure yeah fair enough yeah okay so uh let's get to Brass tax what do we think about ad Revenue uh so important thing here is that ecpm in these titles are going to be absolutely massive so we have 500,000 users in Gossip Harbor we have a million and a half in travel town and a large user base in tier one in US so these games have massive LTV and a high like amount of purchasers so that was going to

increase your ecpm massively so I'd estimate in the ecpm in the states for these titles to be 85 to 90s and probably worldwide it be somewhere between a global average of 30 to 40 45 just to put that into perspective like you say a good global average for rewarded video is 15 and 30 in the like really big right so I'm not sure if these games are getting super high like those like the highest like 90s of ecpm in the states I think it's more around 70 or 80 because gosip block majority of merged three titles so I didn't that was my question these guys blocks each other out don't they yeah they block each other out that will have a negative depression but I'm also seeing haven't seen that many like yeah merge three games so I'm have a feeling they're blocking those games as well as they see them as competitive so I didn't see that

much like so then what like you cut the ecpm by 30% the biggest the biggest like buyers which ma probably going to say here that spend a lot of money which has an extreme impact on ecpm is player XP King and dream right and if they're not buying and if they're not allowed to buy then you won't unlock the highest possible ecpm and the reason for that could be that they see the kind of audiences as over overlapping so they fear that they could like yeah lose the audience right they are which is quite a good strategy right anyway so gossip Harbor uh I think the Impressions per Dau is about four on 50% of the user base which would mean that right now they're earning about 50k a day or a million and a half a month or 18 million a year which is 19% of total revenue so if you take into account sadness multiplier and increase the iaps a bit more I think more around 15 to 19% some around there very very achievable for them Travel Town uh da 1.5 million so ad

revenu is could be a lot bigger impal three 3.1 maybe ADV array is not more than 40 so that means they're making 97k a day and AD Revenue 3 million a month or 35 million a year 15 million I AP which means it's probably closer to 10 uh if you Tak in the sadness multiplier yeah man cool would be I would say like 10 10 10% a lot more 10% okay that's the percentage I 15 to 20 it's in that range it's not over 20 I think for either of the games uh here I just wanted to say like it's a big opportunity I think to take uh like a admon like Q from the King Playbook I'm just wondering if that would be applicable here as well all right so King like their games in tier three and tier four GEOS is an ad monetized like experience and AD monetized games and in Tier 1 us it's yeah I AP driven very

premium I'm just wondering if would be an opportunity here for them to do the same thing to really load you always say like tier three tier four countries are not very lucrative like in terms of the revenues I mean they Mass user B you can have massive user bases there right you can but then like the CPI is not low the CPI is not low maybe it's I mean it's definitely lower in like tier three tier four countries you say that right but King still has a $200 million a year ads business right and that's is it King the small company which is [ __ ] around for a long time you mean that company yeah I Fair yeah that's fair travel time is nowhere near and like microne also nowhere near King I'm me saying it's an opportunity but yeah I know like it's it's definitely an opportunity I guess so but uh yeah yeah my guess is that the soon as we see like a fully Incorporated kind of add stuff

into it is the moment that we see like a true merge hybrid rather than that like something like blog gem 3D or something like that it's never going to happen because merge games have really high cpis yeah that's it and even Revenue I don't think they're ever going to go over that so yeah maybe the thing half a year later we're reviewing a voodoo game that's making you know whatever amount of 50 50% because it looks like it looks and you know there it goes just you know little bit weak here and there yes how it looks is one thing but also like the mechanic is also the other thing it's just like you can't have low cpis with merch in in the cratus it's just like we I even did it when way before it was cool for for TR for trapl and battle Legion we tried merch before but it wasn't like that saturated back then and then as soon as like yeah like merch game to pop up it became even more yeah more expensive so like that's that's how

it is at the moment yeah I know Pedro pascals are at you so and not no no no but okay so creative always upav in top one then we had uh kind of I mean travel town is basically everywhere there's like all the channels out there it's just yeah they're running it that's like that's how how they're growing there uh their user base and the revenues as well but then uh in terms of the merge games uh Unity especially is doing quite well and as soon as I had some merge came in the soft Louch it was always about Facebook Google and then Unity uh Facebook iOS for uh for Merch games is doing quite well and U well Google is a m obviously now what I'm seeing uh more and more is TI to creative challenge even for these types of games because these guys are using a lot of ugc creatives and that's uh the same thing what we see in di to creative challenge so creators are kind of

producing the videos like with their commentary about the game playay that's these are like the the main ones for merge Mansion it was quite interesting because they creatives now very far from Pedro Pascal it actually looks quite terrible sorry guys but it's I'm not sure like what happened to you and we'll go into that those creatives later on but it's just o I mean I guess I guess you spend all the money for for Pedro that's fair that's fair uh also in sure it also like kind of in in terms of the whole like U UA Channel mix like they ran lift of mgal a little bit of Facebook which is quite weird because when I compare that to to Travel Town and then even go harra app Unity Google those are the biggest channels there is a m a little bit here and there but like app is absolute absolutely killing it and for now for Travel Town the unity it's it's up there and it makes sense

now that you said that they have a level play as as mediation that makes sense but then um yeah so we don't need to kind of talk about Pedro Pascal but I guess we need to talk about travel town and Kylie Jenner I guess a little bit because I was like I saw I saw that creative I was like who the [ __ ] is this person I was how do you not know who Kylie jenus I I mean apparently I wasn't I wasn't really Keeping Up with the Kardashians that much haven't kept with the Kardashians like ah I was like okay but the thing is like you know like she was born in 1997 1997 okay which is really impressive and yeah she has 3 million followers on Instagram so obviously like this is an influencer and has like several not 300 300 million

sorry three million followers oh yeah that's true yeah fair enough so I like yeah I'm sorry 300 million 300 million like multiple actually Brands like Cosmetics like baby whatever things I'm was like I was so impressed like she's absolutely killing it like businesswoman really good and apparently apparently she she charges something around like 2 million for a social media post on like Instagram for like brand awareness so I guess for like these type of videos that we're going to show we're going to look at it's could be even more could be even more I guess like two and a half three million that's say two and a half it's a good number two and a half yeah two and a half yeah yeah uh still expensive but I guess less expensive than than Pedro full CGI production I guess like that's the words on the street is like they paid five mil for for p draw but if it's true nobody

knows nobody you have the creatives or should I stop I have the creatives yeah yeah please stop sharing please stop sharing and uh so it's two things so let me just uh share this screen and then because we have uh so if I go slideshow you will be able to see it but I won't be able to see you but volume by the way just saying I have no idea I have no idea let's see so close your ears close your ears is it too is it okay yeah or is it like super super high now it's fine anyway so uh I could go and just SK through all the creative so I I have travel down here I would just just Yeah just they have like few different a few different concepts I'm going to go through them uh it's obviously they're using hooks narrative and like story driven creatives like merging [ __ ] which is kind of like very having very big boards ugc and also what I see is long

form videos which like 45 plus one minute long and then we have La pies we have merge menion and then obviously gossip Harbor but gossip Harbor yeah spoiler aler only freezing families nothing else and six [ __ ] as as usual so okay let's let's go here so we have the ugc and kind of a big board and then like pay attention I'm going to ask you like what what do you think are like the trends in like merch um creatives so we have this what that's a little bit like a tile well yeah it's like a it's like a drop cascy like yeah let's see see looks like IQ slid is my favorite way to relax oh yeah yeah yeah that's true that's true so we have these uh uh we have also the same thing will the merch game work in real life it

can I mean nice little hook combination of real life hook and then like you see ugc my favorite merge game in real life I guess this is uh their ugc person again it's different boards different uh different items and but like it's it's absolutely super boring but still like feeling calm and relaxed fake boards is yes that's what I wanted to say because I don't think you see these but the board and the size of the board is important wink wink remember this name Travel Town here we go with Kylie me and that was just a hook right so and it's like one minute long video and you know what's happening in the video merging nothing but merging and also it's very important like what kind of items you

are merging as well and also like these four like time 2times three that's like this small detail super important remember this name by the way okay uh and then we have the full KY video with with captions as well and it's like it's very like I would say low effort video because just like you know you can you can film this in 10 minutes like oh my God we trying to solve the mystery and all these like blah blah blah [ __ ] no download the link here for free yeah download the link and then we have again there you go you charge to oh let me show you look that's what I would say m m yeah so and you have this is like guess like this is the full one minute when when she plays a little bit longer than than just 30 seconds because they were like different cuts there's no way she grinded to level 20 there's no way

no no no no no no come on like or something like yob L 21 no way yeah no way oh I'm yeah I'm 19 and I spent uh like just under 20 Australian dollars Australian dollars like what it's connected this is my my my this how I get games in soft launch yeah soft lunch okay well yeah use more emulators yeah yeah or just yeah I mean austral can Canadian like yeah makes sense okay so again you're going back so there was Kylie like there like different cuts but it's very simple but yeah like no way and also like that board there um I don't think like that was actual level there I think that was kind of like almost like altered just forl basically yeah yeah so then we have the same thing here it's just different items and uh then more big boards and

that's that's basically I mean like this this is like very big concept the whole merch category you have you have big you have big uh big board and you're just merging 45 seconds of merging this is 30 seconds of merging the previous version was one minute one minute of of game play Just merging nothing the whole whole UA is based on one creative concept that's it no no no no no no no no it's not but you also I don't want to hear the sound I know again big before the characters yeah they have characters uh but then you have multiple concepts for travel town like they are definitely like their creative depth is absolutely huge absolutely huge but then again it's the it's story D kind of hook and then they're using the big board here so there was like a X Files hook and oh no no yeah yeah we there yeah yeah yeah we are there as well of course

so we have we have the all kind of uh story driven so this is merch Mansion basically it's yeah it's basically merch Manion and combination of of Royal match afterwards uh there you go let's save this this girl oh my God there's it yeah there's like come on thring it yeah of course I mean it's like the thing is for those not watching it's the usual Royal match creative yeah save the save the whoever is this Save the King in yeah showing ads in their games yeah but the thing like it's uh that's like part of the like creative kind of strategy you kind of if you have the over overlap with match match three uh games then you you want to use the the mechanic or just at least concept that players know and this is just a regular type of AD which is again like tasks customers merging [ __ ] just

completing the uh yeah the tasks basically or orders so more altered gam playay more altered gam play yes but then you mentioned this uh chain link I guess I call it like kind of merge Evolution which is also quite uh interesting let's say part of the creative as soon as I I used this chain link and show them like what you need to what you need to merge until you get the the highest Ste of the item worked super well the kind of like progression I guess or like how how would you call it this this chain yeah this chain right so you you you show this [ __ ] so you actually use the merge chain in the creative yes yes and that's very important also like as soon as it's shown like throughout the whole creative it's performs even better here fired by your boss but then then you look this is another kind of spin on the

on the merge chain and this is just yeah this is something I saw kind of working really well uh when I was working on like a few few different merge games uh again the chain and then just like simple merging and and we have this like crazy [ __ ] sure oh it's just like what What's Happening Here this is used on Tik Tok no this is just Facebook and then other channels as well there you go that's okay that looks like almost clation yeah you and gr that was kind of like you know like you saw like so many different concepts Big Board narrative ugc hooks I mean whatever so like so many different here what do you have absolute sexist [ __ ] because yeah well of course and really you can't

even I can't even look at it like and it's by the way have you look it's like across the whole portfolio or just for gossip Harbor this is only at go only for goip hard like this sexy [ __ ] and then freezing families we have divorce papers and all of these like fun stuff well not fun but uh the stuff around that uh which is common for Merch no lav and pies and I I I have it in the in the de towards but like this is it and then we have like merging thing you you see like the chain over here that's that's really that's really really powerful they know kind of like what they're doing but this this [ __ ] [ __ ] oh my God yeah exactly so they are combining like Lily's Garden thing and upping it up in on sexy scale a little bit like this is basically Li Garden yeah Li Gard yeah this is Lily Garden yeah and and then on top of it you have the FL play freezing family and then in the meantime you have some merge yeah exactly so not much yeah was like again one minute long long creative right so we have that and then here we go freezing families all over

again I'm not sure if that was like a something to measure the temperature or just like a cigarette I like I have no idea I have no idea what's happening but it's like always this save her is it by the way also in Seaside Escape have you checked that no I haven't checked that but it's the same thing okay so my guess is there also the same thing okay and then we have yeah this all freezing families all everything here here like kind of nice but then we have but that's uh you know what's that that's White House survival H I know this white survival yeah exactly I know it's White House survival and all like freeing families everything here so yeah s but at least at least yeah they're using the hook from there again like yeah I'm not just not going go through all of this like weird [ __ ] freezing family yeah yeah yeah okay just keeping out like you see like it's freezing fames nothing else all all about that at least

now they're using all you know like the merge links and everything here which is definitely important but that's it for for for this merch Manion is like weird ugc [ __ ] which is I mean I have no idea like why like this is pedal level right except it's not so it's just cringe ugc type of stuff and then we have also a Japanese I guess they're not using the like mysterious drama concept Grandma concept anymore like the one the window and like he's alive blah blah blah yeah they are but they are banking on these like weird ugc types of moments at the Bowman and creatives it's like absolute weird but they have I mean excuse me bro what song are you listening to what song are you listening to oh yeah it's merge Manion what the [ __ ] seriously oh they're trying to jump on a the a Tik Tok Trend and make ad content

that that's following a Tik Tok Trend yeah and also here is like uh this type of skill like you're talking basically to yourself uh we saw it with uh with misplay best performing creative they one minute long and it's lies yeah yeah exactly without ads like slow ad like oh who would who would say they they have all the story driven type of things you know oh that's Bas basic these are quite old aren't they these they are yeah they are yeah they have all these still performing well exactly there the grand M change yeah it's yeah it's it's all there it's like few different uh variations of these uh it's like all the all the all the drama yeah that's that's pretty much that's pretty much this is quite new actually like this is a new one that was an animation on the real life Hook was it no that was animation yeah it was animation okay real life no no no no no no that's animation and again yeah like kind of

Grandma evil grandma yeah that's that's the the the kind of kind of hook and then we have lav and pies but it's all all the same but then there is the big board as well for laven pies and the divorce papers and like different stuff so it's like it's almost the same so so what is like kind of the overall creative Trends in here I think you can you can answer quite easily Big Board yeah okay tell me Big Board freezing families uh altered game play sexist content sexist content as usual and then uh what was the last one uh ugc actors whatever thanks yeah ugc ugc actors and then like the story story driven things it's like the the main thing o so and then yeah the big board and chain Lings are the the most important thing part and then obious like the drama it's just like nah it's not the least Garden

anymore so people can't think about like the the new new Concepts anymore so yeah there you go ratings ratings jeez ratings uh are we doing ratings now yeah what are ratings yeah it's pretty much your yeah what than 10 score on the game that you give and you need to reason at the end of it yeah in your dis in your discipline so I would rate for ad yeah yeah are we we're doing which game are we doing just let's go with travel time like come on you can't you can't travel time go Harbor I TR go har yeah or Felix you can you can you can go as lead by example yeah yeah so for yeah so for rating like Travel Town will get a lower rating than gossip Harbor because it has Less ad placements and worse end card s and less attention paid to it overall H probably I would say here like three or

four on ad monetization and then yeah gossip Harbor maybe a five yeah getting up there because it's nearly 20% but yeah Travel Town has a lot more it can do on the outside M so Travel Town it's like 9.5 out of 10 in terms of the the UA and creatives it's just it's Lo working really well and we see down the numbers as well H the [ __ ] High thanks to these [ __ ] freezing families I would say like I would say like Z minus five but they're also doing quite well so I would say like five if they just try to actually go and taste different concepts like what I showed you just now like they would be doing also quite well so five y blow it up okay Travel Town I'd give it eight and a half because I think they I do think they should invest a little bit more in the story and they need to uh they basically need to finish put building up the events Loop easy

they could become a 10 easy easy I just think they need to fin finish up the uh feature set gossip Harbor I give seven uh I think well it's good Seven's good we'll give it seven and a half let's give seven and a half um it is a good game I think the I think the balancing is not as clean as travel towns and this story is it's entertaining but it's very I mean if you actually read the text it's it's very awkward text it does not it's it's it's a very it's a very strange text sometimes so yeah yeah um I would do actually like gosip power I put a bump higher with eight because they are better than the original which is no small feat but I agree with what you said there that like yeah the kind of the model is a little bit worse as Itself by the nature of the game but the liveop pipeline is super strong that that's why they're better than original uh Travel Town I would

say yeah I would probably push it to nine there because it's like keep in mind that Travel Town been around from like 20 20 I think or something and after this time they like reached the top so just the sheer dedication and like the iteration that these guys had went through is like amazing but yeah we agree that even pipeline needs to be fleshed out much more uh probably I guess the connection to that Monopoly go layer isn't as strong as I would like it to be or at least do something with the permanent thing there that Monopoly go has which like in the end eventually you will need to add one more progression layer somewhere because either some kind of cosmetic or whatever or like you eventually have it in the end so I guess there just still waits for them but yeah amazing job regarding the whole kind of progression balancing and stuff best of the best for sure yeah agree nice oh my God that was quite long episode but definitely worth it yeah yeah no no no come

on I put that at the beginning where we just uh had a lot of fun just at the end so everybody knows yeah thank you very much Laura for coming it was absolutely amazing this was fun yeah that's yeah that's how we roll I guess we try to do that's what we tried to do yes so again thanks and uh yeah thank you very much listeners please uh if you didn't do that like go to YouTube there a lot of visual stuff uh a lot of videos grafts whatever else gameplay as well and uh please keep subscribing we love it you love it keeps us going as well and then uh see you next time thank you cheers bye byebye ciao [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

I just cut I just cut it from from there like don't worry all the fun all the fun just that's why he cut his hair cuz he can be quicker and move quicker with his aerodynamic haircut sh don't worry post production that's yeah so yeah yeah but like 16 Pages Jesus [ __ ] Christ uh I don't and some of them are just images so it's like that's not even real that doesn't even take up real space but like real space com like like two slide decks like what the [ __ ] well there's there's only one we combined them we combined combined no worries oh but I have a slide deck you do you do yeah I put all the creatives in the slides everybody has a slide de these days yeah because he like ex Felix yeah I I felt like oh [ __ ] I'm

not I'm not prepared properly so I need to no no the feedback got gun fight [Music]