Monetizer: Epic Empire

hello and welcome to pocket gamer business monetizer feature this is where we have a look at free to play mobile games um have a look at the gameplay the monetization techniques they're using and just generally trying to look at some of the trends that are going on in the space so um kind of doing something kind of slightly differently of 2014 um 2013 we tended to download games and kind of play them from scratch they get kind of the opening 10 minute kind of flow now we're kind of uh some of these games i've played a bit more so we can kind of get a bit more in depth into what's going on um which hopefully will be a bit more indecisive so again we're going to play today is um pocket gems epic empire so let's let it kind of load up so it's kind of um kind of i guess a game roughly in the kind of a mobile kind of strategy city building um kind of clash of clans type uh genre it's a bit different i mean we're kind of seeing a lot of people a lot of

companies release games in roughly in that kind of strategy genre but i'm trying to innovate obviously around it no one's going to overcome clash of clans as a the most popular game so with epic empire um pocket gemstones has the kind of kind of city building element but it's the um the kind of combat focus is more more on a um kind of rpg level so so um we kind of see this already so i've been attacked they're not attacking my base they've actually attacked my my little guy um so typical thing here is can i go and get revenge on them i can't really be bothered about that kind of stuff so um i've been playing this for i guess over a month now so it's kind of a in a sense this is well it's not typical city but this is like this the city type thing it's not as um kind of in depth as as you would probably expect from a from one of these games which is one of the innovations

so there's no walls or anything there's no i've not got any defensive um elements here there's no kind of cannons or so these are basically these basically kind of buildings um obviously these are gold mines are giving me gold that's one of the soft resources there's um this other resource um so this armed camp will give me generating this kind of iron stuff so if i upgrade it i can get mine faster and then these are used to build more buildings um gold is a bit more useful as well so we can kind of see um what basically what happens is you start with a little area of land and as you attack so this is the barbarian woods hard if i go in and start attacking those as various enemies i have to overcome and then if i've done that i kind of gained this little bit of green and it becomes part of my kind of uh village base whatever so you can see there's all these are all bits i can't play yet

fantastical forest is locked but um this is barbarian woods number seven so basically i have to work my way through all these um and then this is one the frost frost fortress that i kind of uh beat and then that's unlocked so it's quite a nice kind of graphical look it's kind of i guess a more kind of cute look than a then a hardcore look um you can just see here my little here's my little guy um who's really the focus of the game so you can see he's level 15 this is um my multiplayer ranking so there's an energy um kind of system i've got just loaded it up so i'm fully fully energized this is the hard currency so star stones kind of usual that's as it's not usually this so this is an interesting game in a sense it has seven different in-app purchase options so typically it goes from a hundred dollars or from from one

dollar to a hundred dollars so it has a bit more at the low end so it has three dollars five dollars ten dollars uh 19 40 yeah so so it's kind of the the the usual price points but there's seven so it's a bit more a bit more at the low end than some of the games and then it um like we're saying with quite a few games now we're kind of having this if you want to transfer hard currency to soft currency they're kind of taking this kind of percentage approach so it's not giving you an absolute it's not saying 2000 gold cost you this much star stones it's saying depending on whatever my storehouse is here if i feel it by 10 it's gonna i'm gonna get that much gold it's gonna cost me this much um so because i'm over 50 in my storehouse i can't feel myself by 50 because it'll go too much so i can't do that one and obviously fill the storehouse there's a

bit more and these are kind of interesting it's kind of a relativistic um approach it doesn't mean the value of gold can change quite significantly depending on um the kind of the ratio of the the the game developer chooses from the soft currency to the hard currency if you get the ratio wrong you suddenly get these big spikes when you can only have one one hard currency converts suddenly converts to a large amount of gold of soft currency but anyway um let's buy the buy trend um so in terms of what we can do let's have a quick go on this so we can go um so these are the quests actually so that if i do these i win some more hard currency so another reason hard currency is useful um is that obviously you can use it to if you want to kind of refill your your energy if you run out but it's the basic model is if you go to blacksmith you can buy items so

items are important for um obviously an rpg type game so the kind of up the upgrade um kind of progression is is by getting items and evolving the items you've equipped now this is kind of interesting from how the games progress point of view so this is the master blacksmith if you want the kind of biggest best rare guaranteed rare items it costs you 999 starstones so even though i've been playing for over a month i've certainly got 500 and something so obviously that's a if you want to do that effectively let's ask you to spend money um and i kind of felt that that was quite a big ask um so but in last week um pocket gems put in this other option um which is apprentice blacksmith so you're not getting such good gear and you've and they've invented they've come up with this new kind of not really currency but it's a forged coin so 140 coin will get you one kind of lower lower um lower quality item and 40 coins you get

if they're kind of enemy drops or you can get them um through multiplayer there are effectively it's just a kind of a way of kind of helping you progress a bit faster by encouraging you to to play the game more which i think is kind of what you know free to play games need to be giving various options if people just want to pay then obviously they're going to pay but most people will pay at some point but they might play a game for two months before they kind of get to a point which they want to oh i'll pay five dollars to get over this kind of um current obstacle so i think you kind of need these kind of lower level um monetization techniques in um so if you go to attack so the single player which is a kind of so i can attack these these areas around my kind of base but there's kind of these these world maps and these a bit more so i know on level two of this so i can it will say this area is full of difficult enemies it's actually not i'm quite a higher higher level than this so um so i can just go in and and just kind of grind through

so i'm level 15 and these guys are level 25 but it's actually not a very appropriate level so it's very simple just tap on these guys um so there's a not really an action element to it but not doing nothing as in the card games so every time i beat some guys i get in this case i've got a tunic so i can do um so this is level 23. so if i upgrade it just tap on that tap on the tab on that so they're in here i'm going to fuse the items and cost me a bit of gold but my lost leggings will level up a tiny amount or almost level 24 that okay so as in a lot of these games so um you probably can't see so this is level 23 this is level 25 so this is actually this this padded armor is leveled up as

far as it can go it's maximum is 25. so that it's a common item so it's not all that good but other items this one here only says level eight but um the info is it's got an evolution tree so the more i level every time i level it up to its maximum i can then evolve it which is by hitting this button here so you use these um there's a special kind of a item you collect and then you can evolve it up and then you have another 25 levels to evolve it up to the next one so obviously those are better items to have and basically i mean very light kind of rpg stats but that's kind of um health and attack and that kind of stuff so that's basically how the game progresses let's do one more there we go and the glorious victory so you've got three items this time oh i got a steel max it's not bad

still a common one though so it can only level up 25 times it's not that useful so we'll go again on this upgrade using the bandit cap see if that'll get us to next level yeah so it's level 24. fuse that one as well not quite okay so let me come out there and the other kind of thing you do is go to the kind of the pvp area which is not i guess it's kind of um again like the combat in in that version in that um we just showed you it's again very kind of lightweight kind of uh gameplay so you just like tap on these guys frantically and i'm gonna lose because that guy's much higher than me um

so let me see i'm lev i'm on these gold crowns i'm 233 and all these guys are miles miles higher than me um or even this guy my gear is not very good um is it going to work um yeah obviously this is not this is asynchronous the other the other player is not doing anything at all apart from lending is having his character walk around that okay so that's um oh so that's epic empire so it's kind of about doing something different to the kind of clash of clans type game i guess you could say i mean casual probably the wrong word but it's a um i guess a lighter experience in what you're doing a bit more focus in the sense you have the character and that didn't really show um

so obviously as as you change these elements his get up actually changes so you're getting a visual kind of feedback kind of flow um i guess the clash of clan type players would say this is a bit lightweight i mean there's there's not really a lot of strategy you're basically getting items and then using them to level up i mean obviously you kind of want to level up items that are uncommon items rather than common items there's not really a lot of strategy going on here in terms of the gameplay they're not really you're just tapping on stuff it's not really a lot of depth and i guess i mean i guess so the game's been out probably about six weeks now so um i call these games as a service it's got a long way to go because it should always be being updated um with kind of new things coming in i think it's fair to say it's not been a massive hit yet so i guess it's still kind of trying to find an audience um and i i

my gut thing would be it would need a bit more um kind of meat to it um to kind of attract a larger audience and certainly probably a bit more meat as well to to monetize but um i think it's a very nicely put together game i'll certainly be playing a bit longer so we'll see how we get on with it