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PocketGamer.biz14 Sep 2013

Monetizer: Glu Mobile's Odyssey: Age of Gods

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
Age of Gods, developed by TalentWalker and published by Glu Mobile, fails to bridge the design gap between Asian market complexity and Western player expectations, leading to an inaccessible onboarding experience.
02
The game’s tutorial is ineffective at explaining core mechanics like turn-based combat, squad management, and resource cultivation, leaving players without context for basic objectives or item quality tiers.
03
The game utilizes a complex, multi-currency system combined with an energy-based progression model that creates an overwhelming density of information for new users within the first ten minutes of play.
04
Aggressive monetization features, including VIP status rewards and gambling-style mechanics, are introduced too early, further complicating the user experience and alienating Western audiences.
05
The lack of culturalization in the game's design philosophy results in a confusing user interface that obscures the game's complex mechanics rather than streamlining them for the target market.
06
Monetization is hindered by an unconventional pricing structure that features a steep jump from a $1 entry point to an $8 tier, while aggressively pushing a $20 recommendation over smaller options.

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Transcript

hello and welcome to pocketgamer.biz's monetizer column this is where we play through and record the first uh five or so minutes of new free to play games and try and have a look at the um kind of user experience flow and also any monetization techniques that are being used very early on in the game so it's not a it's not an in-depth analysis of the first 10 hours it's just a kind of a brief taster to try and um have a look at what people are doing so let's open up our our folder of games to investigate um so now we're gonna have a look at um age of gods from glue mobile so let's fire that one up start the stopwatch see what happens okay big bugbear of mine push notifications really don't like it before the game started um in this case i will allow it um because i'm interested to see what have people using them but i don't think it's a very good um

kind of initial user user kind of experience tool at least until you've played the game and know what it's about okay so we've started something up this is a game um that glue's published it's not a it's not a game that's developed in-house so obviously age of gods um i guess we're gonna have to play aren't we interesting quite female okay rude words they're going to suffer early rage which champs

this is a bit odd you've got this kind of large text box and this over running the skip button anyway okay i've got a bit of a turn-based battle thingy on it loads of numbers it's kind of interesting the uh tabby look like the tabulation the the lights on this have these i'm not really using the full width of the text box i really have no idea what's going on here apart from the blue guys beating red guys why are you fighting for why am i fighting have to go to am i so all good questions

okay so we've got an elemental thing going on um okay so she's gonna tell what's going on choose to skip newbie orientation if if what now there's a slot thing going on here um so color it represents its quality but which what color is good so i'm going to fight this sun um

the war i really don't know what's going on so this is the fact that my gameplay doesn't know what's going on is uh probably appropriate tap the screen to speed up this i'm looking at anything at all that's completely out of my control oh my word that was weird and it wasn't transition there's gonna be some cards yeah of

course random card got some an ordinary coat jolly good if you started trading you can get trading xp off certain amount of time don't forget to claim it please tap on my agility has been increased by three points my intelligence has been lowered by one i'm not sure that's very satisfying result really remember the education outcome is random

so let's just spend more to learn the primary way to obtain silver presumably this is this is silver here one of the use um soft currencies is through cultivation tap on the right crops i'm gonna buy something okay well as tutorials go i really do think that is one of the most confusing tutorials i have ever experienced i have no idea what's going on there and i think this is clearly this is um a game that's been designed for the i've seen the japanese market that um glue translated to degree and published but i mean just that tutorial process i'm sure for japanese players

that's pretty that's how a lot of their games are but i think over as we've kind of discovered simply it's very hard to have games that are very successful in asian countries and and in the west without a large amount of capitalization localization and even just necessarily flown i mean really obviously this is a fairly complicated game um in terms of what you're doing you have like a seem to have some sort of uh kind of squad that you're accumulating you're leveling them up obviously all the item stuff in the forge to um you can improve your items then you've got and we've got all these so this is like an energy system so i've got three resources here this one looks like the hard one hard currency these ones probably soft ones um yeah it's a bit of a struggle okay but let's have a quick look at the store because i was like look at stores

okay first the first purchase doubles gold all right so that's interesting ah it's another interesting thing so even though i've downloaded this that says in dollars anyway which is interesting um and it's kind of the psychologically we can look normally you start with the smallest one to go to the biggest ones this is one dollar he's gonna get me 60 gold um 100 bucks he's going to get me 6 600 gold but it put them up the other way around they've recommended 20 bucks um also interesting normally you get six um six bands of transactions so you've only got five so we're okay cheapest one's a dollar but then the next one up is eight dollars which is a reasonably big jump not to have anything around the two three dollar mark um

that's quite quite an interesting retailing um kind of incentive the first purchase doubles amount of gold perfectly if you wanted to spend a hundred bucks you get 200 bucks of value i don't think we'll do that um some of these things are flashing on blessings from gaia what's this use use eight gold to get nine to twelve gold well i'm not doing that then and here's again this is kind of interesting you're seeing all the people and what they got um oh no let's take them back to the store so do i press that i've not got any good for everybody gold have i okay all right no okay so that so the gold is the hard currency i've not got any of them

it's this one this is reward box for doing activities sword they're gonna give me giant dragon's lair okay looks like a tiger randomly i've got some time potion i'm not quite sure what that is yeah okay so we've got a bit of everything in this game we've got a bit of farm build we've got a bit of rpg and we've got a bit of squad based stuff totally confused my vip status

vip award i get some random spirits because i'm a blue hero i get a perk i spend money okay tell me how much i have to spend daily reward oh i get there if i'm a vp user so oh is it so it cost me 180 gold it's quite expensive so 180 okay it's not that expensive but it's going to be three three of those three dollars

okay so there we go that's a interesting game from uh that glue have decided to uh publish in the west what is the age of gods

Summary

The mobile role-playing game Age of Gods, developed by TalentWalker and published by Glu Mobile, serves as a case study in the challenges of cross-market game localization. The primary objective of the analysis is to evaluate the user experience and monetization flow during the initial ten minutes of gameplay. The central thesis posits that the game suffers from a significant lack of culturalization for Western audiences, resulting in a confusing and inaccessible onboarding process that obscures the game's complex mechanics.

The gameplay experience is characterized by a lack of narrative clarity and an overwhelming density of information. Players are introduced to a turn-based combat system, squad management, item forging, and resource cultivation without sufficient context or intuitive guidance. The tutorial is identified as particularly problematic, failing to explain basic objectives or the significance of various game elements, such as color-coded quality tiers or the purpose of specific currency-based activities. This complexity is attributed to the game’s origins in Asian markets, where such dense, multi-layered systems are more common, contrasting sharply with Western player expectations for streamlined tutorials.

Monetization analysis reveals a multi-currency system involving both hard and soft currencies, alongside an energy-based progression model. The store structure features a first-purchase incentive that doubles gold rewards, though the pricing tiers are noted as unconventional. Specifically, the jump from a one-dollar entry point to an eight-dollar tier creates a significant gap, and the store prioritizes a twenty-dollar recommendation over smaller, more accessible options. Additionally, the game incorporates aggressive monetization features, including VIP status rewards and gambling-style mechanics, which further complicate the early user experience. Ultimately, the findings suggest that without substantial adaptation, the game struggles to bridge the gap between its original design philosophy and the requirements of the Western mobile gaming market.