Monetizer: Tank Nation

[Music] hello and welcome to pocket gamer. bus's monetizer feature this is where we look at a free-to-play mobile games uh particularly their inapp economies so the game we're looking at today is one called Tank Nation so this is a bit different um from what we normally do with monetizer normally with monetizer we download a game and start it out for the first time and kind of see um what kind of the opening 5 minutes like this is a game actually I've been playing for a while so we'll start it up there just a few things I kind of thought would be interesting to kind of point out um so it's from a startup called Wormhole games so as with these freet to playay games it's online so it's going to connect to the server hopefully going to get there an end okay so you can see I've been playing this game for a while now um it came out um about a week ago um so it's a um it's like a kind of inspired by worms I guess a bit maybe by Angry Birds it's a kind

um artillery turn based artillery trajectory Style game um so as I say I've been playing for a while so I've got these um so far I've got two tanks so you can see this one here this is a kind of a if we go in actually just to this slot um we can see so this is the this is the um the driver slot so this chap is the driver and he gives a a metal boost so this is a a metal tank so there's just kind of an an elemental element to the um to the game structure so anyway this guy so we can see these these different um five different slots so I've got a obviously I can put wheels or or legs on here I've got a some sort of gum thing here um and then there's these two Tech slots so this one f a grenade and this one gives me like a a shield over the top so we see basic stats here um if you want to swap something out I can swap something out Proby I don't have anything else in the inventory so swap that one back in um and also as as you'd expect with a

freet to playay game you have these um upgrad so to upgrade my uh so it's level eight at the moment um so you can see all these this is the the upgrade so upgrading is done with bolts so my bolts total here I've not got I need 7,00 to upgrade I've only got 1600 here um actually this one is at level 10 so that's the maximum level I can't level this one up anymore um another thing you probably can't see here um each one of these uh slots has a kind of a a little kind of back with a number next to it that's um cuz it's a turn based game you get kind of certain amount of kind of action points within each turn so this is that kind of shows how many action point you're using up um so and you can see this is just my this my other um vehicle this is a weaker vehicle um so this is a has a Gatling gun on it and this is actually a fire so the other one was a metal kind of element this is a fire element um Walker and it's got a

reflect Shield that reflects um a certain amount of damage the same metal barar as before so um so we can see here this is the bolt this is the soft currency and gems is the hard currency so um kind of pretty pretty standard kind of um set up in the sense that we' have one hard currency so one one currency we spend money real money buying so that's gems so it goes from this is a kind of a what we consider pretty standard kind of setup so there's five different kind of options ranging from $5 that's £2.99 English money so that's $5 ranging up to um $100 or 60 or £70 um and then also so the bolts of the soft currency so we buy gems which are could use for various things which go into um but also you can convert them into bolts so I mean I don't really have any I have five gems at the moment so it's not going to get me very far but if I had 300 gems I could convert that into 600 6,000 bolts um and if you the ratios of these um

sometimes if you're converting more you kind of converting large larger amounts you get a better kind of discount so something we call the when I look at called the discount um currency ratio in this case you get 20 uh 20 bucks for each gem on this so these are all exactly the same for for these um hard currencies if you the more you spend you get a slightly better deal so um for each dollar you spend at the cheapest uh level this one here you get um 80 gems for each dollar you spend at the if you spend 100 bucks you get 112 um gems for each dollar you spend that's a ratio of 1.4 if you do the maths anyway enough of that um so that's kind of uh this is the the tank kind of garage thing so you can see there's another when I get to level 10 can unlock another slot um so kind of as we' seen kind of parts are an important

element of the game if I have parts that I kind of capture I can sell them for bults 500 bults normally there also a part shop this is where we kind of make some parts so um there's basic parts Quality Parts Elite Parts not here yet so um as we' kind of expect with the the quality Parts if I want to spend gems 320 gems I can make um a quality part basic part so there is another currency um which is this one here so tank tokens I haven't got enough tank tokens but tank tokens are a multiplayer you earn them with via playing multiplayer games so you can't actually buy them at all so they're I mean they are a soft currency but they're kind of a a um me kind of seen this more in games they're kind of like a a um an activity currency really um so it's a good way I guess of for for game developers of uh of encouraging people just to play the game and not kind of worry and have a part of the game I guess that can't be um

that is kind of out of the monetization loop um I mean this is big kind of often you get kind of arguments about we don't want to make our game kind of pay to win um I mean that's a different argument but um we've kind of seeing more of this kind of just encouraging people um to to play the game um to get this kind of currency so you can see there is a kind of a you can't convert but you can kind of see there is a conversion ratio here so 3,000 um tank tokens is supposedly equivalent somehow to 300 20 gems um and 320 gems is about well 4 400 gems was $5 so you kind of see some sort rough um kind of parity there um so G the box that just takes back to the shop we've already seen so let's just quickly show a bit bit of gameplay cuz I think it's kind of interesting to have a look as well so um I do something that won't embarrass me too much maybe um so let's yeah let's have a game for this one so

you can see there's um I've not really uncovered a lot of the map there's a lot more of the map to do so I'm still on the the first little bit here so still this is the so there's leaderboard um so some sort of social element to it but not really very much at the moment in terms of communities type stuff will it actually load so yeah so I'm 5,500 so not really uh making an impact on the on the boards and then there's this Arena here so um I've got five tickets and 12 medals um and if I join a match I'm going to use one of my tickets um do that um Al you can see here there's XP That's My Level which is basically used for matchmaking and you probably can't see it but also is like a little um fuel here so there is fuel again um so I've got four out of i' got 15 a capacity of 15 i' only got four at the moment you maybe see it's like a little countdown here so my next fuel are get in just under or three 3/4 minutes um again if you want more of

those you can buy them with gems um but we'll just kind of play play a match you can see I'm going to play one of these levels um going to be difficulty it's going to tell me how much reward I'm going to get and it's going to cost me three of my fuel so let's far it up so I think one of the things that's interesting about this game is um we've seen with a lot of kind of car battler games it's just purely about um the there's not lot of gameplay the gameplay is Resource Management so this series is a lot of obviously kind of resource manage not Resource Management in that way but you kind of we've kind of seen how the currency type system Mar but there is a skill element so this is my little tank here so I can launch I can move him along I can fire a Barry fire up my barrier or fire grade so it's kind of a bit of a kind of pattern based kind of gameplay so I'm going to fire a rocket I've got three energies per go so I'm just going to pull it back so it's bit this is like the Angry Birds or the guess the worms type thing there we go

far a bunch of rockets blow up that enemy oh got got a little uh repair thing there I don't need that moment now I'm going to fire up a metal barrier which will knock off some of the enemies uh kind of attack power see this is my energy bar slowly going down so i' so I had one launch there and used my M bar so that was my three kind of um energy slots so now I can have three the energy bar will last for a couple of go so I can just fire finish these guys [Music] [Applause] off that's my last go with this my third unit okay so that's my go and now so there going to be three waves actually you can't see here say this is the second of three waves so it's kind of a wave based thing and as we can see these are these are fire tanks so this is kind of like the ones other ones I had in my garage and going have

[Applause] go yeah the bigger ones have more turns than the other so it's my [Applause] turn so what I say this is kind of skill based obviously this is not this is not a console type kind of oh missed there so proving proving a bit wrong but you know this is a kind of Fairly light weight kind of kind of skill gameplay um but is some sort of skill actually you can um do a bit of kind of strategy light strategy in terms of moving around um which particular if you have a walker vehicle if you have one of the Gatling gun Vehicles a bit more useful to walk around you need to be a bit closer to get better hits so I hit that repair of L so now you can see got two energies left that my my metal barriers come down so I'm going to have to repair that and use up so that be might go over

[Applause] again come on so this be the last wave see these are all things I can pick up I can pick up that one but there not a lot point I just get get him at the level oh so he's going have a little move forward okay getting [Applause] [Music] [Applause] clever obviously he can't fire cuz he's he's used up his energy by moving forward so let's wipe him out there going be another go isn't it I think [Applause]

[Applause] okay so let's see if this works or not this may not work get him in one go because this is the last gun I've got a relatively amount of Health left I'm not going to bother with the shield so I get him no I'm not going to get him I don't think [Music] [Applause] yeah got it okay that's good so there we go so that's all the stuff I collect so you see it's pretty kind of standard in that turnbas thing so I've got some new parts so I can keep those or sell them if I want to um I've want some XP and want some some more bolts so you you can see actually won 250 bolts this these will be 500 each so won less than 1,000 bolts which doesn't really give me very much um upgrade capacity but anyway um so yeah so that's um that's Tech Nation from wormhog games

just kind of a startup out of the US it's its first game so uh came out a week ago we'll be looking to see kind of what what success it has I think um in some it's interesting because it has uses very standard um kind of monetization in terms of its hard currency and as we said kind of use this this this multiplayer currency and um using stuff like fuel that we've seen many times before now um but uh iot was going to say but um I think yeah interesting in terms of I think we're moving away from these kind of car based games and you could even argue even like kind of Clash of Clans type games where there's not a lot of um kind of active strategy going on there a lot not a lot of tactics going on you're kind of dumping your troops down and off they go kind of thing um I think we're kind of going to see a bit more um kind of kind of u a bit more importance for game play within a kind of even within a resource management type free to play kind of business model so um I think that's good

for the future [Music]