Monetizer: The Walking Dead: No Man's Land

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to pocket gamer. bus monetizer this is where we look at uh freet to-play mobile games and look at how they monetize Their audience so the game we looking at today is uh from Finish developer next games and it's the uh Walking Dead No Man's Land which is um based on the uh TV show The Walking Dead so um I've been playing this game for a while so we'll kind of just go into a bit see what's going on um see we've got a zombie chap here in the cross here so we'll just uh destroy him so this is just a um something to kind of keep you keep you occupied um not big part of the game but this is your base here that you're kind of building up so bit like a lot of mobile strategy games has a a base

element where you kind of build things up do a bit of resource management and then there's a obviously the kind of missions but it's just a little thing you do so bit bit of resource extra resource stuff going on just to give you bit of Engagement in the game just tap no skill involved in that really um but what so what can we see what's going on there so we can see we've got some resources across the top here so we got um gas I guess use start mission so this is a kind of way of a kind of um gating Mr like a like an energy resource gating how much how many missions you can do um supplies so um used to upgrade build and upgrade buildings so we've got a um some Farms here that provided me with food experience point it's XP okay standard for for an RPG aren't they so

um used to level up survivors and Equipment get XP by killing Walkers and as we tend to have with um free to play games gold which is a hard currency which I can buy so usual kind of deal is $100 I can get um 14,000 gold or I can spend $5 and get 500 gold that's a fairly standard kind of ratio it's kind of $1 to 100 at the beginning but if I spend more I get 140 gold for every dollar I spend but got to spend $100 to get there so that's all pretty much my muchness um we do have a some bundles so there's a there's a kind of entry level bundle that I bought I got B more gold probably most people would have this is so basically SP 20 bucks I can get 3,000 gold I get some um additional Survivor slots so those are for my um kind of my my squad um the more slots you have you have the more kind of um kind of

variation of guys you have I can get a legendary rifle for my um for my sniper guy for my sniper class I suppose full gas i' got full gas anyway and full supplies so I won't do that at the moment HP XP there we go so just see my survivors upgraded so we go have a look at that here is Eric so Eric has gone from level three to level four his damage has gone up his health has gone up and we've unlocked a Dodge move so he know has a 5% do chance of dodging a melee attack when he's on a mission have a quick look in these are my survivors so you see I've got um Seven slots only I've got six survivors at the moment um so these guys are in my team Calvin a Bruiser guy like a melee guy um heavily armored not very um powerful at um kind of destroying zombies and he's leveled up four or five

I is a is a kind of shooter as we just saw him he's four or five as well um so he's not got as many not as much health points almost you know 60% of the health points of Calvin but almost double the um the killing power and also he's got a gun so he can shoot at range and then Nathan is the kind of Scout guy um again he's level four but he's can level up more he's um four of seven um much better killing power but he's using a kind of a a knife melee weapon Health not so good as C something see this guy here he's got a screwdriver if I had any better can I know nothing better to upgrade him with um he's an uncommon Scout he's got some traits he's got a Dodge I can when I get up to level six he'll that will unlock I can retire him basically sell him off I can change the outfit point that so that's kind of how we can see roughly what's going on with these These are these are survivors that um

and not so useful actually this gym guy is so he's a Bruiser he's level three but he can level up to eight so he's he's going to be more useful than Calvin but I haven't got enough XP to train him up um then Joel was one of the first guys I got um he was he's maximum leveled up maximum train so he's not a lot of use now just keeping him in for some of the some of the um kind of missions you actually need um six survivors to be able to enter them um and then Tony yeah he's pretty useless he's two level two or four so anyway so there's the guys um we can show this can't wait so um occasionally you get um you get awarded these um call for Survivor so I can call out um on radio ah so I've got Nicole is a Bruiser class he's two or four she's common um so she's not much used to me so I can reject her get 180

XP oh the Walkers are back um so that's the Survivor stuff it's a similar kind of thing with the workshop so with Workshop I can go in and I could I could scrap this this a r pretty rubbish rifle maxed out not that far into the game um so I can upgrade we go I can upgrade this rifle if I want to going cost me 70 or do it with gold for instantly um it's can take me 10 seconds otherwise so this this whole as we typically get with these games there's a you can do it immediately with the hard currency um which effectively you you can you can grind a bit of out but you have to effectively buy really or you can spend a bit of time um so there various weapons and various kind of armor that's the two equipment types so we can see how that kind of works obviously we can do some leveling up um

so I can level up my farm plot so that's going to take 45 minutes off that goes um the shops I can some other buildings I could build another Farm plot uh build a memorial to my pay honor to my fallen heroes haven't got enough resources to do that so that's the kind of get IDE of the game from I guess this is the meta game this is the kind of engine that's that's driving you for these resources um now let's have a look at the actual game now last time I did this I died so it might beit embarrassing but anyway um well we could do um do an exploration I suppose so let's do a so you can see that if you go back here um you can see there's you're working your way through there's a Gil structure here I've done episode one completely that's fairly easy um there episode two I've got one more mission to do on that one then there more

um come back come back so one nice thing here something that that um next games is um has been kind of kind of Highly regarded for or has kind of done very well with is um incentivized video ads so um for here there's a nice integration when you come to the end of the mission which we may get to um or I can um watch a film so this is just a fairly standard so I'm watching an advert um for another game and it's going to give me some uh some rewards that will um give me something cradle of Empires it looks like a match three games isn't it not so interested match three game so we can just ignore that claim our reward oh there we go so let get one you just get one so I got

300 XP I could watch another one okay so um so this is the the kind of the The Narrative Arc I suppose following those ones but there's these little explore missions this is kind of interesting what I saying before um you need six survivors better to do this but this is a deadly one and um if you if one of your if one of your survivors gets killed in this Mission they're they're permanently dead um in the other missions they um they don't permanently die so won't risk anything there let's do kind of an easy one so I can select my team I get to choose three of my my available ones I mean these are the ones I'm playing with the moment these are the best ones I've got so it's a standard kind of I've got one of each types so there's like a melee knife type there's the Bruiser kind of tank I suppose and then there's the guy with a gun so let's start the mission these kind of missions um pretty much there's

an objective you have to do which is often pretty much just collecting resources at this stage of the game so it's all about kind of resources and how you use them but the um it has a nice kind of strategy element to it so it's a bit uh kind some term based stuff so we can see here I mean good graphics good 3D but not not too complex not not going to um make my brain hurt too much I hope but there is enough strategy so you can see so these are my guys and just select them get through stuff here's some Walkers you see they're level four Walkers um if I want to I can flee there's some on these uh shiny elements in the in the environment I need to gather the supplies so this is a uman all these ones are like Gathering Supply missions for this non narrative version and see there's going to be two turns and there's going to be after four turns some more Walkers going to turn up there maybe as in trapped with the environment Walkers might turn up anyway but there like a walker surge I

suppose um and so let's see what we've got so that's the exit there um I'm going to have to look at the so okay so it's fairly straightforward I could let's just move Calin let's move in there Nathan can go and investigate that that and then Eric moving at the back so useful at the back with his rifle so all my turn all my um guys have done their turn they're getting attacked the enemies have their turn right so Nathan actually with Eric with his rifle he can take out those two because they're standing be each other so um but he's fired that and you can see there's one more um walk has turned up so every time some elements some things you do in the environment will encourage more zombies

um Nathan is going to take him out okay so that's good and then Calvin will just stick in there and so now this kind of guys appear so Calvin's okay so uh just quickly um run through this maybe don't need to see really let's just flee to get out of it wor too much end oh so can want to let behind uh okay right do that so okay I'm going to Whack Him got look at that what can er do take him out we got the zombies coming we've actually got to go down there

unfortunately which may be difficult so let's get na down there let's bring Eric around here bit careful with Eric one 10 so take those two out right so getting some do that Eric take they're going to get lots of zombies coming so let's get Nathan out of there

and [Music] turn okay right so let's see we just going to the exit now we collected all the little things we needed to collect okay we can get out so just getting these guys Into the Blue Area done so there we go we get our XP and then we go to this you can see the different injuries so again it's it's a they're going to take a bit of time to recover limit what we do so we unlock we found we got three unlock so we found three resources so we just unlock some stuff here just kind of randomized kind of G type things so so and also here I

can so I can get three more unlocks by watching video so what we saw before the incentivized video or we can pay 25 um gold to get some more so each of these nine whenever you see this one of the nine is like a is like a a rarer value item um which you normally obviously don't get if you only um get to unlock three but it's quite a nice um it's quite a nice mechanic the the incentivized video I think because you feel like you're getting something cuz you you're getting get another chance to unlock the um the resources so that's that's pretty much it it's kind of when it comes to monetization not doing anything too clever it's kind of well worn Stu well worn kind of um mechanics um very nice incentivized video interaction you know really good gameplay I think you know enough enough kind of skill gameplay or enough kind of for most people it's not just kind of randomized kind of card card battling stuff I've got achievement here by it as well so kill 200 Walkers C

got some more go so um and the game's doing very well so so it's kind of in the top 50 in a lot of um in the US and and lots of other kind of big country top grossing charts just available on iOS at the moment um but a pretty solid job I think they've done here obviously with the TV series um now in series six starting or I think they've gone first two first two episodes have been shown we expect that um The Walking Dead no man's no man's land will be will be doing pretty well over the next couple of months so we haven't played it yet definitely worth down downloading it and checking it out okay come back soon and we'll see what else what other games we are checking out the monetization of see you then bye [Applause]