Mr.Autofire live review w/ Miikka Ahonen: User Acquisition, Creatives, Game design, Admon (#79)

yeah yeah yeah so now you want to iterate because sword sword game and Mr Al fire and now the new game seems to be running on a similar kind of a meta game I mean you're right I don't I don't think we are like it's not like a strategic decision to do exactly that it just kind of evolved just doing it smartly yeah it's just kind of evolved uh and there's a factor of there's not really a lot of games like that in the App Store that also have this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast two and a half gamer sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our day-to-day user acquisition game design and AD monetization jobs we are definitely not discussing the latest industry news but having so much fun let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously it's okay yeah oh let's let's try let's try let's try can we can we can we go uh finally okay uh so welcome this is session number 79

my name is mat lerich I'm Felix Brer and I'm we are your hosts for today uh but today we're joined by our good friend mik honen because we are going to discuss Mr out of fire and talk a bit about the other games sword game and battle Badgers Mika welcome could you please introduce yourself and lightheart entertainment a little bit sure thanks for having me mate uh Jacob Felix uh yeah my name is m um F of the co-founders of lightheart entertainment we are a mobile free-to-play Studio based in Helsinki although we do have employees around Europe basically uh the company was founded four years ago roughly and uh we're mostly known for Mr Roo fire which is our first game uh that's been out since uh late 2019 nice 2019 okay well you also uh have in your team our former colleague

Gabor from pix Federation right so it's a small world yeah that's correct uh Gabor is actually running Mr roif fire so uh if I'm going to speak on any anything that is untrue he will come for me at the office I know yeah yeah yeah know we know him wellend sending our regard yes uh so te in in our previous episode this one is going to be special because we will do our classic review based on external numbers tools and using our sness multiplier so M for you sness multiplier is when uh when we need to multiply numbers because we look into different tools and usually they underestimate revenues so we do this sadness multiplier and it's usually from what we see in the tools like if we talk about two million um a month Revenue that's usually it's like four closer to four or something around 3.5 so that's

why you call it s so you're just calling it it's like a constant that you pull out of your sleeve and you call it that exactly always in Finland we have a term for it it's called herand constant so like yeah people in the multier for nine but yeah yeah because we were always sad when someone said like hey well so you're you were super wrong because of the numbers like ah all right then uh yeah we are going to multiply it so again so you then M can tell us how wrong we are and uh then we're going to actually discuss it but don't forget this is no [ __ ] gaming show so we expect brutal honesty uh if you don't want to comment just say uh cucumbers or pickles whatever we will move on uh but we will never invite you again just I I think one time is enough anyway so okay okay okay okay so let's I think we

can start with like few things uh I think M Auto fire numbers and some intros and I think before hybrid casual was a term uh you called it hyper core is that true m i mean when you're raising money you need to come up with something of your own and that's what we came up with uh I think it was actually Manu who probably came up with hybrid casual that the from the navik uh consultancy and uh I was trying to push to him to use hypercore instead but but he wouldn't budge so yeah that kind of I guess that took off better than hypercore but right yeah we we we basically uh started the company right around when Archer was launched so so so that's kind of where we realized that uh these arcade games uh with some skill element can be also made into proper free toplay businesses nice so I was

looking into the into the tools and um Mr outar was launched what it looks like like April May 2020 but you mentioned 2019 was like glunch what what you say Global launch soft launch was six months after arero if I counted it right yeah so the game was out in November 2019 uh the first version I think iOS iOS US uh jch and then uh then I think we launched the Android version shortly after yeah I don't actually remember it but it must have been out by December yeah okay but but as I said like it's ex exactly six months after global L of arero which is a really like amazing speed to be honest heads heads heads off thanks yeah so we founded the company in May uh 2019 um and then we prototyped over the summer and decided to go for the shooter prototype which became Ro of fire in August

okay that's it's great I saw the like there was kind of like a scale happening at the end of like year 2020 in Q4 which is definitely interesting approach and uh having peaked in like January 2021 in terms of like downloads around like 1 million a month roughly and regarding the revenues the game has best month looks like December 2021 which was a year after I mean it was like around this like one million also at the the December 2020 but also like the December last uh every year after but let's take again into consideration the saddest multipliers so I think if it was like one million a month in that um tool then I would say in and this is Ina re in up purchase Revenue only I would say this could be easily like around like 1.2 million maybe closer to two but uh depends if you want to comment or not but it looks like it was doing quite well in like

this December 2021 or like during the whole year I I don't remember like the exact dates but but but at our Peak I think we were doing like 28 30 million like forward looking run rate gross revenue so I think 1 million per month is definitely undershooting it yeah yeah yeah for so yeah the sadness multiplier is definitely 1.2 or two x of what we we sizable chunk of AD Revenue as well so keep that in mind yeah that that's that's that's what we can because then then when I looked at like overall numbers it looks like you got like 10 million of downloads and uh in Ina Ina purchase Revenue like 24 million around again if you take the sadness multiplayer here could be easily like what like 40 the the whole lifetime of the of the game but now earning more than what let's say I estimate like one

more than 1 million around 1 million a month uh and uh but with very few installs like 50k per month basically yeah I think yeah that's roughly the correct ballpark nice okay so we are not actually that bad in estimating things but yeah it's that's very very interesting and very nice uh well revenue and the well the daily install we will get we will get back to that so in terms of retention we see 50 52% day 1 24 day seven and day 30 is around like 10 on iOS and when I looked at day 90 which was almost like 4.5% in the tools we see and it's very similar to what we are discussing uh on Android it's just 51 day one 23 day seven 9 day 30 and then around 4% on day 90 on the Android this is roughly what we see in the in the the tools which I

think it's quite interesting numbers so uh very nice job man very nice job thanks uh uh maybe I can you can correct I can I can correct that I think actually those retention tools always they overestimate overestimate yes I I agree there that like that's sad as multier but it's like a happiness multip exactly are you are you using that already no but we will we will def will not okay but uh which one of these is kind of like uh far from the TR this is the day one or the long term day one I see is much lower in my other favorite too it's somewhere around 36 to 35 or somewhere there so I think you can take the average yeah so we take the average there's the reality between 7 but if you think about the business case of a game like like like Mr Ro fire the day one redention

yeah that important for the long-term business I mean it's important as a signal when you start it out but but uh but it's the the of theur yeah A90 that makes you the money nice okay all right Felix so uh what you got for the admon or should we start with yakob maybe maybe we start with uh uh yakob actually and maybe you can show off the game a bit and just so our dear listeners know what we're talking about okay but do you want to do the admon during it or I can do I can do Adon now and you show off the game first okay sure sure sure so I played Mr ire last time in January and then I started again last week to prepare for the show and I can see you guys have very much doubled down on ad monetization since then uh it's a lot more hardcore I remember in January there was just a few rewarded mystery crate placements during the gameplay and the odd one in the main menu uh maybe you can show yeah there is actually the yeah the mystery crate you can see there boom nice that's actually a branded one

you know I think it's like an event one or something yeah okay and then maybe you can go to the main menu as well yob no too late he needs to play he needs to play now yeah you're never going to get uh to level nine at all it is a nice event by the way yeah I like this one can you go to the shop yeah and show off the ad placements I think they're all gone because I all yeah you use them all so there's one here metal crate that's on like what 24hour cool down yeah no no not here uh like there's one for some either soft currency or Keys one weekly and one daily yeah yeah one daily here and one weekly here then there's uh one crate cor yeah that's that's there and one one week this one and I don't know if hero summon also works I don't think so there's one free in seven days I

think yeah it's not it's not based on the the ad view stuff yeah yeah so I count two mystery crates per run uh equipment metal case that appears on a 24-hour cooldown hero summon keys on a 7 hour 7-Day coold down rare crate pop-ups in the main menu uh which I don't really know when that happens uh but it's really nice and welcome monthly offer like metal crates and hero summon keys and a rewarded video toour like revive but it doesn't show up every time when you die so it's on some kind of lottery I think or some kind of I only got I only got gems I only got gems for Revival yeah I got a rewarded once to heal myself I don't know what's what's the thinking behind there uh yeah so it's it's actually there's a lucky chance for it to pop off what's the odds I actually don't remember so I don't have to tell you you can retry and and you know figure it out yeah yeah then then also you have intertial ads

that show up uh I think about every 10 to 15 minutes uh during core Loop main gameplay uh after a level is finished and on top of that you have also implemented an offer wall the interstitials in between levels were just [ __ ] amazing so I just got the intertial and then it said like you can uh purchase iip and then this intrusive ads in between levels will disappear did you like that yeah I love that I like that very much so did I miss any placements there this one yeah that one oh yeah of course good jobob yeah yeah good stuff uh I'm just a bit like a higher level than you have but when you uh when you implemented the interstitials like uh how do the players like react to the increased amount of placements interstitials I mean they were they were always there um yeah so what was your question specifically no like all the ads cuz you basically have increased ad placements like RV ad I guess yeah yeah yeah yeah

uh I don't think we got any backlash from the ads uh but we have managed to kind of push up the uh RV per uh da player yeah RV but uh we haven't really pushed the interstitials ever uh like like that since RV is just much better experience and also I mean Better Business yeah so like what's the most popular like the most popular ones must be the mystery crates during gameplay right completely because in my experience like yeah users sometimes don't look beyond the core Loop before like ad placement so yeah correct that is correct and what what's the like opt-in rate for the rewarded placements roughly that are on the main menu I guess it's like maybe half or a third of the ones that are in the main core Loop oh I don't remember that from the of my head is a of ads between so rewarded video so assuming that I don't watch any ones in the main menu and only the ones in the core

gameplay I think it's around maybe 3.0 or 3.5 overall on rewarded video per yeah uh I think you're off by about a factor of two a factor of two wow yeah so it's actually closer to six is that what you're saying interesting is the ad viewer rate around 50% or 70% uh it's it's like 60 to 70 nice oh wow that's a lot higher than for those who are not catching up it's the percentage of players that watch at least one ads yeah so if you if you factor in interstitials it's 70 plus oh wow good so intertial as well I open up the ex [ __ ] do the ma I did actually I did are you redoing your math under the revenue yeah of course carry the two oh yeah quite a quite a lot yeah quite a lot like honestly I thought it would be around uh 3.0 but yeah that's really impressive uh the Imp for interstitials which is always hard to increase because

it usually hurts the retention quite a lot like I'm assuming here it's somewhere around two it's it's probably less so actually like what we do is uh if you engage with the RVs you're not going to see inter Cals okay well that's that's [ __ ] come on I I really watched a lot of rewarded videos and I got inters as well okay well you will see less of them in your face okay maybe okay if if it's May you just haven't seen the full force of them you know now that you watch few videos okay could be I'm just wondering like do you segment so that's quite interesting way of segmenting so the more rewarded video you watch the less interstitials you watch that's the main segmentation then I I think it goes kind of under cool down so if you watch an RV then we're not going to show you interests for a while yeah okay cool it's like I think it's fair for the players uh like if you if you you know opt into an ad and get an ad immediately after it feels really bad so that's more a design thing than than a business thing I think yeah so basically the da in the last 30 days

according to our uh sadness multiplier uh data tools uh was around like 60,000 Dau in the last 30 days is that like on the money or is that a bit off it's uh it it's in the right ballpark for sure yeah so iOS iOS USA users about 20 and a half 20,000 users and 13,000 Android users in the states roughly no that's too too much detail I I don't remember that okay exactly come on cool so basically that should mean that you're earning somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000 per day in ad Revenue uh currently on Mr aif fire not counting off offeral yeah that's that's not far from the truth so once yeah once you corrected your math I guess you yeah I did correct my math cuz originally I thought it was about like 3,000 or like uh what was it 2,500 but right yeah luckily I can yeah change my Excel sheet quite quickly but the big caveat here is like I I've only seen Unity ads whenever

I play it is that the only Network you have implemented right now I think it just might be that uh that Google and meta don't value your impressions I think so so how many networks do you have I mean we have The Usual Suspects uh Google I I saw appin app I saw app at yeah it was uh very annoying super long end card and I guess trying to get me convert super extra hard right and on offer well I'm just curious is that kind of also the the the rough amount like 10% often that you see there or is it lower uh I think it's lower I don't remember at the top of my head but it's it's not a very like sizable chunk of the revenue okay cool yeah so so what's the like the split between ads and and uh and inops in that case I mean more more iip right more iip yeah more than 7030 maybe something like that yeah okay okay sounds about right that's what I I would

think yeah but you know like if if in that case you earn around 1 million month then yeah okay makes sense around around okay so what's the Felix what's the what's the rating I mean the rating I was going to give him a solid seven out of seven out of 10 but basically now he's telling me he's like two times as many rewarded videos as I thought it was so yeah you know now I need to change it to an eight uh the main reason it's not higher is basically I would probably push even more in intials when people haven't made a purchase and if they're not like yeah basically like squeze would you say banners would work as well but it's like the da is not as high right so I guess no so basically like the key to making a lot of ad revenu is just having a big da and then having them watch a lot of ads and the thing about banners is like when is this type of da it's not really going to make a really big difference if you have a lot of it uh so I wouldn't really recommend banners as well plus it's going to make it quite ugly uh the only thing that banners like the argument I would make four banners would be that if

you have some kind of users that have never bought anything ever and they don't convert either with like rewarded videos also show Banners To those users because your session lengths I'm assuming they're probably around like 15 20 minutes right right right yeah yeah yeah which means that you can get a boatload of reward of banner Impressions I would sh if you had it on about like a 15 um a uh 15c refresh rate and if you said it there I would say that probably you can show anywhere between 80 to 95 Banner Impressions per da uh which is quite High uh so it could potentially be yeah more Revenue than in the intertial revenue that you're currently earning but I just really segment that carefully because having banners to start with it's it's yeah let me do a counterargument that because the game's currently making most of the revenue IP as M said and there's very very fleshed out AME systems maybe Felix haven't heard of this concept of white whales which I think is kind of pretty important in this game which is that

there are these kind of power users which haven't paid anything at all but they are keeping the whales happy in the guilds playing therefore the IP revenue is moving and you don't really want to squeeze these people out so what Felix just said I wouldn't do at all I think I think Jakob uh is right on the money there uh there is a lot of people who are really really good at the game uh they're important to the game and and we we want them to stay in the game yeah even though they are not paying right now I mean it's like it's free to play for a reason right it's very similar to what like Forex in that case of whale have fun whales have fun and they they can play with uh different Forex is different Forex you feed the whales you need more okay okay this is just okay okay true okay you don't feed Wells here but you keep them happy because they have uh okay someone I mean there's an active community of players they like to you know figure out the optimal way to play and all of that and that is valuable oh yeah definitely cool but

let's move on to UA I want to hear uh uh Ma's take on this H we can talk we can talk UA okay we two one go UA y UA UA UA okay so I'm going to focus on first eight months of this year because uh there seems to be quite a big decline in uh in spending in September so I guess you scale down mainly to Facebook and Google with a bit of molo uh any comments on on scaling uh down or uh I mean yeah that is correct uh why why would you think that Publishers usually scale down well because the numbers suck uh but that's the thing like you have 50k new installs per month and then the revenue stays basically the same or like at like similar level so something is not not right maybe CPI in increased quite heavily and the payback period

then kind of prolonged to the levels that you don't want to uh to see maybe that would be like my assumption right yeah so we have been operating with the kind of similar profitability goals for basically like since since we scaled fire up the uh like started scaling it up so so our approach hasn't really changed in that way so I would assume you're what the aiming for getting 100% in 90 days uh it's actually a little bit longer than that oh nice so the game has a pretty healthy healthy curve very nice well in that case uh I would expect uh way more from the UA team and I respect ver quite heavily so I won't uh I won't push too much I won't I mean you you give us something we can use and we'll test it okay very good so anyway uh let's focus on the interesting part uh which

was happening until August so what else the na right so it looks like you were spending quite a lot of money on up hey finally got to where I am in the game well I'm in the free the space station I think like almost at the end never yeah but it's hard then they come by wave anyway yeah sorry yeah so I guess it was mainly appin and then uh well a lot of playables throughout the months which is great I would play them all but our favorite data tools let me down again uh so I I wasn't able to download them or record but then we have Google Facebook and a bunch of other channels so it looks like Unity was pretty big for you at the beginning of the year but quickly faded off in in March like that's what I that's what I saw then you tested the lift of digital turbine tap jooy and beat machine recently like any feedback on on like Tapjoy or machine it was quite interesting I think our data and your

data do not align here we haven't really had scaling Unity since last year sep I saw quite a lot of Impressions on unity in in January maybe it was because of molo or LIF or LIF or LIF off I think M we tried out though but uh lift off never digital turbine we didn't really nice okay so this is quite a big [ __ ] in the tools that we use yeah yeah sounds sounds a bit of [ __ ] and what about the top bid machine nothing at all no no I don't think so what oh well maybe this okay so are you running molco now uh I'm not sure if we are or or or lifto okay so we did try out but not sure about the scale lifto I don't think we it okay interesting okay so then it should be some really weird DSP mix that is actually catching so the the only tab Joy connection we have I think the offer wall has tab Joy okay could be could be but it's it's it's outbound right not

inbound yeah yeah exactly okay so very good so in terms of the the uh chns the data tools let let me down even more than the the not tragic tragic multiplier this is a tragic multiplier yeah okay so I guess we can just only look into is that multiplying with imagining numbers since you're kind of like have you have zero and then you multiply it and you get something yeah most probably this this is how it I I guess it works but at least I have like a few other tools and I was looking into it uh which was like Facebook almost like 70% of the of the traffic and then there was Google and there was little bit of the M as you mentioned but nothing I think but that that sounds accurate actually okay but uh 70% Facebook sounds too much though I think okay I think the past 12 18 months it's CED more towards Google like yeah Google taking more Facebook taking a little bit less I think it's a like

a kind of how the market has gone um yeah we've seen similar things happen with our own then the question is you do you mediate with Maxs or iron Source uh iron Source that's what I thought okay that's why the appin is already closed because if you were mediating with Max you will have the opportunity to run the the Blended Ras campaigns uh and with this type of um kind of split it would make a lot of sense but usually has splended row as well no they have hybrid draws but it's not as good as the the uplo and but in that case you could actually ask Google to get hybrid Ross beta if you haven't already right I'm I there's been talk about that but I don't know the exact latest like that's fine but definitely ask yeah definitely ask for it but it's let's put it this way we have uh discussed that like many times

over the past years like even since you know two three years ago yeah well two three years ago man you need to be very patient H it's it's not going to happen over overnight but yeah like now it's it's it's actually happening on Google but yeah at least on on Apple I mean it's like super powerful I'm very disappointed like no Tik Tok at all uh actually I think we were a bit late to the Tik Tok party but that Tik Tok is actually live right right now it is amazing that's great to hear because then you have the the Tik Tok creative challenge I guess videos happening hopefully uh which is creators making videos for you you just need to commit to to level of spend and then you can automatically add these videos into your campaigns which is quite useful on Tik Tok uh and then okay so I guess there is a lot of discrepancy between the tools uh and that what you are actually running so I need yeah I need to find out what is exactly the tragic multiplier in this in this case and then

like what exactly is truth and then maybe compare it with the with the tool that you use yakub and see like where is the overlap maybe okay interesting nevertheless uh in terms of the creatives and I think this is the like the area where you like the most why I want no hooks I want to see the hooks you want to show the hooks there's like zero hooks on no hooks no hook you need a hook M always need a hook there's only one there's only like one one semi hook which is like very like I wouldn't I wouldn't call it hook but anyway so I I I would categorize these videos into like few different um uh well segments or categories so there's like Mario like videos where you kind of get the Mario feel then there's like Noob versus Pro um or levels level one versus level five 15 then there is these like hordes of enemies which is also like kind of like altered gameplay is very similar to what arer did before and then there's this

the weird weird ugc so we can we can try and look like what I'm actually talking about so you know now let's let's start with the with the hook yeah it's it's the hook for you so that was the hook do you see do you see the screen yeah okay good so that was the hook and it's like these kind of the altered gameplay right which you don't I like the music though that's pretty good we can't hear the music though don't don't tell him or he turn oh my God how come this is too bad this is too bad so you you let me down again never mind so we have then the the altered game play basically I like this Space Invaders uh oh this one is Classic this is that's very nice so have't tried also like yeah these

different shapes not only like heart and but something else honestly more of this or just cut it into I me I think I think most of the winning Concepts we've tried a lot of variations okay have you tried implementing it into the game um not this one actually no no okay have you tried lying and showing things that don't exist preferably with people that are crying before people that are crying before I don't know this is like play Rex ODS you know no I don't think we've tried that kind of like attention grabbing ads you know I think we we're okay with altered gameplay but not the misogynistic no no no se kind of ads yeah but but there's a lot of you know space in between accurate gameplay and you know like a g Horseman being not a nice person or

whatever yeah we know yeah yeah if you watch Hero Wars ads you would know exactly what you're talking about so yeah I think I think you're right uh the kind of altered gameplay type of type of uh concepts are something we could definitely expand into I mean you can see some of them on the screen right now yeah yeah yeah that's true I mean this but there's much more to to explore as well I think that's oh way more I think uh there is one good example of altered gaml that I I kind of liked uh I will show it in the in the Mario videos but I think we have here like this enemies so look I mean this would be nice uh if it wasn't like three seconds long I mean it kind of grabs your attention but you can you can use this three seconds in a slightly different more attention grabbing way but this is a nice video it's true and also all of these like I would expect or you can kind of like iterate this with like way more enemies than this have you tried like swarm or

like whatever like there's like millions of the enemies on the screen actually we have I mean those are one of the OG creatives we started with like back to 2019 uh but I think I think your point is there can always be more yeah oh yeah so if you have a thousand you can try 10,000 exactly and if you have 10,000 you can try 100,000 you can get where I'm going going see yeah I think that's also a solid Point yeah can see it in the Survivor IO videos basically I saw also this Halloween one which is kind of like interesting what would be the hook by the way that you talk about that it's like what would you put there it could be explosion it can be anything here you can see it in like all the asset right there that can be a hook uh it so by hook you mean basically a front plate or exactly like first two seconds so basically this I I I can't stop thinking

about that like that start of [ __ ] gets real in Commando with Arnold Schwarz Ando when he like you know Zips the vest puts the knife loads the gun and then the game play goes y so uh I I think we've tried several different front plates uh and uh like what you see mostly in the ad networks is a reflection of what has worked yeah of course it's not a reflection of everything that we tried out yeah yeah yeah that's true uh that's yeah that's like very important to notice for the watching like you seeing just the winning creatives not all the not all of the ones but but but I mean like like I said give give me something I can use and we'll test it so so like I I will challenge you to come up with the Creative Concepts and uh let's let's let's test it out yeah I will I will don't worry uh I will let you know so this is the the new versus Pro versus Master so uh I would also try to kind of use

the uh the game play side by side not one by one so Noob versus then just like the the usual so would you do it with the kind of uh the the slider thing or just side by side side by side split screen side by side split screen yeah basically split screen yeah exactly and now we can uh we can go to the well there's the these levels as well I would say levels as well Side by level one level 20 Level 50 and this is just like I mean nothing else changes in the in the gate besides this and like maybe like five more enemies if you then say like level one and then put two enemies and then level 50 and then put 50 or 5,000 enemies then it's going to be very much like you will see the difference basically here it doesn't say almost anything like oh well this is different maybe it's uh it's not clear it's not clear enough then we have this like Mario Vibes which I told talked about which is I

mean okay now I get the Mario VI reference uh we have more more of this which is uh also what I think this is kind of slow to be honest I mean you see things happening but from this fast-paced game and like I played this like space station and I was just [ __ ] like I was trying to survive here I I don't get the feeling hm I don't get the feeling here in the in the creative that I really need to survive and I it's like really skill based and I need to really play this also like a little bit of a Mario VI and this this is actually quite quite good yeah the thing about creatives that are more hectic is that uh the readability becomes an issue exactly exactly and when readability becomes an issue your creative is dead so uh so that's kind of why a can you support that with the data because as is I okay nice yes yes I mean like we have a lot of hectic creatives that you're

not seeing them in the winning creatives okay okay interesting but I think the speed though I think the speed is a good point so you I think it's fair point that you could retain readability easy to read layouts and just you know try speeding it up tox yeah oh yeah well the pace that's really important it's really important and that basically like fulfills your design goal of making it look faster baced without uh sacrificing the readability yeah so this is definitely Mario VIP right oh yeah this is a classic creative as well yeah that's very nice yeah it is yeah it's quite quite good I was like ah okay nice and then we have I think this is the last one that I wanted to show which is again little bit of Mario wipe right here so it looks like D I guess uh this you have tried like

multiple different backgrounds and and enemies and all of these I see Mr Auto fire logo like we discussed with like any Chinese companies they usually use this types of branding yeah actually what do you think about that uh like it's depending on whom you from whom you ask they are like you should definitely put the logo in your creative and then some people say like you should never put the logo in the creative well I don't it's just personal preference I usually don't put the logo in the in the in the creative it does I don't think it's uh well I don't think that's the like that's the main point I don't think it's it's kind of helps you in any way so if you if you can try and IB test this and then see like how how how they fix the conversion rate but I don't think like that's there's going to be like a very big difference yeah my my guess would be that it doesn't really matter but that people still have very like I don't know self-confident opinions about it yeah yeah so honestly a few things that I would uh maybe

try uh in this so different visual style uh let's let's talk like low poly Graphics uh slightly different things than what what we see here uh then also like 3D videos so I we've seen in in the my perfect Hotel like some 3D kind of scenes where there was this uh first person view first person view third person view which I think well you have quite good marketability already but you can always experiment with these type of things and also the 3D video it could be just a fre hook in first three seconds like like yaku mentioned I mean you can just use whatever then uh in this case the the hords of enemies uh like more enemies big big explosions Fast Pace or just more advanced hyper casual stuff think about top war Survivor iio or Rush Royale basically using these like Gates so you could jump or like kill enemies

jump through a gate where you just get like I don't know twice as fast moving uh moving speed or you get oh yeah a classic gate gate created EXA ex power up Gates exactly power upgrades and you can you can use it in this like a platformer uh style then you can use humor I don't know like whatever like funny moments I I have no idea like what but something that can really make me smile when I actually look at the creative which I could sometimes I I see these type of creatives which is always like good and then uh the altered gameplay that we discussed um like different levels uh because usually there was this uh kind of funnel where the archero style which is good but then from different sides just like you said like readability maybe is it could be an issue but if you speed it up uh put more um or different levels maybe like use the space station right like if if you if you kind of experiment with

the different uh backgrounds and like this exactly what we see now works the best but I would try I would try different uh layouts as well so yeah I think uh the May m rating would be just 4.5 or maybe five out of 10 uh but it's that's because I think you could you could like way more than than what you are doing at the moment which which is which doesn't mean that you've didn't try like millions of creatives right so I mean top war Survivor IO rushy those are actually all very different if you look at their creatives um Survivor at IO is I think their approach is closest to what we have right now it's very much core gameplay driven uh top war is more towards the altered gameplay or like kind of that Al They have core core game so you have to do it and R is kind of

straight in the middle so so so all I think your your suggestions are good and uh I took notes of them uh but it's still you know in the kind of vein of do better creatives so if you had like one uh one concept that you would do what would that concept be that concept would be a combination of uh the the pace uh low polygraphics and the hordes of enemies I mean I still think uh even if it the readability is going to get a little bit lower then that's what worked for me always also for battle Legion we used like this like [ __ ] 500 zombies and one catapult it was the best performing creative right out of all that's why I I think like this like hord of enemies always work quite well okay moving to game design yes moving to game design yeah let's let's great as always you think

someone's still listening yob or no they're always listening man like people always tell me like we do the serious stuff these other Jokers they just laugh at you yeah I know unfortunately that that's how it goes people tell me that I do the most professional part so you different listener saying different things huh for sure different types of okay uh yeah so let's get back to that uh previous thing that we told before so Mr Auto fire launch around 6 months after actual Global lunch into soft lunch and then scaled later which is as I said like amazing speed uh if you look at the game it innovates by adding and a little bit more complexity because for one thing it's landscape based not portrait based and there's already two buttons so there's a jump button and move button uh in contrast to Archer which is just one move button skill randomizer I would say there's also very nice adjustment regarding the new vectors that this kind of a new control scheme enables so system and vectors yeah exactly it's not really like copy pasta as you would see these usual things here so that's very nice um so

you know this is this is Remo smiling by the way like this is his smile like that's as good as it gets 10 millions of like actual clones with the same thing all over again this is not it this is not it um regarding the diffic difficulty and yeah I noticed this is this true or if I just missed it because I noticed that when you kill oh let's say archero has this kind of secret thing where if you get closer to the mobs your attack speed increases to again get you some kind of a buffer of making you feel like a hero and it's like a comeback mechanic that they nicely implanted because difficulty is everything in these games so I noticed that you are uh removing the projectiles of enemies that die on the screen if you kill them they immediately evaporate and I know like I've been using this like as a tactic like I would literally Rush enemies because I know the pro projectiles wouldn't even kill me or like reach me because I would kill them before I would get there so how was the iteration here like how did you approach this thing oh that that's that's easy

like it just feels super bad if you kill the boss and die to a projectile that is still alive so it's it's just uh a design friendship for uh that we like to employ that is that like uh try to design the game through being like positive to the player instead of more friendly yeah so so so that those type of small things uh are designed so that F I killed I killed enemy and it kind of didn't disappear the projectile it's still well maybe if it disappeared man you just didn't see it uh take take uh take take a video of it and uh and send it to our customer support so we have okay I will yeah but but honestly like this isn't like these are the you know the devil is in the details these are the details that makes the games great that nobody's talking about like like this is how it actually down so that's head off there yeah so I mean any

game uh if if you if you make games you will know that any game is a sequence of hundreds and hundreds of decisions that you make along the way uh and I mean this is just a minute detail right but uh but but the game will be some of these so yeah I agree with you um how did you approach the side view controls because I know that let's say in the other game that we'll talk about a little bit there also one more control button and you here went just for two was there some kind of of a iteration even with more before or just just move speed before without jumping um no actually we never had that if I recall correctly the original um concept uh was uh two buttons or actually I think the original was there was like buttons left and right uh like in in Zombie catchers uh that was one of the ref games for controls okay um and then we had a jump button that's games yeah zombie remember

usually originally by they took it from someone I guess yeah yeah they they purchase it didn't take it uh so yeah uh the they did we did try out I think manual shooting but we quickly went back to automatic shooting what we did have to iterate quite a bit was like how sensitive the joystick is how it actually works yeah uh and and uh I mean nowadays the game has like a lot of settings you can customize your controls yeah it also follows your it also follows your thumb because there's a lot of very minute movements that you have to do in a platforming game so so so we tried to make it as responsive as possible without feeling finicky so so yeah yeah the kind of player controller and the joystick logic that was something that we a lot even even when the game was still live yeah

um but the amount of buttons like we quite fast decided that it's just going to be two buttons uh the reason why we went for the joystick and not for the the the left and right buttons was that there's a mechanic where you drop from uh oneway platform ah yeah yeah that you can go down so so we did so that was like the easiest way to have that mechanic in there as well like this is what just heard guys this is like your day one feeling how it's good because this also translates to like things like I I read about it like let's say in God of War it took them like one year to just fine T the movement of the X returning back to you and this is the thing with Shooters like movement is literally everything in the feel of it that's how it works okay um regarding the gacha of course our usual favorite one G uh I counted five slots uh and my guess is that there were just four and pets were added later uh if I the P was added like literally last week oh okay

yeah it's very yeah well if you read the if you read the what is it the notes notes not yeah I'm not not reading patch notes like just going out top of my head uh why why why would you go for four instead of six or like was there a decision behind it or I think uh I mean some of the things in the game are Remnant from the MVP from 2019 because you were so fast pretty much months after so so yeah so and I think like Archer probably had four at that point that we were like let's just put four they added two later because I know Survivor IO literally doubled their inventory after one month after I think I think it's uh like generally considered to be a good move uh I I I don't uh I wouldn't be surprised if we we're going to be adding some more slots you just need more spend that more power progression layers so that's there but but what we did I think like what we did in dead was the was the character got gotcha so so a lot of

focus went into that so yeah that can be seen we will definitely talk a little bit more about that regarding the refund mechanic because you're using the merge catcher how how was the decision there because I know this is this is then much more demanding without the refund mechanic in the current game like if you it yeah there's nothing to refund if I let's say have this whatever pistol three that I won't use anymore I can refund the resources yeah I guess that's kind of an implementation detail uh in my opinion you might be right that it's a better design to have it with no obvious downside though that's also one of the things probably that is a remnant of the kind of 2019 MVP design honestly I think it's better because you don't need to spend much more currency if you're going through it you can you know SL everything into one elsewhere let's make sure that we talk about the same thing so what specifically you mean by the refund mechanic that if I would go here I could refund it back to level one and get all the Soft C not sharing the screen can you do that in arer though can you do that in Archer

no you can do that in Survivor right uh do you know why Survivor let you do it yeah yeah uh because they have like so high progression tiers in their weapon thing like 14 it's because uh well I mean that is kind of part of the reason but the actual reason is that uh they have the AFK Arena style merge economy where you can use any uh weapon or any kind of any of the same slots as fod once you get to the plus r yeah yeah you you like first six six Rarities you need specifics and then from that point on you need like other weapons could be use as fuel yeah so once you add that you kind of need to add the refund mechanic yeah because so now you can now you can actually show what what you you were talking about yeah I'm talking about like no refund being here but what m is talking about is the fusion because yes if if let's say Sela intend to fuse and he would need like three of the same which I don't have here but what what happens

later down the line that it gets so demanding that the game allows you to use the same type so any weapon can be used to use it higher that's why we found thing yeah so so once you once you actually add the AFK Arena style merge economy you force the player to make decisions about merging and this is important system difference uh because once a player can make decisions about their merage paths you can feel as a player that you can make the wrong decision so so this I mean I don't I don't really know that people who designed have the the Survivor at IO but my thinking always was that the reason why Survivor has that refund mechanic is to alleviate concerns that you are doing the wrong decision and kind of like beneficial for you to merge so so once if if if I think if if uh Auto fire had this diverging merge paths kind of uh then then it would probably also have the refund

mechanic okay um yeah regarding other stuff there oh yeah yeah the the hero gacha that I was also kind of surprised a little bit so usually how I see these are kind of Shard gas where it's like normal in a way that you have chests that get progressively bigger pulls with shards of Heroes and then you unlock them and scale them with them but if I get it right you just unlock them through the shards which you somehow get and then they are leveled up I mean their hero levels through these like Elemental shards which I mean there's a there's a star system as well if you click on the tab on the top so you still need shards even afterwards correct yes okay okay so that's my my my mistake that I didn't see there's two dear listeners that's definitely your mistake and not the UI not being perfect that's okay but that's good but then then it makes complete sense yeah that's so there's Shard gcha and there's on top of it the like Elemental resource

currency system because it it plays very nicely and uh yeah my other question pretty much going right into it is that when did you add the elemental system into it and how did you make sure that incentives are kind of right for this because I see a lot of games fail because of not fail but like doesn't do it properly it's really kind of necessary or like the incentive is really high for you to upgrade multiple Heroes not just one or two that solves all your problems where gacha pretty much that yeah so right we were out 2019 late 2019 after 3 months in development obviously we didn't have all the content in at of course it is uh no no Heroes Just Two Worlds so you basically bet the game right now that that we had uh had back then uh then we started adding these kind of layers throughout 2020 to be honest uh by Spring 2020 we had I think five worlds and an endgame feature which is the tower tournament that you actually can see

there and at that point we were uh confident enough that uh we started actually scaling UA with something like you know 60 day paybacks or something so uh and then kind of while we were you know running the train we were building the tracks ahead of of the train uh I think we added the by Fall 2020 we added battle pass and hero gotcha mhm or I think we have hero Heroes first and then maybe the next update was gcha or something like that were there already Elemental based by that time yes so the elemental system was kind of there from the get-go okay and how how does it work because I never saw it like let's say the the weakness uh whatever chart so it's mostly used in the end game so there's the elemental castles um and then there's

events uh and then there's the uh the clan Clan events so so maybe to kind of to break it down kind of where what's kind of the incentives for using many Heroes um the base design was that there's these Global bonuses that you get when you level up the heroes obviously this is like easy to understand solution that also scales terribly so so so there's other other other stuff there as well so some heroes are better for other so some game modes or some worlds every Hero has a tradeit that is like a kind of like a free perk that you get for the hero yeah like like soft requirement let's say correct yeah uh later we toxic good or is he good I mean he's he you will need uh eventually you will need like a five Heroes of each element if you want to optimize your play so yes you will want to have him as well he might not be like the S tier hero but he's like a solid performer

good enough yeah good enough good enough that is that is that is a that is Dr toxic Creed yeah so you would not ask Dr toxic to save you if you're in trouble uh it depends who's available yeah right but yeah we added we added more incentives later like there these Elemental castles where you can use up to three Heroes uh there's also Elemental bonus so so these um Heroes of the correct element will get you know bonus uh then there's Clans that have basically you will use the uh Elemental Heroes as kind of like a ticket to play the okay Guild event so so if you have more of of the element uh that is yeah now I got it okay today today is El then you can play the mode more times so uh not really single thing but like couple of things oh that's really good like I

think think you describe it nicely and is there anywhere like a hard requirement like if you don't have the Elemental Hero you cannot play it or it's just more of a s re CL that you will fail if you don't have the right yeah the clan event requires it but you can borrow from your clan members as well yeah of course that's very nice by the way the social heal mechanic yeah yeah that's that's that's good well Remo is always talking about social features yeah social features are great you know you want to keep your friendly with you know great friends that those are the white whs I was talking about like you want to have those hard yeah heart players playing the game even without of the of your guilt I mean like Clan is is is something that uh it's very hard to usually measure like if you did yeah the impact of iture or not yeah so so you might start see it you know in very late retention or or like it's it's kind of vague so so it's like a hard feature to put effort into but was like

oh well we need to put uh Clans guilds and leader boards and like okay why oh because we have to like yeah I think it's also also like there need to be something that is like meaningful for players to do not just the chat but yeah of course like the it's a hard feature to design like you know there's P it off is great yeah yeah that that does it properly like I know even let's say Survivor IO their clown uh features aren't as fleshed out as yours if I understand correctly they were just added after the anniversary this year just the basic ones so you're like way like leaks forward compared to them this um yeah that's my other questions like there's so much endgame features and like the the you know the the width of the content different game modes and everything that you can play it that's like very very nice I I don't think so i' ever seen some kind of R glide on a similar scale when you launched how much would you say in percentage what you got as you have

now 10% 20% let's say that's my guess no 20% is too much I think we had like okay 10 5% of what we have today okay okay yeah that's what I wanted to hear even less CLE for people to understand how [ __ ] hard is to build these things up it's not that you know but also you leave it but what mik said like then uh until the end of 20 what is like 2020 you said when there was enough uh content then when you started scaling so like that's like hey guys like you need content you need also the other part of the equation CPI versus the LTV because obviously without that you can't spend that much I mean you can but it's not going to get any any I'm bit curious actually came up with something like I've seen quite a lot of copycat games or very similar games for similar gameplay did that hurt like UA quite a lot or like what was the impact of of course when someone is is is buying traffic with similar look and creative

uh it has an impact yeah but uh I think I mean how would I put it we are quite confident in the quality of our products in the long term um so I see it more as a I guess as an annoyance than like a huge threat obviously you shouldn't never you know uh grow complacent but but I think what you can do when people CL on your game you just like double down to make you CL it back making sure you clone it actually you take the good parts back yeah exactly yeah and and you just like make sure that you have the best experience available in this genre yeah yeah yes yes product first definitely Yeah because sometimes like like we discussed Survivor iio was first to launch then there is this hordes and uh what is it hordes and heroes hordes and heroes which uh brought like a little bit of a like different experience and some other like improvements but they were even they were my guess is the original Target was archero they were falling Survivor but yeah anyway so what

do we have uh what we have left uh discuss battle pass you you completed like you said they was said later Cosmetics that's one thing like I never saw anywhere an offer or like possibility to buy the buttons for the Cosmetics here what do you mean buttons you mean there's a currency for cosmetics in the game right so oh yeah yeah so so yeah the Skins uh so our artist really wanted to do Cosmetics so then then I was like yeah if you do do do it like we can do it and then I designed a system in like an afternoon then we put it in the game yeah okay question fair enough but to be honest I mean like it's something that like like by now there's a lot of really cool content there yeah it's like a it looks really good yeah and when you like I mean you should give people that work on your game a little bit of leway to make the game like really fun I think

skins is more like a fun feature than a monetizing feature so sometimes we have the kind of uh seasonal skins in in the in the ble bu yeah I think we had that and then we have them in in the gacha Box during like a seasonal event M uh but it it's I mean like when we tried to put the buttons into offers they didn't really work uh but it's possible that we rework the feature in the future but uh also to be honest the game is U still like although it has the glans and all of that it's primarily a single player PVE experience yeah of course which is not like you know it's not the best creating ground for Cosmetics uh yeah yeah I I I I just wanted to push you in a way like is are Cosmetics doing less than 5% of overall Revenue but yeah we don't even I think that answered your question yeah very much very much true yeah and and going a little bit uh on detour here um regarding the other game

that I checked a little bit that's that's on on the account which is sword game there's also the battle badges game uh this for me felt like an improvement uh and the learnings used from the previous game I know there's the inventory system actually is now much more closer to Survivor iio than then arero uh can you talk a little bit like how how did you think about this one when you were making it did you did you play that game like right now or did you play I played a year ago no no no I played I I played it yearo we this week this week this week okay I got the I got the first uh one of the first uh builds right G so uh so those are two different games uh yeah m m will know you played them both no very different yeah so so yeah we we are kind of uh H rating a little bit on this one still uh

so definitely like the the the systems that it it currently has it's it's very like Survivor esque I think like for me like it evokes a little bit even of Hades in a way that the the skills that you can sell in the randomizer they're actually very prequisite and they continuously increase themselves it's not that different 20 different skills is like six skills that you have the star system now right right yeah yeah yeah so uh I I I I don't know what you want me to tell about this specifically like do you have a specific question yeah specific question like uh why would you add one more button to it in a way make it even more comp are you going for more Niche or what was the idea I guess I guess you would never go for more Niche but but uh the thing is um for this game we couldn't make the auto attack kind of satisfy our uh game fantasy yeah fantasy yeah so in

these these kind of situations then we you know either ditch the project or we go with like what what feels good for the game so that's why there's the attack button um there's probably a way to make it work with uh without the attack button but for these Concepts uh like the fantasy that we wanted it to fulfill it it it felt like the right thing to do yeah yeah okay yeah but but for me like this definitely seems like the usual thing that I said that it's pretty much a very nice uh um very nice kind of a learning experience taken from Mr alter fire and then put it into another game which is then like for me it seems like much more flushed out even though I haven't played that much like just like few levels in a way to see please please actually play it and give feedback like we just recently did an update so it has a little bit more content okay yeah we don't have we don't have a big team working on it right now so so there's like a small small elite team is that because the the other part of the team is working on the new

game which is in the soft loue which is actually like like uh in uh in summer we we started kind of lots of small projects and one of them is the new game so that's like five weeks of development yeah Finn working summer since when in August yes so so if I stand correctly battle badges is even more ambitious in the way that it's PV P synchronous did I get that right it is actually yeah yeah okay and there's a dig mechanic on top of it yeah yeah so it's like uh it's like brawl stars with side view and destructible environment okay nice okay that's good and then my last question is then if you look at all of these games I can see some kind of a pattern are you then following the site let's say platform or template then what we've been talking about you heard what's that that we'll been talking about it like for a few few months now

that all the hybrid people they want to in the end create a template what hubit it now saying game seems to made one in the idle arcade genre and you maybe want to have yourp yeah yeah so now you want to iterate because swordland sword game and Mr Al fire and now the new game seems to be running on a similar kind of a meta game I mean you're right I don't I don't think we are like it's not like a strategic decision to do exactly that just kind of evolved yeah just doing it smartly yeah it's just kind of evolved uh and there's a factor of there's not really a lot of games like that in the App Store that also have like solid freet to-play economy and uh I mean like that now we've made a couple so we're pretty fast of making them but I think one should this is kind not to self one should also be careful that you don't kind of funnel yourselfself into like a too strict box so I I would say disadvantages definitely yeah but we discussed it with my perfect hotel that you kind of uh you then need to be in

the same kind of genre category whatever because the template or whatever it kind forces you to do it do the same things all over again on the other hand if you look at the the seames uh Revenue it kind of it's not bad thing they're doing exactly so solid games so like yeah exactly so if you go in the same direction and you kind of improve on the way and evolve like you said uh it's actually a good thing yeah I think that's definitely what's happening like the sword game is definitely an improvement in my M like 100% yeah yeah so my Mind rating of Mr would be uh I would say for the very very big width and of the end game and now that you said it more IP than ad Revenue I would say yeah definitely 8.5 out of that ooh nice very nice very very nice I'll take

that I'll take that rather than the 4.5 you know I know yeah it's amazing game man like L like head the game's great yeah yeah the G is really really good nice okay uh I think that's it than much uh all right first of all thanks meek for joining us because uh it's really important for us as well as the you know the learning experience and like how to evolve also like outside of this like [ __ ] tools that always let us down yeah and it's always good to talk to to people and you made a very good game uh well you can make better creatives but thanks for keeping the onslaught from us yeah yeah and and uh also please share the the podcast with your friends colleagues uh dogs and cats they love it uh join our slack channel uh we already have quite amazing uh discussions there and uh um yeah any any last words Mika on your end yeah I think everyone who's listening should uh

go to app store or Google Play and type in the search Bo box Mr Ro of fire and download the game very and yeah thanks for having me also nice all right thank you very much thank you byee until next time cheers thank you [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well we're screwed if there's anything that we talk about you don't want to have in the show you can tell us and then we just remove it sure the safe word the safe word is cucumber

okay I'm pretty sure you'll just keep it there and have me a cucumber yeah that's why we have that's why we have a safer word that that's pickles and that's the extra safe word if you don't really want to stop but you kind of want to stop it's cucumber but if you really want to stop it's pickles I I think this is something Felix that you're using your playbook from the bar on the Friday night not from kitat you know yeah [Music]