Puzzle & Dragons: Five Billion $$$ Made, Zero Influence in the West

And the the biggest problem is that the whole like the level that Mate was talking about is not the level. It's actually how many monsters you have actually created and then you have because in here you don't get monsters through gacha. There's no gacha in the biggest gacha game of all time and you just take everything from recipes like you go here and there's like okay there's a recipe for this guy get two of these shirts these shirts these shirts and that that's it. And that's the game like and you have some more dungeons unlocked later here where you have like this is [ __ ] it's 4 a.m. And we're rolling the dice. Late drops. Knowledge made of golden eyes. Felix with ads making those coins rise. Jack up designs. Worlds chasing the sky. We're the two and a half gamers. The midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too. Mat Felix Shaku bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight. Master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyber space. Felix colors like a wizard in disguise. Jacks lift us

to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey sick got your back. Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Aha. Ah. Ah. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. H. Welcome to another episode of to have gamers. And I have to say this episode, it's going to be something. I'm very excited. I've haven't been so excited about any game that we discussed. But before we do that, my name is Matage. I'm Felix Broberg. And I'm And we are your host. Okay. It's going to be good. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. So, we are talking about an

amazing game. Amazing, amazing gamer making millions. No, they already noticed because uh we talked about the new mics and everything in the previous episodes. But if you have if you haven't, of course, go on YouTube. Yeah, if you haven't, you go on YouTube because this, you know, I have to say we are just two and a half steps ahead of the industry as you as usual. I I wonder how many steps will take them to do this thing now. We'll see. Anyway, as I was saying, game made so much so much money. Well, the game is making so much money, but it's game making what in Japan and that's it. Not much money even in Japan actually. Okay. Jesus Christ. Anyway, okay. So, we're talking about Puzz and Dragons. Yeah, we're talking about Pas and Dragons. The new one. The new one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like me, I started playing the old one.

Yeah, that's the problem. Okay, so I guess this episode uh will be a little bit of a gaming history and mobile gaming history especially. And we're going to talk about this one game that's like really the the gacha game and the mobile game of all times. It's called Puzzle and Dragons, which you see here written in Japanese. If we go to their original page, you can see I think it's going to be the fastest episode that we've ever ever recorded. Yeah, let's see. It's going to be one of the faster ones, but yeah, they have like six iOS versions, four Android versions. Yeah. So these guys are the OGs by Gunho online entertainment from Japan that this game was the first mobile game ever to reach 1 billion dollars as for like revenue ancient history. Ancient history and right after it there was Monster Strike which literally iterated this same game. So that's

there. But uh yeah, you may know iterations of these games in the west that are called Empires and Puzzles. Yes. But this is and there was one also game before Empires and Puzzles. They died miserably. Heroes Legendary. Yeah. Was company always forgotten network cuz I worked on that game. Yeah. I added ads to it. Yeah. No joke. I added ads to legendary. Yeah. Then it died. Great. Not because of the ads though. Not because of the ads. It died because of Small Giant Games like Yeah. Well, you know, I think it would have not been dead if uh they worked with PVX partners because they could scale the game because today's episode is brought to you by our sponsor PVX Partners. Guys, you know, if uh if you don't have the money for marketing, you should definitely call PVX parties because it's the most effective and simplest credit line for marketing. No equity dilution.

You can repay as you get paid fast, flexible, and fully tailored for your growth. So, you can secure funding in less than 30 days. Super easy term in 24 hours. So, don't wait and take control of your UA budget. Scale your game. Visit pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you grow your game. So pvxpartners.com. Thank you very much guys. So what what are you saying? So I was saying wait before I put like ads in legendary. What do you think the eCPM for those rewarded ads were? Seven. The highest. No no it's it was quite a lot. The highest I've ever seen. Right. 80 250. So global average was like 87 and the US was $132. Yeah. Okay. RPG. What can you say? Yeah. Lots of high pairs. Anyway, so let's look a little bit first is like how powerful

97. Oh my god. Wow. Heads off and really that's I would kill myself to actually reach to level three and I wanted to kill myself. Yeah. The problem is that this is not the level. This is the amount of creatures you create. I don't care. It's it's highest. It's a high number. That's that I don't care. I see high number on screen. It means level. No, it means you played a lot. Did you like it? Did you like it? I didn't I didn't. Okay. Thank you much for listening guys. Disappointed to be honest and very very hard. I mean, I was looking at the numbers and I was like, why the [ __ ] are we talking about this game? I mean they were they were a reason why they pulled this from the store or is it was it monster strike they put monster strike monster screw it up because monster strike did one very big mistake whereas they had the updates lagging between the Japanese server and the global server and people get so pissed off that they just like [ __ ] it and they just went playing on the

Japanese server anyway so the global died down and like complete incompetence I'm sorry but then read it online yeah then you were like okay well we need to talk about these games like fine So you care and I with four people from the west and then rest of the revenue is from Japan. You'll see as expected. This is amazing. Why are we talking about this? Because it's still like piece of gaming mobile gaming history and like the the systems and the the things that systems those are still pretty good. Yeah. Let's start from the start. So what's great about this game and how it went into like being that juggernaut? They had this kind of a metag game system where you have these dungeons that are elemental based. You have these monsters. You have the shop. You have the gacha that they kind of invented. What year is this? Sorry, what year? 2012 if I remember. Even early days. Even this video is 11 years old. So this 2013. Yeah. So yeah, they're they're

very very soon like like imagine like this is 2012 or 20 you know like Candy Crush is 2011 or something like that on I think mobile Clash of Clans time. So the internet and the mobile stores are still very young basically at this point and these guys are already kind of killing it as much as they can. They have very very complex meta elemental systems dungeons all these things. The important part with the match three thing and I'll show you as I will be playing it that in the west we don't even have a equivalent of this kind of a gameplay because it's just so hard because as you see here you're not matching these things you're actually moving them around board and you can match the whole board with them. So I guess if this person finally plays something. Yeah. See, so you drag one token and there's literally a timer that tells you and

even your minions's abilities that tells you that okay, you can use five more seconds or enemy boss does a debuff, you can use three less seconds, whatever. And you see how these things are being matched in in in like completely different setup. Like if you compare Empires and Puzzles is like one click and then cascades and you can even put it on auto play. This is this is Puzzle and Dragons. This is something different. You see that? You literally need to juggle these things out. I can show you as I Yeah, let's go into some kind of a dungeon. The bonus ones, let's say. Yes, please. It's so interesting. You You'll see my team. So, because the core super like in my opinion, this is one of the best coursees. Like, it's still a little bit more hardcore for the Western audience. That's why we don't really see it. But literally like it's really hardcore for the western audience. Not a little bit. Come on. You can play a lot with it. Yeah. So let's say I want to connect

this fire one with three. These fire ones with three. These dark ones, the holy ones, whatever. So let's start. There we go. There we go. There we go. And maybe just leave this one here. See? So you match pretty much the whole board. This is completely different setup than you would like your typical match three puzzle RPG whatever whatever because this goes you see here is the timer thing. Here's the HP of my monsters. Here is the monsters themselves with their abilities. They have pretty complex abilities. Most of them are all pretty much focused on manipulating these tokens on the board as these guys on the top makes them worse and you want to make them better. Like this guy creates more fire ones. again elements going this guy take Baltimore into water and so on so forth like the systems and everything that they do do you see like like the look on the Felix face like I don't care I don't

care I'm trying I'm trying my best I'm really trying No you are not I mean at least don't lie but I mean it's like one of the the best games ever honestly yeah it's one Not the best game develop pretty much period. I mean it's just it's super hardcore. Super hardcore. It's very core. It's very core. Yeah. And and that's because because you know Japanese users and like the whole Asian audience, they are just much more core by their nature. So it works for them pretty well. That's how it just Yeah. I must say I was really against how far did you get? I was playing for an hour and a half. I was still like I mean it's for me even for me it's just like it's too much. It's too much. Yeah. It's just like there the motivation there's like zero motivation to play. Like even the art style is just it's too

this is exactly the same art style by the way. Like everything's the same to the original. It's too Asian. I mean seriously it's just it's too much. The problem that I have here is that I thought that this would be some kind of like western streamlined release or some kind of a whatever something something I don't know like for instance this month by the way we're only also going to cover umamus pretty derby because it's going to have it's released on 26 of June so you can expect that I am in the middle of nowhere in Croatia with on a boat party full game full game not this this please just Can you can you can you can you ask someone else to come in instead of me? Yeah, we'll see. Maybe ask someone from Asian friends. Yeah. Anyway, so I thought this would be something like that. No, it's not. That that's the problem. It's like watered down version basically because what does this mean? What does the water version mean? So here you have all the glorious

special dungeons. You have monsters shop machine means basically gotcha friends social helper mechanics like they're ones that invented pretty much the social helper mechanic but you you really need to have strong friends because you can use one of their characters once a battle blah blah blah blah blah all of these games are all PvE like no PVP pretty much all just PvE and uh yeah as you go you see that you have like all of these other things because a lot of the characters that you see here are done through recipes and then There's gachas on top. So the strongest one comes from gacha. And then you have recipes. In this watered down version, if I do the UI, you can see clearly the difference between the UI. This I'm sorry, but this looks like some kind of intern did it like two hours before release. Snap. That's like [ __ ] to me. Saw is in the mood. So So you have just the single saga. This is actually completely single player.

There's like no online nothing functionality. There's not even a shop. The whole shop is basically just this. So permanent at exemption pass and permanent fast pass. So looks like Felix got hired. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. Would you say that they have a web shop somewhere? No. No, but I I'm pretty sure that they're talking to Fastr to buy. No, no, no, no. I'm pretty sure like that they're talking to Fastpring because our sponsor is Fastpring. has delivered DT D to T2C at scale for over 20 years. What was the the year you said 2012? Well, it's not, you know, maybe maybe because they still power top mobile publishers around the world. Nobody says can cannot be in Asia. So, Fast Spring, here you go. You know, if you want to quickly add a new web store or replace existing D2C vendor, just go to

fastspring.gg. It's fastspring.gg. You know, drama D2C partner. There you go. Thank you, Felix. I see uh you you think about the web stores quite often, so it's good. That's pretty good. Anyway, not even setting up an excellent web store would say this because there's nothing to put in it. That's the point. Of course. Well, you can think about something always. Yeah. So, you have single player saga here. Not even the dungeons because the dungeons here on the original ones, they have like pretty good kind of structure in a way that like they walk you through the elements. You know, you start with mostly fire stuff, then you go into green dungeon, you destroy those guys, then you get them on your side, then you go to water dungeon, you destroy the water dungeon with green guys, etc. Da da da da da rock procedures. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here is just like some kind of watered down version of like basic game play then a little bit more like yeah

harder gameplay and so on so forth. Like they have this like a little bit of unfolding but then it kind of gets super grindy. Like it took me literally a week of very very long sessions pretty much to get here. It's still super hard. And the the biggest problem is that the whole like the level that mate was talking about is not the level. It's actually how many monsters you have actually created and then you have because in here you don't get monsters through gacha. There's no gacha in the biggest gacha game of all time and you just take everything from recipes. Like you go here and there's like okay there's a recipe for this guy. Get two of these shirts these shirts and that that's it. And that's the game like and you have some more dungeons unlocked later here where you have like this is [ __ ] hard. I won't even play this one. And then you have Yeah, these these dungeons are like I think this is the only thing that's been updated during

the time where there's like okay there's a new dungeon going to be unlocked tomorrow with like these monsters that you can get later. But the problem is that everything is done in this like so linear fashion. What? And tell me tell me honestly like what did you expect this is going to be streamlined version of this thing on the left. Yeah. But like what exactly like what just because do you remember what we discussed with uh the legend of mushroom guys last year in China joined like what do you mean we we need to make it we need to make it easier for for what do you mean? They were just unable to to understand four like that was a good moment. Yeah. I was like what? Like what do you mean like they can they can't understand like because it's too complex. Yeah. I don't know. I was maybe I was so hooked on that umamus release which is like the

full release is pretty much the same as Uma is in Japan that I was expecting that it would be something like this. I don't know. But this is like a this is pretty much like a tribute to the old times. Like you can have the game with all the monsters for free basically. It still makes kind of quite a lot of money in Japan because only Japanese people care about this and me and and three other percentile also the world. Jakob, explain to me why they have ads so prevalently also. Yeah. Like I also don't get that like like before the levels here. Oh, let's go into the level because it increases the drop rate, right? That's where you watch the two double double drop rate. That's the important if you use it on the on the daily dungeon here, this is pretty much the sort of currency because the currency that you have, not this one, but the the other one when I'm upgrading [ __ ] This one mana, you can even buy this. So, in my top dungeon that I unlocked, you have

like 9k and you can double that. with one. Yeah. No brainer. No brainer. No brainer. Yeah. So, you get that and then you get five of these tickets, which is basically start the level ticket and if you run out of this, you have two healers. Healers means get five more tickets and get five more tickets for two ads. That's so um this is pretty much like watered down version of the original in my opinion. Like maybe it's some kind of a like I don't know like you know I know for instance city project is doing like Witcher one release but I know that there will be like new content all the old content like like so much more stuff in it but this is not even it it's like some kind of game piece more like companion app rather than just not companion app it's like you know relive your favorite thing that you played 15 years ago or whenever and put ads in it. Yeah, there's ads. There's no catcher.

You can use money in it. So, I don't know. Do you think they called in rich? Um, no, they didn't called in rich. They're actually building gyms in in Japan if I understand. Yeah. Yeah. Like they have their own gym brand or they had so much money that like that that was one of the issues I guess that because these guys were still and yeah, let's let's look at the charts. So, the game you'll see. So, yeah, 5 billion, 6% revenue from Japan. That that says it all. And uh yeah, it's pretty much after 5 billion. Monster Strike is already after eight. Can you go to active user blade, please? I want to know how many people paid five billion to get here collectively. Yeah, not not much. What is going on? Japan. Yeah, if you haven't heard, Japan has like three times RPU of US users or four times.

That's Japan. Yeah, but like why is it why is it dying basically? That's the question population wise or what do you mean? No, like the active use of population. Good one. If if you ever have noticed this is still a gaming podcast talking about games not population because there's other other big games on on Austral like if I put in Monster Strike which is the a little bit let's say the other version of this from Mixie which is kind of same example of like one hit wonder company basically 17 million a month. What? Oh no. Oh no. Oh my god. These are after 8 billion already and they launched after these guys like 140 and again 98% Japan even more. 8 billion. Yeah. Yes. These guys are doing like 1 billion like easy in Japan

without even having like any global release anymore. Show me legendary as well and show me empires and puzzles. I mean come on. Like why? I just want to see it. Do you want to make them cry? Do you do you want to make them meme? Just put Yeah. Yes, you have it there. He's like small blob. It's even taken down now. Jesus. Yeah, it's here. Give me a second. I need to sort it. So yeah, this this this this there's your green blob and then it's like I take back whatever I said. This genre is a genius. Yeah, that's the thing with this these games like they just work in Japan. They amazing but they just make money in Japan period. And even if your empires and puzzles, which is amazing job in my opinion, in

streamlining the thing and making it work in the west, it's still it's still nowhere near. No, nowhere near. But it's nowhere near because they don't have the Japanese users that send like crazy. That's that's the problem. But why? What do you mean too streamlined or they just don't care? They just don't care. People in the West aren't that attracted to gachas. You walk a street in Tokyo, there's gachas everywhere. from everything. I just came back from the Gacha is the way of life. Like I wouldn't be surprised if they go like, you know, come be me store and you would like Yakob Jakob took me to a gacha store. It was great. Yeah. See, yeah. I want to I want to say I take back everything I said about Japan and talking. We finally went to Japan. Great. I know. Welcome to the club. Yeah. Was it was [ __ ] amazing. Which brings me to our thing which is the puzzle puzzle and dragons zero. The one that I it's actually zero. I mean I didn't piece which zero means

like zero revenue. Zero everything. Yeah. So it had some downloads like okay whatever the revenue is like I don't know like and like keep in mind that this is this is just from those two purchases. If there's nothing else to keep you buying the game like just those two purchases I showed like fast pass and add free pass that's it nothing else can be bought still half a million this is this is still 94% god like why yeah US is like 6,000 downloads which like three of them is me or whatever. No, I think you just you just you just uh message all of your friends just, hey guys, like this is it. John, download it. That's 30. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty close. Yeah, that's you and me and then like 20 other 20 other you guys are like 10% of the Slovakian user base. Yeah, exactly. Imagine me and like

my other three emulators. Yeah, because I couldn't make this [ __ ] work on like all four emulators and you know and there is going to be zero in that uh revenue column forever in Slovakia because he's never going to pay and me neither because I I bailed on this. Yeah. Like 10 like now. I guess I I did I guess this is great. It's like, you know, on the same level of like me replaying Dungeon Keeper during Christmas for like 5 hours because I like it and and that that's it basically, I guess. But man, Dungeon Keeper, it's a it's a legendary game that actually makes sense. This doesn't make any sense. These guys, this is legendary for these guys. Keep that in mind. It was everywhere during that time. I know. Okay. So, in their cultural kind of context is the, you know, the thing that we're talking about here. this this like again I was I was expecting more from this thing because the game the original one let's get rid

of this crap it's not crap you talking about the original one still makes what 13 million a month which is like imagine like how much of that is pretty much like pure profit like I can't even imagine how many people are running this game now that it is like 3,000 monsters or whatever. Like I don't know how many. And they're still doing like giant collaborations. Oh, they do. Okay. Active user base. 1 million something. Active user base wasn't a million, right? Okay. A million. Yeah. Like everyone's in Japan. But uh still like I think this is like the textbook example that still nobody will be able to kind of translate into the west and the other way around and like pretty much we just looking at the revenue and that that's it. Goodbye

can really say that now to ads but day. Okay. Amazing. Which brings the whole game revenue to something like 3k per day. Yeah, something like that I guess. Yeah, 40k per day. 40k I guess we'll stay. But again, this is just from those two purchases. Like I can imagine people buying anything else like you can't even buy energy or whatever something like No. And there's no no new updates really and no. You think it's soft launch? No, it's not soft launched. It's live everywhere. It's everywhere. like you see those downloads in Slovakia. I don't know. It's just that I guess it's more of a museum piece than than like something like for instance Uma will be doing because we can check um Musuma by the way uh as we'll be playing it. Uh anyway, I want to see some weird

Japanese ads. Oh yeah, man. So, we'll get to the ads later. You you'll be surprised. You'll be shocked. They're they're wet monthly. Yeah. So, these guys are pretty much pulling the same same. What is this? Like what's happening here? Yeah. You see it going down and then you look down at the revenues 1.8 billion and you're like what's going on? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's still Japan. South Korea's pretty strong 4%. Yeah. O let's go to UA. Let's let's just do UA. All in all, just let me finish that with saying that Hello. Where did you go? Oh, hello. Yeah. So, everybody who didn't play the game and don't want to get Don't do it. Who don't want to get into the original one and like hard one, just go play this watered down version. So you at least

can check mark that yes, I played the first game that did $1 billion in revenue on mobile first. So you you have the experience because some of the gameplay systems are still very relevant, especially the elemental system how these guys do it and flesh out the collection. That's like super good. But it's just, you know, we just have better stuff to do now. I mean, you'll [ __ ] your pants. Zero UA, no surprise. Oh, surprise. Hello. There's literally the quickest episode we've ever done. Absolutely nothing. They must have some UA, don't they? Think so. Yeah, they have UA. They have a lot of UA, man. There is play.

really only Japanese ads because he's nowhere else. Doesn't make any sense to make it. Of course. I mean, what what else you would expect? I miss Japan so much. Yeah, me too. This is some event with some new character which is coffee themed and it's coming somewhere in this mand. Yeah, right. Look s [Music] I mean lots of ads. Look along like why is it even what English sounds even English? I don't know. Nobody cares about Japan.

I mean, it's going to be the same thing because no two look two pages two pages before it was actually I think you're right about this being super profitable. It's super profitable. It's just like amazingly profitable. actually this this quality almost look I can't hear my sound you could hear it because I just turned off the the sound in my on my end. Sorry. Honestly, like this this is pretty good quality of the ads. I can't. Yeah, I guess it's some kind of a famous Japanese person. No, it's almost like if you if they were running this on CTV because this episode is also by Vive.co, you're CTV CTV partner because you know if you ever

thought about CTV ads and you you think it's only for massive brands, not anymore. with vibe.com. You can launch CTV ads on Hulu Rock to be you name it in minutes because it's that simple. Totally self-s served and yes, it actually drives real business results. So go to vibe.co. It's vibe.co and uh launch your CTV campaign in a minute because it's easy. So I think for this game we are we're done. I'm pretty much done because there's nothing else. There's literally nothing else. I was actually I was looking here. But that tells you how much profitable it is basically. Yeah, that tells you like it could run some ads, but there's like a few videos here and there. I would actually I tried to filter by date edit shorts of this game. Yeah, like few shorts here. It's like 400 views. I mean, seriously, 1.7. It's

almost like our shorts. Like we we have 1,700 views and like this is like the biggest game ever. Okay. Right. But these guys monetize so much better, you know. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That again Japan Japan. Yeah. But you know DC champion Champions whatever. Okay. Nothing really interesting. I was looking into I was trying to find some actual videos of the game itself. Oh, you have it there. I mean, yeah, but no views. No views. 4,000 views. I was expecting like 10,000 10 million. Well, not 10,000, 10 million views. Only like hardcore people play this now. But the salary man in Japan, how to get bald out of the block. Anyway, yeah. Um, it's still nice piece of uh mobile gaming history. Nice piece of what? Yeah. Nice piece of something

else. Something else maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I think that's that's it pretty much because I don't think we need to talk about anything else here. Thank you very much. So, this is basically a giant trailer for us playing Umamus Pretty Derby later, which we'll definitely do and do some proper justice to these games. Yeah, I'm not that sure, but I say it's fine. I mean, it it goes live on 26, which is fine. And so we will record like I guess in July. So we have some numbers in July. Okay. Thank you very much for listening. And I mean really thank you very much for listening. Thank you. Yeah. If you got to this point like you are really hardcore RPG fan as me. No pretty hardcore fan of the podcast because I wouldn't I wouldn't go until this point. So thank you. See you in our select. See you in our select show. Please comment under the episode if you like it or you didn't. and see you next time. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

[Music]