Puzzle Monthly #4: $60M Marketing, $65M Revenue, What Happened to Good Job Games?

But but I mean the if you if you just if you just somehow like I don't know sliding door as Gwyneth Paltro like all of a sudden the game was there you know on fire today the [laughter]
my goal is as many as many Laura laughs I want as many Laura laughs as possible today then I don't think there I mean it's in the DNA of the game and I mean here's the here's what you get down to what's the actual problem with with uh what is the problem with it and I mean why is Royal match doing so better and I That's what we got to dig into. I mean, in my in my opinion. And I mean, I if we look up
the [laughter] charts. [music]
Welcome to Puzzle Monthly, your favorite podcast for everything puzzle. I'm your host AC, chief product officer at Rotate Lab and the cons consultant and writer and the constructor of fun. Today, as always, with me, I have Laura.
Laura, working at Minecraft, but very love puzzles to death. wave. In fact, my

name is Tom Store, experimentation group,
and of course, David.
My name's David, former poker player and extreme puzzle puzzleist. Nice to be on.
Yes.
Let's do it.
Nice. All right. Today's topic is we're going to cover good job games. And the word on the street is that good job games are running out of money at the moment. And we're going to try to understand what's happening with their current title matches. And actually we're going to start back from how they were founded and like what games they worked on and under we're going to try to understand if they are actually in trouble with match villains or if match villains can actually be like a potential match three hit in the future. So we'll see everything about that. So share my screen.
So we've created a deck for y'all. For those that are that are watching with video you'll see some great slides to
Wait, did you make this by hand or is this Was it Fable? Did Fable make this? No, I made this by hand.

What?
I [laughter] know. Make things line by line.
Wow.
Such a craft oriented. Impressive. Very impressive.
I'm a I'm a deck making product manager.
Excellent.
And like Laura said, uh for the ones watching the episode in YouTube or in Spotify, I I guess you can also do that. You can see the uh presentation as we speak. So when we look at the timeline of good job games uh the company that we're going to talk about uh uh from out of Turkey uh they were initially founded by it and Nazim Akmandil uh both uh as far as I know they both like come from quite like a rich uh background rich history from a financial perspective so they didn't raise any outside fund and uh they entirely self-funded good job games when they first started when they first uh founded the company. Initially, of course, a gaming company being founded in 2017. They were focused on hyperel games and they had a a lot of

hyperel uh mega hits back at the time with the 3D in the name of their title games like fun race 3D colorfield 3D color bank 3D just like add 3D uh at the end of the game's name and you would probably end up with good job games is like uh play store or app store page and about like two years after their hyper casual success kind of like sustained them for a while. They launched Zan Match which was their first foray into the casual puzzle space and which was which also I think was a kind of a uh forward thinking move back at the time because like in 2021 launching a casual puzzle game from a team that didn't have any previous uh puzzle title or like puzzle experience I think was quite forward thinking. The game uh made quite a success. They actually about one or one and a half year later they sold the

whole game and the studio working on Zen match to Moonactive for like estimated approximately between 100 to $150 million. Uh and like Moonactive took the game and also uh they owned the studio they were that worked on the game back at the time.
So I want to sorry let me jump in one thing. I want to I want to that moment was really important because there were we were we had these amazing puzzle games except there was it felt like there's always a lull in puzzle there always feels like a lull so there's not a lull in someone comes out with something new now this with zen match I remember distinctly because I was still working on casual puzzle games at that point everyone was like it was like the gold rush tile match maong they they have something that we're missing something if we're not in that space and that's when you start to see so as a just as a a note Tilebusters by Spike Games, which um uh which also came I think they came she came from Peak, but um that game came out a year later. So

this space was like red hot. Everyone was super excited. It seemed like an easy way to mix match three mechanics that were so successful into something that wasn't match three. So it was differentiated. I felt like this literally was a gold rush at that point.
Yeah. And I think
they they [laughter]
I think they were able to sell Zam Match at its kind of peak because
once they sold the game to Moon Active uh and just let's take a quick like look at the next slide because it's going to show that once they sold Zam match to Moon Active the game really didn't go back to its like glory days to its previous days ever. And it like it's still probably it's still a uh like relatively sizable puzzle title but uh good after good job games sold the the zam match to moonactive the game didn't have its like previous performance after that. So maybe that gold rush analogy also makes sense from that perspective that good job games was able to exit Zen

match before it became like before the market became too crowded to make the game more profitable in the long term. And after uh they sold they exited Zan Match they exited the other like they had the hyperccasial part of their business and Zan Match up until 2022 and they first sold Zan match to Moon and about a year after that they sold their whole hyper casual portfolio to a subsidiary of Azour games and Azour games was a very prominent hyper casual uh publisher back at the time and uh they acquired the whole hyper casual type portfolio from good job games which had more than two 2.5 billion downloads back at the time with like more than 35 games in that portfolio and they basically in like in the span of one year they basically exited the both parts both halves of their whole portfolio of their whole business and

they had a clean slate to focus on whatever they want to do basically because like you sell them match for more than $100 million and the hyper casual portfolio we don't have the exact numbers but I'm guessing it's not like a very small number either so they had more than a couple
yeah [laughter] even yeah
it was an undisclosed undisclosed sum so it was private sale we have no idea it wasn't it's not public information but [clears throat] this was their second exit I can't stress that enough this was their second exit and it goes back to the whole question of um what we're covering Now, are they running out of money? We this two exits. It's hard to say, but let's Yeah, good. It's a question we're going to try to answer. [laughter]
I think the other interesting thing at this point is like if you look at the frequency of releases up until I think it's like 2022, they're releasing quite frequently and then it's like they sell these two properties cash in and everything goes quiet until Match

Villains drops. So he obviously had like quite a high con conviction that this was the thing that they wanted to do.
Yeah. And before they actually launched match villains, they launched another uh puzzle title uh named wonder blast which was a like a fora which was a experiment in within the blast space and uh as we mentioned I think before in the previous episodes episodes like in several previous episodes entering the blast space in the last five to six years uh never like uh concluded with a positive result for any like uh company or any team uh so far and wonder Blast was no exception as well. The game really didn't do well. And if we were to uh look at the numbers here, you you really have to squint to see Wonder Blast, which is this like thin layer at the bottom. And the game really didn't do uh anything meaningful, especially for a team like Good job games size. and and

they recently like exited Wonder Blast as well to another Turkish developer uh Fugo Games and uh they are I don't know if they are trying to like scale it or just run it profitably but they don't own Wonder Blast anymore either and then we come to the uh main the meat of the uh discussion today launching match villains which were which was launched in 2024 which was quickly followed with a uh gigantic raised $83 million raised, which of course like if you're going to build a match three title. And if you want to scale it further, of course, you need the backing of a large war chest so that you can uh have the leisure of acquiring those users and uh testing things, trying new things. And
lang my inner inner crest the it was two the 80 83 million was divided into two two different parts. So 23 million was a seed round uh backed by Menllo Ventures

and Arcadia and then the second one was uh 60 million series A also Menllo Ventures and Enthos Capital with uh Bessemer Venture Partners participating. So it was two different it while it was 80 83 83 million in total it was two different funds.
Yeah.
Yep. And as you can see after the launch of match villains it's like reached the size of uh uh the peak of let's say Zen match back at the time but right now the game uh is not at a very like a consistently high performing level and that's exactly what we are going to try to discuss later in the episode both through the game play side and through the more of like uh numbers side to understand uh what what is happening with match and what uh what we think can actually fix it in the uh long term. But to understand the kind of the long-term culture and history of the game development side from good job games, maybe we can also uh briefly like talk

about the previous titles that they worked on and that that they actually exited and design match as we mentioned is the first one that they exited and which was as Laura mentioned which which created this whole like uh buzz of Yeah. Tal match is going to become the next like merge. It's going to become the number two in the puzzle space which I I was also kind of a part of that crowd as well. I was also quite impressed with how Zam Match was like performing and scaling and also from a game play perspective uh how many different kind of like design layers it was uh proposing or it was providing uh to players and to be to be frank definitely was a great title and and also an innovative title which you know they they had this like two uh part like two half levels you needed to first like finish the first half and and go go to a more like difficult second half which kind of created maybe this like FOMO

impact because like you've already passed the first half and you want to finish the level after that point. And they had other kind of like tricks with how they designed the levels as you can see how they kind of hid certain items and how they progressively let you uh understand and like discover the whole level by itself which I think is al is still being followed by the hybrid casual market because if you play games like color block gem for example or even like pixel flow you're always given this static game like the game level the level design is always the same and you're trying to kind of like discover it and memorize it and understand which kind of moves are going to be your to be to your favor and then move move through uh accordingly. So I think from those perspectives, Zam Match was quite uh innovative and uh uh rememberable but memorable. But I think the end result with Zam Match was that as we also as I

also mentioned the good job games built a great tile match game and then they were able to exit it exit it sell it at the peak of the game and just like move on with their lives uh to build the next casual puzzle title in their portfolio. Uh, Wonder Blast. I think Laura, you have more to talk about. Wonder Blast.
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Talk about Wonder Blast. I mean, do you know any other examples of people exiting like selling a game? I mean it seems like that's very rare. I mean um usually you know
people buy the studio and stuff but Peak didn't sell the game either. They sold they yeah they sold the studio right they didn't sell the but I guess then match was also like a studio but this

seems like I mean it's nothing you would have I mean um you know I I I haven't heard of that before just like selling just a game you know like
only when companies are trying to sell overall or they're trying to shutter the studio sometimes I can I can see them selling a game in certain cases they've sold a game out when they're literally trying to close a studio or they're trying to earn back money from whatever but no usually if the if the company's is going to continue. Oh. Oh, I thought of one. Um,
uh, Niantic sold Pokémon Go disco.
Yeah. Yeah, but, uh, they didn't buy all of Niantic. I the
No, I'm pretty sure they didn't. I I thought they just did here
and this like the same happened with Peak through their like traditional board game portfolio as well.
It's they bought their games business. So, the Scopey bought um Niantic's games business in 2025 for 3.5 billion. So, it wasn't
I don't know.
Yeah. And I mean, what else is there besides their games business? Like their map the map tech or what is it? Did they

not take shared tech or what did they not take?
I feel like Niantic always wanted to be I remember writing about the CEO of Niantic saying that he he wanted to be an AR company that focused on getting people outside. I remember reading something about that. So, I can see so in that case, yeah, maybe game games were a way to deliver that message. But I feel like if if I if I read between the lines, it's probably not what he wanted to do with his company or how he wanted to shape how he wanted to leave the world.
Yeah. It's Niantic Spatial, the technology platform Niantic Spatial basically spun off uh from the acquisitions.
Yeah. Is that Oh, you're right. You're right. The non the non-vide game division was spun off into a separate entity called Niantic Spatial. Yeah.
Yeah. But like if you're talking talking from like a single game acquisition perspective, Yeah. That's true. Like even the peak example that I'm given is more of like the board game division and they will they sold the whole division similar to the Niantic situation. Yeah, that's true.
Interesting.
Wonder blast. Yeah. Moving to Wonder

Blast.
So Wonder Blast was so for those that haven't played it, it wasn't out for too long. You can play it now, but um it is I I I classify it as Good Jobs Games attempt to do what Dream did for match three except in blast. So, it was a blast style game. They had a little uh the Wilson family was building out Wonderville and that was that represented the meta. And I think there's two interesting parts to Wonder Blast. At soft launch, I covered this in twig 256. It ran it was looking for a USP to find how can we make us how can we make a name for ourselves in Wonderb Blast by offering the player something different, which I love that. That's noble. That's what everyone should be doing. What they did was that they removed the line blast initially and they add a propeller fish engine [laughter] into blast which is typically used in match three. We know it and love it from the fish that were in candy and then candy soda. Um and the what was so frustrating and what the problem I liked that they tried to solve is that if you go back and play toy blast tomb blast, you can't choose the

direction of the line blast you get when you make one. And I I imagine if I was sitting in that room with them, they're probably like, "Ah, all right, how do we make this better?" Because you can't control it. let's give the players more control. Now, I don't think that, as much as I like the idea, um I don't think it probably didn't stick because in a live build that was released later, I think it was 2024, um about a year later, they brought Lime Blast back and they removed the fish and propellers because going through my old notes, I was very confused. I was like, I don't understand. Wait, what happened with fish? Why why do I have conflicting information? I didn't have conflicting information. It was that they changed it. Um, and then if the if if you flash back all, you know, go all the way back to that time, time blast also came out in that in that in that same era and they they were also a blast game, hence [clears throat] the title and they kept the fish propeller approach. So, was there something there? Probably, but Wonder Blast didn't didn't um didn't keep it. When I looked at the data initially for this game, it had a weak uh web uh revenue per download versus other UK titles. I believe I played it

in their UK soft launch, which is why I was comparing it to UK titles. it was not a good sign for scalability early. So, as much as I liked the idea and liked the direction, I didn't have high hopes that it was going to scale. Now, there were some other issues with it design-wise. The specials are the beating heart of these games, like they can make or break whether you win. And they had a couple things that didn't quite land in terms of when specials would drop into spots that would create that would disrupt creating other specials. Um, and that I feel like that is something if you want to innovate in that space, you got to be super careful. Um, and we can talk about I was looking when I was playing match villains, there's something we can talk about it then, but um, when you deal with specials, you got to be careful. So, Wonder Blast, I'll keep it short because it just like, you know, kind of it was a short-lived game. It's still live, but relatively short. Never never really got to scale. Um, I'd say it was a case of it it kind of was stuck in soft launch purgatory. It was mechanically inventive, but it just couldn't clear the uh revenue per download and the

general KPI bar, I think, to justify scaling. Um the let me see. Yeah, I think that's I'll leave it at that. We can we can dig into some of the other other questions around design choices as we get into the last game and then look at all three as a whole. But I liked Wonder Blast. It was it's it's interesting, but I think it didn't quite hit if my my um estimated hypothesis of be the royal kingdom for blast.
Yeah. So let's talk about the last game is this match villain and I'm going to share the like a game play uh recording of that and I think Tom can take us through what he thinks about the game and how innovative it is and if you think that innovation is actually heard in match films to like to an extent.
Yeah 100%. So, I mean, listening to you talk about uh Wonder Blast, Laura, it's like the perfect You can see how it segus really nicely into match villains because it's kind of what they've tried

to do with the game, right? So, for me at least, I think there's there's two main differences between match villains and royal match. Number one is the level of polish. like they introduced that kind of uh cinematic type of um animation between levels and for live ops and stuff which now Royal Maps themselves are doing uh and like putting a lot of attention into the other thing and it looks amazing. It looks fantastic and the other thing that they're doing or at least at launch an interesting thing they were doing was introducing the the gameplay felt very different. So they had different kind of innovative types of blockers like every maps three has uh you know the crate and uh I don't know mine's going completely blank but like you know all the kind of classic kind of you got to hit it with a blaster you got to hit it three times that type of thing. Whereas match villains has got blockers which kind of like interact back with the pieces. So there's like

the police dude which kind of like jails your uh powerups if they get too close to it and lasers which uh beam across the the board and if your powerups kind of drop down onto the laser they get vaporized. So it kind of it was introducing something genuinely different to the game.
Uh which I thought was really interesting. Um, and kind of I don't know when when it first came out I played it a lot and I was super impressed by it. I think over time it things have got like talking to you earlier on Laura it it sounds like kind of the early experience has got a lot more kind of pressed like they've tried to make it a lot more difficult which is kind of you know suggesting that they're kind of moving towards trying to monetize more aggressively but also I find when I play it it's so much heavier on kind of messaging like between each level there's a massive gap where you've got meta meta meta meta offer pay for

this thing $1.99 $9.99 like it it I feel like they're kind of it feels like they're kind of like turning all the knobs at the same time to be like quick can we can we turn it up can we get more money out of this thing which is interesting from a gameplay point of view I think other couple of things which are quite interesting is is kind of looking at the data before um before the podcast um you can if you look at downloads by market you can kind There's a clear point where up until the first raise last year, they were clearly pushing on downloads in the US and you could see actually they were coming along quite nicely and it all looked pretty promising. And then once they' done that first raise, I think around that point they did a global launch uh and actually the US downloads dropped off quite a lot. I don't know whether that was a strategic decision or whatever, but then once you hit August and they did that big raise, the 60 mil one, suddenly like the global downloads

kick off again and there's a massive spike, but US never really picks up. Uh, and it all drops off like massively once you get to is it like January, February, uh, this year, which is also just before these two completely like slightly weird Match Villain subbrand games came out. So, there's, what is it? I have to quickly look at my notes. There's there's Match Villains Police Escape and Match Villains Spook Escape. And they're both very like hyper casual type games. The spook spook escape one is like almost like a mini game from within match villains. Uh and kind of interstitial ads.
It is it is a mini it is a mini game villain.
No AP and it's kind of like I don't know. I'm scratch you know look looking at the evidence in front of me. I'm like scratching my head at exactly what's going on but it doesn't look good.

So I'm going to jump in. I played I I think this is one of the first times I've played Match Villains. I remember looking at it and then I really gave it a proper play yesterday, which means I'm in the download cohort for now. I my first thought getting to I played through level 63. I started to get squeezed for running out of moves, noticing a visible increase in difficulty starting level 25. And my first thought was they are trying to get the payback period faster than two years. That was my first thought. I was like, there's no there's no way to there's no reason to make it that hard. And that's not usually what what these games do. There's a very slow ramp. Get people falling in love with your mechanics. Get them to understand the USP. Keep them as long as possible because the longer they stay, the longer the the higher chance they will pay and they will you they'll stay in your game forever, right? And I felt like they were going counter to that.
I mean, a very different there's two different modes, right? I mean, sure, we talk about it, but like if you're playing like a lot of a lot of cas a lot

of games that came sort of hyper casual that do hybrid casual now, you could fail pretty early. Like some of those games are hard at level six, you're failing and you're sometimes failing a lot, you know? So, it is kind of hard to tell which and what is the right uh what's the right balancing. And I mean I I think probably if you're your gut on the hyper casual thing is to hit fail earlier, show ads earlier, get your I mean if you're if you're running a hyper casual to hybrid casual game, you're looking for 50% rowass by day seven or something. You're depending on what it is you're doing, you know, which is not what match three is. But why is match three like that? I mean, is match three like that? Because it's match three is actually now just a sponsored event for Meta and Apploven to make money. Is that what the I mean that's the [laughter] that's what's actually happening. I mean you look at paybacks on those things you got a two years payback you're basically an apploving subsidiary. Uh which is fine. I mean that's nice I guess. I hope you get a good pension plan and buy some stock or something. But it it is a

[laughter] very it's a very difficult way to run a business.
Yeah. [snorts] But I think it's also like because of the long-term retention potential of those games. Like if I have a game that's has like I don't know 15% retention at day 700 something I'm just making things up. I have the luxury to just like uh postpone the payback just push the payback periods so that I can like bid in a more like uh free manner for like user acquisition and I can afford that. Maybe in Match Vincence's case, the long-term retention was not like providing the uh strong enough like was not providing the K target KPIs to them. So they were trying to pull back the payback period if like Laura's theory is like wrong true in this like case.
Yeah. But I mean imagine what you have to do. You have to launch a game and you have to start buying at like one and a half year paybacks while you have 30-day retention and you got to start modeling that out and guessing it. And I mean, you can do some models and I've seen

some really complicated models made by some really wonderful people and then I asked a seven-year-old to draw it with crayon and the seven-year-old beats them sometimes. So, I mean, you know, it's not it's like it's very very hard. It's very very hard to predict what's going to happen on day whatever, you know, 700. So, I um so I mean it is a difficult thing that you're trying to do. You're basically building something expecting to be very hot and then hoping that your model holds. And when you find out your model doesn't hold, what do you have to do? It's very hard. It's very hard. And I mean, two-year payback and, you know, Google and Apple fees, like this is hard. Anyway, my point is I think it's a natural reaction to try to pull it forward. Um, I'm surprised that more companies aren't aggressively trying to figure out how to pull it forward. And there's two ways to pull it forward, right? The one way is doing stuff with the game. The other one is with targeting. And that's what Apploven does really well is with targeting. So with they're targeting though so well that you can get the payers but the problem is you got to pay for them and then that pushes it back out again. So o
o is right. I will say one thing I liked

about match villain. So I I did like the game. The game I thought was a it's a very solid game. I loved the element of luck they added with the golden the golden fish. It's not a fish but the golden fly. [clears throat] Yeah. That part was exciting.
It doubles it.
It doubles it. And I mean, they do that in most mastery games. That's usually a pre-level booster. It's, you know, you get two fish for every one fish you normally would get. I love that they made it an element of surprise in the in the engine. And that type of core innovation is what I'd love to see more of. And I wish they leaned more into that. How do you add random elements of chance to match three that can that can either help or not help your board? Um, but that's my own personal musings for the for the studio. I'll I'll one day start. But um that laser you mentioned, Tom, I hate that one. That one. [laughter] And but I'm glad they did it because it's something different. It's kind of punishing and mean, but at least they're they're they're looking, I think, in the right places to to basically push change for the match three engine,
right? I mean, I I really liked it because what it does, particularly when

you combine it with the kind of like uh jelly style thing, you end up having like a a kind of actual strategy for it makes sense to clear the lasers first because that's messing me up. I'm going to get rid of that. Then you have to clear the other blockers and then if you've got the jam, you've got to spread across the level. It kind of splits everything into n rather than just like I'm just going to blow up and finish as quickly as I can. It's more like a slight element of strategy and phasing across the level. So kind of breaks it down into different parts. Kind of like Yeah, it's different. It's a little bit more satisfying. It makes you feel like 10% smarter. I'm into it.
Yeah. So maybe David St since you like talked about those uh push back periods and the difficulties of living with the high like two back two year payback periods in match three. So far, Good Trap Games has had these like two exits that we talked about and they have a like a quite like decent uh match match game with match which uh generated like

$65 million of revenue uh so far like in about two years I guess like despite that we're talking about all these like problems with the uh aggressive like uh level funnels and they have they had their download mix kind of like scubing towards tier or three countries which might suggest the game like adding more inapp ads to its like mix like why do you think this happened for like in Match Villain's case and maybe tying it back to a previous episode do you think if Match villains the the example that you mentioned if Match villain and Royal Kingdom was to switch places do you think the same the thing that is happening to Matchence right now would happen to Royal Kingdom as well
sorry wait do you mean do you mean um if Match villains had launched first and and Royal and M Royal Match launched later that royal match would be struggling. Is that what you mean?
No. If Matchence was launched by Dream and Royal Kingdom was launched by Good

Job Games, do you think Match Villains would be in the same spot right now or do you think it would have a different like kind of like trajectory?
No, same spot. I mean, the problem is in the structure of the game, not the not the publisher or whatever. But I mean, I guess if it had been done there, it would have been led by different people and would be different. Saturi, it's the Japanese Zen Buddhist term for sudden enlightenment. That flash where everything clicks. We're told that Heroic Labs team had theirs when they realized that most studios run live ops like a horoscope. Vague, kind of generic, same advice for everyone. So, they built Sattorii, realtime experimentation, player level personalization, events that actually respond to player behavior. Say sananara to your old live ops stack and konichiwa to saturate from heroic labs.
And I mean if you look I mean
the charts.
Yeah. But but I mean if you just look at it like just that thing the the the

polish level is unbelievable in this game. It is out of this world. I mean everything is maxed. Everything looks awesome. the video things, the characters, the I mean it's there is everything is so maxed it's just unbelievable and so I mean I one of the most interesting questions is did the max not only not help but did it hurt it is it too much is it like you know I mean does it does it take away from the focus of the experience you know
I think I think it's too much there's too much like when I play it now I don't know what's important anymore because there's just stuff going on everywhere. We we we we actually worked on a a game once where we kind of hit that point. It was crazy. We kind of like were turning stuff up and up and up and then one week uh we did a release and everything just tanked because there was just too much going on, you know, too many explosions, nothing without kind of like the point of maxing stuff is to emphasize it and

draw a player's attention to it like this is important. If everything's matched, then nothing's important. Do do you mean the polish level insight like core gameplay or the like number of events and how they are like provided to the player or do you mean like bots everything?
The latter for me the meta
I mean everything.
You mean everything?
I mean everything but I mean I mean I don't know there's like there is maybe visual fatigue with this. Like I'm almost watching a movie. Like they're like running and there's car chases and there's like things flying at me and I'm like can I get popcorn and relax or do I have to do something? What is going on? There's so much going on. So much going on, you know.
So you're thinking too much going on and that is why this game is not
I mean uh I think the real I mean it would be a really fun experiment. I would love to see the results of like let's make this thing extremely simplified and find out if it's worse. My guess is it would be one of the

favorite I mean we've run this experiment so many times. You take away all these art things that somebody's pressed like crazy and the metrics don't change at all and you realize you spent two years you know hammering things and polishing and none of it mattered. That I think is the most likely outcome. But then you could focus on what does matter.
Yeah. Yes. Yes. This is where Laura and my ven diagram that's where that's where they pass. It's all about gameplay. That's
it is all about gameplay. And there was one thing you said uh AC about your question. I can't picture Dream ever making a game like this and because of how the mechanics were done. If I remember when I cover when I covered the original uh dream uh royal match, it was one of the most it actually they ended up making changes to it, but it was one of the most let me have the players back in all in all areas of the game. I do I felt like they played hundreds of hours of match three games looked at them decided ah this feels punishing this feels punishing it was probably in the backlog of those games was yeah let's fix it but it's not super important I don't think we're going to I don't think necessarily it's going to move the needle that's fair but then royal royal

match was the solution to that they they basically saved all the the puzzle they saved the special pieces when they dropped down so we in in the original match three games sometimes when you would you would get spawned in for the uh winner win streak they would spawn in places that would take away from your ability to make a special naturally in the level. Those types of kind of they're not and they're not done intentionally. There was no designer that said, "Let me kill that level for players." It's not not what I'm saying. It's about going back and refactoring. But when they when Royal when uh Royal Match started, they fixed all of those small things that make that are like incremental by themselves, but together for him a very solid like defense for the player to have a higher chance of winning. That I take as what they want. They they wanted to make things that were genuinely fun for players. How do we make match three fun with this? I I do feel that while the obstacles are interesting wet between the theme, which is the villains stealing stuff, and some of the punishing obstacles, I feel like that's not to me it does not signify

that the designers want the same have that same kind of uh adoration for the player. And that's why I could not picture Dream Games making this type of game. I think in my mind they're so different uh just in terms of in terms of approach. You don't get those hard obstacles that feel punishing in Royal Match to like I mean I wish I wish my memory was this good, but I don't remember seeing them till like you're in level like 200. Like you're not you're not seeing those those more tricky ones until you've really built a foundation of understanding how that game works here. They're very early.
Royal Kingdom does has have those levels where you're fighting the like castles at the top and they shoot out those bushes, don't they? If you don't get them in time, they like true.
So yeah, I mean I I agree with you on Royal Match for sure, but Royal Kingdom I think is slightly different, which is
positions itself that way, right? It is made that way with the intention of all right, this this game is noticeably harder and it's going to be framed that way harder, right? I feel like this one

is Match Villains and again, it is a good game, but I feel like Match Villains is it does it's not the same type of positioning. There's no boss levels. There's no huge indicators that that's coming or that's part of it. This is weaved into the weaved into the fabric of the levels themselves of every level in the game. I don't know, maybe I'm speaking out of my ass, but um there's just there's there's a completely I feel like there's just a different royal kingdom lays it out very clearly for me. You are battling things. This is how this structure is going to go. Whereas the obstacles, you don't really know. And so I guess I'm just maybe maybe I'm projecting how how uh surprised surprised I was that they would build an obstacle that early sublevel 100 that would basically destroy your specials. That for me felt incredibly punishing. Yes, there's strategy and I get it, but I don't expect that much strategy. Sure, they're villains, but the heist is only coming through with images. It's not I'm not like doing anything in the heist. It's not like I'm hitting a button like timing when I'm going to escape. It just seems like your average meta a little

bit like oh okay now instead of rebuilding something I'm stealing stuff but I don't know that connection to me wasn't wasn't enough.
So like in your opinion the polish in royal match or royal kingdom is for the like the core gameplay and for the player but the polish in matchulence is more for the looks and like how kind of like polished it looks from the outside not the actual like the experience itself all the time at least. polish is definitely for the art on this and they do a good job. They they they do do a good job, but I don't think the the small incremental designs are necessarily this they didn't go as far. I feel like they want they definitely wanted to challenge the player more than they wanted to uh more than they wanted to like innovate in ways that would elevate the type of gameplay we have in match three without raising the challenge bar because there's ways you can innovate without increasing the difficulty. Well, I think that the interesting thing I think is it I it wasn't always like as pronounced as this. I think it's got more like this

recently since we've had this kind of like story last year of doing a raise, global launch, US didn't take off, getting doing another raise, US still doesn't take off. And now it feels like they're trying to like crank it up and try other things to try and kind of like because this seems to be the issue, doesn't it? is like they they raise all this money uh but actually they can't get the revenue per down like they can't get the rows where they need to be because the country mix isn't right and that feels like maybe that's what we're seeing now is like how are we going to make this work let's try this and it doesn't doesn't sound like you're convinced anyway Laura I mean the metrics don't look great either [laughter]
Dave before the episode when we were talking about like numbers and charts you had like an interesting uh observation about the RPD numbers from Metro and and a couple of other games as well. Do you want to talk about that?
You're muted, Dave. We want to hear your voice.
It's going to muted.
What's happened? Are you

Well, apparently while you're doing the sharing, you're not allowed to unmute. You have to do the sharing first. It's, you know, platform is very specific. All right, cool. Let's take a look at this. So, um, Sensor Tower, um, US, uh, iOS. So, we got rid of, um, don't need to mention him by name, but one of the great operators in our industry. every time you showed them a chart would say, "Yes, David, but is this US iOS?" Of course, it is. [laughter] Those who know, they know. Um the uh Oh, boy. Um so, we're looking at revenue per download for Real Match and it's unbelievable, right? This is like very very high and very good. I won't force anybody to guess, but um this is driven by like extremely good design. Um the increase here went up very quickly and you see a continued like increase as they ramp up on events and I mean this is very well done. Yeah. So we're going to add let's add royal kingdom and uh

royal kingdom. You can see that even if we just take a look at like April and then what what should we add? Add uh four months or something like that. So if we look at like August where is it? Something like that. So from you know nothing to 10 bucks after four months and here uh you don't like I mean it it gets to four months way later you know so slow slower ramp up um still at a much slower level uh royal kingdom than than royal match. Uh what's driving the difference there? That'd be really interesting. Um and if we take a look at match villains it's even flatter. There's something wrong. Not just the retention is probably great, but there's something wrong in how it monetizes. I mean, is it getting the wrong is it not attracting the same users because there's something about the puzzle purists that love royal match and when they play matches, they don't get the same thing, you know? I don't know. An interesting one to compare it with is Piggy Kingdom, which operates at a lower

level. the total revenue is lower, but the revenue per download has just been increasing and increasing steadily, and they're doing just whatever they're doing, they're doing a great job with it. Uh, it's pretty impressive.
We should cover Pigger Piggy Kingdom next. Why?
And maybe we should.
And I mean, look at this. Look at this install base. So, like much tighter install base. really looking like they're just aiming at the players that are going to monetize well and getting them and not involved in the, you know, I mean, drag out who's going to kill who, give all of our money to AppLoving first battle that's going on here. That's what it looks like to me.
That [clears throat] that that's an interesting picture because like we're always talking about new games should come up with like new twists and they need to innovate to be successful, etc. But Piggy Kingdom is a very very close follow of Royal Match. Like it's almost almost like a clone of it's the most successful Royal Match clone. I would say it's the most successful Royal Match

clone. And like although we're always talking about the like benefits of innovation and that's how you survive in the market. the charts the chart that you are sharing it tells me otherwise like you don't at least for match three for match three what this tells me is you don't have to like you don't have to necessarily innovate to be successful you can just like go on and execute perfect
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Yeah. I mean, let's say this. If you clone and execute properly, you might get a profitable product. It'll probably never it'll never be bigger than the first one, and it probably won't be that big, but you can build a manageable business. If you're going to innovate and try to go after the big guys, you need to figure out what you're going to innovate on. And I think here, Royal Match innovated on the core and on the what they presented, what they didn't present, and made it very tight. And they improved on Candy Crush. They improved on guard's case and I mean it it did very very well. Um and the question is what did royal match or what did match villains do? And if it was just on the level of polish we're going to ramp the level of polish so it's twice as high as royal match. I mean it looks like that's not a valuable not viable and I think we know this in mobile games like just improving polish a ton isn't going to be the big breakthrough. And I mean maybe on other

games. I don't I mean I'm not a I don't play firstperson shooters so I got no idea. I play puzzle games. That's what I do. But I mean the the I mean also a good example um Gossip Harbor versus Love and Pies which you covered last time. Gossip Harbor is not a a massive improvement in polish. It's the same. It's the same. As a matter of fact, it's almost a perfect example of what a notoptimized one looks like versus an optimized one. It's just optimized the events. There's ton more events. There's way more action going on. And so the revenue is like way higher.
It's also it's not on polish. It's not the UX polish, it's the systems polished is what differentiates it.
I think it's system execution. It's not polish. It's execution.
Yeah. Kind of what I'm saying is like it's it's the stuff that you don't you can't you you can't pick up Gossip Harbor and be like you wouldn't unless you knew it looks so similar, but the thing which is different is the thing that you can't see. It's the thing that you can't actually copy because it's you can only like infer [clears throat] from what's there what you think is going on

in Royal Match or whatever. But you actually have to work that out for yourself as a company, like what actually works for your players.
Yeah. I mean, if you're going to go after something, you can either go after something that is not optimized yet and take your knowledge and optimize it.
Um, and if you're going to go after the the big ones, you got to go after them with a real understanding of why you think you can serve this customer base much better than Yes. than the way the incumbents do.
Amen, Dave. Amen. [laughter]
So, what I mean, I get like how does this net out then? Are we just saying that Matt's Billings is just kind of like been a big swing and a miss and and that that it's just kind of he's never going to make it and it and if so, what what's the kind of implication from that? Is there an implication?
Well, it's on a home run, but it also wasn't I don't know enough baseball terms. They didn't miss they didn't miss hitting the ball and the the the hitter this the one with the bat wasn't hit by the ball.
Oh my god. That's fine. If you get hit by the ball, then you get on base, which is all you want to do.
This is terrible. Edit this out. God, this is awful. What happened? The ball

in the hitter with the the ball hitter.
The batter. It's the batter.
The batter, right? The batter. I mean, I think Yeah. The Is this going to be their Well, here's the question. I I still can't figure out. And maybe we figure this out by, you know, in the last couple minutes or not. You know, the whole rumor is that they're running out of money. Do I think they can I wish I if I could see a balance sheet? I'd be able to answer. we all would be able to answer it. But is is can this game again the lifetime revenue of um from sensor tower for match villains is about 65 million and that's what over now almost three years.
I don't know what their studio costs are. I don't know. I mean the UA costs well the UA cost alone would be quite tough but is this going to dig them out of the hole? I don't know. I don't know what I don't know how how open they are to changes. I don't know how they could change it at this point. Should they I the question I guess yeah Dave what what do you think? How do you think they can what where do you think their status is now? And do you what do you think they can change to make to get them out of it if anything?
Yeah. I mean, they've probably spent $60

million in marketing in the US, you know, if not more. I don't know. So, I mean, I I don't know. One of the things I think is really interesting is the um uh you've got the the uh you've got the um uh there's like a there's a basically they're taking a couple of the live ops and turning them into games. And this is the pixel flow, right? This is where pixel flow came from. It was a So, it's like following another trend. Can we grab these small things and actually turn them into something? See if we can make it big. Um, I think that's pretty pretty interesting. Um, it probably says like, are they running out of money? I mean, like you said, they only they know and whoever their backers are, but uh I don't think this looks like any sort of like desperation attempt. It's probably like, hey, let's take what we've got and try to find a place that's more fertile and a better place to uh a better place to spend our time rather than going to war. Um, I'd also say that maybe the worst time to launch it. And I mean, you could see this right here. I mean, look at this. It's absolutely wonderful. One of the worst times to launch, if you'd

asked me, if you'd only showed me these top two lines here, and you said, "When's the worst time ever to launch a match three?" I would have been like, "Let's say November 2024."
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That's also true. That's also true.
I mean, probably the numbers got doubled. And I mean, we know this. This is old, you know, old stuff, but like when there was nothing going I mean, Candy Crush is like such a huge a massive amount of organics. Like, you don't need to do anywhere near the same kind of marketing. And the companies that came after him, Play Ricks, um, you know, Peak, uh, uh, Dream, you have to spend a lot of marketing money in order to compete with the big the big incumbent. Um, and when you're doing that on top of an incumbent that's already willing to spend extra on top of what they're already spending, it's just a tough time. It's a tough time to go head on. Maybe not the right thing to do.
Yep. All right. Should we call it?
Anybody want to play taps on the What's the you know the thing that you when you're dead out?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, the taps. It's like when um Well, so

never mind. Never mind. I'm not even going to go there.
For fallen soldiers or whatever.
Exactly. it.
Edit that out.
Yes. Edit out, please. All right. Cool.
All right. Thanks everyone. Bye-bye. See you in the next episode.
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