The Hunt for hybrid casual, Captain Hook of Creatives, Google Apocalypse (#92)

there's been an absolute revolution in ad monetization in the last few weeks it's been a complete shakeup and it's all been done by Google and it's been done in a short time like time period and it's been perfectly executed and timed by the Google senior leadership like to a t i probably think that this is the most impactful ad monetization news in the history of AD monetization not to minut it can actually a bit dramatic but like just to highlight how big of a thing this is this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast 2 and a half Gamers 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 okay okay okay anyway welcome everybody

uh this is session number 92 uh my name is mat ancher I'm Felix braberg and I'm and we are your hosts and we also work as consultants so if you need help on the game design a UA or ad monetization site give us a call we are here for you Soh what are we talking about today so yeah we're talking about news hot takes lives are the br oh wait oh wait wait that's different podcast uh sorry uh so I guess we are talking about something else we are talking about the Captain Hook uh award we are talking about the hybrid casual or the hunt for hybrid casual and we're talking about Google apocalypse and also I think this is going to be live on 1 of January when I unless I get covid again and feel like absolute [ __ ] in in that case it's going to post a little bit I need to interrupt you there man I need to change my internet settings

because I keep dropping out and I can't hear anything hang on fine is fine we just lost your feet mate like camera is that just me or is that is that like I can also hear M [ __ ] okay so Ma's Internet it's Ma's internet that's a problem yeah no I'm fine no you're not I can't hear what you're saying it's like it's like talking it's like talking to like a wall I have no are you talking Rob you're talk really is better now you're talking now it's better we as I said like we still don't see you in the camera but camera [ __ ] that's that's okay uh we don't care yeah but now now it's better like I don't know like you know maybe turn off the porn torrent or stuff like that no I can't do no no no I can't do that like the Christmas porn is it's that's the gift what are talking about anyway did you do the intro I didn't hear anything man yes I I did the intro

it's fine if if if I if if you don't want hear the intro then I will do it again in the postproduction it's fine this is even better than the [ __ ] intro anyway so I think uh uh yes so I was writing my annual learnings and uh article and compared our subscribers 2022 versus 2023 and guess what it looks like we 8X the the number of subscribers so it was around like 1,000 at the end of the year now it's 88,200 around something around that which is not bad SS pretty good yeah it's bigger thanon yeah so and remember that our dear listeners Enron wasn't built in a day yeah so didn't crash to the day yeah so but yeah huge thanks to all of you guys for making this happen thank you so much guys it was just a joke about Enron but

yeah really appreciate it thank you so much thank you I wasn't I wasn't sure if I'm if you actually can hear me because you're just nodding as like what the [ __ ] is happening can they hear me anyway it's fine it's fine okay good yeah can you start with the the hunt for the hybrid casual yeah the mysterious yeah mysterious it's kind of our usual recap of a category segment uh which is not games thank you very much not three not three this time so yeah looking at the whole category um yeah looking at the whole category but you should grab the mic and put it next to your mouth again yeah yeah we we're looking have you have you bought a have you bought a mic like a boom arm yet yet we're almost 10,000 subscribers and you still don't have a boom arm so yeah once we hit 10,000 I'll do the boom okay at least we have some motivation um not you

have some motivation so overall segment as I was looking through it is still pretty big we're talking mainly about companies that are switching from hyper casual Publishers to hybrid casual Studios let's say um oh the racers list again as I said is uh yeah from top to bottom hubby Voodoo crazy laap say games hom ketchup lion Studios super sonic tap Nation rolic sorry since I missed M's intro what are you talking about what is this the racers that are hunting for the biggest hybrid casual game thank you right KY Green Panda games Aman good job games azur games boom hits yeah there we go so are you sure boom hits are just going for hybrid or the hunt Royale is already kind of like uh that's boom bit that's boom okay different different portfolio account but yeah my guess is that every hyper casual publisher is now looking

for hybrids like if not they're probably sleeping under a rock or something yeah but uh don't be a dick yeah let's see uh so the top top winners of 2023 are definitely Hobby in the first place Voodoo in the second uh crazy laps in the third and say games in the fourth which I will interrupt you right there how can you even compare hobby to everybody else because Survivor iio is the HBY casual game sure but hobby was a hyper casual game before no but they have they had a giant hybrid that's the thing on this category man it's like you know yes but they're like very big outlier of of the whole category in this yeah they are very big outlier but doesn't mean that like they're not part of this because a lot of people are just directly copying their template or trying to copy it or you know using the mechanics and the gamees look very similar so yeah they're directly

competing with them if they like it or not doesn't matter sure um yeah looking at the charts um I just like our usual filter for this is 1 million IP Revenue a month until we consider hybrid a big hybrid because as I said we never see the IP the ad revenue on let's say the sensor Tower tool we are currently looking at the only thing we have is like Felix decimal recalculation ad ad Network and ad placement Coal Mine where I do mathematics to work out exactly and sometimes it's horribly wrong sometimes it's very right yeah so we'll see uh but yeah 1 million a month in I revenue is the cut off I'm using here so uh if we would compare last 30 days and to be really precise last 30 days uh being from November 28th to December 28 uh of course the big outlier is M

mentioned is Survivor IO which did 12.6 million in IP Revenue just in IP Jesus Christ yeah justtin IP Revenue uh Aero 3 million in I revenue is making 4 million wow yeah we're not counting Souls because there different genre category um but yeah there's our chero then there's block gam 3D which how much they how much they making 3D 2.4 million IP last month I I I'll go through the game separately the big ones uh once iish theist that's even more when we talked about it yeah yeah it's getting like crazy Alien Invasion 2 million last month I still pretty good mob control 1.9 million snaker Bridge 1 million suddenly maybe some Christmas live Ops pull it up back to the top so yes snaker still there and then uh

surprisingly all the say games hybrids actually went down the big ones so my perfect hotel and dream Dale aren't breaching 1 million anymore they my perfect hotel is 0.8 million and dream 0.6 but there's a new game onio that we're going to talk so yeah and that's pretty much it because if I read through all the other kind of Studios portfolio for listening such as hom ketchup lion super sonic tap Nation rly quy green Panda amot coob games azur games boom hits yeah right as if I missed anyone significant there but there's no big hybrids there there's some games that are making 200 to 300K at most as I was going through all the portfolios but nothing in like the scale of the games we mentioned so if he yeah for for basically also for listeners right so add a little bit of padding to all the numbers that we say cuz we're taking them from sensor Tower directly

right so you know and then add probably another 50% just for ad Revenue like I think always like 1.5x or almost 2x of what we yeah it doesn't mean that that like the companies that I just read that don't have this like 1 million iip a month hybrid doesn't mean that they have a hybrid that doesn't mean that they don't have a hybrid that makes 1 million overall because we don't see the ad Revenue but IP wise that's how it is so if you look at the like individual games Survival R is kind of stabilizing you could see that again little bit growing a little bit right I would say this Christmas liveops your Q5 favorite word there uh which is probably kind of not even happening like I I see across like different games and some games I see quite big decrease in cpis and because if you look at the downloads it's like still following like a little bit of decline Trend so just Revenue I would say again the power of Christmas live upster uh then if we switch to vood yeah

y that's very big grow there good job guys the block gem 3D game is really kicking it out of the park uh Mob control is I would say still in very good position and still growing but yeah blockchain 3D is just like Unstoppable here in this portfolio then insane yeah uh what was it here we are Alien Invasion uh because Alien Invasion is a little bit specific because Android is still on multicast uh account and then the other one is on crazy lab so yeah I can't put it really in one chart that easily but anyway looking at the revenue it's still kind of growing a little bit peaked in November but currently again maybe Christmas live Ops or it's just kind of still scaling up we don't can see but regarding downloads is definitely peak in that November November October period so yeah but that revenue is still very very strong averaging something like what like 100k a day I would expect in

IPS only so it's still going very very strong and then if we look into say games actually the whole account uh Revenue IP revenue is going down which is yeah it's getting a little bit better like since mid December yeah it's getting again maybe Christmas liveops but uh yeah there's this other this orange part here on the left that will get to it what What's happen there because if you look at individual games we've seen that dream Dale already went past its peak somewhere in July August where he was doing like 50k a day uh and then like again stabilizing a little bit in December but still like nowhere as like as near as it was peing same goes for my perfect hotel which follows the unfortunate shark fin uh as we can I used to say here um but then uh the last time here the to war game is very very

interesting and it's actually scaling pretty well uh and keep in mind that it's been there from like January 2022 so we talked about it uh in our two and a half G inter talk about it a little bit but only now it seems he going to breach that uh yeah magical 1 million IP a month number looking at the game play uh it seems It's actually over yeah [ __ ] Empire take over I just I saw it in the creative like wait wait a second we just talked about it on the podcast I like oh wait this is is a different game yeah so we know that this game already Works uh pretty well in Empire takeover and it's the usual mushroom wars uh kind of a iteration that that that we've been talking about and yeah works perfectly in creatives and it seems that uh yeah finally somebody built the game out of the creatives that seems to be working pretty well there you go easy yeah see

lot of currencies lot of kind of things so yeah you know what like it seems like somebody is actually listening to this podcast yeah as well as as you mentioned on the like doodle magic uh this game is getting copied we already got the the the cop getting getting cop that very good guys cop but but you could see just just you could see just from the screen that it's clearly a hybrid because there's you know PVP battle pass additional missions daily Rewards there's the usual kind of hubby left and right side of the screen uix icon so yeah probably we'll review this game very very soon yeah I'm pretty sure like it's going to happen in January February because they're going to they're going to scale it quite heavily after the New Years let's see yeah but anyway that's it for the overall kind of a setup as we look for these games uh keep in mind that this is not a specific genre more of like Revenue profile where hybrid is something that is grossing uh 40 to 50%

IPS and 50 to 60% ads that's what we're looking for and that's what usually every hyper casual studio is switching for because it offers much more stable revenue and much more kind of a long-term what's say stability in the current market man like everybody said like the Archer is just like the biggest hit whatsoever and now when I'm looking at the Survivor iio number is like [ __ ] out of out of the world yeah but wow Survivor I is crashing it but yeah that's that's valid point that you said there that like hobby is like wasn't hyper casual publisher to begin with but they are pretty much the ones that are you know yeah they kind of like spearheading the trend of hybrids have ATI gone up as well I haven't checked their account for quite a while uh I don't know if they have like a separate account or let's say yeah they have with the games that we follow follow on last episode but most

of the kind of big games are on say games portfolio account yeah but their own games are not near nowhere near yet yeah not scaled yet so it's kind of soft lunch there it takes some time you know to build to build the game yeah but let's see uh and I'm very curious how the tables and cards will switch next year because my guess is definitely somebody will either jump on the list or get out of the list that that's like that's my prediction here or both or both well probably both all right nice if you had to pick one of the like hybrid or hybrid casuals from the list like that you would say will be the strongest next year who do you think it will be the studios yeah and take out habby take outby so I think uh Voodoo will definitely yeah go forward they're already quite quite there yeah they switch places with with s because because SE was before them now and they can switch places now so Voodoo is

definitely second in the race after hobby um seg games I would say we'll probably keep the third position and then there's some kind of black horses such as like Lion hom supersonic maybe or even qu let's see like they have the resources to pull it off yes but it's just like you need to have the production knowhow there that's the thing yeah resources are one thing but if you throw like bodies on the problem it just won't solve the problem because keep in mind that most of these studios are you know they are not really doing these things external studios are doing that for them they need to kind of guide them in order to make the hybrids yes that's the the Asus and Dell kind of example yeah well all right interesting so I'm definitely betting on block gem 3D being quite a big game next year yeah and also we are no nowhere near close to like level 100 or 120 or something that Alvaro said from Voodoo When we had a

call like it's a different game after like certain levels and hopefully we'll get someone from voodo on the Pod to talk about it yeah or about the some of the new [Music] games why are you attending games from Barcelona 2024 share insights and knowledge have all gaming experts in one place networking great lectures meet new people to learn more about the industry games forum is one of the best places to get marketing Insight see all the conferences and panels staying up to date with the market I'm going to meet their amazing people the experts in their field insight and networking register now and join 500 UA products and Apple Managers at gain on Barcelona February 7th and 8 yeah that's going to happen probably next q1 so are we uh shifting gears to talk about the revolution tell us what what kept kept you bu busy busy busy around Christmas man like H I've been wanting to talk

about this for a while but it was playing out but now it's played out yes pretty it's pretty annoying but there's been an absolute revolution in ad monetization in the last few weeks it's been a complete shakeup and it's all been done by Google and it's been done in a short time like time period and it's been perfectly executed and timed by the Google senior leadership like to a t i probably think that this is the most impactful ad monetization news in the history of AD monetization not to minut it get actually a bit dramatic but like just to highlight how big of a thing this is I made some memes uh to commiserate the occasion uh maybe ma can add it in post production but I'll show it to you guys right now on screen share please so far the biggest meme King is uh areni from original games the this is the first one can you see yeah yeah that's perfect yeah so basically this is a giltine and it's basically Google

taking the heads off ad mob and Google ad manager the second one Google bidding cutting the head off mob and Google bidding and gam and then the final one Google absolutely pulling the rug from mobile Publishers B from under their mobile Publishers classical art there yes I know so uh I'll send those to you m you can add them post production but on December 14th a product manager from Google ads called anr Oya posted on Google support a Google support blog that after the 20th of January 2024 it will actively start to punish Publishers that Eng engage in ad mob placement refreshes or and or Gam placement refreshes so Google has announced

somebody is also listening to this podcast wasn't this like the most promoted thing yeah so basically Google has announced that it will stop buying inventory on any publisher app for a period of anywhere between one week to a month based on historic and current detected abuse o so basically for our listeners Google typically represents anywhere between 40 to 60% of a mobile Publisher's ad Revenue so you as a publisher simply cannot risk losing that ad revenue for a week let alone a month especially if you're Alliant on ad revenues instead of iaps so this hack has existed for about three four years and it's basically due to how Google have built their bidding algorithms uh and how they bid on placements so how it works is that on Google on mobile it has this unique feature compared to on how like other

mobile networks make like make and have their bidding algorithms for new placements on admob and gam uh when you make new placements basically these ad units are forced fill with Google inventory they get better inventory at lower margins so basically my assumption is they drop their margins down from 30% down to zero uh to basically get a lot of fill in a short time to quickly assess like how good the traffic is in the app and it was designed so long ago that I don't think Google can actually change it but this usually meant that from these placements like ad Revenue would typically triple or quadruple over 24 to 36 hours so algorithms could learn quicker uh on an adarp out basis each time you did a full like ad mob and gam refresh meant that your ad ARP Dows would increase anywhere from 25 to 50% for a day or two like each time you did this right so just let that sync in that meant that if a publish how time

during the month you could do this man every day Bas I I know I know about that did that did this three times a day for four years like so let me just let this think that meant that every time a publisher did this ad revenues would increase by a fourth or by a half every time you did this overall that's not Google Revenue that's overall ad roll Revenue right why don't we have this 3on I Revenue exactly but look like this but it it's you know it's not allowed yeah I mean I mean it's like one of those things where you're like it told about it right because it wasn't policed right so it's like until now hey do you want 50% extra ad Revenue all of these [ __ ] got punished as a Christmas gift so do I get it right that this is Spanish retroactively yes so basically in typical Google fanion like the answer from this announcement or

this announce announcement was super vague right so this blog came out it's three paragraphs I had to dig to find it and then it's like not something most people would know about but basically the AMS that I have I have three or four Google like admob am they didn't know anything about this they're like man we know as much as you do about this uh we don't know so after going back and forth a lot it basically emerged that Google will have a 30-day look back period where they will police this so that January 20th date is in fact [ __ ] because if you're doing refreshes after the 20th December that would count as the retroactive thing so pretty much this ad monetization hack ended on December 20th so everybody who did did it after December 20 going to be punished in January yep and started already being punished right yeah or well no no you're going to be punished after the 20th that's when basically dear listeners if you're hearing this you're already going

to be punished yeah most probably yeah I was like guys stop just stop so to put this like from a perspective from Google's right like Google remove a hack that was exploited by Publishers that wasn't really allowed it basically made Google's margins not as good as they could be on like yeah on mobile it's their Network so you know it's in their right to close this you know after four years but you know Publishers have been doing this for such a long time so they're counting on this so it's artificially inflated like the equilibrium of the market right so if you're putting this from a perspective of a publisher and you're feeling like this is being taken away from you it's a bit like let me go put on liptick because then you know I at least I can look pretty when I'm getting [ __ ] right so it's not it's not great but but does this effectively mean that some of those like three times a day Publishers is going to be pretty much like their margin is going to be dead because they were relying on this all the time I mean okay so perspective so let's put a hypo

hypothetical scenario here let's say there's one publisher that's 95% reliant on ad revenue and they make 100K a day most likely in the last 3 four years the biggest or second biggest ad partner for rewarded with you interstitial and Banners was most likely a combination of using three or four gam partners and Then followed by admob right most of these Publishers also did refreshes so that meant that probably together it was probably about 40 to 50% of overall R revenues came from these two networks and let's say now when they stop doing these refreshes probably that publisher today is making 75k a day instead of 100 already yeah yeah 75 to 80k a day right I need to put that goif funk is in [Laughter] here anyway 100K they make they will make 7

yeah yeah 80 75 80 right so yeah this is a big deal right so uh yeah I wrote a blog post about it I'll let mati put a link to it in my show notes in the show notes but this is quite big and uh yeah we'll see how it plays out I'm sure I'll hear a lot of stories about people getting punished but that punishments it's pretty harsh well that's it I thought you were going to talk about this like [ __ ] uh problems or about around the Christmas uh which is I thought this is kind of connected to this but I mean like the fact that they like they announced this so close to Christmas that's on purpose I think because then less people will complain about it because everyone's on holiday sure you mean so like this kind of a stress situation things going to evaporate so fast because chras Christmas yeah well okay we'll see we'll see then uh

and now we getting very close to the like we finally doing the legendary Captain Hook Awards yes because this competition was announced by Felix some time ago uh it was actually you remember when did you announce or I don't know I talk so [ __ ] I can't remember mentioned the Captain Hook I was I was looking I actually looking into it it was uh session number 82 when we were talking about top troops and I was asking which one of these is your favorite favorite hook like in a second it's like Captain Hook so thank you much was in uh minute 41 and first second so you can you can look it look it up so uh we are going to look at some creatives from big games they're kind of killing it on the U side and some newcomers that I saw in the let's say last 30 60 days because I was I was going through a lot of creatives in the last five days and

so this is Captain Hook 2023 right the best hook in 2023 yes and we're going to vote all of us together uh oh I love democracy yes because I mean so it's it's three of us so I guess uh so you narrowed it down to how many creatives man it's like 15 prepar to have your ears destroyed yeah you should yeah you you should uh but nah yeah okay so it's like few games uh it's like Township white out surval Monopoly go merge Mansion put some candy crush a kingdom guard Hero Wars my perfect hotel and travel top I can't wait to see exploding toilets and freezing families and then we have some like few others like M Survivor which is like a new game from upin by the way uh then we have age of apes and then there's one game from the company called 37 games

which is makers of puzzle and Survivor but I I couldn't read that [ __ ] name I'm not sure if it was in Chinese or I whatever but they're pretty big like 37 games 37 G is very big yeah yeah very very big okay so we can can share the screen I'm G to share so what should we I think I'm just going to go one by one in here uh uh and then maybe we'll we'll talk try I have a start with monopo go actually did you see the the [ __ ] right there no ads M okay how's that a hook how's no adds a hook I'm not going to vote for a creative that says no as a hook man I know no they they don't have any other hooks that's the thing animated Mr

pennyback yes animated Mr pennyback they don't have any other hooks it's just like a lot of creatives directly connected to to the board that's it so there's like not not a hook this is at least different so from the hook I mean different first three seconds of the video uh which is grabbing your attention and this is kind of grabbing your attention but yeah it's it's kind of [ __ ] uh but then and yes let's let's go with Hero Wars oh my God yes was a good hook it was it was okay it was okay pulling so this time our hero is not pulling the sword out of cleavage but out of a statue of a women's mouth yes which is fine but then then we have all like all these like classic kind of usual crap yes usual crap Hero Wars thing which is not even close to the game but it's like you know like it's fine uh

what can we what can we do I well just uh kind of this is this is man this is quite interesting so a minor women is burning a bird mark on Our Hero's ass okay yes I mean I was well next time I will record the whole session when I was looking into like the different crazes oh man oh my God what a different [ __ ] I've seen but yeah this is like best creativity ever yeah exactly I mean it's it's great yeah so now now our hero is saving the minor women who burn him just like a moment ago yes but now they're friends friends yes of course it's just you know quite a big twist so long how how long it this uh uh two minutes so it's a story creative

it's a story cre but all of these like all of these Hero Wars creatives are now very much story driven to be honest like it's one minute plus it's almost always always like two minutes like I know now he's he's exercising it's great this is the first time he's getting numbers up by not killing troops that's true yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know what I think but they don't use this whole Creator right it's just they use it all they use it keep watching it yeah now he's going to be killed yes uh he not you know what I think they killed the women yes and now now you're back oh my god oh they do he's there he's there so in I seriously like I see these these long creatives of Hero Wars almost every day on Facebook and I'm I'm literally like looking on like watching everyone

until the end because I'm curious to see like what now is in the creatives it's quite interesting actually what new [ __ ] will come up exactly yeah the game hasn't evolved any right it's still the same core gameplay right yeah yeah yeah pretty much the creatives is what are yeah the creatives are this is the this is the problem or not the problem but it's different yeah unfortunately the M also evolved yeah well unfortunately all right see you uh this is the m Survivor at all I mentioned production values so it's a play on Mad Max yeah I think that was like from directly from the movie actually you think so yeah it looked like it looked like that yeah a little bit but it's like this is this is just like Survivor game kind of but it looks quite interesting that's a good hook one so far yeah that was quite quite good hook I'm keeping the best for the end are we

getting gradually better uh we'll see if gradually gradually worse yeah gradually worse so we can we can go and man I will keep this King Candy Crush the end this is age of Apes oh wow joking okay so gorillas in real life then switch to G as in Battle Royale in Battle Royale yeah but the these Battle Royale kind of creatives they use quite a lot uh it's if you think about it is exactly Hero Wars concept yeah the numbers concept the numbers concept they're killing each other and then you know absorbing the numbers absorbing the numbers big one and then the there you go I'd say that's uh the best hook so far yeah not bad not bad can the giant gorilla squeeze through that really small

opening it's cral to choose that's it wait again one more time you don't even know like what happened right it was so fast what happened chopping at those trees doesn't make any sense now we have our usual AI voice yeah yeah was exactly I was trying to look into this game like what nobody's Adventure CH I guess how much can a good hook Reduce cpis by ooh 40 50% easily waa Ser seriously yeah yeah like see so this is the industry award man yeah doesn't get much better than this then this is like the hottest award to give out in you how much is this game making chop chop wood what was it mean I have noidea I was trying to look into the sensor tower for it but uh I couldn't yet but nobody's Cho it's it's written in I think Chinese or something something else I will share that link after towards but this is also kind of like very good hook

right okayed Pascal fed Pascal is you know just a closeup on ped Pascal's face yeah closeup on ped Pascal is that's you know man can I click on your ad right now please that was amazing that's very very good hook but this is the thing I know I'm not sure if I can count this as a hook because it's you know a real life creative it's not Pedro Pascal and then connected to gameplay but you know it's a it should be in this category for sure because Pedro Pascal is PED Pascal right I just want to have another season of Naros come on all right let's uh let's go with my perfect Hotel no Wii games for long caride two I recently opened our finger with mobile phone great hook polish no Wi-fi games you know like that was one

one of the the best ones and I do you remember the one that uh had that was the balloon which exploded where was the no no Wi-fi games I I tried to find it but I couldn't find it but it just I mean won't uh be any competition to the hooks that are coming later okay so that's it uh then we can do C Candy Crush 12,59 is that true you I think they're even higher now it's even more yeah it's even more so 12,590 levels and like that's that's interesting hook it's like what yeah it is it's quite a lot but that's a man that's even more hammers home that you know 15,700 something to this [Music] wa

oh yeah but that was hyper casual it wasn't hyper casual it was a Tik Tok meme I will share the I will share it afterwards [ __ ] I knew I saw it somewhere it was a Tik Tok Meme and then I I will share it afterwards it's this is like actually guys King this was brilliant because I was trying to very good I was trying to kind of combine it with some games I manag I couldn't find like a best like really good combination but this is a very good combination like this is very very clever very clever that's really good and they have their own jar broken or just directly the one from the trend no I think there was just own jar broken because uh the trend was about I recognize the king office there in the background I think it was uh the bottle that was kind of no but that's brilliant that's really good very good very good use they definitely made their money back on the broken bottle broken jar yeah yeah so we have then the the kingdom guard which is

basically oh this snake I everywhere there was no hook at all but I can't win the hook Awards this looks really good yeah that's that because this exact like nowhere near the game play it's just like complete fake as [ __ ] but what can we do uh but I wanted to just showcas what can we do just have L CPI that's L CPI yeah exactly that's h l CPI CPI We Trust yeah they they use this this uh dragon St kind of snake everywhere now it's it's basically in the in the screenshots in the I think yeah and then there's another kind of view on this snake again it's like there's again no hook but interesting kind of grabbing the attention but that's it I'm just waiting for my favorite white out Survival Creative we are going there we're going there we have a few more so so we have Travel Town which is also merge

game this never I as in a blonde I can never agree with someone abusing other blonde people you know like yes I can imagine but you know like what was this basically taking from mer mention yeah this kind of merge mystery mention mer finding a camera in your living room blah blah blah but lav Pi has it as well it's like all all these like secret basements and all of the drama and I don't know like I don't get this thing like there's zero Secrets within this game zero but yes of course it's zero Secrets but apparently that works with the female audience like they want drama they want to see like oh well maybe there's a secret but there's zero drama in these games literally zero yes but it's drama in the drama are discussing it yes yeah this very big drama so uh now we can also have Town trip which is also golden goblins yeah it's also no hook there's no hook but at least there's like satisfying feeling at the beginning feeling fake G yeah it's like altered

gameplay what are you talking about no it's not even close to alter it's completely fake yeah it's completely fake but honestly like I need to write about like we need to talk about Township it's just growing like [ __ ] crazy it's still it's still growing and growing look at look look it up it's really really we should do a we should do a deep dive on it it's definitely doing quite well quite well and now for next couple weeks in the next couple weeks now now we are talking about the the the hooks and uh yeah let's let let me try let me start with the first creative that is so satisfying eyes with wind blower even yeah even in the creatives I mean it it will get even better from from now on and I I couldn't find the real like train station with the real um snow and real people that we kind of show in some of the episodes before but

they even made it with look oh no way they wow it's animated yes they did it with their own their own yes so what happened here our list such a good creative oh that's our listeners they had this hook uh with real people taken from somewhere from the YouTube and now they recreated it in in the like in their own assets and it's just beautiful it's just like it makes me really happy seriously like this is like now we're getting to you know you see it's now we're getting now we're getting the top three maybe like this is probably one of the best hooks of this year yes yeah yeah man Township is growing like crazy 1 million a day probably IP anyway y I'm not sure if 1 million a day is not not is bad or or good good for like a 10-year-old game that's quite good no

it's like amazing yeah okay so I was I wasn't even sure like if you're like I don't know like it's going up yeah it's going really well oh how much how much like man how money does does this cost like all of these animations within the 3D environment now if you look at if you look at itth they have these pretty sure like they all these scenes are just built already like million times yes yeah yeah we getting it looks amazing it looks really good but we it's oh I know that this is like this is a meme like I've seen that one for years the for start there man white out Survival Man like look like they're making 70 million a month yeah like they know what they're they know what they're doing respect man yeah that's like very big respect seriously like this is amazing

probably the studio that surprised me the most this year by just the sheer like quality is for sure like yeah they're killing it as soon as we started talking about Frozen City and White House survival and like the the revenue growth they they've seen in the last years Jesus Christ like from Zero to Hero seriously these is my favorite yeah I know this one as well this one time lapse shair cover snow yes time La he one was my favorite for sure and then then we can go there's one more which is quite good snow what uhhuh okay this one it's like you know the the the the ramming train is still my best yet yeah look at this so it's basically water balloon over Earth that's covered in snow and then they pop the water balloon and it goes all over Earth so and then yeah and

they use this like car crash in like few different uh creatives as well as a hook yeah kind of works in combination with the like there was a preh hook and the hook M now there's game play the usual one yeah well which is golden goblins this is golden goblin so if if you think about it like these these guys from Century games uh and kudos to Haven which we we talked about uh different things with him and our at our bat party in Busan in South Korea they're super clever guys and uh they're using different you know mechanics from different games in this like in these creatives you can see like how mean different concepts different concepts yes yeah different concepts basically even like different genes right and we have like a few more what yes even like but you see the connection like the connection like from hook to the to the like kind of like a

gameplay it's just like it's brilliant it's kind of seamless yes it's as seamless as Frozen City to White up Survival on boarding of course and then we have the last one uh the last hook of the Year flamethrower oning really on oh my God but it's in the game play look it's in the creative can you see it it's just like seriously like the connection I I haven't seen such a good connection from like the hook to creative so there's a guy with water who is actually breathing fire instead of water yes and then saving the others other folks yeah to create the the village and the city so yeah that was like so all those are like the contenders for the hook of

the year um now okay before we go uh to like the like two um additional bonus sections so which one of of these were was the best for you guys honestly Felix Man without a shadow of a doubt there's two uncontested winners it's uh Candy Crush uh basically glass jar candies falling down the stairs breaking and probably that's tied with white out survival train uh moving and like spraying all the passengers with snow yes the train is also like my favorite because it's very seamless then into the game it's like yeah it's a hook but it like you know it doesn't have that kind of a contrast between real life and 3D environment there so it's kind of very very seamless that's true okay so I would say the handy Crush Tik Tok meme was like really super good combination but then yeah the white out

survival either the train which was also the like real life kind of uh creative before but now it's just like this is brilliant so okay we have I guess the white out survival then the train uh kind of wins then we have the candy cr the second spot and then let's say number three what would what would it be at the age of apes the gorilla the gorilla was also good gorilla was really good but is the gorilla or ped Pascal's closeup because like Fame stardom like you can't put a price on that I mean they kind of can I guess you but you know what I mean like it's just it's such a hook right because you know people are like oh I know petc I like Pedro Pascal he's like Tom Hanks I have nothing evil to say about him like it's such a good hook not yet sure yeah I would say I would say the

the age of Apes rather than just P ped Pascal to be honest like I I also like the new iteration on the Hero Wars s but it's not on the hook the Hook's kind of the same but like the storys this is Captain Hook yeah this Captain Hook if you are one of the creative masterminds behind any of these creatives let us know and we will send you a also you know you know let's let's leave the let's leave the third play for our listeners to decide so let's uh give us a tell us uh in our slack Channel like which of these you or like what what what would be be like the order for you guys uh and then we can we can discuss it and now I'm definitely going to show you like the the creative that want the weirdest [ __ ] thing that I've ever seen in my whole life we is creative of your life yes what so but it's like it's it doesn't it doesn't end here it doesn't end here man it

doesn't end why am I watching this and like I was looking for for creatives what that man like this is not not even close going on man I don't to describe this yes exactly why why he has Goro hands now man how much hallu genetics is this person on what I don't know I don't know but he's just like how did you find this I was looking I was looking into the top creative section on the top creative section uh in senon Tower and I was like wait wait a second what is this I'm like what like this is like this giant guy like pissing into the toilet I like what why like why I was like okay well I need to watch this in the end cannot even describe this watch if you're listening to this like you should definitely go and watch this it's just it's absolutely terrible and then we have the the the sexist

creative which it should be stopped right away cuz this is just terrible and it's like from play flux which is a tile match tile match game and it's just all the this like all around like again I wish this would end this is painful to watch it's just like very very bad even worse than the usual freezing f exactly yeah so please guys stop it most probably sking you great cpis but like you know like there's a fine line between cpis and like being toal [ __ ] okay I don't want to see this until the end and uh yeah I think uh that's it basically so we have white out survival Candy Crush and then then all of this weird cheit and happening so we're going to be in two places right uh mon you're giving a fancy talk in London BGC London oh well actually I have two two talks so I have the Tik Tok um panel discussion about

the launching new games and then I have mobile mavens final discussion on Tuesday I also have a fancy talk at PGC about spend dep o guess what guys I also have a fancy talk at PGC but yeah gaming Place add placements to mobile applications nice all right so we are going to you know have the the take PGC takeover because we also are going to have a party on Tuesday so uh as soon as we have the the details I will share it in the in the show notes well we will shareed in the podcast most probably and all our listeners is invited if you happen to be games in PGC London you're all invited to come to our party and also as you heard like during list during the listening of this podcast uh we partnered up with games Forum so you should also register and come to see us we're going to have a live session games Forum it's quite good conference actually it's really good yeah right so happy New Year I guess uh

because this is this comes out after New Year so you know yeah yeah happy year happy New Year to everyone New Year CU I mentioned in the uh the intro like if I won't get covid again then this should be live yeah this should be live first yeah all right perfect thank you very much uh subscribe share this with your friends colleagues dogs and cats you in our slack Channel and see you in our slack Channel [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] byebye