⚠️ The Industry’s Dirty Little Secrets: Confessions from the UA Underground

comes up that they spend $50 million on a on a on a you know a large like brand campaign and everybody's like why don't we do the same or why don't we do a Super Bowl ad and it's because it's [ __ ] stupid and you know like it's it's maybe it's maybe smart if you have a lot of money and you're like going after the marketeer you want everybody to talk about you but from like a pure and profitability like the actual number of downloads perspective it's not necessarily profitable and we're rolling the dice with those coins. The midnight crew talking to the early master [Music] tracky smack slows beautifulh.

[Music] [Music] Oh, hello. Hello there. I didn't see you. Thank you very much for coming to this episode. Uh, it's brought to you by our sponsors, PVX Partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing. If you're scaling your business uh, and need funding, here's the deal. With PVX partners, you can grow your game easily and your business. There's no equity dilution. You can repay as you get paid, and it's flexible, fast, and fully tailored to your growth. So, you can secure funding in 30 days and get a term sheet in just 24 hours. Don't you wait. Take control of your UA budget without giving away uh a piece of your company. Visit pvxpartner.com and uh see how they can help you grow your game faster and stronger. Don't wait. Go to

pvxpartners.com. And while you here, uh, we also want to thank your sponsors, vibe.com, because this episode is brought to you by them as well. They can help you grow your brand on CTV ads. Uh, with Vibe, you can launch high impact campaigns across top streaming platforms like Hulu, Roku, Tubi, and whatever else. I mean, all from one simple dashboard. We don't have all of these in Europe anyway. So, uh it's built for brand all sizes. It's rated on 4.8 out of five on G2 for a reason. Join over 5,000 marketing teams already scaling with streaming TV. Visit vibe.com to get started. That's vibe.co. Join them. And thank you very much for joining us for this special episode. Now, let's get back to it. Thank you. Keeping the glasses on the whole time. Let's roll. Let's roll. Welcome everybody. Welcome, welcome,

welcome. My name is Matthew Lancherich. And I am Joseph Kim. We are your hosts for today. We have a very special episode because we have a third guest, but you don't know her or his identity. We'll keep it anonymous. Let's call it Dr. Doom. Let's call it Dr. Doom. us because we're going to ask some very direct questions. Maybe we'll piss off few people. Maybe a lot of people. We'll see. We'll see what happens. But it's going to be a lot of fun. I definitely want to do it more often. So, anyone out there, if you like this and you want to come on the podcast to talk the real stuff, come on. So, let let me know afterwards. Okay. So, where should we start? Where should we start? May maybe just to set the stage for the audience. Yeah. Dr. Doom, can you tell us a little bit about maybe like don't identify yourself but maybe

talk about your background from an expertise perspective in terms of like you know the kind of work you've done or the kind of expertise that you have? No. No. Perfect. Very good. Very good. Okay. Well, let let me just say we've got one of the brightest minds in the gaming gaming and we'll just set it we'll we'll just leave it there because we do not want him to be identified. Yeah, I did spend all the money. Her or her. Yes. Okay, good. Well, I did spend a lot of money as well. That's why I have the the protection the glasses on so we can keep ourselves safe. Anyway, so should we start with like the who is the most overrated studio in the mobile gaming right now and uh and why everybody can or why they can get away with this? But what does even mean overrated, right? Uh yeah. What what where do you want to go with this since we've got a UA angle?

Do you mean So there's a couple ways we could go with this, right? Overrated could mean that there's a lot of hype and the performance isn't there. The other thing could be that you've got some of these game studios that are charting really high in terms of top grossing, but the actual financial metrics in terms of like free cash flow, profitability does not match their top grossing ranks. That's another way. And then the the third that's kind of coming up more is just there are a lot of like these overhyped early stage studios that got a ton of funding but are basically fraudulent or things like that. So there's a lot of different ways we can go. So I assume from the UA angle are we going to talk more about top grossing relative to profitability? I would say yeah I would say that because uh there are a lot of well not a lot but few companies out there we talked about one game already and I think we don't really need to go there uh anymore but yeah like growth a lot of spend but then

there's the question if the spend is like what's the context for the the level of spend they are doing and uh and if they are kind of reaching the the profitability or the hype around the all the all the US spending basically. Yeah, I think it's good to talk about it, but like in in the in terms of the payback windows, like does this money ever pay back or not? Uh, we can talk about Dream Kings. I'm okay. Like, because it's it's very relevant. Uh, I wouldn't say it's the most overrated, but it's definitely overrated like their strategy. Okay. Yeah, that's that's a pretty good uh pretty good topic. We even with the recent uh kind of celebrity campaign, and can could you characterize it? So just just for just for the audience if they're not aware of like some of the financial disclosures behind Dream as well as like uh and obviously they're doing great from a top grossing perspective. Uh they've been ranking in the top three to five globally for the last few years. Um they've been

dominating um from a RPD perspective as well. They're showing extremely high RPD, but but they were not profitable. And so may maybe Dr. Doom, do do you want to I'll just I'll just uh that that'll be my tea up over to you. Yeah, I think uh I think they're really going up there to market you and it's really questionable whether this money ever pays that. The one of the biggest challenges of being a UA professional nowadays is that every you know two years someone like Dream Games comes comes up that they spend $50 million on a on a on a you know what a large like brand campaign and everybody's like why don't we do the same or why don't we do a Super Bowl ad and it's because it's [ __ ] stupid and you know like it's it's maybe it's maybe smart if you have a lot of money and you're like going after the marketeer you want everybody to talk about you but from like a pure and profitability like the actual number of downloads perspective it's not necessarily

profitable and you can look at the Royal Kingdom uh downloads and revenue growth it's not as as exponential as look people would expect um after such a large campaign um in wait wait wait wait it's like it's it's not even two weeks after the the celebrity campaign started $50 million $50 million where's that where's the $50 million coming from every No, every single celebrity is probably like, you know, three 4 million. Uh these guys are like super expensive. Let's say it's 20. Let's say it's 20. And it's it's it's basically all over their UA channels. It's everywhere on Facebook, on Google. So, it's not only like a celebrity campaign, meaning like they're doing the TV only, but it's like actually in the creatives in the campaign. So, they're spending against it. But would you expect more downloads as a result of that? I mean they are driving more downloads for sure but would you expect to kill me more downloads as a result of a 20 million $20 million more budget? I mean

I think what people are not actually comparing these two which I think they started doing this which was coin master back in the days with uh JLo Terry Cruz and all the Kardashians and everything back then I think it was what like 2017 18 I guess I need to check and uh and do the comparison uh the fair comparison like it increased revenue by a lot but there was lot so I'm yes in this case it might be just not really matching the I guess expectations. But whose expectations? The market or the the UA experts expectations? I mean, this is a this is a match free game which is going to pay back in two years or maybe never. Well, we'll see. I mean, it's two weeks only. I mean, like I play Royal Kingdom. I'm level I don't know, like 200 something and I haven't Well, I paid maybe like twice or three times only. and I paid played this game since we reviewed it on the on the

podcast. So, right now I'm getting to the point where I really need to pay more and it's like three months since I started. So, now it's not really a good time to actually kind of measure this against the the revenue increase then the installs maybe. Yeah. But but sorry Dr. But can't we say that this like to some degree you could say dreams overrated? But at the same time, isn't this a strategy that's existed over the last 10 years from every startup is to and and like there's all these people in the industry where they see the top grossing church and they're like, "Oh, those guys are doing so well." And it's like, are you like how many times do you need to be fooled, [ __ ] You know, it's just like Jesus Christ, dude. Like all these companies try to chart up and then sell, right? Yeah. Uh and and so I don't know it it seems so naive when so many people in in you know friends of ours

are are basically like this company is doing so great and and then you see like glue postacquisition you know and so many like startups post investment or acquisition they just fall and it's just like guys something was fundamentally broken with the UA model and and like why do we not learn these lessons? I I don't know. Sorry. it. Yeah, it comes down to RPD, which is what you mentioned earlier. We had a really good game. It basically advertises on its own. So, it's fairly easy to advertise match just like spend more horn money. That's how it works. But, you know, rough thing, it's a little too early for that. And I think they're also doing themselves uh uh uh nothing. you know, they're not really helping themselves with two games that are named very similarly and look very similar and and now they have a brand campaign for both games. It's it's going to be really hard for a consumer to distinguish. But again, this is this is in my personal opinion not

necessarily a data treatment uh fact. Uh so it is to be seen uh what's going to happen. Yeah, look, they're they're increasing the revenue in the last couple of weeks and months. It's it's going up and I'm not sure I'm not sure if we are in the position to actually say this is a flop or this is a this is a great thing. Obviously, it's everybody says, "Oh, this is insane." And I mean, yes, the the installs per day only 5xed from 100,000 to to 500,000 per day. So, I guess it's doing something. So I wouldn't say isn't it is I I think the the I guess the tailwinds or like the uh the positive aspect of of Dream being able to acquire more aggressively than other companies though is because of the genre of game and when you think about the retention of that kind of a like a match three game is generally very very long right so I I I think the danger

comes when other games try to acquire in the same way with longer payback windows when you don't have the stickiness of the players. So, Dr. Doom, what what do you think is that could you am I right in making that kind of an assumption that because it's match three and for certain genres? Sure. Like, you know, and we saw that with for example uh you know um slots and in casino games that they were the first ones to go dramatically longer payback windows and it kind of made sense for them. Uh but from your perspective in terms of you know when you look at the profitability of Candy Crush uh does Dream eventually get there is that basically okay for them? Yeah. Yeah 100%. I think especially if Val match u match had a ridiculous long-term retention like when we're talking about two three year retention it's really really high. it's so higher than what's the case with, you know, like most of

the mythgore games like the United Retention. Um, and that's why you have these big mesh publishers who stand against uh, you know, three, four, five, six year payback windows, and that's what no one talks about. Uh, one of the biggest topics is GDC was like, oh, we we paid the money back in 6 months. No, you're you do not. It just does like Exactly. Yeah. No, it doesn't work like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not realistic anymore. Like if you paid money back in 6 months, your game will be growing like you know mushrooms or whatever is the saying. Yeah. Uh so and that's not the case something you know you're not tracking it the right way. So when you look at these games like let's say bro match and let's say they spend $30 to $50 million a month on your way you know they're generating significantly more and they're essentially in the game of like you know growing at market share further not necessarily in the game of let's state the money back came the most efficient beta. So yeah, and they can do that because of their really great long-term retention. Uh I mean look at

this like day 60 or 12%. Like Yeah. Day 90 royal match 10% day 90 10%. I mean and this is basically a straight line afterwards. Like it's insane. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. And that's basically if you follow Andrew Chen, he says that successful businesses are those where that have like where the rotation curve flats after a while and you see that you're so basically after day 30 the player there's almost no churn and that's why royal match is printing money and yeah royal kingdom I don't know I mean but at the same time they have to grow they raised a ton of money I don't say they're overrated they're definitely not overrated but they're also not having you easy as most people think uh you know they had to make some compromises in order to to support this crook, right? And just so for our audience, so so again, we're not taking out of context and [ __ ] like that, right? Uh we're not saying that uh Dream Games and Royal Match are failures or this or that. It's just that relative to their grossing rank, it would be better

if they had a higher free cash flow profile or some something along those lines. But since they're a private company, they don't really care about that that much. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So that that's I guess that's the right angle to talk about it. But you know a great couple a great success a success like the industry needed for the longest time. Um so so you know all the best about the drinking test. Yeah. And and maybe like one thing I would like to ask you about Dr. Doom is that I think the other thing that happens a lot when it comes to to the stories that we tell either internally and externally and how this comes is through a couple of things. One is like the UA models that are built internally and the fact that UA folks are they have to show that they're successful. So the incentive of a UA manager is to tell everyone in uh management that they're doing great. Yeah. And so internally what I have

often seen is a lot of window dressing, right? Where and and Dr. Doom, you can tell us about your own experiences along those lines as well. But then it's like, hey, this game is doing great. Look at this cohort. Look at iOS US only. um 200 people and and and then like these small stories are then kind of wrapped and then told to management. And I I think the truth of the matter is most management in gaming are not the highest IQ people if I'm just being honest until they'll hear something that a UA manager says and then they'll brag about it. Oh yeah, this game is doing so great. We, you know, our ROAZ is freaking fantastic. uh you know our UA spend is only 25% of this or that you know you know what I'm saying 100% you know they come to me and say like you know day 70 is 35% but your day 90 is 40 so gives the [ __ ] you need to look at it from a more holistic angle um and you need to understand the curves and the most

important thing is you need to understand the measurement well like how things are measured internally and I think most companies don't really notice um you know like is this user an existing user a new user? Like uh is this uh user little data does this user level data come from epsllier or internal data and then how do you essentially uh ddup and and properly track and generate LTV curves of those players. It's super easy to make LTV curves or like Ross curves look really good if you take into account existing players because most of these players who are uh in the game after day 90 they're payers and essentially you know they generate a lot of revenue every week and if you treat them as new players then you know your your cohorts are going to break. So I think there's a lot of uh there's there's an overall lack of understanding of how measurement works on the O side and this can make things even worse. Then because of that you know some people are like our theme is great and our rep you know our repity

is not growing we don't know why our data is declining desperately why there's this there this there's this this like massive inertia from the path that that you know we we don't really know how to fight but auto is doing well it's not you know the role of the role of yeah surprise surprise you know the role of a team is to grow games not to you know maintain varity client um yeah so it kind of seems like there's There's kind of two aspects of like the internal overrated UA growth team or or UA performance, right? One is a UA model that and everyone's incentivized to spend. And so that UA model is going to be very aggressive at often. And so then a lot of executives take that UA model as truth even though it's a forecast or an estimation of what could happen under certain you know e Excel spreadsheet scenarios with anyone who can just adjust adjust numbers really quickly and make things look good. So that's one.

And the second are the stories that are told internally because a UA UA manager wants to get their bonus. And so they're going to window dress some stuff to let people in management know, hey, we're doing great. Look at this. Yeah. So look at this. Don't look at there. Don't look there. Look at this. It's like the classic. the the danger I think is in um internal like internally management teams who don't understand and they get bullshitted is is my my take on this. Yeah, that definitely h happens. And I also think with private companies, they really want to to paint this super positive, thoughtful picture and say we're doing great and they're looking for angles to say that, right? Because they're trying to raise money and you know their numbers look their you know earnings and like your numbers are not really public and it's harder to argue how well or not well they're doing. So that's really where it comes from. I

think uh you know it's another controversial topic we can cover. The best example are all these exotic PP channels that look really really good early on but then they just like look like [ __ ] three weeks later. Uh you know not all of these you know my pace is an expert here. Uh not all of the networks operate this way but a good chunk of them does. And and again they make your early numbers look good. They make your shitty um you know uh shitty LTV projections uh even better uh or worse uh depends on the angle. But yeah, Monty, I think you want to say something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So based on Yeah. All these rewarded UA channels are they're great, but you can't evaluate them with the same lenses as the the other UA channels because yes, you're using LTV projections and then suddenly the first seven days look amazing. Of course, because you have the the rewards tied to the day seven or even if you do like day 30 and then you tie the rewards to day 30, but then

afterwards people churn immediately and then your LTV prediction is [ __ ] like immediately because like you're counting with amazing numbers, let's say on year one or year two, but then there's no one playing the game anymore because they churned, they claim the reward by thank you very much. So yes, that happens so often these days. But I mean, they're not doing anything wrong. It's just like how that channel worked basically. It's just that the UA managers don't don't really see beyond the point of day seven, day 30 because oh look, the prediction is amazing. Yeah, thank you very much. See you next time. And it it's essentially how I've said to traffic always worked. Yeah, it just these guys are you know like 3 years old and they don't really understand how different traffic types mature and based on that their curves are not adjusted. The way they measure things is not adjusted. So you know that's why

that's essentially this also comes back to the relationship between the U managers and the the management or the founders because I have the I have few different or I had few different engagements where I was brought uh into the team and uh the CEO asked me like look so I have no idea how to evaluate my UA team because I don't understand how it works. I was like, "What the [ __ ] are you like how how can you even manage the company?" And there were like three people managing 10,000 like spend of 10,000 per day. I was like, "Why do you have free people on the UA?" Like this can be done by like half of the person. Seriously. Oh, but I I didn't know. What do you mean you didn't know? I mean, do you don't talk to people or you just, you know, don't listen to people talking around you or you just don't go to conference like three people managing 10,000 daily? like that's it's that's insane. So yeah, like there's something fundamentally wrong with like the whole

flow of like how the UA works and then if founder doesn't really know like that's a problem. Well, it's common man. I don't think a lot of gaming founders understand why UA is so important. And you know, obviously we're UA guys. Um, and you know, we're always going to our own horn, but you know, we're like talking about industry that has like 90% of insurance like or you know, 80%. So if you don't drive users, you're not growing. So essentially, you're super dependent on user position. Other industries are it's not really like this. If you look at software as a service or subscription, it's a little different. But when you talk about gaining specifically, you depend on user acquisition a lot. Unless you are Candy Crush Christian. Yeah. And as since I'm representing since I'm not the UA expert, but I represent the sort of gaming executive and and founder. I I do agree with Mate like if you are in mobile, like mobile gaming, it's product, live ops, and growth. You have

to understand all three. If you don't, there's a problem. You need somebody on your team to understand it, to oversee things, and to try to get that organizational um optimization so that you're not getting bullshitted and you're running things efficiently as per what Mate just just suggested. In my opinion, you're Yeah. No, but because then then it's your it's it's your own company and it's I mean if your UA sucks and you don't understand how it works like it's it's not going to last long until you run out of money if it's not if it's not managed well and it's honestly it's your pro it's your problem. It's your it's your problem because you don't understand and you should it's I always say every founder at least one or two campaigns you just go to that [ __ ] Facebook dashboard you click five times you have a campaign at least you know how it's done and then you kind of manage it for a week and it's and that's enough but at least you know how it

works and then that opens your mind so much so so much. Sounds like a business idea. All right. Did we just finish our first question? We have like 30 minutes. Only 20 minutes. Only 20 minutes. Yeah, that's fine. It's going to be all the fun. It's going to build all the fun. No, but I think uh then the the question I think you you touched a little bit is there's the scan and then there's the the UA managers. They're kind of trying to get the bonuses because of the seven targets or whatever else. But then I really it's really funny to see some of the the young guns out there that started doing UA and running them and they think like they they know everything. They were not there before which again opens your mind so much that you know what what worked 2013 14 so you were there basically. So all of the new stuff like web to app and all of this. I mean

I've I was there. I mean I can remember it wasn't called web to app. I was there when there was this like different creatives which wasn't really called misleading or fake fake ads back in the days but they were there. They were there the entire time. Yeah. If you grew up in the Travian era and Eer European, you know this and and E Republic, all these web browser games, they had these leading ads back in 2005. Um, so so it's not new at all. I mean, you know, Machine Zone playables were mequeeds. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No one talked about it and Machine Zone was getting punished for that. So they had to have the playable in the game. So all these things happened in the past. It's just you guys are young and you know nothing. Uh, so shots fired. I'm sorry. So, who are these young guys? The only UA guys I know are like you mate and like Warren and you know Josh is coming up coming up but like you are we are not young

anymore. It's like you open LinkedIn there's a lot of lot of these people which is it's it's okay. It's okay. That's that's how we're getting old and old. It's not a t to share when they're saying it's a teddy. I'm kidding. I think the biggest change is really we can we can dive you know that beer in this topic but the biggest change is that you know you had became way simpler since 2020 2021 and essentially everybody's new ro campaigns and all you need to do is change bids and creatives and that's why every single new new age UA manager keeps talking about creatives all the [ __ ] time like creatives are the only thing you can do. They're not. Um, and then they're like, "Okay, how do we test creatives?" And they don't really understand how this creatives because they don't really understand how algorithms work. Yeah. So, and that's really why it pays to be old and wise like us. No, it's like uh I'm at the at the point

where I I read something on on LinkedIn or in Slack channels or somewhere and I'm I'm getting so annoyed and pissed at the same time because I see it's wrong but I don't know if I should interfere or if I should let it go because if if people are just getting these information which are ultimately wrong like it's it's going to spread like wildfire. everywhere and then people are just going to be stupid afterwards because they're, oh, but he said that, she said that. And it's like, but this is not how it works. It's not how it works. I was like, I don't know how to go how to how to get out of this situation, basically. I'd say that you're pretty active at telling them they're they're not doing the right thing. Um, maybe. Yeah. To put it to put it nicely. Um, yeah, but overall, I mean, that's that's fine. you know, you don't like it the industry also I feel is further

apart than it was 5 years ago. Yeah. Um I mean outside of events people don't really talk to each other that much like in 2010s we were a closed community wherever they talked to each other there was a bunch of events at a time. I don't or maybe I'm stoooled but I don't really see a lot of those events anymore. Um you know that's that's quite different. And then everybody has their own opinions about things. I must being one of them. And these are like pretty technical things that you need to figure out as a as a as a community, not necessarily as an individual person because of the lack of information and because of all the [ __ ] that was, you know, spread around around scan and everything scan related. So I think we were missing out on that fun because we are not operating as one or trying together to figure out this the hardest problem in the industry which is that. Yeah. Yeah. Measurement. Yeah. And they you're right that the people don't really share that much uh anymore or not don't share that much anymore, but it's

like sharing with just one purpose and one purpose only just to benefit on their own. Not like to benefit as like you said like the community like the scan that's a big problem that like no nobody was able to understand properly how it's how it works. the technical side of things is really hard and then people like ah like it's going to change with Doom UA is dead like I'm not sure like how how that evolved and it's not that at all it's just it's hard to understand properly and it's okay it's okay if you don't it's just people are are really afraid to admit like oh well I don't understand this because then who I can't do my job properly all right let's get to some spicy questions. What's the spiciest I don't think we're going to get through every question. So, what's the spiciest thing we can ask Dr. Doom? This is the origin story. The Avengers are coming. You know, we need like six more episodes.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. Don't worry. This is just like the t like the teaser for for the next episodes. But I think I think the the one we have with uh the large creative teams from coming from China is is pretty pretty interesting and and uh important as well because then we have all the Chinese companies coming to to get and conquer all the top grossing charts. Yeah. Insane teams. So, so just to set the stage for the audience, it's been rumored or on on good on good confidence that some of these It's not rumored, JK. It's not rumored. We We know it's We know. We know. Yeah. But it's But basically, some of these top grossing games out of China have huge creative teams, some reported as much as 300 plus people. Dr. Doom. Does that make sense? Yes. And what are these people doing? And if these Chinese studios can have 300

creative folks per game, what makes sense for a western game studio to do? Yeah, just just for context, u an old man uh talking uh players had 150 people on the creative team for the longest time. Like players was known at the time for having a really really big team. So the question is uh why did they have 300 people? First um it's not super expensive to have a large crazy game in China. It's my understanding. I'm not I don't have a lot of data to support this. So that that's one reason. Second reason is that these are mostly Forex games or hardcore games that you know depend heavily on creative diversification. So in order to promote a Forex game today, it's incredibly competitive. you're going to pay $100, $200 CPIs. The only way for you to survive and grow is to find higher RPM creatives that have somewhat reasonable

retention. And essentially, they only do is just like they send campaigns and they keep trying to find crazy winners in order to lower their CPI and scale the game. And really I have to give a lot of credit to player because playerics really high or like invented this where you know they started as a master game then they moved to like decorations they moved to hold the pin. I mean mate knows all these different creative concepts but they only did massive UA bursts when whenever they would unlock a new creative concept that does really well on the IPM front. Yeah. And Chinese developers you know they're extremely more aggressive. They have deeper pockets. These games are printing money. I mean like what out survival and the last war are making like a billion plus dollars a year globally. So they you know for them 300 creative people but you know they don't cost as much as developers. They work for you know six days a week and they turn on like a ton of creatives it makes total sense because they are spending a ton of money

and their number one job is to lower the cost and how you do that is with creative. Now whether 300 people is like too much or not that's that's a separate discussion but we've seen this before and it makes sense from like it may it's logical. I'm not certain whether it's whether you know it's uh it's the best invest money but definitely makes sense to invest money to a certain extent maybe 120 people. Well the thing is like it's not possible to do it in the US like full stop 100%. Yes. And to be like we can talk [ __ ] about the US too. Uh I I think you know Chinese developers are eating our lunch or western developers lunch because they're just working us and they keep trying they you know they've built games faster. They operate games you know more efficiently and they build more ads and test more things at the UI better. So so if you look at like war and write out survival if you have feed three years ago it's impossible to scale a forest game. I would tell you [ __ ] yeah I

would say no it's [ __ ] stupid. just like launch a casual game like only casual games are growing you know do like a merge through a game whatever but look at them a billion plus you know dollar businesses out of nowhere so Matthew well it's not out of nowhere right like they're like these all these guys are good old friends as we discussed with uh with JK in our forex episode like this is the next next generation of forex I've been talking to the guys from China and even heaven from century games he mentioned there are going to be hundred of forex games coming from Chinese studios in the next couple of months and I'm talking to other people from the west. Everybody's now just, oh, there's a Forex. They're spend they're, you know, printing money. Let's do a Forex game. It's like, well, good luck. Good luck with that. So, and it's Yeah, it's so definitely not out of nowhere. And honestly, with the 300 people in the creative teams, yes, I'm not sure like what are they doing, but anyway, you just you you said it

correctly like they need to drive down the CPIs and decrease the CPIs. How you do it? creative volume. Absolutely. But the thing is like how they do creative research. You just hundreds of them just come to the to the office and they just browse internet and then find trends what works like what what others people are doing. They copy the the concepts immediately like from like one day to another and then bum that that's that's that's how we do it. But but Dr. Doom. Would you say that this level of um I guess investment and resource around creatives is that specific to Forex or only specific genres? And would you also say that if you are a western studio trying to do Forex, given that you can't hire 300 people from a cost structure perspective, should you just avoid forex? Uh, that's a really good question. I

mean, I think it really depends on on how deep your pockets are because the the thing with Forex is, you know, your conversion rates are going to be lower like payer conversion rates, your CPIs are going to be higher. So, to make something like EPA to work or you need whatever like, you know, 10 conversions a day, you really need really deep pockets. And in order to test creatives at scale, you need even deeper pockets. So, it's really a question of, you know, is if if it's fun plus and they have like a ton of money, sure, you can give it a try. If you're a smaller developer, unless you you can raise a ton of money and you really have a ton of experience, let's say machine zone guys, it's going to be really really hard to make it successful because you can't do it without super pockets unless you casualize it or make it slightly more accessible than what's the case with the current. Even if you do that, even if you do that, you still need either the Forex expertise or UI expertise to make it happen. And like now the the overlap of people just very much decreased that

they have either one of these or both. It's like very few of the people. I I think there's also an information advantage that the Chinese studios have because just speaking from my own experience when I was at at Fun Plus back in the day, we had a lot of information. Oh yeah, we were in I don't think the western studios have the information. We were we were in Shanghai, China Joy and we were talking to to the developers and they said look the the Tik Tok guys or the reps like they share the the data from like your company to all the competition like they don't care like so everybody knows everything immediately even before before the the actual uh team members. So it's all about execution. Yeah. Yeah. One thing that's different though compared to again 2015 is that it's so much easier for Chinese developers to scale their games in the western markets. Like you know if you think about you know 10 years ago they have to figure out how to like work with Facebook and Google. Not only do you go

to Apploving and just like here's all my money just bringing you just said with Apploving is very tough if you it's tough but they they have deep pockets you know that's that's what I meant by deep pockets. Um, and again, you know, they spend elsewhere, but I think FA made it significantly easier for non-western developers to scale their games in the western market. Yeah, I mean, recently, definitely. Yes. When I look at the the actual UA portfol UA channel portfolio of the last war and forex, Last War and White Out Survival, it's very balanced, especially on White Out Survival. Uh, they're spending like 20 30% on like all of the like the big channels. The last word is skewed always to more towards uh the Google. So yeah, and all the Chinese games basically uh Forex or anything more hardcoreish. It's mainly and from the the experience I had with working with some of the Chinese studios, they were always big on Facebook and and Google and tried Applavin and other channels and never

succeeded that well because they don't have that experience and expertise running the Applavin. Now, yes, it's it's a little bit a little bit better. It unlocks unlocks scale immediately within few buttons [Music] and then just change creative over and over again. Yeah, you need use your 300 person team to No, but honestly like all the all the big Forex games, they have engines where they build the where they build the creatives. So, in that case, like that should significantly make your creative process way more efficient. basically then you have then a lot of AI stuff coming uh on the creative side and especially from the Chinese studios on the forex front. Uh so yeah like the 300 people it's quite a lot. I would say 100 is already a lot but still I think manageable and I would say white out has 100 people in the creative team. Oh we'll see. Hey Mate, so you've been

actively doing stuff with AI. Yeah. When do you think that AI overcomes that 300 person creative team advantage? Next year. Next year. Absolutely. We we're just talking about this with Jakob and we already see some kind of spillovers from like the AI hooks into the actual creative work. So we we talked about it on the on the creative trend podcast where dream games were they were testing few different AI hooks and then there was one especially that I I guess that worked then they transferred into the game kind of um art style and everything and just improved it. But until we we have AI just replace the whole creative team, there's a lot of work on the on the on the way until we get there. And what about on your side? Are you seeing in the industry a lot of folks using AI for creatives or for

growth applications of any kind besides creatives? Yeah, for everything. Uh I'm I'm currently interested in just like the content side of AI and and the the amount of content that's generated with AI. YouTube content content is insane. Um yeah, and for creatives at least for live action stuff, I mean clink got so much better in the past like six months. It's insane. Like the the stuff you can create uh so making videos, 3D videos, tube videos with cling, it's it's a no-brainer. I mean, you kind of have to do it. Um, I think for playables, for um, any kind of in gameplay uh, stuff, we need to be build workflows to make AI work for us, but it'sable. It's inevitable. It's incredibly fast and incredibly cheap. Uh, so I I don't see a reason why anyone would not play around with the AI. I guess the main reason is is the legal side of things and regulations. Like, not everyone wants to do that, but it's a no-brainer. It just makes sense to to do it.

Yeah. Okay. And with that in mind, I think we should we should pause here. Keep the the rest of the the questions for the the next Dr. Doom episode. If you if you agree, wait, I've got one last question. One last question for Dr. Doom because like back in the day, uh then I'm I'm, you know, over five years out of touch, but there used to be ways in which you can bot downloads and things like that. And I think one of the questions you were going to ask Mate was like, you know, the um kind of like the download performance of some hyper casual and casual games. And it used to be that you could pay for with very little amounts of money. Like way back in the day, it used to be like I think $8,000 to get top three downloads in the US. And I I put a chart in in the notes for you guys. That was an old pricing sheet that I got. Yeah. So that's you know that's not Yep. that just to be clear that's not

something that anyone should do but it used to be the case that you could pay to rank for downloads or anything like that and I'm sure many studios back in the day use that to get investment and things like that. Uh is that still possible today? And uh if so what are the prices like in in today's today's market? Yeah, it's possible. It makes no sense though. Um, okay. And I think, you know, we'll talk about it next two episodes. I think platforms failed to to help developers with organic growth and it's just getting worse. Organics start tanking across the board for everyone. Um, and essentially the reason why it makes no sense is that the incremental downloads you're going to get from like a top free position are not worth the investment. So you can still drive bot downloads. You can still get cheap installs. Um but it's really questionable what's the quality of those installs going to be and what is the actual incremental volume of get in the US and tier one markets from from that

particular placement. So so that's why it's not as common. But it's possible. The impact of featuring has come down a lot too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Try to find the top free j in in in the app store. It's it's near impossible. Uh, and Google swapped all the free placements with paid placements. So, you know, it's really really hard to to drive organic downloads nowadays. So, kind of doesn't make sense to do it at scale. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Now, nobody does it. It's still kind of possible and there are still some review buying and all of this like uh dark head SEO ASO stuff. So, it's it's still happening. It's still happening. I heard that that side is still like I I heard just recently some people are still doing that kind of stuff like app store reviews and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean obviously I mean people are doing some crazy crazy [ __ ] out there that nobody talks about but thank god we are here to talk about it

and unpack all of this anyway. Okay, good. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you Dr. Doom for coming. Uh, I'm pretty sure that we see each other again uh in the near future. And yeah, until next time. Thank you very much. Cheers. [Music] Hey, [Music]