Top Troops Global launch case study: Game design, Ad monetisation & UA review (#82)

I think there are still I there are still few more Concepts you could potentially use like the progression like day one versus Day Day 30 kind of like okay well this is my army versus the day 30 which is this is my Army and these these type of things and also like putting more emphasis on Concepts without merch yeah yes get rid of the merch immediately get rid of the merch but I think that's the whole point of having the merch in the CP but is it I mean but how like what like how how like what Universe 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 [Music] seriously hello hello hello hello

welcome this is session number 82 my name is mat lerich I'm Felix braber and this isier talking his wife because he's talking to of course multitask on the background all right uh welcome so guess what we're talking about this one game which launched quite um what was like AG already three weeks ago okay nice uh but it's already making millions I maybe a million I think so yes you guessed it right we are talking about top troops uh about friends at Social Point uh so I want to start because I think uh this going to be quite interesting since we have a lot of comparisons yeah to one specific game

why is that remot yeah yeah let wait a second I was I worked at that company as well so I have also some some UA numbers am I the only one who wasn't let in that's um W yeah we wanted to actually we wanted to to get you in but I I'm not sure I was actually doing yo work there back then like I was doing the mediation and everything I think for the admo part we'll actually have a quite interesting discussion but maybe brief brief introduction why this is interesting yeah yeah with our great uh colleague filipo who's not here with us currently unfortunately but yeah me and him was doing the mediation back then so that was nice um yeah um so battle Legion we w b work there with M after the global launch uh the game was Global launch at uh or let's say the game was soft launched in August 2018 and it had pretty much you're talking about battle Legion now yeah battle Legion battle Legion because we started talking about top troops we'll get there we'll get there wa wait a second and because it was it was the hotest think on the blog back then and

everybody was talking about it it was getting copied from left to right pretty much and uh top troops game it actually soft launch on the parro games account which was I guess somewhere connected to social point I don't know when in it's connected to social point because I was looking into that uh uh yeah it is connected social P that came whatever yeah whatever the website is and I was like huh wait a second I say I know this this was soft launched March 26 2020 so it was four months before even battle Legion Global launched and this was already soft launched so it's uh yeah it's been out there for a while yeah yeah and then then as I said battle Legion Global launch in juel 2020 uh right afterwards and then these guys killed the game I think according to our favorite data tools which Dr also dead games which I recommend everybody to try looking too

uh this was killed in January 2021 and then relaunched in July 20 at 2021 with like a lot of other changes if I remember correctly I couldn't find the video but I think I saw it somewhere before because we were looking it back then at Battle Legion it kind of copied battle Legion or let's say Bor yeah direct clone and even the units were the same F like everything yeah and and only afterwards they Chang after the relaunch with the merge progression and kind of iterated there was also this game of Nations from E Republic Labs that's sitting in steel front portfolio if I get it right that's not a clone didn't also make it that's de yeah that's that's nothing let's let's kind of take it from there so the game if I understood correctly has been in development from like four years or something like that if I count it right because soft lunch top troops game okay because

yeah if they sof launch on March 26 probably you know they had some time until they get the game going and and yeah so very long time ago let's say and we were kind of looking into it anyway so um they take on the batt Legion core gameplay we can kind of look into it yes please talk about it you know what would be amazing if you could uh kind of okay well uh side by side Legion I'm there yeah I'm I level 13 [ __ ] off I'm level 13 almost level 140 oh yeah you're level 14 I can see that on your screen almost there oh I'm I'm almost there don't don't you worry yeah um don't you worry my friend let me go somewhere else um thousand GS what the [ __ ] what what do you mean why don't you spend them why why do you have you save them for GAA that's it Jesus [ __ ] Christ anyway yes because you

yeah okay you just headed live uh online all the time when you were just uh I did no you you can't do this thing here yeah you can you can't man that's the thing and I will talk about you can you can just click one one main thing they took out of battle Legion core gam playay is that there's no spinning mechanic yeah and and this fundamentally changes the game because this game is actually nearly completely PVE or single player like battle Legion was mainly PVP game and it was mostly driven by PVP meta game most of the features were PVP based even though we did the single player Saga but this is a completely different setup here regarding the like this whole kind of a even approach here because if let's say here I can see my opponent I can adjust my whole thing you couldn't do that in battle Legion at all it was just random opponent and your composition needs to be based on rock paper scissors and it you know loses against some wins against

others yeah that's the strategy element so you need to think about like what do you see on the battlefield and then kind of adjust your your army yeah exactly here it's it's way different because here you can completely see your opponent right before you either on Saga or in PvP or a boss or whatever you can adjust directly there well you can adjust but you need to have your kind of army well balanced if you just level up your like few of your troops and nothing else then you're pretty much [ __ ] like the nice thing nice thing they iterated here that now it's kind of Snappy that you know you have the the board here I know it's kind of small but it's a very very big difference here that units you have the guy from The Toy Story yeah yeah uh because in battle Legion you could literally move the units by like a few pixels and come let's not compare it to battle Legion just the game so anyway you kind of have to you kind of have to you kind of have to because the C game play is pretty much the same yeah but uh yeah I guess it even looks like it's it

does few nice iterations here on on here the other interesting part is that deploying units is a little bit different here where here units take just one spot in the Army power and in battle Legion we had it in a way that there were like legendary units to more and so on so it kind of was a deeper strategy honestly because here I can just build everything out of brute forcing legendaries because they just take one spot and so on in that Legion you would kind of lose if you just put all the legendaries there because have like very few units there so I guess the it's it's adjusted to this PVE progression it's not driven by PVP meta game as was Battle Legion which is good on the other hand but yeah let's see um there there is the brute I can I can see the BR on like in the opponent's Army yeah of course um on the other hand uh it's as I said like pure power progression everything kind of goes into legendary think I don't really need to care about

the small guys anymore they are not really kind of I guess I didn't really see them as some kind of part of my strategy and uh what they iterated very heavily is the meta game and the meta game now is kind of let's say mixed up of merge and an idle RPG so the merge is [ __ ] annoying by the way yeah it's super annoying and and this is this is some of the problems let start also before you start kudos to Laura because thanks to her I find found out about the that star right there outo sort outo sort I was like it's unplayable without this button I was like what I was just moving around this like great I was always just swiping those armies com level eight like it comes in level eight I'm like why didn't I have this from the start yeah yeah the thing is that like let's talk merge a little bit so merge uh there are two merge main game plays on the market currently merge merge two and merge three and five merge two we

know under merge Mansion where you have the board you merge two things together you have more of those and then you consume them and that's it if you have merge 3 to five you have the ever merge or merge dragons where you have this kind of Long Island something where the board is three times five times bigger and you can merge five units to get two in this kind of merge bonus where you don't need to merge six or 3 to one where there's no bonus so everybody merges five because you know yeah because way to play um the problem here that in every other kind of casual merge game stuff gets consumed in a way that you have quests and you need to merge stuff and then they consume the thing and it gets away from your board and you continue to fill up your board with generators and blah blah blah here you need to keep everything on the board forever it never gets taken out you haven't merged a single unit in like 10 years looking at this yeah what do you mean no no this is completely optimized yeah this is very optimized this is

completely optimized man I have everything that I could why why would you merge those four out like Assassin if you are getting one more and then uh you get the bonus that's exactly so you don't merge three you just merge yeah yeah you just merge the maximum amount of uh exactly to to play efficiently and this that's why he's on 14 I'm on 13 and you level five yes exactly you see see level 11 the problem the problem that merge games have and as I said is that they have problem creating permanency because everything that you work for everything that you merge for gets consumed eventually you get nothing in return anyway like you get the renovation story whatever some kind of [ __ ] but you don't have anything permanent and midcore games try to solve it with this kind of unit progression that gets permanent but the problem is that it gets into this mess which is a problem so I call this the merge midcore dream where there's like five or four games currently on the market so there's stop troops there's merch stories which hadum

units that's already dead with the whole studio acquired by plka then we had our own soft lunch game at trap light Crystal Heroes which we tried we which is dead as well which is dead as well we went for Merch two not not merch three and five uh then there's merch wiking sitting in metacore portfolio uh a superar portfolio company which I think been there also for like two years or something at way more than two years because we were above the Trap light when they started this it will unfortunately suffer from the same problem that the units if you want to merge the units the situation will be just worse and worse because as you see here every single level of the unit will just add four more instances of the unit on the board which means that if this has whatever seven or eight merge levels each merge level will now require four of those units on my board because I'm waiting for that one thing that will can come up the whole chain yeah so this will just get worse and

worse and worse and as I progress through my game pretty much all of these things will just be occupied by these yeah end it's really annoying units that you don't use yeah exactly this is the biggest problem you don't even use this unit have you ever seen like the normal archers or like these guys never ever well iuse the first levels like I'm until like 10 yeah exactly like are you just I I have like this whatever like this whole island of whatever legendary units that I have here like don't even use those visards by the way it's like that doesn't matter so those RADS are [ __ ] amazing the the reds are completely op super power but the thing is that I don't use these units at all I don't even know what to do with them like this the whole kind of merch thing kind of loses the point here so yeah just kill them I think you can uh yeah kind of for some this brings me to that other thing that I think you can still merge them in the Ascension mechanic that consume them at some point so I hope

maybe that will be the use of it but let's see uh the last game that's on the market that I want to mention is top war which has exactly not top battle but top war top top war exactly which is also kind of close to top troops you don't know why um is it is it seriously just the name anyway top war does this perfectly in a way that it hopes on that bandwagon we've been talking last year all the time where you have the fake mini game same as Kingdom guard which they have like a merging Tower Defense which hooks you up with the game it's nice and like easy to understand easy to get into until the Forex game lurking in the shadows comes up and steals your wallet exactly so but then the merch game ends like you they have like Auto merge button and that's it you press it goodbye you don't really need to well here kind of like uh it still sits there yeah it still sits

there you need still tend to do something with it and like it's annoying to be honest like for me at least like if I'm playing an RPG I don't want to do these things it was fun for like first two hours but then like it's not fun at all two hours 20 minutes and and the worst part is that like you know the events they run they run the same event as the ever merg meta game which is you start the new Island from scratch and you merge everything from scratch which is like more merging like now you have two to T to yeah yeah exactly and those like uh rewards are not that sexy to merge like like [ __ ] everything from scratch so so my problem with this whole thing is that at one point you didn't go for the like fake mini game where you diminish the mini game Power and like completely put it into background later down the line because we still have it in front of ourselves the other thing is that it's not really that important for the progression because the progression is mainly what like upgrading units which have like five upgrade vectors because we need now the merge Vector we

need the level up Vector we need the Ascension vector and we need the skill up Vector and in the end the merge Vector is the slowest and like we don't really need to care about it that much all the other like most of the things that just done through this like Squad coins that is the currency that you upgrade the really yeah that really matters like of course I can go with like let's talk about the red for instance red is [ __ ] op because if you go into skills and he summons one minion to his eight but actually he can summon up to five minions and they stack on the battlefield if they don't get killed he summons more and they stay there y pretty much just go for the rats that's that's there like our Splinter here from Ninja Turtles and uh then the other thing is that as I said like I don't really need all these like non legendary non-epic units and most of the chests like if you look at normal chests they have like 1% epic chance the better one and the other ones has 0% this is complete trash I

don't need this yeah I like my guess is that they kind of went through like throughout the years through this merch road which was like very good on the early metrics but later down the line it kind of fused together with this like idle RPG progression monster and evermerge monster and now we have this how's the game doing though so let's talk numbers let's talk numbers yeah yeah do you have those because I have those so it's actually um well overall revenue is quite uh the higher than what we see in the uh in the tools that we use yes in the tools and it's kind of growing uh so when when they launched on October 4th uh I think and like the first week was like [ __ ] terrible I was I was actually writing the the the the case study I like what's this [ __ ] like what like making like 6K per day on the like Global launch week like after being in development for years yeah I was like wait a second I

was like okay well so I stopped because of reasons let's let's go it that way and I came back to it when uh when I was flying back from Lisbon and I was like oh wait a second it's kind of making like 20K a day now like okay it's interesting and I like and then when I finished the the the article last week was like 33,000 per day or like oh it's already peaked it's it's declining Jesus Christ like what's what's this but then it's it's climbing up again so uh so now it makes like 45k uh uh in I per day which you know if we take the the sadness multiplier in can be easily like eight maybe 70 80 and then I was like uh with all all the all the experience and the and the information you shared Felix in the previous uh podcast I was thinking this can earn like like 20 to 30% at ad

Revenue it's like okay well just like rough can not right now but it could easily it could even more then and we can discuss that afterwards yeah but I think um what I was kind of looking into it was like at least since the global launch it was like 1.2 maybe 1.4 million in Revenue but on like 300,000 installs now it's like 400,000 installs which is quite interesting was the daily installs ratio uh daily installs is like 20K I think right now yeah it's 25 24,000 both re revenue is stagnating and downloads are increasing or was no both are stagnating it's yeah it's kind of stagnating now it's it increased uh because the Brazil installs increased as well but like the the game has stable four 5,000 installs from us and then the rest is like rest of the world basically we have France France Germany a little bit Vietnam uh why would you launch

Brazil without ad like anyway we'll get to that later let let me finish the GD yeah okay um so yeah as you can see this is so overall I mean not not great not terrible I would say yeah not great not terrible like don't get me wrong and it's also it's the the revenue is increasing so I think and also like we are recording on the day when the season changed and I think there will be a spike so we can actually make guess I think there will be like free times more revenue on a daily basis I I think they will reach like 150 per day let's see for for for this like 15K yes or just the spike you mean not yes just the spike just the spike okay if I remember battle Legion was doing something like 2 million in the first Global launch month yes something so this would put them on 4 million a run run rate if that comes true 150k day run rate of 4.6 million roughly well but only for only only for the spike on the season CH the spikes so if it's if it's going to be three times more five times more or like what like

think about it then make a guys at the end of the end of the podcast I I I say it's like going to be 150 so fre time fre let let me finish so the really big addition that these guys did during those years they build like this super super massive progression because as I said they have the merch progression they have the idle RPG progression like all the things that you can imagine Saga what's the where's the where's the idle RPG progression like all the idle RPGs has these game modes like you know normal Saga then you have these Quest taken from puzzles yeah like what's what is this all about I mean they say it's kind of weakens the the dark Forces but like how that's [ __ ] story ID RPGs have [ __ ] stor okay uh then the asynchronous arena PVP it's [ __ ] unless it's wuss exactly [ __ ] if you are [Laughter] not then they have the clam Clos thing the Ascension Tower just like you know

if not worship with with boobs then you [ __ ] story uh fa faction dungeons Rog glide mode that's pretty nice they have Rog glide mode similarly to like any other this is this was quite uh quite interesting like this was nice like I I really like this one and then they have the can you show it come on yeah oh yeah we can show it uh is the typical Rog Life mod where you can start small with some of course typical RO with some kind of a whatever let me just deploy my legendaries here wait a second where's the where are the rats put and then how Rog Glide most work like they create this kind of a little bit of a journey through you building up your army and you need to choose somehow like you don't choose here but then you choose between this and this or whatever and you you get to kind play the units that you don't own which is nice that they can offer you you get absurdly high values of like power because there's even upgrades just like 50% increase of damage or whatever so it kind of it's a

very nice flavor to the game I think and they have it even pretty nice regarding the monetization because it stays there even if you lose and you can reset it and stuff like that so let let's see for instance here let's take a medic whatever now we have to choose this and yeah Aladin pretty much yeah for instance this one this is good for our ditty um yeah so they have it like yeah they have it done pretty well like don't get me wrong like this whole kind of robust thing is probably what's holding the revenue and like why why it's so good because like one of the I would say bigger problems with battle Legion was that you could as as Felix mentioned in the beginning you could leave it spinning and it would play itself which my guess is was a little bit of detrimental Factor later down the line but here you need to kind of have player input very often I would say so the thing is the the short well the early

retention was great also early Ro was was amazing but then like long down the line like nothing there basically very even though we added like bosses single player thing is like in here I think it's going to be the same problem because we are you're on 14 I'm 13 and there's like that not that many things you can do actually yeah that's the thing like this is my my account after like three days of kind of intense exactly I wasn't even like playing dead hard and it's was like oh okay so it's level buy did you buy anything no no I didn't I just wanted to see how it goes I bought today the the season pass because I was like okay well see I'm going to unlock that premium territory and it's like no you have to buy Star Kingdom pass like [ __ ] this this is by the way very very good like there one of the best offers I've seen in genre where you have this kind of permanent inventory permanent space seating gear that you can only unlock for oh you can unlock for gems for gems this is for gems the others for money yeah pay for Comfort how how is that pay for Comfort there you go I know

like it's not as as see let's open the legendary just let's see what oh wow really okay really didn't really want that's what they gave you an arcade Hunter that's from Battle Legion ah like lot of un are from Battle leg but they have their own units like pretty ni I throughout the years that they're pretty good the other problem that I have here or let's say not the problem but it's kind of confusing that there's like multiple multiple ways to acquire units which are kind of confusing because you have these kind of training camps yeah that you can like train units and eventually you can train like legendary units after like 20 years of playing this and then you have the gacha pools of course to have the gacha pools so you have faction summons which is great you have the essential gacha which you always summon only if you have the max then you have legendary which applies the same and some kind of whatever featured unit [ __ ] as usual like this is done pretty well but the thing is again

that the only the Epic and legendary units matters like these kind of random guys here like pretty much half of the rooster they don't matter that much you know way yeah so so this is this is kind of my problem that it's not that deep as battle Legion in a way that the strategy the strategy is there like you literally have the de was built around something that you need to wait wait why is that a bad thing battle Legion is closed now right so yeah maybe it's a good thing we'll see yeah maybe honestly batt now makes like 4K a day on zero nothing it's just Sunset it but but the thing is that if you wanted to kind of streamline this with the merch audience coming in or like I still kind of miss the angle what are you talking about what merge audience like what is the merge audience in here so why do you then have a merge in it like so I think just to keep people occupied a little bit more just another thing to do in the game you you know you mean like play the inventory Tetris with you don't use at all yeah

pretty much yeah really yeah just to do something when when you wait for I don't know energy or whatever seriously yeah I don't know like for me why why do you play ever merch every merch is different every merch you do quests and those quests require to merge some stuff here you don't you don't do this Quest you don't consume these units that that often so it's different different progression in a way but yeah let's see maybe it will work don't get me wrong like they have the potential to do it and and and I'm not saying like B Legion did it better I'm saying they did it different way and kudos to them that they were able to squeeze that much progression into it because it's hard it's really hard to do these things and reconnect all the like evermerge battle Legion core gaml idle RPG whatever something economy into it so this is really hard like literally like giant undertaking here yeah you just you just said the merging is not even connected to the yeah that's my

point like but this game is still fun I I I still had a lot of fun playing this game yeah tell me that after one week of playing yeah like if your board gets this full you lose the fun that that's that's the problem here well but you are not fun yako because we can enjoy merging not even like the full five uh unit optimization time yes there's a bunch of units you can merge there I can see you here you just don't want to join in the fun Remo you can merge them man because it's inefficient why would well you can but yeah who cares but literally like if I would like see here this four four guys it it literally hurts me if I would merge them now which four well you don't use them anyway these these four yeah yeah yeah yeah of course because I'm waiting for the fifth one then I have two more of the next stage and I save so much time wow that's so fun see I don't think you're pring playing this game correctly oh he's well he's playing very correctly yeah very correctly very correctly to correct yeah too correctly well with 1,200 gems what

the [ __ ] seriously why but you wait for the gacha pool that's it because it's 1,400 or something I know I know I know anyway and I know I I should I should uh go to the gacha pools and then like summon if I have only the full stack but I don't give a [ __ ] I just summon like randomly because it's it's worthless I know I know I'm just I'm just used to play like efficient anyway the yeah let let me finish the rating from my side is pretty much like very good job on trying to create something new out of that like core gam play and like with very big twists and very big progression so my guess is something like seven and a half in a way or seven seven sorry seven seven because the merge doesn't connect in the end that that's that's that's the problem here like it will still run into this problem that like this board will get just worse and worse later down the line is it the fact that you don't like order like you don't feel like you have

control of the order and then like you don't like it he's that's the control he everything he needs yeah that's like well there you have like space no I have still some space like few blocks oh my God you're are terrible yeah but EDS are definitely underutilized yeah that's a nice seg to me by the way m Segway uh have you seen the the story elements and how you can earn gems in there in those which ones well click on the unit oh of course you can pick gems from new units of course I know that yeah that that's usual things there there and then story and then you can collect yeah which would be a nice additional ad placement oh man that's not a good ad placement man see here they give you they give you let me get into my part H honestly let me get into my place now cuz like honestly like it it's the game is fun

but I think it really exemplifies like the most common argument and ad monetization uh that you always have with a game design team like because in in my world there's two type of mobile gaming companies there's one that listen to admon people and two the ones that don't listen to admon people this game would never make 50% of ads uh or inaps it it could never earn more than 30% on top of it but is earning way less than that much is it though yes it is it's 20 maybe 20 any% no it's way less man it's way less less than 10 my guess yeah but anyway like in these two categories like whatever company you're in pretty much boils down to how reliant on I APS you are as a primary revenue driver uh or if it's ads people actually listen to top troops Falls inside category one 100% uh they're going the I AP route and they don't care about ad placements uh and because basically the game design

features they put in drive so much more value so that's fair I get that argument but there's so much an tapped ad monetization potential in this game and I don't really know why they released it with such Bare Bones admon strategy um like there's two rewarded ad placements maybe you can show Remo M yeah the merchant deal who shows hours yeah every two hours and then there's one in the store as well yeah one per day yeah yeah okay and that's it so they're not adding fix yeah exactly they're not adding that much value so like ad view array is somewhere like maybe 35 40% because it's not on the main screen and it's not visible at all times imp out is no higher than 0.8 if even that High um I think this with a Dau from the last week this title is earning about $175 or $400 a day in ad

Revenue so that's about a half a percent of the overall Revenue you are you serious no okay no I'm dead serious uh I had the same argument with you yakob on Battle Legion that you should put more ad placements but like here there's a couple ones that you like stick out to me like doubleim doubling of rewards after a one match speeding up timers on upgraded buildings there's the firly that come and you have to click and you get dropped stuff like having one that's a different color that's an placement I was like click I was like where's that ever ever has that I think exactly yeah and double of resources when you come back after the app is being like closed like after a session like there's so many like ways to go here and maybe they're going to add like ad placements down in the future but yeah like what I would say here is just show a lot more ads after users like stop converting so you usually find out a point where yeah

purchases are made the first purchases are made like I don't know what day was that in battle Legion I would put an an ad on autosort evil right every second click will be forehead but like for argument sake here like let's say let's say if if we start showing a lot more like ads to non AP purchasers in this game and they watch at least four or five rewarded per session which I don't think is impossible with the how the game is built in the USA that would earn about 12 cents per day per user in ad Revenue but compounded like over 10 days that's a120 which I would argue is quite meaningful for UA I don't know like what do you think the cpis are ma quite High absolutely High yeah absolutely High it wouldn't actually matter a do2 yeah that's why I think like this is no ads territory because it's super expensive I I mean it could be less expensive but we will get there the thing is like monster legends

and Dragon City they're they're 30% ad Revenue like why why would you not add a couple more ad placements in the start of this because it's still going to earn you money maybe because they want to just see the Baseline and then we'll they will build F from there I mean look so now it's earning this amount of money and then it can be only better I had the same argument with you Remo on Battle Legion I was like add a couple more ad placements and you're like we had a lot of AD placements we had an ad placement event man yeah exactly it's quite quite good what was imp on Battle Legion oh 60% uh like engagement and then like five so it was 30% ads then right yeah 30% ads exactly and during the event even more because the event was driven by it you could 32% yeah whatever um yeah like this whole thing I think um I guess they had enough time in soft lunch to kind of see if it would improve with that that's my

thing here H what do you mean but I don't get it why wouldn't you just put it there CU it makes so much sense and it doesn't harm the core Gameplay at all I'm not saying don't put it there I'm just saying like this whole argument mat said they want to seal Baseline [ __ ] because they had so much time in soft lunch but it's got so much potential you agree with that right course of course as I said of course all right so instead of earning $175 they could be earning $1,000 yeah which is quite a lot when you earn 45 day to be honest I would love for someone to crack this midore merch game any way because you don't think these are cracked they have cracked it my problem is that maybe this this whole kind of thing is unable to begin with in a way that it's kind of like kind of either like audience mismatch or the only thing you can use it is a wle to your for mismatch it's just like it doesn't like belong in the in in this

like mid core like what what do you solve with merging like what do you solve with merging nothing you have you have great retention early numbers yes exactly then it yeah turn top war anyway before passing on to Mier I'll give it a one out of 10 because it has ads in it that's good then you automatically get a one yeah but honestly like the admon team and social point they're really good there's a like quite a big team like I'm just wondering why they got so outed my guess is that this team is kind of a little bit more like on the sidelines because it was four years in soft lunch or something so it's not really the center if you put game team and admon team next to each other you know who always wins depends the company right like in a hyper casual it's the admon people that win you know okay okay that's but then the admon people are the U people as well so you know all right so tell me why adding a120 to like player LTV wouldn't really matter here much yeah have you seen the the ads do they

have good hooks uh they have actually quite good hooks but honestly um so I was a little bit disappointed when uh when they Global launched because usually when came Global launches I see their ads on a daily basis on Facebook like pooping into my face like 10 times a day haven't seen a sing yeah I haven't seen a single top troops ad which is you know I guess vades of the big Market I've seen it I've seen it really mhm I was playing one other game that I'm doing currently I had like three or four times it was walking in ba and then he saw that that would be great if like baa Ed comes up and then it turns into game ad that would be the hook yeah okay the Mr hook well next time you play a game or like show us a game and stop the baa ads in in the banners that would be first thing to do anyway so um you know we talked about the merch kind of cpis

right in the past so they were super low yeah exactly not anymore I guess what do you mean super low like [ __ ] like it's you need Pedro Pascal now in order to get there yeah and even even Pedro won't help you because uh your well downloads are kind of stagnating and the revenue is not going up even if you use Pedro Pascal but uh honestly yeah it's exactly the opposite of low it's kind of quite high so everybody Casino High match free kind of high high which is still very high which is still pretty high so if we are talking about metre is like what like4 plus uh with purchase optimized campaigns in us with value 50 plus sometimes even more so so it's quite high so it's quite high so it's but you know like this is how it is it's it's the merge all it's the well merge games for female audience a yeah it's the still the same audience it's match free

games so it's the same thing high cpis but uh the question is like why the [ __ ] would you use these merch mechanics in your creatives if you have way different uh mechanics in the game so for example on top of it yeah so the battle the battlefield come on anyway you don't show the battlefield in any of the ads uh it is there but uh it's not on like first position I we'll get there uh so when I was looking in this like creative research and uh I saw these type of AD so it's ugc a lot of merch there's like actually very well not a lot of emphasis on the battle itself there like few konish narrative based uh Crees is hooks so you will be very pleased Mr Felix and our favorite hook do you know which one is our favorite hook Captain

Hook that was [ __ ] amazing answer like one second Captain Hook nah it's actually the the best no Wi-fi game hook almost well I think the favorite one was when it was on the balloon it really works like I was getting very very shitty connection and the game still was working pretty well nice so it actually is true and uh you know what we have there our good old fake ads and uh we have inspiration coming from Top War uh storm shot course can you show the screen I want to see these ads I want to see these ads what just wait a second everybody isjust for the ads yeah we are here for the ads don't worry I'm going to share my my screen and actually my uh kind of article because I already wrote about it anyway so we

can let's start with ugc right anime FL I just wa you take a camera and film yourself playing in on tablet out standing move yeah it's all a winner yeah but don't worry it's terrible that we have is like Noob versus Pro which still like a kind of fuy I don't yeah you know again merging why is there not not the battle like come on way earlier than this this looks really high production value for these creatives I think it it is actually yeah it could be and then we have uh this guy is he real he's real yeah he seems real he's real yeah and then we have uh oh this is one how this one I actually

was targeting me on Facebook oh this is this like my girlfriend is better than yeah yeah kind of concept yeah kind of started the battle with blah blah blah can I ask you a question oh sure what are you playing right now oh asking gra the people on the street but it's it's kind of like a hook as well right enem B and then we have this is yeah this is this is you don't want know did know canr andn reward this is you merging five units to get the free yes I think this is actually fake AI I don't think this is real yeah I don't think this maybe this I don't know we have the same thing same

thing yep and then we have the same oh no it's so who are they copying here uh this is uh Lilith game what was it rise of Kingdoms yeah R of Kingdoms and then we have right not this one not this one they probably should be using a fake ad wait wait a second no fake ads there you go no fake ads hey I this so good so this is Storm shot obviously um and then we have our good old top War uh I mean the thing is so why is this fake ads uh or why are these fake ad working for top war is because they have it in the in the tutorial four different tutorials we look into it because they Chang the fake CS directly with it yes that's the thing like that's

why I think like this and also storm shot is this is basically the game there right yes it's in the tutorial because uh before the the Forex and this is kind of like I don't know I have no idea what it is actually whatever I would actually play this interesting that's actually quite fun a little bit like a kingdom guard though or uh no Kingdom guards is like a tower defense thing uh yes but I mean from the creatives Yeah Yeah from the creatives never mind this should be the fou and what do we have here good old Hero Wars good old Hero Wars no chain woman in the at the end no no CH minus 10 points yes yeah yeah plus 10 points and this is what like uh PLS versus Zombies type I never seen this before yeah I seen this uh is that NN they're killing from Zab looks like it

some slime thing that's not even in the game I'm think not even in the game never mind so that's that's that and then we have kind of like a the biggest spinner which is on YouTube which is kind of like a trailer basically that's it right so you have this talking trailer yeah yeah yeah what have it here it's in the in the Google Play as well this exactly looks like a like battle Legion anyway CD and all of the all of the fun stuff and then we have these like not representative of actual game play this quite nice next they have those bosses in the game actually yeah also the music is good I'm not sure if you if you hear it I guess yeah you you can and it's yeah I I mean quite okay not sure like how this works in terms of the audience but yeah then we

have again different story story based ad yeah yeah story yeah there are few like these I haven't seen story based ad for a long time yeah you should you should watch the the latest Legend of slime creatives yeah nice and then again a narrative because yeah this is basically tied to the tutorial and like the beginning of the game I also like the music this the Cinematic yeah and then we have few more like this it's like versus this versus this oh my ninja M that was so creative yes ninja Mo that unit is amazing yes I have it as well and then yeah right better version of Assassins yes way better version man and assassin just die from being breathed on ass are completely useless yeah yes they

are again like so these were like quite like narrative kind of based creatives merging M merging with fake art yes exactly but again merging like I know it's a lot of a lot about merging but come on guys like merging one do the trick but I guess what that's the trick is the plays no Wi-fi games that's man so yeah here we are and then the same thing but with different color okay yes so that's like kind of the lot lot of Concepts though like it's in terms of the like the creative depth is it's amazing I love it I love all the fake ads and like these different kind of angles they they've done and I mentioned it as well and then uh kind of like the guys from social point they were kind of if you had to venture guess right now like what would

you say CPI is in the US for them for this one uh for all these creatives that we see for for for the fake ads it's like way more than 50 for these I would say like 25 30 for sure because it's still like all about merging if if we so getting your 12 on ad on on ad monetization pretty much just like 3 4% yes yeah it's like so yeah it's nothing but if we kind of think about it differently and we were able to decrease the CPI quite heavily on Battle Legion because of all all of these different creatives again Mass battles that was always like I'm talking about because this is actually what kind of lowers down the cpis heavily and I've I've done this for years took this concept these Concepts from Lords mobile and I think few Oh you mean the gate before the gate concept like Army build up Army build up

it's like like so many so like exactly this yeah so so many units on the battlefield it's kind of uh like what we discussed with uh with Mika for Mr out of fire yeah then we have uh we had few more of these like iterations obviously all of the M battles but then we kind of stole this from the animal Warfare or got inspired by this uh it worked that's a good hook that's very good hook man and we also like paired this with the actual units from the game so that was doing very well and then we had also like a little bit of humor the this was actually like do you remember aob this was uh uh a QA build I like hey this looks quite funny let's I this actually happened during the release of the unit that it was kind of op because he ate everything yeah pretty much so it was it was really really good uh and then we just kind of used it in the

in the creatives because why not so I think there are still I there are still a few more Concepts you could potentially use like the progression like day one versus Day Day 30 kind of like okay well this is my army versus the day 30 which is this is my Army and these these type of things and also like putting more emphasis on Concepts without merch yeah yes get rid of the merch immediately get rid of the merch but I think that's the whole point of having the merch in the CP but is it I mean but how like what like how how like what Universe you are kind of like lowering down the CPI with the merge concept like this not how it works I know maybe this work in 2021 when this soft launched would be yeah I mean that could be not bad actually not bad but you know like uh you're making the ads now not in 2021 but you have the same game you have the same game but you have more elements in the game that's what I'm try trying to say so like put more emphasis on on the battle the battle itself and then

just you know different units there you can use the upgrades which were kind of shown in the sour in there and also honestly when the I even used merge kind of concepts for battle Legion it was working okay so I mean I get I get it like why is it in here and like why it's all all around the the ads but not the best concept I think let's see I already of published this a week ago and uh and I so I have friends there in in the UA um Department in Social point which said like they're going to get inspired by this so let's see let's see I'm going to watch this very closely um we're definitely going to return this to review radar anyway anyway maybe we should do some bets in a way like what's going to happen in three months oh yes of course well you should you should now uh kind of bet like what would be the spike on the revenues I'm going to say mayen mat score is like eight out of 10 for sure it's very solid because of the like there you know I well I didn't even

talk about like what kind of VLS they have actually let me guess app living meta Google done pretty much uh no actually but yeah it's app yeah it's app with Google on on the like top spot even though they're not running and they don't have the max as mediation right because Char boost right no no no I don't think they're on helium actually cuz I know cuz I know social point was iron source is one of their crown jewels in Europe and then I don't know if they move to Max or not but maybe they have some portion of their portfolio on Max and some on level play they're not on helium I think okay that's what I that's what I thought that they are actually but anyway I mean it's not like hybrid so even though I guess they will be at some point right they will be maybe uh but honestly even like iip based campaigns on appli work quite well for me at least so uh so there's like the appli in Google on the top spot then we have a little bit of Facebook here and there but they have Tik Tok and Tik Tok in a very clever way uh so

they're using actually like spark ads um which is basically you use it because they have also the Tik Tok top troops Tik Tok fan page or how how should I call it and you put video on on your fan page and then you get all these engagement and all the fun stuff and then you can actually use it in the in the in the campaign with all the engagements so you know quite better performance I mean anyway uh and then they also run influence marketing that I kind of discovered which is nice and then small tests here and there so is Viva making a new video about this well I hope so didn't I didn't see that no that would be amazing but I didn't see that okay can we finish on doing a Twist so now we're all giving the scores right before we get into predictions can we just say what the lowest hanging fruit from a UA perspective uh game design perspective and admon perspective is told you I already told you about the creatives and the get rid of the merge yeah it's quite easy Remo um my guess is

like make the merch that is kind of more enjoyable in a way like for me but if you say it like that I'm not sure that's going to happen like their offer system is so robust like I have L like seven popups on on like but the thing is like why why you unlock offers in like level 10 what seriously like why why be a little bit sooner but but for me like I wouldn't even want to say so it's it's just my like hunch and opinion because I don't think so this is like lowest hanging FR I just kind of would like for the lower level units and this kind of whole merging tetri do something because seems like dead end it seems like a dead end no not di use itend on a raid maybe maybe but that's a normal mechanic that idle RPGs use that you know they try to kind incentivize you to upgrade more kind useful units so you don't send them on missions on cool down that that's one of the ways yeah let's

see okay so predictions now my lowest hanging fruit is just get enough ad like placements in that users can actually watch up to five ads lowest hanging fruit man you're going into Walmart there honestly man like come on like cooldowns like getting some kind of timer rewarded ads for like getting more there's like you're swimming in the lowest hanging through it's too much all right okay predictions I think this game is going to be 30% on Revenue by end of the year oh no end of uh mid Midsummer around Midsummer somewhere around there well that's that's quite easy we're talking about the somewhere January February when I do review rad there again okay I think they'll have way more ad placements then like they should yeah say a number way more is what like now they have two it's like five they have four they'll have four that's way more with way more 100% increase man but like honestly like I it's going to be a while I think because I think the game design team are protecting this game from m quite heavily exactly yeah they're doing exactly that I'm standing there saying

please sir have some more money and they're like yeah very true okay no uh okay so I think that this game is going to make 70k per day in January February 70k per day yes without sness multiplier without if if it survives I I think there will be like a new new island here if it survives come on like be out of space um yeah I don't know like my guess is that this either scales or gets killed or like Soundset it pretty much wow that's your prediction it scales or gets killed in three months I mean in three months what the [ __ ] is that like can you just this is why we don't do predictions yeah okay yeah like okay my thing is it won't make it it won't scale up there you go that's a prediction yeah that's some something we can we can build it won't scale up above more than three mil what was the highest daily ad

Revenue you got to on Battle Legion H what was the highest $7 the $7 ad Revenue go on Battle Le no no no no I'm kidding that was like 3K a day I think no higher even like 10K a day no yes yes I was there man okay I can I can I can I can check it out and say and tell you okay cool next next uh next episode and on that note yeah thank you very much for listening we don't have ai to actually take us home so uh we can actually all just say thank you very much and until next time and join our slack Yay see you [Music] [Music] byebye [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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