two & a half gamers session #10 - How to save millions with marketability tests? Fake ads going n...

[Music] hello everyone uh welcome again this is no gaming podcast two and a half Gamers session number 10 session number 10 discusting latest news fun stuff and dropping some knowledge sometimes you know this can feel like a 4:00 a.m. conference discussion live and that's uh that's how it is okay so let's dive in and and try to enjoy it hey welcome guys welcome yakob and welcome Felix hello M and the Power Puff Girls oh yeah wait wait are you dialing in for Mobile Beach Conference M oh yeah of course one second you know uh do I look like yakob now I hope so there there you go okay Jokes Aside how is GDC going Ma perfect yeah

of all of people actually reach out and uh ask for a for a meeting obviously I'm at home and uh all my LinkedIn fake news and click click bike posts were pretty efficient oh but you know jokes is you know there's there's rules against child labor right well that's what I heard uh but uh what I found out is that my daughter is way more popular than I am so from now on I'm going to use her from time to time if it works use it right yeah exactly if it works no but you know like uh I think she with the with the VR headset that was super funny it was super funny I think she joined it as well but how's how was your week looking forward to to Istanbul Felix oh very much yes it's going to be exciting next week yeah yeah that's why I brought these Powerpuff Girls up you know so you know what's uh what's going to happen

next week nice do you want to do the agenda of course so uh we're going to talk about Netflix uh boosts mobile games approach with the acquisition of uh Bost fight entertainment going to talk about Crafton signs long-term cooperation with Solana labs in game in-game app apps I can't speak today I'm not sure what's going on ing game ads are getting more misleading sexis and myogenous sck and crypto investor Katie H raises 1.5 billion the largest debute in uh in crypto in female EC what the nice and then we're going to talk about some pre soft launch activities marketability tests and uh and more so uh yeah let's dive in let's dive in so let's let's start with the Netflix because uh Netflix is um very very

popular topic of uh Mr yakob Brar over here we discussed yesterday how Netflix um announced three more three new games that are coming to the platform and uh you know amazing discussion not amused I would say those are from pbook which is a mobile game developer but those are not games really free to play games yeah because they don't have the monetization there but yeah back to the acquisition so Netflix revealed they requ acquired us-based free-to-play mobile develop boss fight entertainment I've never heard of this guy before they these guys uh well founded the company 2013 and actually cofounded by three former Zinga employees oh okay boss dungeon was their their uh their best known game which I know now uh who who are they and uh following the acquisition the studio will continue

operate independently across three three locations Allen Austin and Seattle so um so more equa hires for Netflix so they are definitely taking this seriously yeah this definitely sounds like equa hire to me doesn't seem like I remember next games was the same thing yeah but those are that that made much more sense in a way that next games but is really really familiar with working with IPS which for Netflix is of course like the way to go here but this is more of a I guess yeah equa hire that was on the market I would say because I don't see any any other connection there sh price share price since the news is down almost 2% I'm wondering if that's connected to the news or it's just a broader market trends well somebody's listening to me on the stock market yeah well Mr Jr here is not

definitely not the bigger fan of uh of the Netflix game because can you explain what you hate about it it doesn't make sense like they're trying to recreate another Apple arcade fail or what like tell tell me where where do this is going like do you really think that these kind of subpar mobile games going to attract more customers to your Netflix app or retain them more when you're trying to compete with Disney Plus or Amazon like does this bring you the edge when the new Lord of the Ring series come out in September I think that they are only a Wordle hit away like you need one hit and then All the Troubles will be behind them but getting a hit in this market I do agree it's not like a direct science but what they're trying to do now I guess is assembling a team that will improve their odds of getting a hit but you know this is a hit driven business I know but this is this this sounds to me like the same strategy that Amazon did just like throw more money and people at it and somehow it will miraculously

solve itself didn't happen didn't work same thing for Apple yeah but apple is slightly different I think it's I you know mentioned yesterday uh with Netflix and I know you're going to say uh I I try to find logic behind this where it's not obviously but I think as soon as uh you know as as much as they they want to like um start adding more games this is going to be again like content heavy so they need to start somewhere with these like you know shitty games sorry guys I respect every game you you put there but still most probably not going to uh play any of them still you know you need to start somewhere and they they already announced it they want to move forward and this is again like a sign of them taking this seriously they want to do it uh do it right but but honestly like I don't even care about the quality of the games like the games could be excellent to be honest but

those are premium games you don't retain with these you retain with free-to-play mobile games they have better retention than normal premium games people play more Clash of Clans than they play Wier 3 why because the game is built like that to keep them in and also because Wier 3 is a very poor game I told you that a couple times you know what to do Remo do you think Netflix would earn more money or have a bigger multiple or a bigger market cap if they just focused on getting these people to make free to playay games and just publishing it under Netflix but even from the like the standpoint that you want to retain your customers in the app like build a free to-play game or I don't know just tone down the monetization itself but the mechanics need to be free toplay because those are all build on retention retention is King there like there's no other metric that you need to do there first premium games and the games that they are currently building they don't care about retention at all and they're building it again as Apple arcade catalog I don't I don't see the point here

oh because they want to you know if uh the premise here is if you already want watched all the series all the shows there then what you're going to do play games well because because imagine that let's say you're playing your favorite Netflix game and it's it's being pumped up by content every month and you return to it and and and there's still like content content content and you retain retain retain and you progress through it you don't really spend money in it but you play it because you only care about engagement this could work I think but nobody said they won't do it that's the thing nobody said that but they're pumping out premium games okay but that's the you know that's the first stage they hired like 15 like senior exx from the from the industry now they're buying Studios you know like why do you think like this is the end game so this is still saying this is the end game but why are then then like assigning these project for premium games why they already don't work in this already how do you know work in this so why do you

then lose time with working on the upar premium games because you need to start somewhere you need to launch content you know why so what those things don't work like you think people that make premium games cannot just switch immediately to like okay we'll do this small premium monument valy and then we'll do World of Warcraft In the meantime that doesn't work like that man sure that's why they they acquired like two freet to-play Studios okay let's see let's see let's see but still bottom line is Netflix is market cap is today $169 billion like as a force to be reckoned with that is a war chest and a half if they need to Pivot a couple times and take five years they can do it if if Disney plus won't crush them in those five years that's true that's very true I'll give you that I'll give you that much uh should we move on yeah every time you you you say Netflix yakob is triggered discussion like it's a good discussion the share price goes

down it's amazing all right let me let me read the next one cuz uh I'm actually quite thrilled about this one and I think it's actually quite important uh especially since the fact that I have launched like lost about 50% on of my money I put into salana so and that news is of course that everyone's favorite gaming company of the like in the world get dare I say but not really Crafton uh everyone knows I'm from making pubg uh yesterday yesterday announced there signing a long-term business agreements with salana uh salana labs to support the design and marketing of blockchain games and services so Salon of course is a crypto company Ur Solana um you know it's it's a protocol is it assets uh went a bit up since I mean I still bought in at 132 so you know I'm

still down a fair bit yeah yeah yeah nice okay sorry so the reason I personally think this is quite important is kind of going back to what I said on last podcast about distribution and like right now there's a battle royale like who will win or which will be the premium like cryptocurrency that will power most of these crypto games that are being made right now will it be Avalanche will it be salana will have bit ethereum but like eum not so much yeah exactly but like interest thing is a big like Blue Chip gaming company like they're signing with salana is a huge stamp of approval and at the end of the day the chain that has the most projects on it they will win and that's why I think this is extremely important news probably actually one of the most important news we've seen in the crypto world for a couple weeks it's still a bet you know yeah 100% absolutely thing is that so can just go completely on the water some new protocol takes over and you know you're completely out that's going to happen for sure that's going to happen for sure but now looks like uh

the best solution um at the moment say so least well you know let's see you say so cry skeptic add to this news is that let's talk about pubg new state that Crafton did and that didn't really go very well that I must say which is their new pubg game that didn't really it was uh wasn't published by Crafton was some other it is sitting on thecraft on account if I see it right here well let me check because uh I'm definitely not sure yeah but just saying that I think they have problems growing somewhere now in a way that uh okay creating another instance of pubg won't help you that that's like you know each subsequent Candy Crash will bring you less which seems that immediately the second one didn't really fly well so I'm guessing they're trying to grew into some kind of

other direction here but I still wouldn't be sure as like yeah Solana is the way that will you know be the next I think I still think we're in this kind of R&D phase that everybody is trying to figure out the most smoothest transition from user to get onto chain wallet and like all the the big friction that's currently in the market and people are just kind of betting on these horses and by the end of the year probably 90% of those horses will die on the track so we'll see actually I have a I have a follow-up question for for the both of you actually I actually looked up something since the start of the year how many nfts related to gaming do you think have been traded like average every day since the start of this year average yeah average a day like yeah 10,000 problem is that problem is that people are whitewashing this a lot pretty much a lot of companies are having people that are there trading between themselves to increase the transaction volume despite that it might be true but like I believe

in it but like give me a number yeah nobody cared about your answer give me the number no no podcast come on dude what do you want to hear like a number of like how much nfts are traded currently gu yeah take a guess m said 10,000 yeah 10,000 that's a super small okay might be thousand a day ah there you go thousand super small that's okay still very Niche huh y beginning for the whole Market yeah for gaming thousand nfts are being traded every day like every day definitely more I think well in gaming so if only G only gaming I'm talking gaming just but look look at the cats that's being traded on the axi marketplace cats all right fact check me after the show killing me every time time we said that so one one correction it's yeah of

course the pubg new state is Crafton I was referring to pubg mobile which is tent obviously so yeah and they they are crashing the new state by by a lot y yeah we can move forward we can stay with crypto and then I will end it up with the the amazing article which came out uh recently okay um so I can I can take this one KY Hound if I pronounce it correctly then buter it completely raised 1.5 billion uh which is the largest but like the The View fund ever by female VC and it's a crypto one actually uh if I understand correctly she left before Anderson Horowitz the famous uh fund and then uh this is the largest initial fund Ever Raised by solo female founding partner and she is of course very excited to dip into to the web 3 New

Era yeah well looks like a lot of money she definitely needs to Pro needs to prove a lot with these type these uh these Rays if I understand there's not that much mention of gaming or something it's more like a web 3 kind of more generalistic approach to crypto if I understand this correctly doesn't web 3 right now just mean gaming cuz that's usually what's at the Forefront of these like new trendy things like it's usually do you remember what n do you remember what n said about it's kind like you know uh the whole bubble of everything basically technology gaming and nfts and everything I would say but this is pretty pretty big compared to like all the other investment oh man one plus one in crypto always equals a billion yeah without without a doubt yeah okay yeah I'm just kind of kind of waiting

like where the market will Top then like with these you know all these Investments and everything when because we still don't have anything to show for as for like the you know you don't hear about companies making so much revenue or like having so much users and pretty much the results articles we always just hear about the investment articles so I'm still wondering when this kind of a we three bubble going to pop you know like did you hear about like a griffin um fund then makers fund like raising like 750 makers I think 500 or 600 then you know like it's yeah Anderson horo it's again like 500 million so it's like so much money out there at the moment crazy slashing around but it's it's chasing so few opportunities like you know there are there aren't that many good like crypto investment opportunities if you look more closely into it well of course but if you have like unlimited casual what what would

you do that you will buy a ticket into into the lottery as you always say yeah of course there's nothing else to do here that's there you go so that's that's why there is you know that's the the best time to to start the gaming company should we which which we discussed with our you know guest special guest and our like new segment which is going to be live next week so uh keep uh keep your eyes and ears open and there is uh yeah the the last last news uh yeah let's step down from Mount Olympus and talk about something a bit closer to all of us yeah exactly so that in-game ads are getting more misleading sexist and uh whatever else like says the Mr maretzki and that was a GDC um opening session so ads for guidance capes merge Manion Lily's Garden there contemporaries all the all the the right culprit yeah amazing man like some of

the ads I've had to ban especially in Q4 this year it was like it's just ads like for like Lilith games and stuff like and some of it is like oh a man a woman shows a man a pregnancy test and he like kicks her off a boat and RIS into the sunset yeah exactly and it's just like it's it's so sad because it gets a lot of clicks I'm sure and I want to hear M's intake like input on this but but the sad truth is that it's just a mirror of like darkest corners of humanity cuz basically what human wants is like a mirror and this is what humans want because that's what converts the best exactly so this like Mr maretzki was gaming consultant who work in all the triaa companies like uh blizzard King uh Disney and EA and whatever else I mean he called on at the regular and platforms like Google Apple

and Facebook to Stamp Out misleading ads this will never happen never Facebook said already multiple times they're already like doing something against this last year until today nothing happened because why they are making money out of it and they will be so it's never going to happen again Google same thing Apple same thing and I feel said this is exactly what players want to see you know all these uh controversial ads yeah controversial ads that's what everybody wants to see the same thing with the ends uh that we discussed on like the third session or the third podcast like so hilarious something connected to the gameplay not at all nobody cares but you make quite a lot of creatives right ma like you're in your team right yeah like do you guys on purpose make some that are controversial on purpose yeah I make controversial ads on purpose and hilarious and humor um on

purpose as well trying to stay away from um uh producing fake ads completely but try to do like a fake ad which is connected to the game play because yeah I know dream games do this really really well and why why you shouldn't try to you know maximize your marketing efforts and like uh to the efficiency here and there even if you're are you know producing slightly misleading ads slightly do you do you have yeah okay some more and some less do you have any metrics that you could share like roughly how much better it is like if you do a misleading ad let's say like is it 20% better CTR is it 1% better CTR like how much better is it the thing is like nobody cares about CTR you know you don't buy uh you know um anything in uh in uh grocery shop with CTR you can care about you care about yeah you care

about the RAS afterwards so this can decrease the CPI quite heavily and um this something that I have uh on my slides on the in next week um theconstructor fun Istanbul event which I am showing like three different ads from the same game and three different um cpis and then draws as well and retention numbers because misleading ads have lower retention but also lower CPI but eventually you know if you just try to like um acquire as many people as possible many players as possible then you don't care about the cpis you know like afterwards there will be some whales who will pay for the whole campaign even though you know like every everything else is trash the whole backlash of course yeah and of course I mean you know that's something that you need to you

know need to work get yeah as well but you know like the the problem with Facebook is like you have all the comments shares and everything under the creative and even though even even if they hate you it's still a positive sign for Facebook because it's amount of comments getting into the auction fine tuned towards polarizing content the story we heard exactly exactly so nobody cares if it's ha or not if if they don't you know X out of that creative it's still taking as a as a positive feedback and the sad truth is as well it's like it's my ass as an admon person it's usually us as the publisher of the ads we get the crap for it like not like Facebook like Google or the people who are like advertising the games exactly I've seen emails for people write long thing about how their daughter is seeing like something misogynistic or something you have to apologize and then they think it's it's you and it's like that's not how it works it's programmatic but

you know me as ad person I'm the one like has to deal with it it's um stop it Ma please oh come on well I would stop but uh then I care about the the performance and if uh if it performs and you know obviously like there's very thin ice but I still try to be somewhere in the middle and not like being like too misleading but also trying to show some at least something from the game actually yeah I think it's it's more of a like I completely understand um Mr meretsky rent here but it's more of you know sign of times like times have changed so much and nobody can do about it like if this is the thing that works in this environment so what you're going to you know yeah be completely destroyed by the competition like they won't care anyway but you know like this is exactly exactly the the content you will see GDC like crying a lot crying loud about how the market is really you know yeah

shifted and going in the wrong direction of course I mean yeah so what so what the regulated exactly yeah you can do whatever you want and then like uh create whatever ads you want if it works it works and you know this is Performance Marketing we care about data we don't care about uh some uh cry baby over here at GDC it's not going to change anything I'm sorry mister yeah with all du respect it's pretty much just how it's going to be yeah if they will actually ban it and if they would actually ban it I would guess some they lose so much money yeah but but what I'm trying to say is that some kind of a new trick would be then discovered and people would hope on the next bandwagon that's going to happen anyway of course yeah it's it's always I mean so this problem is not really game produces problem it's more like Facebook's and Google's like uh Revenue models basically encourage these times of ads so the root cause of the problem

is not the game makers or ma it's actually yeah Google and Facebook but but you know honestly if you even want to kind of like you know you set up a policy that you won't do that he going to be crashed by the competition and they going to take your market share and then so what you know you kept your morals and ethics and everything and you know your creatives are all through but you know there's no Revenue exactly and that's like there is one um one company from Finland which which we are going to talk about in uh in April they said like they're not they're going to stay away from fake ads as much as they can and then what what happened yeah well they closed one game because it wasn't performing that well yeah I think we can we can move on and uh you know since I really love the Q&A type of uh our main topic now we are going to talk about some pres soft loue activities that I think Developers should do before they go to soft lounge

and there are some questions they need to ask themselves so what do they do actually before even going to the development so now I'm going to ask before creating the game Crea of course but you know like before still because sometimes what happens is uh as you said um two sessions ago like okay so this is the game we are going to clone it and uh we are going to make at least of the money they are making yeah yeah exactly yeah that's not how it works that's not how it works so so what can we do actually pre soft launch uh guys any any ideas um just to make straight like straight here you finished the game it's ready for soft launch but before you actually put it on the market to test stff what you should you do I think we're still talking about what we do even before start of production

here yeah even before start of production so there's no code yet I'm assuming if you're if you know what you're doing what you do is you make a bunch of fake ads for your different games that you want to think about what you want to make and the themes and then you start sending ads to like a landing page and see which one converts the best because then you don't have to build stuff right it's like testing want turn screen your audiences first like what's the attractiveness of your concept yeah but that's you know like that's uh jumping through multiple steps already okay even even some some other things you can you can do you know like so you want to do a new game so you sit down with your uh producers team and every every everybody is like okay so now what so what you should do before uh everything starts you know do the home

homework so you know market research try to ask yourself like okay so who is the target audience of the game who are we making the game for what is our unique selling proposition so we don't like create another clone of Clash of Clans or Clash Royale or whatever else arero clone well there's a million of them already uh what kind of genre you are going to make the game you know if this aligns with the company strategy if you know you're trying to stay within the same genre and have the the genre Mastery or what the situation genre that's that's the important yeah and that as that as well like what is the monetization strategy are going to work more towards the inap purchases or inap ads or you know both 50/50 and the most important part like what is the the marketing team capabilities are they able to scale this type of game do they have experience with uh this game for

example this game genre these very very important things because know you will make a Forex game and then you find find out well obviously you already knew that but your your team had only experience with uh running UA for casual game and then what so it's going to be very very challenging for them if they if they don't have any experiences with the different genres rather than just with some casual game so these are like some some of the questions yakob is there anything that I actually missed that you would you would think about I would say it always is great if you have people that have done already a game from the same genre that you did already so you have some kind of genre Mastery or at least you have a person on your team that's been in that genre before because if you are just going into like a new genre blindly it usually never works out and and as I as I seen on the market successful games are usually the ones that are not inventing

something out of nothing like even if if we take that Clash of Clans thing the example that you did there actually what supercell did was they improved Backyard Monsters which was a kick side game that's pretty much was designed for them and they were just able to do it properly on mobile and improve upon it so that that's what happened here and there's numerous examples of these that you don't really create like the wheel out of nothing thing you just you know do something really really good and really really sophisticated let's say a golf Clash example where you would take The Shard GAA system from Clash Royale and apply it to a different core gameplay and completely different audience so you don't compete with Clash Royale at all but you pretty much borrow their expertise or let's say their progression system or or something similar like the of course the example we always use the dream games one they're scaling you know they're going pretty big but why because they have a lot of team members of the original Peak games team and they exactly know what to

do yeah yeah well of course uh but there still what if you are trying to experiment with the new genre I mean you can't just have uh people experienced enough that are you know able to help you with the different it's it's a chance it's a chance Factor pretty much like you always need to work under yeah it's a lottery ticket always always new free toplay game especially is a lottery ticket you just increases your chances even if you have a super super senior team in the same gen you can still fail spectacularly like I I don't I don't I don't see a problem with that like so how much is how much is skill and how much is like looking at the data and how much is just like art like an artist person is just good or is it just look art I I wouldn't put art into good art is usually tested by data so that is pretty much out of the question it's more of a if you know the current pain points of the genre and you can improve upon them so like Let me Give an example

if you remember how Warner Bros want to do Harry Potter go the Pokemon clone like it was pretty much like out of the question in a way that the game play didn't match the experience at all like Harry Potter is not it didn't make sense yeah and and it it was more of a like I guess it started from this mismatch but even though they have the infrastructure from Niantic and like all all the things you know all the stars aligned really really heavy big IP it still didn't make sense but it's I would say that they had a problem with some kind of product person said like it won't be a problem people will still play like PO let let's do it so so I would say it's pretty much being familiar with the genre and familiar with also players expectations because somebody somewhere there definitely said that like do you really think that Harry Potter people will play this like Pokémon and and and and the guy said like it doesn't matter properly or something like that happened yeah we will slap the IP on the top of

the the G geolocation game and that's that's going to work yeah it didn't it works for Pokemon it for it needs to it will work for us as well yeah I cannot I cannot even imagine the amount of money that was you know drained down the down the line there it was just one sell in the Excel sheet yeah and now you know nobody cares nobody cares anymore but you yeah you could if if you had a small company then um you would think uh twice about making this typee of game but then in the in the big corporations it you know they always try to say we do all these homeworks before and market research and everything but then eventually you know all the small companies that you know don't have that much money on their bank account they do it properly because you know if they won't do it then they will be out of the business very soon bigger companies is like yeah well okay work out they can afford to fail

pretty much the big companies because if the gamees fails you know you still put the team in some other different project or you know recycle the capabilities no problem there but if it's your startup or like you know this is that one shot that you have that's it that's one shot period yeah okay and then question is like how do you how do you do the market research what kind of tools you are using and what do you have in mind that you can use potenti that it's free out there or any paid tools as well man this is so on my I have no idea like oh really uh I would start probably with even three versions of f any sens or tower all these like anals data AI yeah data AI sorry uh even free versions are pretty okay where I I remember that you see the grossing charts lines there even if you have a free account so you can still kind of validate some of of the arguments that like these games are going up or they're going down at least

you see the trend you don't see the numbers but you see the trend so that's good uh one of the things I always like to use that's kind of you would say trivial but it's basic Google algorithm like if you go into Google uh Play Store and you Google your competitor and then you see the recommended games that can give you already a really really big uh Direction the right way I use that the when I'm looking the competitor ads basically when I'm trying to do the brainstorming and I always um look at the historical data but also on the competitor side and this is how I go about the the competition like go to the Google store and then see the recommended games and then you can see everybody basically yeah that's really so that that's one of the other things and then uh then comes the really really hard part where you actually need to play those games and see which ones are actually your direct competition because some games you know they change the core

gameplay they change the main progression formula they aren't really your cup of tea even though they're in the same category you just need to go through all of them you can you know cut this time down a lot by just going through the gameplay videos on on YouTube like pretty much every single game out there has this kind of like first 20 minutes tutorial video that somebody did that there's lot of those so you can skip the installing and everything and just go through there and then you will at some point you will start seeing a pattern and then you follow that pattern and try to look for it in different games and then see how they solve different problems in your game design you know genre feature set that you can apply or use in your current problem yeah so everything can be found on YouTube also our podcast as well so definitely subscribe smash the like button exactly Smash It the like button subscribe and and that's it's going to do the trick and you will see the the power puff curls as well but yeah but this is this is the hardest part like you actually need to play those games and understand their mechanics and systems there's no

way around it yeah well it's uh that's uh takes a long time but uh it needs to be done if you want to do it properly that's you know that's something that you need to do because you need you need to find the small bits that are pretty much hidden there that some of these games have let's say done really really well or some of these games didn't really went well and you need to discover why so you don't repeat the same mistakes these are the this is the hard part of the homework so if I crystallize it down the first thing is you get like a subscription to data AI look at the like Trends take 10 of the games from that's like in like circulating that Trend and then play them crazily like amounts and then take the things from those games and then take what you like and you think what you think would work together and then kind of mismatch it together and that should be your game uh no no that that's like a recipe for goulash it it won't work like that like let's

take every good bit from every game and then we'll have this amazing game now you're going to end up with gash and it's game gash I know that sounds good oh you need to have your vision and you need to be you know you need to keep the direction on the right track you know what you're doing and you need to have some kind of product Market fit in your head before this kind of happens and you know just take the inspiration from the those games you don't everything from from you cannot end up this like you know Junior Loop of I'm adding features to my game based on what I have played in last two weeks that's the worst like that's actually the worst because it means that you didn't do your homework properly because you you were supposed to see those things before not each next two weeks yeah yeah yeah and uh very true very true most important part I think that uh is defining the target audience because um there's a lot of uh gaming companies

that still you know they create a game and then ask the the marketing managers or U managers like okay so you know run the campaigns and find me the audience that like the game seriously like how I know even better like everybody's our audience oh yeah yeah yeah of course everybody's going to play the game seriously this is so wrong on so many levels and how like how do you like add features in the game when you don't know who are you building the game for because that's the goulash you are talking about right but there are again some some mistakes that I think you can see like everybody is talking about you know motivations personas and uh whatever else I mean yes it's super useful but still if you focus on on like one Persona and it's it's going to be there going to that that great V diagrams that you you draw and then you

just have the small middle part that's your audience the super super small Niche yeah super super small Niche exactly and then and even even if if you see that you're still approaching or like uh progressing with the with the game development yeah well there's a high chance that it's not going to succeed because the the target audience is really small so you need to think about like opening up a little bit that's the biggest problem with the whole lottery ticket thing that you don't know what's your lottery ticket worth until you hit day one retention which will take you like six seven eight months until you hit that Mark and that's it and you could be running all the wrong directions until then yeah but then you know like you have the play testing so um as soon as you have the the playable or MVP of the game then you start doing the play tests right and then is this something you know that helps you yakob to you know go of course it dire it helps you to mainly fine tune

the ftu experience the tutorial and everything uh always you know these days things like play test Cloud are really really easy to use you can even sort players based on your like genre so actually it's better to get you know scolded on and people pretty much hating your game because they've seen the genre and those are actually the really valuable feedbacks rather than like new ones but this won't still be the main indicator of your retention and especially long-term retention it it's more of a like you can fine tun that 15 20 minutes of experience and after that you're kind of blind yeah that's what I wanted to say because uh usually you know like you can see a very good stars in this like plest cloud and then you you run the campaigns and the first retention is like 20% it's like oh wow but the play this cloud guys they say like it's it's absolutely amazing game why is not working well yeah he's Absolut amazing for 15 minutes and then yeah exactly so you know it's uh it's this is very similar to to when someone is just uh looking at

one kpi and then not like the series of kpis because it's like okay so I I have really good CPI it's like 15 cents okay so I but so what I mean what is the retention what is the RAS like there are multiple other questions that you you know you can you can ask and then okay well the 15 C CPI is good but then the retention is 10% oh okay okay you're right then it doesn't make any sense like of course but you can't just look at one one thing same thing with the plest cloud okay and then there is the there's the the UA marketing um activities that uh Felix mentioned already in the beginning so the marketability tests and this can go wrong again on so many levels because if um in my opinion I mean this can really save you a lot of a lot of time in the development but also can be very tricky because if you are looking at the wrong data and you don't have the

experience with running the marketability test then you know it's the same thing that that you mentioned yob when you are working with Junior then you know junior is looking three steps ahead senior is looking 10 steps ahead here if junior is running the the marketability tests and he or she has no experiences with that it can be very dangerous for the whole company because you are you can be looking at the very wrong data and you need to keep in mind that these marketability tests are very far from the the business's usual campaign so you know even though geek clab and the um shout out to Jesse uh the founder of geek laab you can run the campaigns which are simulating the CPI campaigns but they are not exactly the CPI campaigns so even though you can calculate the CPI from these campaigns it's still landing page view optimized for conversion so you will see a lower cpms rather than just uh looking at the

CPI campaigns lower CPI even though it's calculated be careful very careful and then CTR is going to be absolutely amazing 3% 5% 10% because it's a landing cage landing page view it's not optimized for mobile app installs or even for purchases or even for Value it's going to be very different so using marketability test as a directional thing for your game that's very good if you just basee guidance yeah just yeah directional guidance if you base your uh you know all the decisions just uh based on the data you see yeah it can go very wrong but you know it's still very good tool should you should you skip this step then because you sound very negative like negative no it's you know like I I just want you no no you need to do this step but then it means you cannot just take it for granted and you know because then we're saved you know whatever we do doesn't matter we have like super good cpis and the you will see really low

cpis with this test and first again like I said it's calculated from conversion it can be similar but it's still not the same thing then you run the CPI the actual CPI campaigns after you you you produce the game and then see oh but why we we see like three times higher CPI than what we saw in the marketability test well hello of course because it's a very different optimization oh but the ctrs are lower as well oh yeah of course who would said that no Sherlock is it always within a band of percentages so you can kind of factor it in when you do like your calculations and look at the data so you like you know to decrease like CTR by x% or yeah yeah I I compared these type of results when I run the the marketability tests um some time ago and the cpis I got from the marketability test were two or 2.5 times actually lower than the ones so everything that you know you see in the marketability

test then multiply by fre the CPI and then you're good to go and you're good to go for the that's only for CPI campaign not only not even talking about purchase campaigns or any up event optimized campaigns it's going to be way different way different but still you are trying to get as much data as possible as early as possible and this is going to be very helpful but you know it can go wrong when you don't have the right person to do it we're back at the you know lottery ticket Theory what are we doing we are just increasing the chances there's no guarantee there's no guarantee at all along this all hway ever yeah and there's never going to be yeah but the nice thing about this is uh you know you can use Facebook now iron Source even like a couple of days ago announced the marketability test tool which is nice you need to take uh take a look at that you're using the fak store Pages which is you know you using the exactly um Apple or Google Play looking

a store Page which is fake everybody that that click um clicks on the download button they will get the popup this game is not available yet please leave us an email and uh we will hit you up when it's when it's live or you can you can actually use um a player survey at the end so you know you can ask questions so what questions to ask Mr game designer over here yeah I would say I would say it's mainly based on the expectations of the of the players that you talking about and you want to make sure that the things that you are talking about and then like pretty much confirm your or validate your points that you are running through so I would say definitely try to ask about the product fit and give me an example Mr Mr game designer let's say what would you expect to see in this game or pretty much like some kind of it's always best to you know do nice questions rather than suggestive ones don't do suggestive

questions of course you just can SK skew your results yeah and and and then uh maybe even try to look a little bit more into the audience themselves like do you play mobile games do you have purchas anything at all in the mobile game before like you know some kind of a screening on the audience so descriptive questions this way I would say yeah I mean this can help um there are still it's again it's a guidance nothing yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly that it's a guidance so you know some some companies take these marketing marketability tests like this is this is exactly what we are expecting this is how it's going to be nope it's not going to happen and that's that's what's dangerous because then you can hear a lot of U people discussing oh well we are doing marketability test so it's perfect everybody should do that and then when they uh see the First Data they're very disappointed because it's it's something else than they they expected but you know you can test whatever you like characters visual themes the setting and whatever and then

you can you know you can actually end up with uh the the highest chance of success when testing like multiple things yeah that's still high guant success there's no guarantee exactly there's no guarantee so yeah I know I I sound very negative but actually I actually like say you sound like Remo oh yeah that's my PO my post yeah no no no I I I really like to do this but it needs to be done properly and it's again directional guidance not something that you need to take uh very seriously because usually when I when company companies try to do this they use only like one idea no you should you should think about like three different ideas and then this will tell you like which way to go so you will test three different visual designs cartoon real IC or whatever else doesn't doesn't matter you will see that the with your target

audience the cartoon works the best okay so now okay what kind of characters should I use female male long hair short hair whatever then characters at all or no characters yeah exactly then you will see which way to go again and then these you know trying to narrow it down afterwards it's always a iterative process pretty much and you know you try to be as fast as possible that that's like one of the good qualities that you need to hit is that the frequency of these iterative updates needs to go up or at least be very very frequent that's the that's the whole thing like pretty much back to the lottery ticket Theory it's more about like how many shots you can make rather than you know to aim precisely well so it's pretty much like hyper casual this is what they're exceptionally good at compared to like casual to hard St casual is this lottery ticket theory on steroids yeah exactly

and because it's it's way easier to do marketability test with Hyper casual game when you create the video easily easily because you just show the game mechanics in the video and that's it that's the whole game when you are you know compared to strategy game or casual game it takes time to create the video so you might just use static images only to save time and resources which again can be you know slightly far from the the reality afterwards but at least again it shows you the the way way to go yeah but with Hyper casual creative is the actual gameplay itself there's no you know there's usually not the difference like you don't run fake ads for hyper casuals you run the actual gameplay video that is the creative and just by I remember like people saying from hyper casual genre that just by changing the visuals of that creative they were able to tone down the CPI to a manageable level and then they were able to scale the game that's it that that's how it works even though the mechanic was pretty much the

same yeah well you sound you look a bit confus confused scared would say or scared yeah yeah Felix she's so like like admon I'm the cherry on top you know like that's what I deliver sometimes a cherry can grow to an Apple but like I don't have a dog in this game like you never get I've heard about it but like yeah well I think uh in that I think that's it right yeah it was uh it was pretty fun again yeah good luck with your soft lunches hope they will go well we'll see get a job in [Laughter] Adon oh my God okay that was a really nice ending thank you thank you very much guys until next time see exciting very exciting I can't wait okay so I need to add this one uh one last news to the agenda because that's what

we do now all right 4:00 a.m. again conversion why the I'm saying always conversion [Music]