two & a half gamers session #41 - Stop with sexist ads, Q4 Admn round up, Goddess of Victory review

[Music] hello hello hello welcome everyone this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast 2 and a half gamer session number 41 we are sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our day-to-day UA game design and admon jobs but also discussing the latest industry news from time to time make so much fun but let's not forget this is 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously and this is also uh not 4 a.m this time but a vacation discussion Vibe as you can see and if you don't see it on the Spotify oh well you can see it actually on the Spotify nevertheless welcome everybody and welcome uh we have Felix braber over here yaku bremier over here and then myself mat lri as well over there I was

every over there yeah over there over there with the the fake background is it fake though yeah much m is [ __ ] is sitting his kitchen in Slovakia right now with his shirt off of course ex of course you can you can actually [ __ ] check this uh because I recorded the Marvel snipe episode with the deconstruct of fun so uh well oh maybe I did it as there as well nobody will ever know pretty nice one already listened to it like good good stuff it was it was super long though so and a half because you know what product stuff product stuff takes time I know I know I know I know I know I know exactly because we we discussed this after the Pod like okay so it there one and a half hours and I said to guys like hey guys so I didn't want to interrupt you because it was super interesting it was really interesting like you talking about all the like the product stuff and game design and I had zero idea what they're talking about obviously but it was so

great I learned a lot definitely learned a lot and it was nice when you were asking like what's drafting so that was nice of of course man well if I don't know something I will yeah of course that's what we do no worries that's what we do yeah and what we do today is uh well except everything else we also want to like celebrate you becaming a dad obviously because well it was a time when sometime that we didn't didn't talk to each other CU last week there was an episode that the Felix was uh recording with with Rafael right uh yeah from Rafa from upin and then well we're here so it's it's been a while yeah it's been a while people get kids in the metime so much time yeah yeah people get having kids me uh moving my eyes to Maldives Felix what's up with with you oh man a

lot it's been a what's the thing this here in America it's been a Humdinger of a week and everything was just getting ready for Thanksgiving Black Friday and now it's starting all over again for Christmas man I was asking about your personal life I don't give a [ __ ] about like ecpm all this like Thanksgiving [ __ ] come on oh yeah okay okay so what are we talking about today is it going to be an admon Q4 update from Felix obviously then we're going to talk about some some interesting stuff about the the new game which launched which names goddess of Victory uh and then then what else yakob is going to talk about well obviously about the game as well from the game design Stu as usual product stuff as

usual okay product stuff as usual all right Felix what's up you have some yeah man you have some some predictions to make oh I got predictions I got things but man so last Wednesday before going into Black Friday and Thanksgiving weekend like I was a bit nervous right so Consumer Price Index in America that's like inflation uh is 7.7% and that's a 40-year high right now and I thought we were hitting in for like a super weak Thanksgiving and Black Friday but it's going down already isn't it like they had eight already man oh man was I wrong like this year after like eating Thanksgiving pie uh us consumers spent 9.12 billion on black Fridays that represents a modest but increase of 2 uh 2.3% compared to last year still an increase uh one but it's a very pleasant

surprise so where's the crisis are you yawning yob are you yawning yeah I'm yawning a little bit because where's the crisis like yeah he is people are spending like there's no tomorrow we'll get there later man course he's it's it's he's yawning it's like 11 11 a.m. in uh well in Bratislava and Berlin it's like midnight Midnight for him yeah exactly so listeners right now might be thinking wait this is a gaming podcast asked why is ADM booy Felix talking about consumer spending and economics that's because it's all related to ad earnings in Mobile gaming if we look a bit deeper on the numbers uh the big winner of the Black Friday spend bump was mobile e-commerce mobile e-commerce on Thanksgiving accounted for 55% of Us online retail sales that's up nearly 10% compared to last year and Black Friday reached 48% of online sales

uh compared to 44% so consumers now are spending more money than ever on e-commerce like they prefer to spend it on mobile instead of desktop so good good good so now this is where it starts to affect our gaming sphere on mobile so marketers and UA managers are clever they know this so they increase uh their sales uh on mobile to like ramp up spending on brand in UA for apps so the line share of all inapp Impressions come from gaming so what does the US consumer love to do after eating Thanksgiving turkey they play mobile games so in order to show their ads to people they increase their spending while normal game ads are still running so this pushes up ecpm very basic right but that means us Publishers earn a boatload more money and if everything set up properly

right so how much so using a baseline uh for the week before Thanksgiving I looked at my sample set of 19 million impressions which were mostly video and us-based I saw increases in ecpm in different games and the increases were always between 3% to 25.4% increases big spread yeah very big spread the Delta massive 3 14 to 25.4 I mean those numbers feel you always pull it's like man it's amazing I'm just looking at it's not like it's not three from three to 25 it's from three to4 to 25.4 we are super super concrete very exact I love it yes right our listeners come here for concrete facts not wishy-washy predictions right 100% 100% 100%

yeah when you you pull out numbers from Felix S is produces decimals that's just how it is right exactly so okay fine so back to some context here like an increase of 3% in the US ecpm should like a big you had 3.15% in the in the not 315 yeah yeah so why I Chang the prediction I changed the predictions now to like accommodate for your guys is giving me [ __ ] and now I'm getting [ __ ] for changing it did the last I missed I missed Mach when he was in Slovakia Mal M males Mach is more difficult oh yeah it's more me mean of course 3.15% increases in us ecpm should not be considered like a very big win like on the Adon side so so what's up with a big Delta and these in inrees so it all comes down

pretty much to the networks that you're using and how they interact with each other and what mediation you're on so if you dive deeper into the data uh the admon trends that I see and by the way I'm going to name some Network names here and I'm already dreading this because I know I'm going to get goddamn emails from these networks complaining and trying to disprove this with some kind of data look these are what what's I've seen and these are the conclusions I've made from my data set don't complain so out of all the gains the biggest gains in ecpm I saw were always on Max mediation gains here were between 6% to 25% and the mean increase value was 12% increase on ecpm so the 25% ecpm incre increase which was the biggest increase I saw was on Max and it was driven by a combination of these networks it was admob uh Apple bid in app exchange digital turbine Amazon

publisher service and in Mobi bidding and but really what happened here it was really clear that admob had the biggest Spike on demand like out of any other network and basically the companies that were in the best situation were like gaming companies that had networks that could force ad mob to increase their ecpm to maintain like kind of their share of Revenue so that was like the key you driver so results on admob mediation were a bit more meager uh according to my sample set the issue here generally is that on admob mediation the admob bidder always takes up at least 50 to 95% of the share of Revenue in mobile games and despite what other networks you kind of add so what happens if you're on admon mediation is there's no other networks really to force price up in a meaningful way so results on admob mediation uh was that ecpm increased by somewhere between 6 to

9% so iron Source mediation here was uh pretty much uh like the smallest part of my sample set like sample size so were quite small but the sample side showed like a very modest increase of 3 to 9% on ecpm and I'm not sure if this was like overall because yeah I don't have that many Impressions to look at but the key networks also that the games I had on here like missed a lot of the networks that drove a lot of value on Mac so uh we know that Black Friday and Thanksgiving weekend is just a tiny like pre- snack for what's to come and that's Christmas so looking at the data from last weekend uh my top ad monetization tips for Christmas is you need to add networks that force and compete with admob to increase your ecpm because that's where the majority of the demand is going to come from uh and a lot of e-commerce and branding spend seems to have been driven by only a couple of

networks and in particular these networks that you need now for Christmas is Apple Amazon publisher Services digital turbine and inmobi bidding and these networks compared like together force ad mob to push up the prices which drives a lot of value for you as a publisher wait wait a second you need to add networks that compete and force ad M so which ones or how do I know I just said it so so just say it these that's what I did that's what he did still sleeping oh he said you need to add app plug in Amazon DTX okay like like what are you still sleeping come on man okay okay right so now I also have to make a little prediction here and just like Ma's background I do see some storm clouds on the horizon so I think ecpm in q1 are in for

a hell of a goddamn hangover and why do I think this so if we dig a big deeper on Black Friday yeah but Black Friday numbers like a lot of these purchases that were made were made using buy now pay later companies which saw their revenue increase by 72% in the holiday weekend so buy now pay later is of course when you finance your purchases over time and you pay interest which means that now now as rates are increasing these Goods will be more expensive and cause consumers to have way less money to spend so get ready for a lean lean lean admon q1 okay but then uh what should you do in q1 to get like higher ecpm and all all these all these pollit yeah there's a couple of things you can do funny thing uh you're asking I'm actually working on a blog post that's coming out this week going covering exactly and I'll post that later and we can talk

about that in the next session because I know you guys want to talk about your new waiu game of course okay so instead of a tip we go the trailer for next time wait what okay now I I didn't I didn't understand like so you're not going to talk about it but we need to wait for the for the blog post god sleeping you sleeping the [ __ ] this is even worse this is even worse than me Shilling my own own blogs and and articles okay whatever anyway most stuff for w so let's let's talk about the some some UA uh interesting stuff and uh and the wife game obviously well so I started playing this goddess of Victory Nik is Nik or Nikki or well whatever uh again because it was it was training so so uh so heavily in the charts and and uh well I need some like uh help here

yaku because I downloaded the game started playing started playing and immediately after 10 minutes I turned it off and uninstalled what the [ __ ] is this game all about is it only like an anime female characters like trying to battling the the robots or like like is there anything else actually happening in the game what do you want more you have anime characters battling robots and all of them are wles okay all of them have yeah weapons okay yeah okay so they have weapons okay so why all right then why why this game like why the [ __ ] is it is is it earning like so much money so it made almost like 80 million almost 83 man 83 and and only by the estimate that we see and we don't see the Chinese part you don't Chinese part okay well I was looking at this like few days ago so maybe okay now it's like maybe more than 80 million since launch which happened on November

3rd yeah okay November 2nd I think was the official number or something but I checked it for first month from 2nd November to 2nd December is like 83 plus which means it's on its way to do 1 billion in first 12 months because for that you need 83 mil okay o so it's making like anything between two to five Millions a day I mean that's [ __ ] crazy but we need to mention that it's like top one g is Japan obviously then is South Korea and US surprisingly sitting on the third place for like this type of game I wouldn't expect the US be on third place actually it's pretty common I will have a comparison with another my f game a favorite of mine ah of course all right okay but first like how is this even possible yakob you are the the Wu Wu guy here uh Japan that's why it's possible and then

the rest of Asia and then the increasing and bigger and bigger crowd in us that's pretty much uh consuming this game and it's like you know people are getting the appeal there more and more so that's why as I said it's not that uncommon and even Aur Lane had pretty much a kind of the same mix of countries okay regarding the revenue so my guess is like I I I told this like three years ago already like Vu games are here to stay and they will port to the West so they will migrate here stay here as a like stable category and whoever says otherwise just you know you don't just stop it yeah stop it because it will work it will work and like you know just look at what happened with Edge Runners the Cyber Punk anime that Netflix did for CD project right like people in the west eat it alive and the sales of Sky of cyber game which was like 2 years old on

the store skyrocketed so yeah anime is starting to work also in the west and will work I started is the clad anime like is it the scantly cloud anime characters that are driving this or is it actually like the gameplay that's a lot of fun a game play is actually very very good like uh I'll go into detail but yeah what game what gameplay are you talking about it's just like anime characters with boops and ass which is Just sh shaking all the time and Ling robots and like shooting guns okay but okay well okay okay we can we we can go deeper into that okay I will leave it to to to the to your your part after all okay but but thanks okay it's good to know uh but I guess this is like why uh small Giant games is also pushing their new games in soft loue which is almost which is almost everything but wfus so they will they will fail they will

fail yeah or they were going to add it okay never nevertheless so I started looking into the like the the uix of the of the game and and the channels out there and then it's mainly unity and Google which is uh it's not that interesting the most interesting part and the set part at the same time is the creative strategy and I mean the whole game feels still like super sexist uh and it's like they're not using anything else in their game playay or the creatives just gameplay which is again again as I said whoops ass and that's it so you see the as from from from everywhere you go in the menu this just it's not fake it looks exactly like it looks in the game exactly yes it's yes of course it's not fake you only see giant poops and guns and that's it so like they they have the in the creative uh like the big headline like really watch my back Commander I mean seriously that's a nice spun like it's like [ __ ] like this this is terrible like hey 10

cent is this really the creative strategy you are going for I mean on one hand I totally get it like where is this coming from if the target audience is men 40 plus and especially in the East I guess this is work this is like how it how it's working there is it yob or I'm completely wrong to be honest I directly look up the demographics or like several Wu games and couldn't load them don't know what's happening like specifically for Japan but my guess is that it's pretty much a culture thing there that you know it's anime and Anime Works a little bit different where you just you know go Str casually into Akihabara Tokyo the anime quarter and you'll understand okay well to be just completely honest I find is very wrong I know like maybe I'm just like too Western but this is not like the first uh case of sexist ads uh that we are seeing and not only sexist but also like creative attacking woman and like there's a misogyny in those creatives

and like also like violence against women and we are seeing this more and more in the last uh last few days and weeks which is not ideal I think but that's not they're not any all of these like they're not any yeah that's what one big difference like these guys were here first and then this kind of fake ad whatever and now vience against wiam was you know it's coming from the West actually not from the East that needs to be said yeah all I know is I have to have removed so much of these like ads because have so many complaints and like yeah it's really annoying because like yeah like they showing these ads like pretty much in all apps and it's just super annoying you have to be super quick to remove them otherwise you get so many complaints and then usting drops and and we are this like like I said like we are see seeing this more and more and mostly like female game female oriented games this is like match free or match or merge games I mean seriously and right now I think uh there was one uh uh one example that Claire and Janie

mentioned on on LinkedIn which is like play flock and there's also like keys of war and I think keys of war is again like from east of course yeah yeah that's that's that's different but I mean like why is this why is this even happening I'm I'm a little bit constraint here is like how we ended up here so I think like unfortunate start of these creative creative uh Concepts is actually tactile games because Lily's Garden start these like Creative Concepts with like rocking the whole UA creative world with the new take like drama pregnancy storytelling with a Twist and all this like I think they didn't very much expect this new level of drama will emerge from this because of it's like how could you expect this but I know like these creatives it they are uh running because they catches your

attention they they catch your attention obviously and most probably they deliver a lot of like Roi uh because well they're still running so I guess uh they're bringing money uh into the like company's Pockets but this is really all about like the money and I know I've been talking about like uh how gaming industry is like all about business and then needing paying your bills but I think uh there should be a point where we as an industry just draw a line uh because money is obviously important but should it be important more more important than everything else I mean I'm pretty sure that you can find the ways how to produce creatives in an ethical way don't show yeah that you know to drive positive Roi and you know just recently just an example I started working with one company on the creative front which is they wanted to just move or or evolve their creative strategy from fake ads to start using

some real um gameplay connected creatives and it take it took a little bit of a time to actually evolve from something like super fake to more friendly creatives to their brand that delivers uh arei and it actually we succeeded to to do that so I'm pretty sure that you can actually succeed moving from these sexist ads and and uh and start working on something else also you should just stop it right now I mean it's it's ridiculous fake ads are one thing they're fake they're misleading but at least they're not attacking woman and like it's it's not misogyny all the time so hey guys if you want I will be doing free creative work for you for a year if you stop doing it right away so tell like just ping me what wherever on LinkedIn here in on my email just stop it right here it's terrible so

please the question is where where was I the question is again like what thing will break the camels back here because what like we'll be talking about this like for years and like you know I know nobody cares that much where you know Butlers are getting drowned into lava or whatever the pin creat is where now like because the rules are that there are no rules that you can do whatever you want to show in the creatives it means that like at some point we'll hit the lowest denominator where somebody pays attention but what happens afterwards because I still don't uh or let's say can't imagine the the process of enforcing anything upon this no of course it's it's it's it won't be enforced because well Facebook and all the all the well uh channels they're making money out of this so they they don't give a [ __ ] but you know like we as ini we can just uh say like hey guys

well we care about like how our company brand looks like and and uh we can commit to some like ethical ways how to do creatives and obviously you know I take I really care about like Roi and everything but this is just just out of the out of the question it's terrible yeah it's definitely like so like it's pretty much getting to the lowest denominator like uh yeah my guess is next up will be even worse if nobody happens here so no it's a race to the bottom it's going to get worse and worse 100% like it has been in the last couple years like it's not going to get better yeah exactly so like we at least what we can do is just talk about and talk about that and try to stay away from it and then uh and yeah well that's it I guess but it's it's really like unfortunate like how we went from like the the storytelling narrative Lily's card and pregnancy creative and we ended up here like creatives that

suggest rape and like attacking woman I like come on what the [ __ ] happened to to the companies that's that's just that's just wrong on so many levels yeah it would be great if there would be some kind of functional enforcement here that let's say even normal guys wouldn't need to kind of care about I think that's where we're heading towards that's where it's going to end up yeah well all right yeah let's let's move to to something more yeah yeah R over R over okay okay okay okay so can move to your V explanation of like why why the [ __ ] is this actually working because I'm I'm super interested in hearing that yeah yeah um I'm going to do like say a little little bigger roundabout here about like what's like this no no come on just don't don't do like like super super super long super long boring got coffee oh no worries it'll be it'll be swift but but you need to understand some that's that still you don't understand

because of Mr surface played 10 minutes uninstalled guy so let's correct that and don't be [ __ ] o wow okay okay yeah shut up we only play the game for 10 minutes need end I want to play the game more but I I want to play the game more when I find it really offensive come on like why would I it's not that offensive that's it's just like you don't understand the mechanics man that's that's the thing they have like very very standard featur set especially influenc I would say by stuff like AFK Arena these days sure but can I can I head the game because it because I hate how it looks like I can of course you can hate the game but you need to play it if you want to talk about it that's very easy I know okay I know I know I know how that's why that's why we yeah okay okay that's why we discussed this like session so what are we talking about we're talking about the latest uh sci-fi RPG actually which by the way sci-fi

it's it's sci-fi the worst of the worst tees to get and it's making so much money so just saying it it looks like something between like a Cyber punkish End of the World mea postao like you throw there every niche of the niche and the V diagram just get super small and still makes so much money so great job there uh it setting this post-apocalyptic future where the surface of Earth was conquered by unknown mechanical creatures uh of course it's always better to slay something not living in mass quantities because you don't feel remorse for it so great point there and the story follows a commander and his n Cas and N in this case is pretty much a synonym for like a battle robot so all the wife fo and girls are pretty much Bots and then uh those are artificially made by three big corpse and you are even talking with the CEOs of these corporations in the game

which are also old girls of course and they are very very mean and arrogant and uh you use those robots to pretty much reclaim Earth and have like a nice progress uh P scripted PV campaign so that that's what they have there uh it was developed by South Korean based company shiftup and it's working with the publisher level infinite which is a division of 10 cent as we know uh that was set up in 2021 in Singapore if I understand with the goal of going more into International so I guess that means out of China because this is definitely working out of China especially Japan um the development and this is interesting began already in 2018 with an internal planning competition for a prototype of the game and it was originally planned to be a firsters perspective shooter so imagine that uh but was like to change to incorporate the battle poses inspired by

the hell of a PIV yeah nice by by the Gears of War series of course like if you don't know Gears of Wars is the one like s signature cover shooter cover shooter means that you have an obstacle you're leaning your back on it and at some point you like you know go pick up some enemies reload go back to the cover and so on so forth uh if I understand the game there Works in corridors this one just works on permanent cover so the cover is pretty pretty much they not moving anywhere it's like a shooting R pretty much uh shift up first revealed Nike a long project even crank in Showcase Event in 2019 so actually this was very very anticipated and even if I look into the like community and everything like they already have like 150k Discord 200k Twitter and everything it just pretty much missed us because you know we are not that super deep into the Japanese gaming Market Market but it was showcas in like gar the big biggest

South Korean gaming conference Tokyo game show the Japanese one and then initially was planned for 2020 release but then was resettled I guess because of covid problems and usual delays because the production value of this game is enormous so my guess is the team and everything working on this is like super big and yeah and I get do it why it works so well because it just that just the prayer registrations were 3 million so so just that tells you something man that's that's nothing compared to like uh some some like 30 or 60 million for like Call of Duty of course yeah I think even I think even crash bandic had more of course keep in mind that 3 million pre-registration from Japan means five times the LTV of an American so now count yeah that yeah that's what I wanted to say like the game the game has like 5 million downloads and 83 million revenues like yeah that's one of those Japanese arpu

games where it skyrockets very high well how how like where does it sits like between the the Dragon Quest or walk Quest whatever is the game you're talking about my guess it will be it will be lower uh because Dragon Quest is only in Japan and that's like pure pure Japanese AR Japanese and this one is kind trying to be more International so people with less money to throw mobile G is dragging it down probably so let's see um I'll try to compare the games to azur line um because let's just say that Vu games are very very popular in Japan specifically uh they're very appealing to otaku culture otaku culture is pretty much the whole anime manga culture there uh I guess in the west you would call these people nerds in in in Japan you call these otakus uh they have like a different things pretty PR much that are not in common because some

people are just you know watch anime take uh taking figurines and stuff and you know have a different things in in the west you have like Comics games and everything in there it's kind a little bit different I would say because the the whole anime manga thing it creates like a different setup than nerds in in the in the west there are pretty much everything that people don't understand from the main culture I would say in in the it's it's a little bit different but anyway there's like a very very big tradition so they you say like give me your lunch money oku I don't know man it's like it's there's it's mainstream there it's like it's not not how it is in the west uh I I by the way I recommend anyone going there into Japan into Tokyo just go there into Akihabara and you will understand that's the anime neighborhood there it's like one of the best places in the earth so cool yeah it's great uh yeah so azur Lane was actually

again similar Vu game where you again collect wuss which are actually World War II battleships uh is taking on the tradition of like kol which was again a browser game that did exactly this and they pulled it on mobile there's multiple multiple Wu games being going out and like being in in like on the stores there we just don't talk about it last time we talked about the horse racing BYU game for instance that also making a killing in Japan there's lot of these but they don't translate that well into the west but it seems they're getting you know their little piece of the market slowly and slowly increased as as we see with this one because us is one of the biggest audiences there so it it's definitely working um both games both Aur Lane and Nik I would say are kind of like one of the best Wu games there uh the I don't know if the horse

racing game the pretty Derby uh if they are dead focus on wles I don't I don't think so probably but but I played aine pretty heavily this looks like exactly like an upgraded version of azur Lane and they have very very like let's say V food Centric elements in the game I'll get to them later but um like the typical thing of a Wu game here and pretty much the feature set is pretty is that they both have scripted single player PVE in campaign on repeatable and and or pretty much like different difficulties that you can stroll through so like a lot of content that you need to eat and that's that's like typical for an RPG game uh these these guys are also in like amplifying it by their story narrative and this is this is very very important like usually if you have something like story in R Shadow Legends or AFK Arena it's kind of non-existent it's like nice to have or something here is like a completely different level the

game's fully voice overed in both English Japan and Korean of course anime people always vote for Japan because like having anime with English dub is just saage I'm sorry and then uh you have literally anime sequences as cut scenes like they actually like it seems like they paid in studio to do an anime for them to do like three to 5 minute cut scenes and the story is pretty heavy like you start the game and in first uh five to six minutes you ended up in a cut scene that you will need to pull the trigger and kill off your tutorial guide directly into the head because she got corrupted by a virus or something and she needs to die and blah blah blah it gets pretty heavy but it's great like the production value outstanding there's like a full-fledged anime comes into the game at at some point and you continue wait wait Remo does this does this game also have like a a anime series to go

with it or is it just not yet but Aur line did uh their anime series two years after launch and my guess is that this game will also did Monster Strike also did a lot of successful games just like there's the natural way to Branch into like offline advertising and just pretty much do anime series it people will eat it like hot cakes so how it's same as cyber Punk by the way that was a nice nice nice kind of a shot there um yeah um what was I yeah so we kill the tutorial guide the game goes and continues uh why is making so much money because there's character event gacha monetization and this is the the secret source of all of these games why it's working so well because you need to spend a lot of time in order to pull something useful from the gacha that's that's the main thing and the character progression is the typical one for a G game where you have like levels of characters uh they even have the star

system so star system pretty much determines how much you can limit break your characters meaning that what's the actual end level that these people can eventually achieve if you have enough duplicates of them because you can level them for XP and like you have them that that's great but you need duplicates of them with the same small chance to get so you know the system is greased really well in a way that you need to pull more more stuff from the gacha there's the typical tempool that people go here for which guarantees a little bit of like some kind of guarantee that accumulates they even have like the the typical wishing list feature where you can actually wish list stuff on your gacha which will increase the chance that you get something that you wish listed a little bit just like you know so you can keep your list uh and the the the the main thing is that there's multiple pools and this is the secret Source between whole system that you you have like five pools immediately you

have like standard pool then you have the social pool for instance with like shitty characters that you get from helping people on I have the I have the I have the pool behind me as well but I guess that's different type of pool he pointing at his sink in his kitchen that's a background that pool that pool doesn't make that much money I would say uh well that Deadpool makes a lot of money Deadpool yes but Deadpool not anyway uh the the the key here is that you have characters that come and go with with these event pools and the only way to get them is pretty much to to draw them from the pool with chances like 4% less than 4% 2% like very very small chances so you need literally hundreds of tries to get these uh in order to pull like it's pretty typical within these games to even roll them so you start the game you play until some kind of a mark and if you didn't get like a good character from that point for the free currency you were given you

restart this is normal practice within these games so it's all about the gacha gacha pretty much Paces everything uh you want these characters because yeah they not only increase your power uh regarding player progression because they're very good and the event ones the ones for instance now they already switch like three I think or three or two characters that like come and go and I cannot get them anymore because they were just in that and catcha uh is that they are wus and you want to collect them anyway that's that's like one of the biggest power of like a Wu game that if we compare it to something like Empires and puzzles which also have like this very very heavy gacha monetization uh you don't really need that Collective aspect there like what you need you you need like roles being uh placed on your team so let's say I need a fire Mage I need a fire tank I need like this guy from that GAA okay I can wait to get next one but here you

actually want to get the specific Wu because she has the full voice over collection yeah yeah it's like collection okay it's very very heavy on the actual collection that's the powerful thing about W like it's really powerful I'll get to it later why you want to have these wles specifically because you can do other things once you have them which you cannot do with in the normal gacha game especially in the west also even in the East like for instance moners is also like very very very good gacha game but they don't have any Vu features and you cannot do things with the tokens from GAA that you can do here so that's there uh on top of it of course is an Asian game so it's very very feature heavy so it means that it has very deep power progression layer very very deep it means that we have character levels that we need to exp uh exp up we have limit breaks which means we need duplicates of characters to pretty much unlock their level we have skill upgrades on each character we have equipment slots Six Equipment slots on each character and the equipment can be

upgraded itself and then on top of it of course we have the skins and skins in Vu games work much better than skins in normal nonvu games let me tell you just that so that's very very why is that because you want to collect every and each of a skin you have in the game you want to buy new clothes for your Rifleman that that's that's very easy okay you want to see the differ looks okay yeah and and you know keep in mind that here the Skins are mostly for you usually skins work as a social status for people to show off but here you want to have them even though it's like a PVE situation yeah it's your collection your collection is very very the center here so you want to have that so so so it really sounds like this will be the next billion dollar mobile game H could be like uh the starts definitely looking there if they are able to pull out some very heavy liveops which they already started the usual treadmill on these

games my guess is that they will get to these really really big spikes just to give you a context let's let's run through some numbers so we know what what we talking about so if we compare I hope you I hope you have decimals uh no I don't phix the decimal I'm the one with millions millions and billions yeah uh so just by comparison azur Lane when it started in like the the first big BN when it launched it didn't launch globally yet it launched only in Asia first it did something like 15 more than 15 16 mil a month in the first month in the in the big one as we talked before Niki already did 83 in just the first month okay compare Japan to Japan Japan to ja Japan uh yeah I think that would be something against like um what's there it should be more should be more yeah that that's the Japan

actually like Aur Lan Ranch launched first in Japan and like uh Asia but the chart here says pretty much that is mostly Japan like 90% at that point sure but then like gos of of uh well the the Niki game it's like Japan then South Korea and then us so how if you want to compare apples to Japan 48 40 first month so it's 40 m 40 m out of the yeah yeah yeah okay yeah that's what I want to so it's it's even [ __ ] crazy yeah it is it's even bigger in Japan mind blowing uh my guess is that's anticipation because I guess for some of these games the delays actually went pretty well because there's like it was everyone was delayed so there's not that much to play and these guys were pretty much hyping it up really really good and they you know the pre-registrations like I know three Mills but also the pretty Derby they they were just same scenario delay after delay after delay and then the rocket anime series yeah anime

series and everybody was like super eager to play and then they exploded yeah yeah so so that's there but as I said like azur line currently makes in those spikes the usual event driven events or whatever periods they're running there something like uh 8 mil uh and it was launched in 2017 so it's still makes a lot of money if I counted it right it did like 560 million all together for for all of the apps in China Taiwan South Korea and I don't know what I'm reading this I'm sorry but pretty much the whole bunch did like very very very good and we still don't see the Chinese revenue from Chinese stores which I guess that's the thing yeah so but if you look at the whole pie chart of aurand throughout these like all years from 2017 59% of Revenue is coming from Japan 16 from China that we see on on these sides and then third place is us with 11% 55 million M okay and afterwards you

get The Usual Suspects such as taian and then Germany and some kind of other countries but those are like one to two percentages kind of small uh if you look at Nike uh it's already I don't think it's Nike n Nike is okay let's do that Nike is a different company you know you can buy clothes so trainers so for for for the latest one Japan makes like 50% South Korea 20% and then comes United States at 16% which I still think is pretty high for like a western based audience uh followed by Taiwan Hong Kong and Thailand so not Germany yet but us part is still pretty pretty big I I guess it's also because they already have like a English DB in the game I know I said it's sacr but I guess it works for English audience uh at least the one that just get this and it's like man it's like it's literally like being

in an anime there's like dialogues and [ __ ] after every encounter there's anime sequences there's like the game play the map everything it's very very very good like if you're into anime and stuff this is the game for you definitely and I would say maybe yeah I can see it on your face I can see it on your face you enjoy quite heavily I didn't have that much time because you know son was born so I had say balance a little bit but yeah yeah rosan was yeah but uh the thing is that my guess is and and we already saw it we already saw it with small giant like these game concepts are getting into the West they will get into the West eventually as usual all the trends are coming from Asia to the West somehow adapted and works here well so my guesses we'll see more and more of these uh as I said before I stand by my prediction that the small Giant game won't will not work or will have a much

lesser impact if they omit the Wu element completely my guess is that uh yeah I'm really looking forward once we see like a true Western Wu game with even the Western Art or some kind of a features that will be kind of typical adaptation for Western audience but this is still but will will it be Wu if it's a Western Art we'll see we'll see because you you already have those like uh you know game of Sultans and stuff like that that kind of looks a little bit King Choice let's say wish okay but yeah let's see because it's it's it's uh yeah it works a little bit different there but it's it's it's I would say the closest we have in the west regarding this category and it works also pretty well so let's see um yeah so the these were the numbers again as I said like more than 84 mil in the first month that's that's really outstanding uh continuing on the feature uh rundown the

core gam playay is the typical very easy to control but super deep to main Max I know it looks like easy there's of course like auto combat semi-auto combat where they will use abilities on autop play and you can still shoot and aim uh aurine had the same again like fully auto combat but at some point the AI is not good enough to to carry over the boss encounters so you need to take helm and like actually you know do your stuff there I know it looks like very easy like there's nothing there like but actually there's very very kind of more that meets the eye regarding like what you need to do keep in mind that all the wuss have different uh weapons and they work completely differently so if you're like attacking something with a shotgun sniper rifle rocket launcher and even assault gun the whole thing can switches there's an order that you need to use their abilities within this kind of a combo that they have there uh it's kind very typical with like azur Lane with azur Lane they have this like very very

hardcore pretty much setups where you need to count the seconds where aircrafts come from the uh the carriers and you need to count it down so you have enough strikes so you don't deplete your seconds on like non-compatible ships and also the ships where you you know pull the guns of the battleships so you need to time it right which means you need to give them the right Fighters for every ship so they can make as much uh sorties during the level okay Mr otaku or what what the [ __ ] was the name this is game design I think it nerd think it mechanics nothing else vectors and mechanics [ __ ] yeah systems and vectors something what I'm trying to say is it's still really deep if you get into it it's very very deep it's actually pretty high to be honest so don't don't disregard it as like yeah they just slapped bunch of WIP some random shooter gears or work or gameplay it works no it won't it's just very very

thought out yeah yeah I know it's it sounds deep but uh well of course I could get into you just didn't see it I couldn't get yeah I couldn't get into that level of [ __ ] deep yeah game design and then um they have the full full feature big rown they have like you know the idle generation feature that you need to come every 12 hours and pick up up they have the character time lock for rewards where you pretty much need to send characters on missions that will lock them which means you need to have more of them in order to use them they have the dorm room output feature where you have pretty much like a poly pocket uh haven't seen the decorations in godess Nike yet but uh Nik yet but aine had that Quest system directly pretty much taken from stuff like AFK Arena the daily weekly monthly challenge everything a lot of additional modes like they have even this Rogue simulation that's pretty much really similar to Labyrinth feature for FK Arena where you go from Battle to battle and you grow stronger and stronger which

you need to like pick three abilities in between when into rings bells of course people know uh scale difficulty Tower very heavy liveop started with these event gacha pools and very very heavy economy you have pretty much four inventories with different materials and everything like you know lots of things to spend on that's that's very very easy but let's get to the differentiators within the features because this is this is the real thing yes so what Aur Lane has do quickly please Aur Lane has is that you have this kind of a dorm room where you have five battleships that they pretty much take on XP even when you're not there in the game and you need to put fuel there in order for them to consume because they're ships of course and they they have this happiness happiness mechanic which increases their stats and everything and in Aur Lane actually if you hit 100 happiness and if you buy a v weding ring in the shop you can marry a Vu and you can marry as much

as you want why not which unlocks a special wedding skin or stuff around that like portraits and stuff so that's good but Nike they don't have this marriage mechanic but actually they take it to another level where you have like a fully fledged WhatsApp that messages you with all the wus you have like separate chats and group chat like they actually casually message you with like a group chat discussion and you can choose within a story segment uh the thing like like you would have like episodes and choices built into the game pretty much and and nice so this is like retargeting pretty much we haven't finished yet uh that that's like casual WhatsApp with vus that's one thing but the other thing and this is I haven't seen it yet advice mechanic where you actually go can go and advise the vus like what they should do and like take life decisions for instance I have a one that like a hip-hop singer or something like that which she fired her manager

and I'm now her manager and like stuff around that and she has troubles within like organizing concerts and stuff so of course if you are you her manager then of course she is troubles with organizing concerts me her happiness happiness uh mechanic is definitely wor not sure but but the thing is that mine is started with tamagi an hour yeah but yeah it's tamagi and and it's monetized that's the thing so the happiness the bond level here increases their stats uh kind of heavily that that's that's really good but the other thing is that in order to increase the bond you either have to advise them and you can advise five times a day and you have the whole inventory of the whole collection to choose from who to advise the bond level also increase or let's say unlocks episodes of new story within each of those so you know more relationship status more story for you more focus more attachment and then you if if you don't have advice you know you depleted all those what do you do of course you

buy gifts which are consumables either given throughout the game or sold in the shop so uh that's on top of it and then of course skins skins uh still very light I would say uh but these are like one of the main drivers of the liveops here so they will be added pretty heavily into the game I guess later down the line but just uh I think last week or this week they added the new pool with uh this girl that I forgot the name uh but they had like a new special anime sequence like 4 minutes one just for her where she pretty much like picks up the courage and then does this like whatever chain like chain gun laser chain gun sequence where she destroys everything and she's super op uh in the game playay and that's the usual thing like the best thing in the Eva is usually very op everybody wants to have it so yeah their their liveops is not taking time it's already there it's fully fledged and it's making those big spikes and this game will be driven by those big spikes from event gas so that's there so I

would say this is the next level of like a Vu game especially the WhatsApp thing really really got me that I I haven oh that's amazing like it's I think it's it's from those games u in China the love and producer ones and where pretty much like you have like multiple boyfriends and they integrate with wi and stuff like that so I guess they took a hit from there and put it here into the game so it works great it's like yeah It's amazing And by the way you can play the game uh not only on uh portrait you can even switch it to landscape 60 FPS if you want it is possible and I'm playing it on emulator like this which means you can see a much much bigger playing field than the combat field of course how else any questions all right no let's just my my happiness yeah my happiness mechanic is on the on the top top level I think but it works so well man like monetization wise

design Wise It's a Marvel of a game great job outstanding move guys like you really nailed it like I I was expecting another kind of azur L clone or something that was catching up to it because they wear a lot of them way this this is like pushing to the next level Let's uh let's keep an eye on this and then uh yeah see if our prediction is true that this is the next billion dollar game then yeah might might be all right yeah I think that's uh that's it for uh for today thank you very much for uh listening I need to say uh again thank you very much guys because we we had this uh Spotify wrapped uh which surprised me in a positive way uh so thank you very much for being awesome we got all the all the like amazing stats from Spotify uh about you that you are great and you're sharing our podcast so please keep doing so uh and yeah until next time thank you very much