Wash Away Your COVID-19 Worries with Soap (Cutting) | PGC Digital #1

thank you everyone for coming today you know we crazy labs already knew that soap is a great way to avoid the kovat 19 the corner virus early december when we started working on soap cutting but today i'm gonna discuss and walk you on how to wash away your worries with soap cutting and you know in my opinion today it is important to wash your hands at the same amount of time that you invest in playing a level in so cutting and what we'll talk about today is a bit about crazy labs we'll talk about soap cutting the game why did we choose to work on so cutting the game and how we took the game from the time that the studio sent us the page until the time

that it raged to be number one in the charts Christmas Eve for those who don't know me my name is Shyam I'm a publishing manager at crazy labs I work with developers and Studios in order to get their game ready they're hyper casual game ready to hit the top charts I'm always on the lookout for very talented students and developers who are looking to develop hyper casual games just a bit about crazy labs so crazy labs is a published hyper casual publishing company we are around 230 people with offices all around the world Israel where I am today China and Cydonia Germany Bulgaria and a few others as well we just peaked with over three billion downloads up today and have over 80 million monthly active users a few of

the games hyper cacher games that we released over the past time run sausage ron was one of the first hyper casual games we worked on dentists playing which is our latest release so cutting the game that we are going to be disgusting today amazed one of our successful games and a few others as well so why so cutting the story began when a partnership form I stood with a partnership with the studio called the files going to active a very talented studio from Mumbai India the studio tested a few games with us and we were able to establish a really good and close partnership with the studio and are able to work and with the studio on rather early stages of the game development and able to facilitate our in-house teams in order to work only on games which have more potential in

becoming a number one hit and we'll walk through today all of the steps that we did in order to get this game to be number one in the charts so why stop cutting you can actually see here the video also cutting and I hope that you also can hear the sound so cutting is an asymmetry which means it creates sensory response which is very relaxing and you know satisfying to watch you can watch this hours and hours and but our question was can we make this trend into into a game are we able to get this video and make it into an actual game that players will enjoy would be satisfying enough no strict ASMR games are not in the top charts and our mission was from the beginning to be the

first one there and to be the leader in this ASMR hyper casual train so we received the pitch from the studio and we immediately understood that there it has huge potential very good mass appeal millions of views on YouTube and Instagram and different other platforms and now we understood it you know there is potential but can we make a game out can we use it as like to play it will it have the appearing of the ASM a trend that we are seeing today here and so you know there are many different ASMR trends not every trend can become a hyper casual hit the goal for us is to make the game as appealing as the video that you are seeing and

make it as satisfying as actual cutting the soap itself and so this is a timeline of the poses from the time that we first received the pitch from the studio until the time that the game was released Christmas Eve and reached to be number one in the charts in hyper casual the timeline is very important and for many different reasons main the main ones is that trends change very drastically and very fast so you really want to be the first one to the trend and not being left behind and second is that you know studios and developers might copy you so it's very very important to to be as fast as possible and so we received the pitch around November 1st from the studio a few days later we received a playable prototype and for the first time we were

able to actually play the game and see if it's fun not too light not too much later we started the CPI test now the goal for that was to first test to see if it is appealing for the users will users want to play it the goal is to just work on a game that has this kind of potential and one setting up the CPI test we immediately understood you know the CPI's is very low with not much content we're able to achieve around 35 to 37 percent a day 1 retention a few days later the studio started working on more levels and more content to set up a retention test to see if users are able to continue and they want to continue playing that quickly we saw that the retention rates are pretty high and from there until the time that the game was released worldwide was about a month or so so as you can see the full process from the time that we received the pitch until the game that was released

worldwide was just less than two month which is a reasonably good time to work obviously the initial prototype did not include all of the features that you are able to see in play with today in the game the goal was to make it as close as possible today to the trend on the video itself so what they did is they tested different sounds and different haptics to try and match the best closest experience oh so being cut itself and to match today to the satisfying feeling and the smooth feeling of of cutting the actual so this is the first user acquisition video that we used in the initial CPI test it's a simple pure gameplay video the goal for us was to try and understand if users are able to get and

understand the game from the first three seconds of the video and once they do we understand there is a low CPI and only then we continue investing more time on the game and try and make it and adding more content and then I testing their attention once we understood that there is a potential and then it has huge mass appeal and low CPI only then we continue to work on the game and they you know the mechanicing hyper casual is very important so a one-finger mechanic simple gameplay is crucial here and the challenge for us was to see how players would like to cancel and use the knife in order to cut it so what we did is a be tested different kind of solutions the winning one was moving down the knife to cut the soap and moving and swiping up to remove the crumbles and

revealed the next flare in order to continue and cut into to the next layer continuing to work on the game we worked with together with the studio and our team in order to improve the UI you can see here a really good example of how the game looks initially and how we wanted to achieve at the very end of the of the change you know if you are an ASMR fan and if you're not the goal for us was to retain the user and give them the best experience as possible and this was the outcome itself and we saw did it it really had amazing results moving forward and you know Claire sure should understand the what's the game about but just looking at the naming icon so we a t-test of different kind of icons you can see here one of the examples that we

tested and the winner was the white shiny so far you know perhaps in mind my guess is that this is maybe they're so bad that most users know either from the videos that they watch and also cutting off from their own house continuing to work on the metagame in order to retain the users and give them more a gamification experience we added the mystery box that was not in the initial prototype you can also see the changes that the mystery box had during the time that we continued to working on the game we made the mystery box larger we added the animation to it to make it a real-life present that everyone loves and this is a real changing to the meta game to keep the users plane moving forward so Zen games

Zen games are able to give us relief from a daily hectic busy lifestyle and so cutting really points into this pain point now it can give you the day relief from your daily lifestyle but just cutting soap is not enough and wanting to work more on the metagame itself we added something inside the soap so once you can't carve the soap and cut it you start revealing the item inside so it's like a gift it's like a present that you want to reveal and you know everyone wants to and they like presents and they want to open presents so this actually made a huge difference in into the mental gaming and to their attention so adding this kind of feature and adding different kind of meta games can really

improve the overall retention and the usage and the gamification of say my games like so cutting here so once we release the game worldwide this is one of our successful creatives what we did here and I am Not sure that you can hear the sound is that we combined a popular so cutting real-life video into an actual gameplay of so cutting the game itself and it's unfortunate but I'll explain the only change in the video from and the time that you see the real so being cut and transferring to the game itself is the only only the images the sound is the only sound of the game itself so once you understand that this is the game and this is the sound of the game it gives you a really good feeling that you know this is something which is

close to to a real soap being cut great so to summarize SMR trends is huge and the goal for us was once we reached and they received the page was to be the first one there and the first one in the store but also the first one to to make this kind of a smart game once we released it we had about 15 copies of developers which was very flattering and but one of the main things for us and while working on this game is really trying and keep the original gameplay to make it as close as possible to the video itself that you can see on Instagram on any other platform that you are seeing today and and we actually brought you know soap to

the office and we try and cut it and we found out it's not easy we first need to you need to warm up so then you need to carve a scratch it then you need to cool it down and then try and cut it so it's a whole mess and what we wanted at the end is for users to be able to get this full experience as close as possible to reality but without the whole mess around and I think then this is it thank you very much thank you very much shy that was brilliant like I've been saying I'm sure if we had some audio feedback from the attendees we would be getting around the flaws but all there give you a round of applause myself that was so it was really interesting and if you've got some time we've got quite a few questions coming in if that's all right so the first question that came in was during the retention test do you show ads which may affect day 1 retention negatively so no during the first

retention test 1 what we want is to avoid anything that will harm the retention we want to see what will be the pure retention from just pure gameplay without any interference yeah okay and next question is the cpi-u quote is the CPI for the video you quote right did you try right 300 by 50 and 300 by 250 banners for you a not true at the sizes exactly but the creative itself was the exact creative that we used in the initial test itself for the CBI okay next someone who were asked a similar question to our first speaker is did you try noob / Pro video ads so creative is we have a huge team that does all of the creatives and what we do is we a be test different creatives it can be pure gameplay it can view it can be something

similar to like noob like pro not sure exactly if this specific game for so cutting the tried or use this kind of creative but I know that some other games are using this kind of creative yeah okay next question is can you share some insights on the ad monetization of soap cutting also did you get any I ap revenue so in a purchase revenue is not is not something that we put much focus on specifically in hyper casual this is something that you know it's it's common that the most revenue will come from ads but in general what we see is maybe around sixty percent of the revenue comes from interstitial maybe twenty to thirty percent from we were the videos and the rest comes from next is before validating the idea and CPI test do you do CTR test for YouTube videos if so

what's the benchmark CTR for you it's a good question for this game we didn't and I know that some are trying to check for the CP CTR without having an actual game I don't have the specific metrics for what will be a good CTR for this specific game we did not test the city are I explained all process and what we actually were able to get the first playable prototype moving to a CPI test and a few days later for the retention test and just less than a month later for a few more questions super popular talk so if you don't mind I'll ask a few more before we let you get off is apart from the us what other Gio's did you see success in so what are the locations that's a good question we do see that us is maybe around eighty percent of the revenue but we do publish worldwide and Eastern Europe is a really

huge market for us China is also a really successful market for us I know that soap cutting is being published there as well but definitely us is one of the biggest markets for your kindness yeah that's interesting and did you did you use only the mystery box for increase in the session length or well there are the things that you would use and to do to achieve the same thing so yes we did use different different methods and different method games I gave a few examples of how we wanted to improve the metagame because the retention different kind of solutions can can be in different kind of games here there's also different items like the knives that you can buy with coins that you are able to earn and unlocking different schemes and these are the general things that used in this this one questionnaire that I think is really quite interesting especially the second part so I'm going to ask you which is there from the first retention test how

long did you take to fully develop the game but I think a part the more interesting thing is how do you avoid being copied even if it's almost possible it's almost not possible to completely avoid that I think that's an interesting question especially in hyper casual yes you're totally right and this is this is the goal this was the goal for us you know not just being the first one there but also avoid being copied and we did see that you know other students try and copy the from the time that we had the first epi test until the time that we did the retention test was just a few days luckily we had a really good studio which was really fast and we were able to use our also internal teams to assist a studio and in whatever way we can in order to make it as fast as possible and I think this is the key in order to avoid being copied and for the first day the part of the question from the time that we finished the first retention test until the game was fully released was less

than a month and this time what we did was a be tested and different features including the mechanic that I showed earlier in the in the presentation different level funnels different soap bars and in this small period of time maybe around three weeks we were able to finish all of the a/b tests and have everything ready in time to to release it obviously after that we continued to improve the game and work with the studio to add more features and improve it as much as possible to improve the retention and lower lower the CPI yeah this one here that I think you know quite interesting because I think it's what we're all thinking is you know it's it's such a simple idea that has like so much potential in new guys along with the studio have really grown that into like this really in-depth engrossing game and it's like do have any insights into where that initial idea came from so I know that the studio was searching

for a really cool idea to pitch us and I know that what they did is you know obviously in many studios do is try and tap today and to the trends to see you know what videos are really trending what videos do you see that has many views and you know so cutting was a trend that we myself as an ASMR fan I saw and loved and you know I always thought it's nice perhaps someone will make a game out of it and then the studio came and pitched us the idea but it's not just seen you know and the video and saying let's make came out of it but it's everything around it so what will be the actual game can we make it as close enough today to the video itself and this is this is the key and this is what you know when having a really good idea and the gap between this and an actual game in Haiti and this is where the still doing us as a publisher came in to get all of the

insights and improve the game and make it as fast as possible yeah thank you I mean we've got a few more more questions but I think it's maybe time to let you get on so I think I'll pick one more and then we'll let you get on with the rest of your day but I think an interesting question is you know especially with hyper casual a lot of what helps that is the the virality and sharing and getting everyone else engaged did you Inc did you explore sharing of gameplay recordings for getting players sharing by you know things like social media no for this specific game and I'm not sure even for other games sharing the gameplay video I was tested it can be a good good idea it might be a small niche when you're looking and talking about the morality you know SMR trends is something which is viable and can help the reality of the game itself to players and ask their friends this is a

really cool satisfying game right right well we've got one more question that the person is asked twice so I promise this will be unlike the last question but the person seems very keen so I'm going to indulge is can you share some insights on the ad monetization of soap cutting I think we've discussed it just earlier in terms of monetization it's mostly maybe 60% interstitial ads and the rest would be rewarded videos and a small percentage would be great well thank you very much she's been brilliant having you in like this the questions are still coming in as they were in the last talk super popular but I'm sure you'll be in the meeting system and obviously anyone wants you have the contact here but I'm also available in the meeting itself and then I'm happy to answer anything that anyone would like to share and ask in terms of the presentation or hyper casual in general and games themselves well thank you so

much for that and thank you for giving such a fascinating an interesting talk no matter what you do with the rest of the day where they stay here to watch some of the talks or getting off to meetings or anything like that I really hope you enjoy the rest of the day and thank you for being a part of this thanks Sofia thank you very much