Whiteout Survival - How to Fake It to Make It

[Music] well something that is crushing it globally is last war survival they just surpassed two billion in lifetime player spending on mobile so wow top five Revenue T1 in the last month when I looked that up you have Monopoly go Royal match Roblox Candy Crush and then you know last war surval pulled ahead of Pokemon TCG which is number six and white out survival is number seven so it's pulling ahead of white out survival you know definitely these ideas of these games that are more very very casual with the Deep monetization afterwards seems to be working so Phil what did you see when you looked into it so I think there there's a ton going on in Forex I think Joseph Kim and the two and a half gamer guys have been a really good job covering what's going on in the creative shift side I think there's the web store stuff too which needs to get a shout because Forex does so well when it comes

to Web Store shares because there's a lot of direct distribution not only that it's highly competitive so like for instance if you're able to like optimize your spend using the web store you get more bang for your buck that's actually helps your power score it helps you you know take over the server so there's a lot of competitive pressure I think also to be on the web store I think the thing that I would push back to both you Eric and to Jen is like I think this hurts a lot of what you guys have been talking about so I looked into taxonomy Revenue which is given by sensor Tower as the strategy genre and then kind of filtering for what they call 4X it's up from the depths of 2024 it's not quite where it was at its height in 2021 but it's on the upswing and this isn't the direction I would expect in a postat world especially considering web stores which we were just talking about that's not here so I would say that's one thing I'll park for Eric and for Jen the thing I keep trying to wrap my head around is like fake ads or even just implementing

I would call fraudulent gameplay for the first part of the funnel has like been this LTV durable strategy and I feel like this just cuts at like everything brand stands for delivering the fantasy of the IP like we're materially frauding people with with what games are and I look at Forex and like this is what the genre has become now this it's successful and it's sustainable and like even when you look at Lilith which is what you know we're also looking at like that's been the hidden story of like we talk about AFK Arena it's all their Forex games that are really The Narrative for them so there's there's all this this stuff that's going on Forex which doesn't get a lot of conversation yeah the the thing I will say about this fake ad topic which comes up a lot is what the games are doing and gamer finery actually did a little bit of a piece on this and that what they found is that half of the top 200 games are integrating these fake ads or these mini games as different parts of the

game so they could either be an event they could be like eony there's like a little you know bug on the home screen that if you want to do the pull the pin you click on that and you can go and do those fake ads were they are integrated into you know the gaml in in a different way and so I think that they are trying to mitigate that fake ad you know Feeling by somehow shoving it in the game somewhere like white out survival I think I saw that they do a fishing you know UA ad well there are fishing mini games inside the game and they come along every like two weeks you can do this like returning event that happens and I think that's the smart way to do it is well it's in there somewhere and it's not completely fake but it still makes me feel really gross that that is like the core of what's happening but I mean we're also seeing that that works so if it's working there is very little reason for people to stop which doesn't

mean it that it's right it just it is what it is sadly and you just said it earlier CR like youa is a dirty business look I think this is the strategy right basically casual gameplay with deep monetization design is what I said way back when when when idfa happened in Turkey is like this is it right they actually executed against it it took them a while right took them a while to come out with these games that did that what I think is happening is that they are selling the game with this casual gameplay like the runner [ __ ] um and that is that is bringing in a huge audience and they're just picking out the 4X players because that game becomes a 4X game ultimately yep and they collect those people and so probably I would say that retention numbers are probably lower for these games than they have been in the past because they're not targeting as specifically to this audience because they can't with idfa but nonetheless like this is the strategy and games like first

you know top war white out survival they're kind of like executing against us really really well right to bring people into these games and anecdotally like I played this game for a while right I might have said this already on the podcast and I apologize but yeah I played last war for a while and the game is amazing and actually the gameplay itself is What attracted me like this Runner style gameplay right but that gameplay actually takes a backseat once you get pretty deep into the game and then it becomes such a 4X game that I got my ass handed to me and destroyed and I'm like [ __ ] this like this sucks right so I stopped playing right and now I'm just a fodder for the masses of people that are continuing to play the game because they just keep taking all my resources time and time again the exact same [ __ ] that was happening when I back in the day with atam yeah so anyway this is the strategy right this makes sense right to broaden the funnel as enough to capture the whales that are out there no it makes sense I would point out that I think this harms everyone like I think there is this

negative externality when you run fake ads which is that now the user doesn't know if the ad is truly what the game play is going to be down the funnel or not and you don't know which ad is fake and which one is not so I think it actually artificially raises cpis across the board if you have fake ads it makes users just more hesitant to engage with ads overall and I think that that harms the overall ecosystem and I'm surprised no one has cracked down on this like none of the UA platforms I guess to your point Jen like they are extending it into the game and so now becomes a blurry line that makes a ton of sense to me I I would say the the the opposite direction here is like why aren't more genres doubling down on this this is what I don't understand where is Squad RPG on this like Squad RPG is like very similar it's been in the sh a genre where the [ __ ] are they showing up with fake ads so I think there's a huge opportunity to do this with that particular genre I think yeah this RPGs in general the only like genre that's kind of declining these these days because I don't think we have I've seen

an execution that actually takes advantage of this so I think that is a huge opportunity like Lil did put match three into like AFK Arena like that happened once but it's not it I don't understand why the endless Runner like why does the endless Runner work for let's say last war but not like Marvel Strike Force like I that that is another interesting question is like what is the fake gameplay you have to pair with these genres to like get this thing to work well they're in lives what the creatives are good for figure that [ __ ] out you know yeah that's what people yeah that you test that this is how creative Works in Mobile I think we've talked about this before but like this is the only thing that I can actually say Voodoo and these super [ __ ] hyper casual [ __ ] games have done for the business is created these type of gameplay that actually is attractive to a broader audience that can sucker people into playing forx games you know like they did a great job of of creating these type of games so good for them right so yeah now we need to couple it with RPGs and simulation games and bring

get people into the fold you know yeah Philly you might remember the choice ads for Walking Dead Right For That Squad RPG we did those Choice ads and they were incredibly successful it led you to believe that you know do I let my dog die or do I feed it to the zombie or whatever horrible choice you have to make and the game did have a little bit of choice because in the story mode you did make choices and so that's how we kind of Justified the idea of having that happen in UA but could they have doubled down on that could they have made that like a deeper thing you know maybe so the One S in summary of this whole podcast is advertising is a [ __ ] dirty business yeah it is like when I when I was at Riot and I was setting up the mobile publishing I don't know how many people came to me and said we will not allow you to do like fake ads and I'm like that's okay I have high integrity I don't you know yes we we we agree we

will not do fake ads because Riot was like we're not about that and it it was a like probably one of the top concerns of people at Riot and likely at blizzard too when you've got like the Integrity of these games and everyone knows what it's like in the UA sphere to create those crappy ads so I I know it's a thing all right all right one day we'll talk about OverWatch Loop boxes once when I get my tattoo once I get my tattoo done we can talk about it overwat are are the is it out yet loot boxes no is it happening just announc we're back baby mini celebration we go segment is like yeah they're cow Towing to the market forces oh no creative Integrity they creative their creative Integrity in shambles at their blizzard right now [ __ ] Microsoft overlords as as corrupted their purity awful take awful take this is swager okay this is Swagger this is a

team that like is striking back at Marvel Rivals and actually doing something interesting this is the OverWatch we were promised oh all right all right part this compromising all their morals the moral High Ground they're not selling the loot Boxes by the way just to be clear they're only earnable in game for now oh that's different oh that's that's stupid all right all right thanks everyone see you next week and maybe we'll actually talk more deeply about it next time all right see you [Music]