Why are sticker albums taking over? From Royal Match to Mid-Core by Jakub Remiar

Once you complete it, you literally get this popup about the grand fall collection, which which what it does, it just does different art basically. So the pictures are different. Exact same template as usual. Instead of 10k gold, you have 15k gold and 15 boosters instead of 10. So basically 50% more rewards, but you get a different cosmetic. And this is the whale cosmetic. M and we're rolling the dice. Mate [music] drops knowledge made of golden eyes. Felix with ads making those coins rise. Jack up designs worlds chasing the [music] sky. We're the two and a half gamers. The midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too. Mate Felix Shak bringing the insight. [music] We're rocking those vibes till the early day master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Felix [music] like a wizard in disguise. Jack lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. [music] Slow hockey stick got your back. Ads are beautiful, they light the way. Click it fast, don't

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Hello. Hello. This is Two and a Half Gamers, another solo episode. And today we're going to talk about one of my favorite mechanics and something that is spreading like the wildfire basically and spilling over even to midcore which is the collectible album mechanic. We talk about it on the podcast lots of times usually during reviews or some kind of game comparisons and stuff like that but never talk specifically. So, let this be some kind of like TLDDR rundown how to video basically and I have some interesting timeline numbers that I want to go through to kind of put this into context. So, yeah, let's get

to it. Okay, so what we'll do is we go through this small presentation and from that point on I have again some more tabs to kind of look into. So collectible album itself it's this thing and this thing specifically because um a lot of times collectible albums are normal mechanics in games and everybody can say like they were here before like what you're talking about. So I'm talking specifically about the scoply implementation that was done in monop let's say popularized by monopoly because it was there before. So, Monopoly releases April 2023 and from that point on this thing spreads across the whole casual genre. So, it's this really really specific one where as I said you can look at collectible mechanics and collectible albums across the whole mobile market. There will be different mutations things but I'm talking about this very very specific setup where again if we go to monopoly

itself these things are defined by clear templates such as you have these kind of album pages basically which all consist of these x amount of cards that have their like star rarity value. There's like the overall grand price. There's a time frame. This is very important. there's like a limited time period when you can do this. There's the duplicate mechanic and there's the trading mechanic. So those are like the typical things how to kind of differentiate this specific execution of the collective album. Like let's call it sticker album. That's the most important part. So this thing is just great for these games because it's very easily or I mean like it's a perfect complimentary mechanic for their heavy social feature set because lots of these games they are on giant player volumes and therefore you want to have dynamics such as leaderboards, such as trading, such as

like pretty much users bragging about their cosmetics and stuff like that. Again, cosmetics works mainly on social status. So it's perfect for this kind of a setup like casual pretty much every single casual be game on the market. You have some kind of implementation of this mechanic. The other very good thing that it's seasonal so it resets and you lose everything so it doesn't accumulate stuff. So that that's very very good. Originally as I saw it this was first introduced into Yatsi with buddies which is a different scope game. Yeah, I guess some people are currently screaming at the screen because a lot of times I was told that this was actually kind of invented like I mean this specific implementation by Pika somewhere even before in one of their games. I don't know if somebody really knows. Let me know in the comments please. But Yatsi with buddies is the one where I literally saw it I guess where I was able to track it in in in a

way that I really kind of the one that I'm talking about. Why is this mechanic so good? Because it adds depth to shallow economies. And this is the most important part about it. Because if you look at, let's say, Royal Match or Monopoly, both of these casual games, they have very very shallow economies. Shallow economy means that there isn't really that much currencies floating around the economy. There is the soft currency, there is the energy currency, and that's it. And that's the only thing you can get in the album actually. like you can just get the same type of rewards that you get from any other live ops events or whatever stuff they're currently running. It's like because they cannot add more mechanics really to the game as it would complicate it and we don't want like complexity with casual audience but we want engagement. We want anticipation. We won't gachas of course and this is exactly what this album will give us because it introduces these kind

of let's call them temporary currencies which are the booster packs that you get by opening stuff during the events getting them as for like during the core loop of the game and yeah it's a gacha and again you get legendary cards you get not legendary cards as always so and so on so forth. Yeah, that's great and perfect, but still it rerolls or pretty much returns back to the original complexity, which is the only thing we give are these two soft currencies, which is the exact same setup here in Royal Match where again the economy isn't that really deep. It's a little bit deeper because just by the notion of it, we don't have the rolls or whatever. We have lives of course, but we have these powerups and boosters. So as you see here uh here you get again just the soft currency and the the dice which are the energy here but here you also get

boosters which is a little bit more complex but just by a little and that's it basically suddenly you are able to add a gacha system which is like one of the best progression mechanics ever invented in the game and put it into a casual game. So that's perfect. As I said, it's really important to implement it correctly. So, you really need the duplicate system because the gacha mechanics are only as good as many times you can roll the gacha, which gives you the gacha depth. Therefore, you need to be able to be able to absorb duplicates. So, once you open these packs and you get duplicates, you have a choice basically. So, in monopoly, what happens is that I can go here and exchange duplicate stickers for stars, which basically gives me either direct rewards like here, which nobody does, or they give me more packs. And the usual thing is you want to save for the best pack because for instance here in royal match these

packs you literally have this red pack that if we go here you are on their website you you see the right ratio and all these other things. The red pack contains one card that is guaranteed to be missing from your collection which is immense value for a collection of 135 cards. So just saying so again that's just the way usually for solo players but and this is the other very important thing you can trade these cards and this is the big uplift that this mechanic is causing because it's giant player engagement because again here you have an example how you can trade it in monopoly go you have five you only trade five stickers per day and players search actively for trades outside of the game which is perfect. If we go here in royal match, what you can

see here that if I go here uh into my but basically you can trade these things. See, I can send it. I need a duplicate but then I can send it to one of my friends or I can request this in my clan basically. See, so not only now the clans aren't just begging mechanisms for lives. So which is like yeah that's there but again it gives them much more meaning. So suddenly these social groups like teams in royal match have much more potential. And again, this is just the immediate motion because usually what happens is you go outside of the game into these giant trading groups, which is basically this, which is the official Monopoly group go Facebook group with 10 million followers, where there are these they even supported themselves and facilitated through these golden blitz events, which is just like life hops here. It was even done one today. You

see there are these cards and like search for perfect trade in comments 800 comments basically every everyone's like anyone have any pumpkin spice and people are pretty much looking for all those cars they add each other into friends list and then they trade between themselves. So this creates giant amount of engagement because everybody is going after that top reward of the grand prize which is usually a cosmetic because again you can't really do powerbased gameplay impact style items in these casual games. So what do you do? You create cosmetics. So that's there. So here we have for instance the origins batch the nice price that is currently running in royal match. Here we have the scarf king because of the autumn coy comforts album in me polygo and that's it basically. So it's super easy and once this thing ends you just reset it everybody loses everything and there's a new row new reward on the block basically. So that works very very well

and as I said this spread like wildfire. I'll get to the list a little bit later. Just want to finish the setup here. But yeah, every single big casual game basically implemented this exact same setup. This is just the casual games. Like you can see it. It's sometimes a little bit different based on the seasonality of the collection, a number of cards. For instance, here we have 126 cards. Here we have in2 cards. Royal match has their own template of 135 cards, which they always run. It's the same all the time. 135 cards for 2 months. Currently, I think Monopoly is doing yeah, even more because it's running nearly 200 cards basically. That's there. I guess maybe they're experimenting with a little bit more cards collection. The other very interesting thing that I want to mention is that I think maybe some games also have it with this implementation but at least the one that I know has it which is this double bottom setup which means

that their album is H basically doubled. So when you complete the main collectible album let's call it the fall collection and it was there you get this leaf and the price is here of course. to complete it. And once you complete it, you literally get this popup about the Grand Fall Collection, which then pretty much starts, which what it does, it just does different art basically. So the pictures are different. Exact same template as usual, 135 cards, a little bit more rewards. So instead of 10k gold, you have 15k gold and 15 boosters instead of 10. So basically 50% more rewards but you get a different cosmetic and this is the whale cosmetic I would name and call it basically because if we go here and we check for instance players you see that the previous collection the one with this gold thing

you see how many whales completed both albums actually and you need to do that during the same time so it's 60 days for both albums it doesn't resets the time of course. So you see how it goes pretty much and there are a lot of players already. The collection here is what 51 days. So it's 9 days in basically and there's the top players already kind of having the collection fully collect and they're on the second one basically. So you see how how they go. I'm guessing maybe this guy, the first player in the world, is currently like this is the the cosmetic for the second album, the grand album. I'm guessing. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. But I guess that's my guess here because you see how this whole list will basically change into this. Yeah, it's perfect. Everybody is pretty much implementing it from left to right because it's very easy to maintain and it's just art. You can use AI for this literally. I'm I'm guessing half of the implementations are done with AI

anyway. And again, it doesn't add any more complexity into the game. The kind of important part is the trading, especially with other players, which I guess is a little bit of a backend exercise. It's not that easy, but still, it's just giant uplift, I think, regarding engagement and what players can do within your game. As I said, these groups are just filled with players trading. So, Monopoly Go has a 10-minute group. Same goes from Royal Match, but I don't think so they directly facilitated through one of their like Facebook live ops events or maybe I didn't saw it but they definitely like you see they announced the collection so it's not that that that different. So yeah, so if you look into the timeline, let's zoom in a little bit. So Monopoly go I I put a timeline. Thank you Game Refinery for being able to kind of create this timeline even where I put the release date of global launch of Monopoly Go as the start of the timeline which is April 2023 and from that point on you see how

this thing spreads into basically the whole casual genre. So we have immediately being followed by solitire grand harvest which as I said because playa probably did it even before I guess they were preparing it before them or maybe following them during the soft launch I don't know so they implemented it right after them then we have stuff like tile buster match masters the big PVP match three game family islands moon active board kings match match masters again I did two times sorry for Blitzbusters, Dice Dreams, Coin Master, Travel Town, Gossip Harbor, Royal Match is April 2023. So, Royal Match implemented it in a year. Project Makeover, Seaside Escape, Twisted Tangle, Truckstar, Animals and Coins, Merch Mansion, Domino Dreams will at the end of 2024. Then there's Hexasaur. Candy Saga implemented this year's March which is

in my opinion quite late compared to all the other ones which already implemented it a lot of time. I think match maybe even sooner than April last year I would guess. So don't know I'm need to double check that. White out survival. This is quite interesting. So I was looking into it as I said let's use game refinery for it. So, white out survival has this very specific implementation where you can see that it's not the same one. It's just a little bit different, but it's there. You see it that I screenshot. It's it's just a mutation of it, which is again a midcore game, like a very very very midcore game. So, yeah, this is spilling over to midcore. Then we have Block Jam, Tasty Travels, the Century Games game, Homescapes, Gardenes, implemented this September, Acecraft, which is the big uh shooter

game with these animation style stuff. Basically, they're currently running what the promotion with Bugs Bunny and Yeah. Where was it? Yeah, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Yeah. So that's their new setup here. But again, they have the collectible album. Their collectible album is a little bit different. It's 36 cars. I think last time it was 40. Now they cut it even lower. But it's the exact same setup. A little bit different modification here, but you can trade, you can do these other things. You get stuff for it. You get summonings basically. And then you have this one cosmetic. So yeah, it's there. We saw it also in the Hantopia game which is the idle RPG. It was an event, not really like a permanent addition to the feature set. So, let's see. But again, as I said, because I see it in white out survival, uh I'm guessing we'll see it more and more in midcore later down the line. And we have screwed them this

magic match and magic sword. So, yeah, this was just this month. So, yeah, lots of games are implementing it still. And I guess all the casual big games will implement it eventually. The big question for me regarding this whole mechanic is which is the best setup, how many cards, how many kind of you know double bottoms. The biggest iteration will be coming in midcore once some kind of midcore game properly figures it out. I'm guessing these are more experiments or like ACE is the most stable one or I would say the most the one that actually double down on it because it's part of the main feature set. But as as you saw there with white out survival, as you saw with Hantopia, it will take some time until midcore figures it out properly. But then once it figures out, I guess it will become like a staple pretty much midcore feature that we'll we'll see all over the place. I guess once hobby implements it in this setup will will maybe know and then yeah the

question is how it will mutate in casual because my guess is what will happen and we saw it already a little bit with coin master because coin master is running a little bit of a much shorter modification of this album similar maybe to this one that we have in Acecraft is how that thing will go on because of course we have these long 30 60day albums but the question is if this can be done also on a little bit shorter basis which could again pump up the revenue. Let's see. But yeah, it's quite interesting. For those that have a casual game or are thinking of implementing it in their casual game, definitely do it. It's just it's have so many advantages and the mechanic is just so easy to maintain once you kind of hop on onto it and just go by the template. So that's there. We'll be watching very closely how different games implement it. Where do we see it popping out in midcore and if we see any other modifications of it in casual because

currently like 80% of the games are running the monopoly template I guess the sticker one. So again it's a question if it morphs into something bigger but yeah let's see anyway really short one just informative one. Thanks for listening. Yeah we'll see how this one goes. If you have any questions or anybody knows that this game, this mechanic was done by Plikas sooner or in which specific game, let me know in the comments. Join us, like, subscribe and see you next time. Ciao. [music] Heat. [music] Hey, Heat.