Two & a Half Gamers
Two & a Half Gamers is a YouTube channel covering the mobile games business. It publishes videos on ad monetization, user acquisition, game launches, studio strategies and industry news.
Documents
Brawl Stars to the Moon? A monetization deepdive! GameMakers x 2.5 gamers crossover
Brawl Stars has experienced a notable revenue resurgence, successfully reversing a period of decline between 2022 and 2023 to surpass the performance of Clash Royale.
- Brawl Stars experienced a significant revenue surge in December 2023, reaching $20 million compared to $12 million in November, effectively surpassing Clash Royale's $19 million performance.
- The game's recent growth is primarily driven by structural changes to the in-game economy, aggressive sales promotions, and the introduction of 'Hypercharges'—a new power progression layer at level 11 that costs 5,000 coins per unit.
- Supercell is shifting its operational model by increasing team sizes, with the Brawl Stars team expanding toward 45 members to support more intensive LiveOps and content production.
Special: Investing in Mobile Games w/ Ignacio Monereo. When to approach VC?
Venture capital investment in the mobile gaming sector centers on identifying scalable studios capable of long-term growth rather than those focused on single-title successes.
- Founders should initiate contact with venture capitalists as early as possible, rather than waiting until the final three to four months of their financial runway, especially given the current high-interest-rate environment.
- When evaluating early-stage startups, investors prioritize the founding team's ability to tell a compelling story, hire effectively, and maintain a unified long-term vision among co-founders.
- Venture capitalists analyze cap tables and round details to assess company health, specifically looking for red flags like broken cap tables or signs that a startup is seeking a bridge round due to operational difficulties.
Pocket Champs live review: Exceptional growth, Clever game design, Ads playbook w/Arthur Michel (94)
Pocket Champs has established itself as a significant player in the mobile gaming market, generating over $40 million in lifetime revenue with daily in-app purchase earnings reaching approximately $100,000.
- Pocket Champs utilizes a hybrid gameplay model where strategic gear selection based on terrain (run, swim, climb, fly) dictates success, balancing automated racing with pre-race tactical player input.
- The game experienced significant growth spikes in March and June 2023, driven by a long-term product vision that emphasizes a unique, innovative player experience over short-term trends.
- Monetization is structured to provide distinct value across different player segments, with the battle pass and specific in-app purchase offers (notably the $9.99 and $19.99 tiers) serving as primary revenue drivers.
Is Monopoly GO profitable? GameMakers x 2.5 gamers crossover
The mobile gaming industry currently lacks a standardized framework for defining profitability, a challenge exemplified by the financial performance of Monopoly GO.
- Defining profitability in the mobile games industry is highly subjective, as it depends on whether one accounts for operational costs, royalty fees for licensed IP, and the specific UA payback model used.
- Rumors regarding Monopoly GO's daily marketing spend vary significantly, ranging from $1 million to $2.5 million per day since its global launch.
- Industry estimates suggest that Monopoly GO's user acquisition (UA) strategy has shifted over time, with paid installs moving from as high as 90% of total volume down to approximately 60%.
Hybrid casual Tower War: The evolution of core gameplay, growth & creatives, admon excellense (#93)
Tower War: Tactical Conquest exemplifies the successful evolution of the hybrid-casual genre, demonstrating how iterative design and aggressive creative testing can transform legacy mechanics into high-performing mobile titles.
- SayGames has achieved significant revenue growth, with top-performing titles like My Perfect Hotel and Tower War driving monthly IAP revenue to over $5 million.
- Tower War utilizes a deep, midcore-style economy and progression system, which distinguishes it from simpler hyper-casual predecessors and contributes to its high IAP performance.
- Tower War generates an estimated $70,000 per day from advertising, with players exposed to between 7 and 14 interstitial ads per session depending on play duration.
Unfolding Doodle Magic Wizard vs Slime: CPIs, missed admon opportunities, systems & vectors (#91)
Doodle Magic: Wizard vs Slime has emerged as a significant hybrid-casual success, generating over $3.2 million in revenue from one million downloads within its first month of global availability.
- The mobile game 'Doodle Magic: Wizard vs Slime' has achieved rapid growth, reaching $112,000 in daily revenue within one month of its launch.
- The game innovates on the tower defense genre by replacing traditional paths and lives with a 'rampart' HP system and integrating deep roguelite progression mechanics similar to 'Survivor.io'.
- Monetization strategy relies heavily on rewarded ads, with critical progression items like 'Scrolls' and workshop speed-ups locked exclusively behind ad views.
5 tips for killer UA, Soft launch Sonar vol3, Black Friday secret admon tips (#85)
Mobile gaming monetization and user acquisition strategies are currently undergoing a significant shift, driven by evolving consumer behavior and heightened competition.
- During Black Friday, eCPM rates historically increase by 30% to 50%, requiring ad monetization managers to shift from long-term seasonal planning to maximizing revenue during the specific one-to-two-day peak.
- To mitigate risk in User Acquisition, maintain a balanced channel mix (e.g., 20-25% per channel) rather than over-relying on a single platform, as competitors will exploit your lack of diversification.
- When localizing creative assets, prioritize the top 10 revenue-generating countries and calculate the cost versus a potential 10% to 20% revenue uplift, utilizing AI tools to keep production costs manageable.
Alien Invasion hybrid casual story: Full Game design, Ad monetization, UA and creatives review (#81)
Alien Invasion serves as a prominent case study in the hybrid-casual genre, demonstrating how deep, multi-layered progression systems can successfully anchor an arcade-idle experience.
- Alien Invasion generates approximately $3 million per month in IAP revenue, with an additional 50% estimated from ad monetization, totaling roughly $6 million in monthly revenue.
- The game relies on a non-dynamic ad monetization strategy, utilizing rewarded videos that trigger at fixed 20-second intervals on the main screen rather than adapting to player behavior.
- The game's progression system suffers from early-game pacing issues, where the lack of speed upgrades makes the initial experience feel slow, suggesting a missed opportunity for dynamic ad-based progression boosts.
How to pick Admon partners, Ads library bonanza & research, Game review radar vol2 (#80)
Optimizing mobile game monetization requires a disciplined, data-centric approach that prioritizes independent performance metrics over the recommendations of ad network representatives.
- When managing an ad monetization stack, remove or replace any ad network that generates less than 5% of total revenue to ensure networks are effectively competing and bidding up prices.
- To optimize ad network performance without direct contact, launch networks via A/B tests to verify positive impacts on ARPDAU before rolling out to 100% of traffic.
- Night Crows has demonstrated significant stability in the Korean market, maintaining approximately $25 million in monthly mobile revenue despite a sharp decline in monthly downloads from 300,000 to 30,000.
Mr.Autofire live review w/ Miikka Ahonen: User Acquisition, Creatives, Game design, Admon (#79)
Mr. Autofire serves as a prime example of a successful hybrid-casual shooter, demonstrating how a title launched in 2019 can sustain a peak annual gross revenue of approximately $28–30 million through long-term retention and iterative design.
- Mr. Autofire was developed in 2019, launching globally six months after Archero, following a summer prototyping phase that began in May 2019.
- The game employs a segmentation strategy where players who engage with rewarded videos are shown fewer interstitial ads, and rewarded video views trigger a cooldown period for interstitial placements to improve player experience.
- Maintaining a high-quality, active community of non-paying power users is prioritized over aggressive monetization, as these players provide long-term value by supporting guild systems and game health.
Unity Special no.3: The reckoning. They are sorry, but the trust is gone!
The recent controversy surrounding Unity’s pricing structure, specifically the introduction of a runtime fee, has resulted in a significant loss of industry trust despite the company’s subsequent rollback and apology.
- Unity’s attempt to introduce a runtime fee based on game installs triggered a massive developer boycott, involving over 1,000 developers representing billions of total game installs.
- During the peak of the protest, bid requests from the Unity Exchange dropped by 30% to 40% as developers removed Unity and IronSource SDKs from their monetization stacks.
- Although Unity rolled back the policy to offer a choice between a 2.5% revenue share or self-reported engagement fees, the developer community remains skeptical of the company's long-term stability and transparency.
The mystery case of My Perfect Hotel - A New hybrid casual framework for Idle Arcade (#78)
My Perfect Hotel serves as the definitive case study for the hybrid-casual framework, demonstrating how developers can successfully merge hyper-casual accessibility with the deeper monetization and progression loops of traditional idle arcade games.
- My Perfect Hotel generates approximately $8 million in monthly revenue by utilizing a hybrid-casual model that splits income between 65% from ads and 35% from in-app purchases.
- The game achieves strong player retention with a day-one retention rate ranging between 55% and 60%.
- User acquisition strategy focuses on hyper-casual creative principles, utilizing gameplay-focused assets and long-form vertical video content on platforms like AppLovin and Google to maintain low costs per install.