Supercell's Mo.co: Exciting new global launch. Is this the next billion-dollar game?

Speaker 1 This guy, like, let's take Orange Juice Gaming. Yeah, so Orange Juice Gaming always on the

Speaker 1 top top YouTubers for Supercell, 3.5 million subscribers. You see his channel, it's pretty much three videos of top Supercell games all the time.
Like, I don't

Speaker 1 play anything else, basically. And immediately, when the game hits, what do you have? Like, five Moco videos.

Speaker 1 It's 4 a.m. and we're rolling the dice.
Mate drops, knowledge made of gold and ice. Felix with ads making those coins rise.
Jackup designs, worlds chasing the sky.

Speaker 1 We're the two and a half gamers, the midnight crew. Talking UA adverts and game design too.
Mateish, Felix, Shaku, bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight.

Speaker 1 But K-U-A, master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.
Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise. Jackups crafting realms lift us to the highs.

Speaker 1 Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey sick, got your back.

Speaker 1 Ads are beautiful, they like the way. Click it fast, don't delay.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Hello, hello, hello.

Speaker 2 Welcome, everybody.

Speaker 2 This is another episode of Two and a Half Gamers. I'm back.
And my name is Matia Vanceric.

Speaker 1 I'm Felix Brauberg.

Speaker 1 We never went anywhere.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we are your hosts. And I'm not on Tahiti or what the fuck was it last time.
Tahiti.

Speaker 2 I don't know what you would he said, but it was so funny.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 you said you're on secondment to Tahiti. Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 Whatever that means.

Speaker 1 Whatever that means.

Speaker 2 Anyway, so I'm back and we are talking about the latest launch, MoCole, by Supercell.

Speaker 2 Because while I was at GDC, there was well, there were some flyers around the GDC, uh, which were actually moco

Speaker 1 ad moco ads.

Speaker 2 But anyway, uh, before we go into the episode, uh, this episode is brought to you by PVX Partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing.

Speaker 2 Pretty sure Super Soul doesn't need this, but you should

Speaker 2 think about it. Because if you're scaling your game and need funding, here's the deal: PVX Partners, there's no equity dilution, no

Speaker 2 restrictive covenants, as Ritsky said in our PVX episode. And you can repay as you get paid.
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Speaker 2 You can secure the funding in 30 days and get term shitty in just 24 hours. So, you know, take control of your UA budget without giving away a piece of your company.

Speaker 2 Visit pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you grow your business. So, last time, Felix did a good job of

Speaker 2 saying pvxpartners.com.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 at least I can say Tyler instead of Tyler. I don't know who this Tyler person is actually talking about, but

Speaker 1 we need to have him on the podcast. It's mine.

Speaker 2 Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

Speaker 1 I am Tyler.

Speaker 2 I'm Tyler. Tyler, I met Tyler.
I met Tyler.

Speaker 1 Welcome to this year's episode. I'm sure.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 let's actually try to stream this wonderful game because

Speaker 2 Supercell, as usual, with Supercell, as usual, you can't play it on your emulator, so Yakobi's faaaaaah.

Speaker 1 Well, the ones that got killed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 good.

Speaker 1 So, here you go. This is me playing the game.

Speaker 2 Now we can talk because I can't do multiple things.

Speaker 1 Don't worry, you focus on the game, me and Rima will take it from here. Yeah,

Speaker 1 especially you.

Speaker 1 That could have been a good rewarded ad spot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that could have been a good rewarded ad spot. We're not set in a video game store.
There's no bear. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Quite close to a video game store, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's go from the beginning as usual.

Speaker 1 So we're

Speaker 1 reviewing Moco.

Speaker 2 What's happening?

Speaker 1 Streamlined Action RPG by Supercell that we already reviewed in the soft launch, if I remember correctly.

Speaker 2 You remember correctly?

Speaker 1 Yes, and now it went into Global Launch, which is by the way, it seems that there isn't really that much hype as it was during

Speaker 1 Squad Busters and everything, like the new Supercell game Global Launches. You know, like no, Chris Hempsford advertising or something like that.

Speaker 1 So I guess it's more like a stealthy global lunch, especially because the game is, or as I understood, in first 48 hours was invite only. So they went.

Speaker 2 It's still invite only.

Speaker 1 Still invite only.

Speaker 2 You can just get the invites a little bit more often. And as soon as you actually

Speaker 2 achieve level five, you can share

Speaker 2 yes, and then if you use those, you get 10 more.

Speaker 2 Which is an interesting

Speaker 2 thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like similar to Deadlog, like we like we played before, but that game never

Speaker 1 said that.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so their

Speaker 1 uh yeah, their global launch, the game, uh, it's definitely very polished and uh seems finished. Um

Speaker 2 well I see man it's very far from finished. Even Ilke mentioned that in in his

Speaker 1 finish plugin, but uh how I mean is that you know the main like compared to something like Project Rice it's much more finished you know because it's coming from Finland

Speaker 1 one thing you need to note here and this is quite important is that

Speaker 1 Supercell acquired Phantom Game Labs in 2023. Oh my god, this is a yeah but this this is the the facts man.

Speaker 1 So this is a studio that uh has a game called Riftbusters, which looks quite nearly the same as Moco.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 my suspicion is that from that point on, they got like some kind of engine support or whatever know-how from that company. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know what will happen with that game because my guess is it's going to be delayed indefinitely. Because, why it should

Speaker 1 compete with another kind of a similar game in Supercell portfolio, but yeah, let's see what happens there. But anyway, back to Moco.

Speaker 1 So what this is, is pretty much like a streamlined version of Action RPGs on the market. Like think of it like streamlined Diablo, basically.

Speaker 1 That I would say is the closest TLDR definition of the game.

Speaker 1 It's very colorful, very

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 I don't even know how to call it like fast foodish.

Speaker 1 Because everything...

Speaker 1 Fast foodish.

Speaker 1 Like everything is very snappy and easy to get and like comfortable and stuff like that. So

Speaker 1 are you comfortable right now, Matte? You're comfortable.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna be in heaven.

Speaker 1 It's not hard. No, it's not.
It's definitely not hard.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the inventory, if Matte can for now leave, yeah, he finishes quizzes anyway, so let's develop that.

Speaker 1 And let's just go around like what we have here.

Speaker 1 So the game starts in

Speaker 1 the room, which is like, you know, the

Speaker 1 video game store, as Felix likes to say.

Speaker 1 So this is basically the main menu that's like put into like a 3D space that's there. Oh, nice.
So maybe.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay, wait enough. Wolfstick.
Definitely.

Speaker 1 We liked the technique of this last time, but we always used to

Speaker 1 do another one using Wolfstick.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, that's what I said. That's what I saw because I was kind of

Speaker 1 using that wolf. Yeah,

Speaker 1 exactly. Okay, anyway,

Speaker 2 this is so annoying.

Speaker 1 Okay, thank you, thank you, okay. Just leave me alone.

Speaker 2 Okay, thank you guys. I know, but we are actually recording a podcast.
Just, you know, I wanna leave this.

Speaker 1 Don't need to click anywhere, just click on the like the draw.

Speaker 2 I'm literally trying to click anywhere else. And I need to go here and claim this.

Speaker 1 Now I can click on it. Now you can.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's start with the inventory. There's lots of stuff in the inventory, but it's still pretty simplistic.

Speaker 2 It's the same thing as it was in the beta.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the same. So you have your main weapon, which is

Speaker 1 your main weapon. Usually, every piece of gear is very ability-focused, meaning that everything has their own kind of flavor functionality change, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Those things aren't your usual action rpg stat holders like plus hp plus damage whatever things that does nothing everything here really like it's more kind of similar to something like devil may cry or i don't know like some of these like console hack and slash uh action rpgs where you have like every weapon is pretty much like an entity of itself like we have here uh then we have some auxiliary slots uh three of those which could be swapped for stuff like gadgets which are basically abilities such as self-healing area, damage,

Speaker 1 monsters, stuns, or whatever stuff like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's building damage.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's building dodge skill, which is like the movement ability, which is these days like pretty much necessary with every single action RPG. It just needs to be there.

Speaker 1 Then we have the mount, which is,

Speaker 1 I guess, just the visual.

Speaker 1 50% faster. Yeah, you can move 50% faster, but you can take damage.

Speaker 1 The moment you take damage, you dismount it.

Speaker 1 And then you have those trinkets or passive skills, whatever.

Speaker 1 So these are like the usual kind of passive things that you could expect, like vampire aura or like additional lasers to shoot from you or area damage from smelly socks around you and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 All the usual kinda nonsense. And then we have ringcarno

Speaker 2 elite hunters, which is

Speaker 1 pockets later.

Speaker 1 So three more slots there uh for like end game content i'll get to it at the end of the review and then if you leave this menu uh and go to style

Speaker 1 there is a very big focus on cosmetics and i mean very big focus because you can't really buy stuff i mean the gear you can mostly buy cosmetics which we'll get to it later but yeah so cosmetic menu there are four slots for uh

Speaker 1 stuff on your head head, stuff for on your

Speaker 1 stuff for your hair, stuff for a face, and stuff for your overall kind of gear, sorry, visual, and then six emotes, and that's it basically. So that's for the visual thing.

Speaker 1 If you leave that and we go

Speaker 1 to this whole menu, if you leave that, if we go to the left and we get actually to the shop,

Speaker 1 you can see immediately that the whole shop pretty much start with those cosmetics, like the offers that you would expect, like the first ones, like in Brawl Star shop.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is all cosmetic. Then you have these merge drop gachas, which basically means cosmetic gachas,

Speaker 1 where a few of these have the hard currency, which are these moco gold coins or whatever. Uh, they work on the premise.

Speaker 1 It is a box gacha, by the way, which means a gacha where if you pick apart from it, it's no longer being given again.

Speaker 1 So, you eventually get to the end and like take it.

Speaker 1 No multiples of yeah, no no duplicates

Speaker 1 yeah yeah if we go back to the other one like these are kind of quite similar by the way like at least yeah I was like oh make a bit more effort to be put into this come on it's like a different shades of gray

Speaker 1 if if you go scores and molding shadow it's actually it that's what it is that's what it says basically so if you go to starter style gacha this is the one that's like kind of free where these tokens that you get here the merge tokens are found in maps which you unlock and each map has 10 chests and each chest has 10 tokens.

Speaker 1 So that's there. And again, you roll through this and kind of complete it quite fast.

Speaker 2 You can get 10 of these every day for free actually as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So this is like the

Speaker 1 noob gear.

Speaker 1 Then you greedy also gifts.

Speaker 1 One more.

Speaker 1 So gifts is like free stuff that you get from time to time, like these emojis. I think I even got some like titles like ogq or whatever

Speaker 2 and then you have hunting intern whatever yeah

Speaker 1 go back go back into the shop

Speaker 1 and then so so daily freeb no no one more so daily freebie is there okay we were there and mogo gold packs is that hard currency that you would use for those like uh more premium cosmetic gutchas that's it and that's the show

Speaker 2 yeah and if you have content creator burst you just have gamers.

Speaker 1 We'll just earn the money.

Speaker 2 Of course, we won't, but I mean, we could.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll get to creator program later.

Speaker 1 Let's X that

Speaker 1 and let's go into the

Speaker 1 icon on the left, which is the Battle Pass.

Speaker 1 Oh, here. Oh, no.
No, no, no. That is the

Speaker 1 Battle Pass.

Speaker 1 So it seems that it's very cosmetic.

Speaker 1 There is theoretically some power within it because you get XP and you get these cows chaos chests.

Speaker 2 Chaos shards, yeah.

Speaker 1 Chaos chests and and this is the the let's say the main progression of your gear is unlocking these chaos chests which you get from farming.

Speaker 1 And what you get from them, you get upgrades from your like current gadgets and modules that slowly unlock and it's basically like a gacha on rails because you don't give any gold to upgrade or choose which one you want to upgrade.

Speaker 1 You just get them directly and the moment you get them they're upgrade so it's completely on rails like you don't decide anything basically what what you can do you can a little bit speed it up through these battle pass which is if you click on get button i think it's 999 yeah it's 999 you get the exclusive uh seasonal skins whatever stuff like that all of this

Speaker 2 i think i don't even like

Speaker 1 We'll get to it.

Speaker 1 So, and that's it, basically. This is the most amount of power that you can buy, pretty much.
Which is quite different from Squad Busters first iteration, huh?

Speaker 1 Of course, like Squad Busters, where you could buy direct key consumables, like unlock more

Speaker 1 things, like and mega characters. No,

Speaker 1 so yeah, this is

Speaker 1 like I don't know. I'll

Speaker 1 talk about the well, let's finish the feature set first and I'll talk about the monetization model later.

Speaker 1 Uh, then if you go to portal,

Speaker 1 um,

Speaker 1 there's the main content of the game, basically.

Speaker 2 yeah here you can you can get the invite so you find this useful or you just ping me

Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 1 worlds worlds which are basically these

Speaker 1 non-stop open world dungeons where if you go in there are shit ton of players that are killing stuff you usually have quests the good the best thing in my opinion is that there's like these like five minute events when they spawn some very very very good like XP bonuses or whatever and just every like the whole server kind of goes in and there's like 40 players roaming around the map like killing everything just like free XP and stuff so you got missions in these as the game slowly kind of teaches you tutorial this is done very well and the onboarding is done like super well like that's definitely hands down

Speaker 1 drill to the perfect like supercell funnels are always kind of very very good

Speaker 1 but it's still very grindy. Like you could think of it literally like starting World of Warcraft area in 2006, where like go and kill 10 bears.

Speaker 1 Now go and kill 10 bears and give me their heights, which means that there's a 30% chance a bear drops it. So you need to kill 30 of them.
And then go kill 30 wolves.

Speaker 1 And then give me 30 pelts from the wolves. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like that's basically it. So you go there and there's always like do this and do that.
And I thought you were going to say Assassin's Creed instead, but all right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's the same, but uh, you know, that was early World of Warcraft, where it literally worked like this. Like, just like

Speaker 1 there's even escort quests, by the way, here, where you need to escort the NPC or whatever, and stuff like that. It's very, very grindy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, see, so, so it's just like very, very grindy, and like everything's like super, super grindy. And the whole quest is

Speaker 1 profile up on Grinder. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's just

Speaker 1 Fair enough.

Speaker 1 So we have the basic dungeons. Let's go to the next one.

Speaker 1 We have the rifts, which are, again, kind of similar to Diablo, where you have a timed

Speaker 1 four-minute dungeon where you go with other players. You need to defeat the boss.
Finally, the balls have some abilities that you need to dodge, otherwise you die.

Speaker 1 Learn at least a little bit the mechanic. It's not like tank and spang like it is with the normal dungeons.
So

Speaker 1 this is, I think, a little bit more advanced content that's that's how it's going

Speaker 1 okay so dojo is a

Speaker 1 single player pve arena where you go with a chat girl and you defeat waves of enemies unlocked by level 14 or 15 don't remember which one

Speaker 1 pretty straightforward content uh it's a time attack and then you have versus mode which is pvp where you either 1v1 3v3 or like multiple teams a little bit more kind of i i quite surprised that there's like so so much focus on on that point of view you have this black like belt system or whatever uh that's a little bit of a different progression a little bit of a different loadout there

Speaker 1 but uh yeah that's basically it for the main modes of the game and then if you go to elite or elite the robot that's sitting in your hideout it's called elite hunter program uh reach level 30 to unlock the elite hunter program we're lucky that some people were were even able to do this because the game's out for like five days.

Speaker 2 Five days, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, and uh, we get that. So, if you hand me over the screen, I can show how it actually looks.

Speaker 1 Sure,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 here we go here.

Speaker 2 Easy.

Speaker 1 Did you see the cat that was going around in the living room? Yeah,

Speaker 1 what did it say? Jakob, what did it say?

Speaker 1 Meow.

Speaker 1 Meow.

Speaker 1 Anyway, we're going to borrow the...

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're going to borrow this YouTuber's thing.

Speaker 1 So what happens in Elite Merch, it's basically seasonal content and the endgame seasonal content. So it reminds me really of

Speaker 1 Diablo seasons a little bit, but also of Wild Divers, because it pretty much unlocks another type of battle pass. I'll show you in a bit.

Speaker 1 So what this does is that it unlocks the possibility for you to get elite merch, meaning elite cosmetics, and elite modules.

Speaker 1 On top of it, you also can get elite levels, which are again quite similar to paragon levels from Diablon,

Speaker 1 and elite small rings.

Speaker 1 temporary but god-like powers these are going away from season and reset because that's pretty much every single action rpg on the market is working on a season reset model because you can't grind forever and then no new players are able to catch up with you.

Speaker 1 And elite projects, I guess those are just these top quests that are there.

Speaker 1 We can show them in a second if you move in. So this is the battle pass, the elite pass, sorry.

Speaker 1 That if you pretty much get these and start to do the quests, the elite quests, you get points into this.

Speaker 1 If I understand, these are the... Do you see the wolf there? Yeah, it looks like me.

Speaker 1 a little bit yeah it's the armor man not the hair

Speaker 1 it is hair it's hair

Speaker 1 it's hair it's hair okay

Speaker 1 so if i understand

Speaker 1 you can buy these two only if you have the elite pass yeah for 25.99

Speaker 1 yeah yeah

Speaker 1 uh and then all the rest of these uh goodies that you have in the pass

Speaker 1 Where we are, blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the rest of these you can buy from from those tokens normally, even if you're free-to-play player. You just need to like hit level 30 and start getting these from the quests.
So, that's there.

Speaker 1 But again, it goes similarly as Helldivers, where you like complete one page, and again, you spend 150 tokens in that first page, then you can progress and unlock the second page where you get again a module, you get some of these, whatever, cosmetics.

Speaker 1 Yeah, here we have the elite hunter program. This is pretty much like seasonal quests.

Speaker 1 I don't know, reach elite hunter level, whatever and collect small rings hunt mega charts smasher whatever like the the usual thing like pretty much kill endgame content of the game consistently and daily that that's basically summarized

Speaker 1 that's it basically yeah that's it so so like again very similar to something like a streamlined version of like giabo seasons or what metal exile does there um

Speaker 1 Yeah, and there's of course the leaderboard. Everybody's going after that one.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, I think we can show a few of these things. So let's say this is a like Elite Ring, one of those that will be going out if the season resets.

Speaker 1 Those will live in those three slots that are reserved for the Elite Hunter program. You see, it's kind of pretty strong because, like, seven percent of damage just from one slot is a lot.
And I think

Speaker 1 it's attack speed as well. Yeah, and it's not even leveled up, it's on level two.
So imagine this probably can scale up to something like 10 or 15 easily. and you have like multiples of these.

Speaker 1 Then we have

Speaker 1 what we have, yeah, precisioning weapon critical chance is always the best stat to go for. So, why not? And then, uh,

Speaker 1 yeah, uh, the thing is that as uh the creator is showing here

Speaker 1 new worlds, of course, unlock after you complete the elite hunter program because, again, elite hunter program 20 required, which means again another i mean how how can this guy guy?

Speaker 2 I mean, I know how he plays this basically the whole day.

Speaker 1 No, you switches, you switch people. Like, one sleeps, the other plays.
Oh, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 That's how it's done.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 so basically, the quest that you would have normally there, as Matthew showed you, the projects, now turn to elite projects. And it's pretty much like,

Speaker 1 yeah, same, same but different, where it's just harder content and more stuff there. But the principle and the scaling is pretty much the same.
So that's there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, those were the dojos. I think they also unlock.
Pretty much every single type of content type unlocks additional

Speaker 1 harder difficulty of content. Here you have the

Speaker 1 versus one. And yeah, that's it, pretty much.

Speaker 1 Like definitely not that big.

Speaker 1 What I should say?

Speaker 2 I can say that there was this announcement from Iloka, which he basically published on the Supercell website, which says, So we decided to greenlit Moco for global launch.

Speaker 2 You will need an invite to join. And then,

Speaker 2 if you know anything about Supercell, then you know we're about risk-taking, truly believe in Moco, and can't wait to see where it goes.

Speaker 1 This is really a risk.

Speaker 2 Wait, and this launch isn't like anything we've done before. To join Moco, you need an invite, then blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 Our commitment is long-term. Rather than going for scale immediately, we want to learn what works, make improvements, and build Moco together.

Speaker 2 We are playing the long game and want our community of hunters to be able to give direct feedback and help the future of this project.

Speaker 1 So, isn't that what a soft launch supposed to be?

Speaker 1 I just don't know if still if it still applies. The Supercell is looking only for games that make one billion a year.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe yes, but not from day one, I guess.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying day one, but still, yeah, I think

Speaker 2 this is a this is a bit

Speaker 1 yeah, like let's let's look at the numbers. I know the shit, because it's just four or five days.
Like we have like Saturday's numbers, which says 400k downloads a day, which is a lot probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably.

Speaker 1 Incidentally, US is not the biggest one, but again, this is very shaky because it usually rolls. So we'll get to it.

Speaker 1 Revenue is kind of trailing on 50 to 60K a day, which again could be irrelevant because it could like recalculate, but still it means it's not big yet.

Speaker 1 And we know that for sure, because if you look at top charts metrics, which are just taken from the you know the tables in the stores, Moco is trending on 27 place in iOS US store on download charts, but it's nowhere to be seen on the grossing charts.

Speaker 1 Go on Saturday instead of today,

Speaker 1 or are you on Saturday? No, I'm on Saturday.

Speaker 1 No, I'm on, yeah, I'm on today. Let me go.
Okay, go yesterday, because I think I saw it a bit higher yesterday. So 18, yeah, yesterday

Speaker 1 higher, but it's the download charts, not grossing charts. Yeah, yeah.
And if you go to the last grossing charts on like 100,

Speaker 1 I mean, it's 50k

Speaker 2 together for all the all the all the geos, Yeah, yeah, it's 50k all together.

Speaker 1 And this is what, like 43k US iOS only. Yeah.
That's that's the requirement to get on this table. So

Speaker 2 yeah, that's not there. So I want to say I think they just

Speaker 2 started releasing games more often because it was just, I mean, took a long time to get somewhere. And they were just kind of iterate on the go.

Speaker 2 because it would happen with uh with kind of brawl stars i guess but thing is,

Speaker 1 what's the like let's talk a little bit about the design philosophy of this game regarding the monetization? So you have like heavy cosmetics. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then you have what?

Speaker 2 Well, Battle Pass.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you have the Battle Pass, but you know, the Battle Pass, it's like...

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But RPGs work on power. Like, in HP damage scaling, all the way.
People care about

Speaker 1 fantasy game. So for your comfort.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so what you're saying is

Speaker 1 what you're saying is that Squad Busters was too heavy on the monetization and Moco is too

Speaker 1 yeah Squadbusters was heavy on monetization, but that that game had had a problem that it was uh

Speaker 1 it was a PvP game. PvP games cannot be heavy because

Speaker 1 again people don't like when they're getting steamrolled by other players by wallets. Stage should switch from monetization.

Speaker 2 Stage shoulders switch.

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 pretty much, but in PvE games, like PvE games, man, like raid shadow legends or whatever or stuff, like you don't care because you're just using your wallets on the monsters, you don't like PvP is an afterthought in these games, so

Speaker 1 I don't know. Like for me, it seems that it's I would expect it that at least some kind of a gacha with power progression would be there, but it seems there's zero of that.
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 I'm kind of

Speaker 1 and and the the biggest thing that kind of

Speaker 1 scares me or not scares me but like this is the biggest problem with ARPGs I'm playing ARPGs all the time pretty much from my childhood and I've been playing stuff like Diablo and Ped of Exile for like last 20 years

Speaker 1 it's that endgame is very hard to do with these things because it gets so like

Speaker 1 more of the same all the time the helldiver syndrome not helldiver syndrome like this this syndrome has been all over the place much more sooner and the only guys that were able to figure it out were guys from pedo exile because they created this like

Speaker 1 university requiring end game content atlas map or whatever that's like so hard

Speaker 1 to even understand that uh yeah like i don't think so this like streamlined version of this will work because at some point like this diminishing numbers will kick in meaning that of course you can have a different map you can have more damage you can have more whatever but in the end it's like a scaled excel sheet like you need different functionality for this thing to kind of add flavor into it.

Speaker 1 That's what Pedro Exile is also doing with their seasons. They're radically changing the game every three months with like a new league mechanic for it to work.

Speaker 1 Which

Speaker 1 I don't know how this thing is gonna work. I'm

Speaker 1 even more pessimistic than I was with Squad Busters.

Speaker 1 So, you're saying they need rewarded ads,

Speaker 1 obviously.

Speaker 1 what else? What else?

Speaker 1 The other problem is that, of course,

Speaker 1 I'm not the target audience for the game, even though I'm really loving ARPGs.

Speaker 2 As I said, this is like who's the target audience in this case?

Speaker 1 I don't know. As I said, this is like a fast food version of ARPG.

Speaker 2 It's very simplified.

Speaker 1 Even Apple for me is very light.

Speaker 2 I mean, but you are the universal.

Speaker 1 I'm out of this. I admit this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is too much. But it's like, for me, it's just too boring.
I mean, I, and I'm a Diablo is kind of repetitive as well. But, like, this in level five was like, what, what the fuck should I do?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's like,

Speaker 2 I don't have any motivation to actually

Speaker 2 keep playing. And then after level 13, I got all these messages from the guys of GDCs, like, yeah, well, I'm out level 13.
It's like, yeah, it's like too much grind.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's also the the point. Like,

Speaker 1 I don't see currently that the game can add a lot of depth based on their design vectors. They're just like,

Speaker 2 what does that even mean?

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait. So, Jakob, instead of doing this, like, what are the three things that could be done where this could actually scale in your mind?

Speaker 1 Like, what are the three things? I don't think

Speaker 1 they can, like, what I'm saying, like, don't do what I said because that way you would just make the game more complex for different audience.

Speaker 1 I think they're going for audience that like wants this fast food version of a game, but I never saw it. But

Speaker 1 that was my thing because RPG people are usually kind of hardcore people.

Speaker 2 Okay, but look how it looks like. It's very kind of colorful, casual, cartoony version.

Speaker 2 It's very similar to Brawl Stars, I guess, kind of in a way, in terms of how the colors look like and the whole theme and art style.

Speaker 2 A little bit more hardcore to what we see at the on the screen at the moment, but oh, it should be like 18-ish,

Speaker 2 kind of 1824, like how much money they have.

Speaker 1 I don't know, but like it works with PvP games because you know, you have all the Fortnites and everything, sure, of course.

Speaker 1 Like, Brawl Stars is basically playing that demographic, that's okay, yeah, yeah, that's right. Have you seen any Diablos doing this? No, exactly, no.

Speaker 2 So, it's basically a mismatch of the

Speaker 2 kind of core gameplay with the audience and style and how it kind of looks like. And

Speaker 2 if it's been because it's simplified too much.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 The problem is that I don't think so. If they add more mechanics into it or make it more deeper, that it would fit their demographic or their scale that they're looking for.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they would change the demo that they're probably going for so they can do it. So the question is if this even fits the thing.
Like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Also, if they're now, yeah, like now they have what one million players or how how how much was it?

Speaker 1 One million downloads?

Speaker 2 No, no, altogether.

Speaker 1 Altogether this has like four hundred K downloads a day.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it's okay.

Speaker 1 You mean the AU?

Speaker 2 No, no, no, downloads. It's actually says, yeah, three hundred thousand per day, total, like one million.

Speaker 1 More than a half million. Yes.
But this is set to the number, so by this time it's like somewhere like three probably.

Speaker 2 Three?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's okay, fair enough.

Speaker 2 Three.

Speaker 1 Maybe two and a half, whatever.

Speaker 2 If they have the feedback from these people, it's never gonna be like going into the Diablo part of exile kind of direction because these are the first adopters, I guess, which again is

Speaker 1 the young audience. Cosmonauts.
Cosmonauts.

Speaker 1 It's called Golden Cohort, man. Golden Cohort.

Speaker 2 But is it the Golden Cohort?

Speaker 1 I mean, it is a Golden Port.

Speaker 1 Those are people that are going through the friction of using fucking QR code.

Speaker 1 Okay, we can we can grind this, but should I talk about it?

Speaker 2 I'm just gonna you know go to the direct like marketing.

Speaker 1 All right, yeah, that's where I wanted to go. Good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because yeah, because yeah, if yeah, this is a golden cord because these are like all the f Supercell fanboys, basically. Yes,

Speaker 2 because like they're using all their

Speaker 1 paid

Speaker 1 creators,

Speaker 2 which some people from Supercell says that it's basically for engagement, but honestly, think about it. You have a shit ton of videos on YouTube from these creators, which is basically quite a lot.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which you have basically here, where there's stuff like

Speaker 1 quarter a million shorts, quarter a million videos all around the place with all the like Supercell YouTube army pretty much spamming this thing all over the place. And they get paid for this, right?

Speaker 1 Yes. Or is this just people making fun of it because they like it? Or they get paid for it.

Speaker 2 That's why I mentioned there is the creator program.

Speaker 1 Creator program does give you 5%

Speaker 1 of buy if somebody inputs the code, which is peanuts, to be honest.

Speaker 2 But it's still additional revenue.

Speaker 1 It's additional revenue, but come on. These people are definitely given some influencer stuff money.

Speaker 1 Of course. Yeah.
Of course.

Speaker 1 Not only

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 definitely on the payroll.

Speaker 1 I didn't mean access to the game. I meant access to Supercell.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 For instance, this guy, let's take Orange Juice Gaming.

Speaker 1 Yeah, one of the top YouTubers for Supercell, 3.5 million subscribers. You see his channel.
It's pretty much three videos of top Supercell games all the time.

Speaker 1 I don't. He doesn't play anything else, basically.
And immediately when the game hits, what do you have? Like five Moco videos.

Speaker 2 Every time we talk about the the game in a beta it's it's us him and all the other supercell basically guys and we are yeah but he he gets the build before us because he just

Speaker 1 wait oh my god of course way way before us i've obviously yeah so and and this this same thing applies of course to tick tock

Speaker 1 with also like all all the tick tock people and you know it's really telling when you go through these and for instance what was supercell yeah it's all supercell so let's say we have like this creator where he just posts brawl stars videos.

Speaker 1 Like, why should he even post Moco? Because it's like a different genre for these people. Bam, there's a Moco video in his feed immediately.
And this goes on and on and on and on and on.

Speaker 1 And those have like half a million views each.

Speaker 1 So how much do you actually have to pay some of these? Like, is it only like rev share from the people that sign up with their code, or is it like they actually pay upfront for video creation?

Speaker 2 I think they are on the payroll for like a monthly retainer, basically.

Speaker 1 We think so? I think so. So, like, they have a deal, like, you need to make X amount of videos for XYZ.

Speaker 2 So, Supercell is still quite light on

Speaker 2 the revenue share and like monetization. So, I think this is just like, look, guys, we love you.
Here's some money. And also, guys, if you know how Supercell, I mean, they have a creative program.

Speaker 2 I was actually talking about it. Like, they paid all the money to the creators.

Speaker 1 Let me just bring it up here. But, creative program is the thing that you said.
Like, import the code into store, they get 5% of kickback. That's it.

Speaker 1 You need to roll into that and to be like a certified

Speaker 1 whatever supercell creator or something.

Speaker 1 But seems to me like paid UA. Yeah, like it's like influencer marketing.
Like it's

Speaker 1 let's call it what it is. Like it's it's it's very simple and it's done perfectly well.
I'm just kinda baffled that it's not being taught or like called how it is.

Speaker 2 I was I was actually talking about this. So and I wrote a

Speaker 2 future of ua which is creators and mobile ua

Speaker 2 and uh in 2018 so supercell opened this uh

Speaker 2 uh like og content creators and asked like what they want and they said creator program and portal so they have tiered reward system creator codes and supercell has recruited over thousand of creators they claim some creators grew the the viewership by 600 percent

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 you have the Robust Creator Program offers the benefits. Creator Discord channel to share tips, knowledge, and network.
First access to previews and create content before launch.

Speaker 2 Earn money for in-store Ina purchases, that's what we said.

Speaker 2 Exclusive first looks, tools, access to super solo support, funkit media kits. So we have all of these

Speaker 2 and you know there are some Elixir currency and different things. So

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, not bad, and the creators earn exclusive merchant skins, whatever,

Speaker 1 but still, no, no, like this is campaigns and other promotions

Speaker 2 reach.

Speaker 1 That's the thing, this is why they can use fake ads because they're already doing this, which is going directly against the spirit of fake ads.

Speaker 2 Yeah, look, so uh, there's the product owner of Supercell Program, creator program says, like, it's Billy.

Speaker 2 I they believe it's better to focus on the relationship you're building and not just use the creators for views. I mean, I guess that's where that's where the engagement comes from when

Speaker 2 we were kind of discussing this with the supercell guys.

Speaker 1 What is going on with your camera? It's like it's been zooming in and out, like you're the hot girl in a movie. Like, I know, it's trying to bother you, probably.

Speaker 1 It's working, yeah. But

Speaker 1 what I mentioned here is that

Speaker 1 the videos and everything, like, think of it that it's not like one press of a button, it's like constant flow all the time.

Speaker 1 Of course, like, like the orange gaming guy is whatever doing all over the computers. Yes, yeah, yes, yeah, of course, of course.

Speaker 1 And they constantly talk about like how they're flown to fly fly over them to Helsinki, basically, to Supercell HQ, show them around and give them kind of royalty treatment because, again, this is their

Speaker 1 US, basically.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah this is the ua

Speaker 2 that's basically so because then

Speaker 2 everybody's like oh well there's no ua where this is the ua basically uh and i know it's

Speaker 1 it's organic but not really exactly right like yeah it's like a new it's like a new thing in ua we call this misattribution

Speaker 2 because this is exactly what it is

Speaker 2 it's not i mean you pay these guys and they bring you installs

Speaker 2 that's paid installs, however, you want to look at it.

Speaker 1 It's

Speaker 2 different UA, yes. It's not Facebook, TikTok, Google, whatever uploading.
No, of course, no, but it's still paid UA.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like would you get these would you get these downloads if you didn't like some of these organic downloads if you didn't hire these creatives, creators?

Speaker 2 Like, you will get way less

Speaker 1 than what you see at the moment.

Speaker 2 That's the thing, way less. And you know,

Speaker 2 I can say these flyers and everybody supercell changing their titles to match the Moco.

Speaker 2 That was that was really funny. So clear.

Speaker 1 So keep in mind it's coordinated. Everything's coordinated to the point that, like, at the second, everybody does the same thing.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes, for sure. Like, this was prepared, very well-prepared heads of really good thing.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 it's around GDC.

Speaker 2 It's true that there are people from the industry, they want to see all the conventional bubbles.

Speaker 1 Nobody cares, man.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Nobody cares.

Speaker 2 No, nobody cares.

Speaker 2 I couldn't even play the game because I had shit tons of meetings. I downloaded the game.

Speaker 1 It's like, whoa, okay.

Speaker 1 But the marketing shtick with the posters on GDC was just like, because we can.

Speaker 2 Exactly. But the thing is, like, now people will start saying, oh my god, this is great.
We are going to do the same.

Speaker 1 And they are going to fail. So much.
Everybody who's trying to do the same as Supercell is is gonna fail.

Speaker 1 That's what hope is

Speaker 2 exactly, they done it because they they could, and it

Speaker 2 made my day, it was great.

Speaker 2 Should I do it? Absolutely no, should you do it? Absolutely no. I mean, fine, you're not supercell, and the camera says exactly the same thing.
No way,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 you do that on purpose because it's like winding me up so much. Like, I need to just stand up and take that camera and throw it out the window.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 this is amazing. I love it.
No, anyway, just back to Moko. So, all these, also, the invites and everything, it's uh, I think

Speaker 2 it's just another hurdle. And even if this wasn't there, this is just something which is called, you know,

Speaker 2 a viral effect because then you need to invite all these other people, but you would get into the game anyway because it's Supercell and it's a new launch.

Speaker 1 That's it.

Speaker 2 And everybody wants to to play the new Supercell game. Everybody.

Speaker 2 So I guess that with the combination of all these YouTubers and creators, then you have 300,000 installs per day. How long can this work without the actual paid UA on the UA channels?

Speaker 1 Maybe

Speaker 2 another week.

Speaker 1 This is the thing that completely

Speaker 1 bogs me that on one hand, we're talking about all the heavy hitters from China with wiped out survival and last war, like using everything

Speaker 1 they can to lower the CPI. They throw the cushion sink at you.

Speaker 1 And then you have this against it.

Speaker 2 It's a different mentality, man. It's a different mentality.
It's just.

Speaker 1 Same market, same money, same players. But the crazy thing is, it works, right? Like

Speaker 1 Brawl Stars.

Speaker 1 Wait a second.

Speaker 2 Wait a second.

Speaker 2 Let me go a little bit back. It works for Brawl Stars.
They fucking started pumping so much money into that game when they r turned that shit over into the into the rocket ship.

Speaker 2 Like you you can't say like it it works.

Speaker 2 It works to certain scale and certain extent. If you wanna really scale the game, then you start UA doing UA, which they started with Brawl Stars.

Speaker 2 That's it. You can have all the creators in in the world.
It's not endless. They also have some

Speaker 2 like number number of their followers. It's just it's that's it

Speaker 1 Simple as that

Speaker 2 Yeah, which I don't say it in a negative way. It's just like this is how it works.
Welcome to the gaming industry

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. No, yeah, so basically to sum it up We're definitely gonna keep this on the radar as usual.
I'm curious myself like I As I said, I'm kind of pessimistic.

Speaker 1 Like the game, don't get me wrong. You're always pessimistic.
We're talking about that. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah.
No, just a new second.

Speaker 1 We'll do the next review. I'll show you which I'm optimistic.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 No worries. But

Speaker 1 just saying that

Speaker 1 the endgame will be probably the key.

Speaker 1 And I think they probably need to kind of add some flavor mechanic or something that, again, similar to like streamlined version what Ped of Excel does, probably, or something like that, because

Speaker 1 it's going to be very repetitive. And they need to be.

Speaker 1 It already is

Speaker 1 RPGs are repetitive, that's why they played in Korea because people grind there. Yeah, of course.
So, so, yeah, probably something in that manner.

Speaker 1 Because for me, it also seems to be like this kind of play.

Speaker 1 On, like, for instance, you see that in the room, there's like the cool room, yeah, where you can go and have target dummies, and you can test your abilities and show off to other players.

Speaker 1 It all seems to me, and you know, even games that are with very high focus on cosmetics means that it works only in social status. So it means to

Speaker 1 communities and show off effect.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 again, this whole thing sounds to me like they're going for this kind of more like Fortnite-tish slash Rogue

Speaker 2 Roblox scene.

Speaker 1 Yeah, everything.

Speaker 2 I can see that there are mods and people build their own stuff within the Moco universe, and that's how they earn money.

Speaker 1 I mean, maybe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just saying, but the thing is that it's still an ARPG.

Speaker 1 Sure. Yeah, we'll see.
We'll see. Gonna be interesting anyway.
Always a pleasure to see a new Supercell Global launch to kind of cover that one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because it was really creative.

Speaker 1 Honestly, this stuff went down to LinkedIn. Let me just explain that quickly what happened.
Like everyone in the industry kind of saw.

Speaker 1 that basically a bunch of people at Supercell, they changed their job title to chief chaos agent at

Speaker 1 the end of the day and then

Speaker 1 yeah. And the thing is what they're doing there is basically if you update your job title, that gets the biggest boost on LinkedIn because it's what you get the most reactions to.

Speaker 1 So basically, you're getting free impressions. And if you get 30 to 60 employees that are very followed, because Supercell is a very followed company,

Speaker 1 everyone in the industry will know about it. And I haven't seen this before, and I thought it was quite clever.

Speaker 2 It's very clever, but then

Speaker 2 do you want the gaming industry to play your game or players to play your game? I mean, that's simple.

Speaker 1 But this is again in the same category as because we can.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But yeah, exactly. I mean, it was pretty hype.

Speaker 1 It was pretty hype. Of course, of course.
Yeah. Just, yeah, kudos, guys.
Of course. That's the brand identity thing, but not against the game, but

Speaker 1 against the company. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Out-performance marketing. I'll see you on the other side of the revenue.
Thank you so much. Thank you very much for listening.
Please subscribe, share this podcast with your industry friends,

Speaker 2 family, and dogs and cats, and all the hunters in the moco.

Speaker 2 Uh, if we don't get cancelled, but uh, join this join the Slack channel as well, and then see you next time. Thank you very much for listening.

Speaker 1 Cheers, cheers, bye-bye.