Creative Trends in Mobile Gaming - November 2024

Speaker 1 Important iteration, man. Keep in mind, yeah.
Like these things, I've seen stuff where, like, just adding a visual effect, like

Speaker 1 a particle running against something, is like what, like 20% CPI decrease, stuff like that. So, keep that in mind.
Like, these small adjustments can be very big differences in scale.

Speaker 2 The pocket necromancer, where I just put

Speaker 2 fires in the in ice,

Speaker 2 and that

Speaker 2 one change improved the numbers by far.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

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Tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry.

Speaker 1 Oh, ho, ho, Merry Christmas to us

Speaker 1 from York to us all for you all. Merry Christmas, Jakob.

Speaker 2 Oh my god, Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy holidays.

Speaker 2 My name is Matiel Ancheric.

Speaker 1 I'm Santa Claus.

Speaker 2 And we are your hosts. And you know, you can see which season it is because Jakub already brought his fake background.

Speaker 2 And also, Felix is in Sweden, which means terrible internet connection. So

Speaker 2 there you go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, before we start, I hope

Speaker 2 you watched the episode about merch, not merge, even merge episode, but now merge free episode actually.

Speaker 2 So if you didn't, go

Speaker 2 get some snacks, coffee, because it's two hours and 40 minutes long.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 it's very good. It's the most like comprehensive stuff that you can find on the internet.
Really updated for the recent numbers and all the gaps.

Speaker 2 But today we are here to discuss

Speaker 2 trends, creative trends, and all the fun.

Speaker 1 Felix, can I say one thing before we get started? Because this is probably actually one of the most actionable episodes that we do.

Speaker 1 And we know that you, dear listeners, are not always in English-speaking geographies, which is why two and a half gamers have addressed this issue.

Speaker 1 If you are a Russian speaker, a Turkish speaker, a Chinese speaker, Japanese, or Vietnamese, go down and check out our Two and a Half Gamers subtitles to help you stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry.

Speaker 2 Very good.

Speaker 1 Wow, nice. Yes, and you should work in the subtitle selling company.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that was the previous job Felix had.
Anyway, okay. We might get Swedish subtitles as well.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Everyone speaks English.

Speaker 1 Fair.

Speaker 2 That's fair.

Speaker 2 I did see some Finnish subtitles, by the way. So

Speaker 2 in the mix, so I'm not sure. Anyway, so let's start with the creative creative trends.

Speaker 2 Where should we go, actually?

Speaker 2 What do you want to see?

Speaker 2 What do you want to see?

Speaker 1 You know, I will show you.

Speaker 2 Since we discussed this match 3 episode last time, I'm going to share one interesting thing which we didn't cover

Speaker 2 in the episode, which is Fishdom.

Speaker 2 Because we were kind of going through the history and then just jumped straight into the Royal Match and Royal Kingdom.

Speaker 2 But here we have an interesting thing,

Speaker 1 which I found out. No, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's Nemo. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a great off the bat.

Speaker 1 Right off the bat.

Speaker 2 That, my dear listeners and my co-hosts, was absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1 One more time, please.

Speaker 2 One more time.

Speaker 1 It has

Speaker 2 basically everything.

Speaker 2 You see, like, the shark in the background, the trampoline, the sling shot, everything.

Speaker 1 The near-death, the near-death experience,

Speaker 2 the sharks jumping out of the water, and then, bam, the numbers came.

Speaker 2 This is just, this is just beautiful. And it's one minute long video.
So,

Speaker 2 and we have the fail. So, we have basically everything.
It's just, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 And when I was talking about a royal match getting to like to Evony for inspiration, I think we can see where Plarix is getting the inspiration from.

Speaker 2 The only thing is like they're kind of combining the like two or three different

Speaker 2 two or three same videos all over again, but still,

Speaker 2 we can see.

Speaker 2 It's now Evony, King, Royal Match, and then everybody else.

Speaker 1 Everybody else.

Speaker 2 So it's

Speaker 2 then we have all. Then, yeah,

Speaker 2 we saw this before. So, so this is it.

Speaker 2 And then we have something else, which is still. Yeah, this is also actually in

Speaker 1 King Candy Crush.

Speaker 1 Like, how many levels?

Speaker 2 UGC and how many levels the Tvish Tom has. So nothing groundbreaking.

Speaker 2 Well, let's see this one. Ooh, geez.
ice.

Speaker 1 Ooh, ooh, nice.

Speaker 1 Nice start.

Speaker 2 Yeah, nice start.

Speaker 2 Where do we see the ice in winter?

Speaker 2 I wonder. Is it a metaphor X?

Speaker 1 Maybe.

Speaker 2 Maybe not.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 We can actually go there and check the actual

Speaker 2 freezing. It's not families, but you know,

Speaker 2 it's our dear friends from Whiteout Out Survival. And tell me, guys, what is this?

Speaker 2 What does this remind you?

Speaker 2 Okay, kind of.

Speaker 1 And, and what else?

Speaker 1 Come on, guys. Yeah, I want to say Nexters.
I want to say Nexters.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 Yes, this is Hero Wars.

Speaker 1 This is actually Hero Wars.

Speaker 2 Hero Wars 3D, Numbers Game, everything. There you go.

Speaker 1 Can you

Speaker 1 estimate roughly what you think has be estimate what you think they've spent on this creative?

Speaker 2 It's live 19 days. So it's not a lot yet.
This is all like what we are talking about now. It's it's usually the fresh out of the oven.
So most probably not that much.

Speaker 2 And it's live for a couple of days. So

Speaker 2 again, you see here

Speaker 2 all the idle lumber type of stuff that we discussed before and they're using it now. And it's really like 19 days out.
So, yeah, the impressions are quite low still.

Speaker 2 But since this is there, I'm pretty sure they're kind of experimenting with different stuff. And we saw these logs and wood before in the previous episode as well.
So it's still happening. And

Speaker 2 you check this creative, and

Speaker 2 I don't think you would ever expect Forex games.

Speaker 1 Most probably.

Speaker 1 I thought that was

Speaker 1 a Player X alpha.

Speaker 1 When you was watching it now, it's actually why

Speaker 1 we're not sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we already switched to White Out Survival, my friend.

Speaker 2 Because they're kind of using the types of hooks, not hooks, but the types of like very similar to township, actually.

Speaker 2 Which I'm not sure why, but I guess that's kind of what it is.

Speaker 1 Zombie humans?

Speaker 2 It's kind of not zombies. It's just they're freezing to death, basically.

Speaker 1 Well, that's just normal emotional play, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, normal emotional play.

Speaker 2 And then, but this is like, guys, like this,

Speaker 1 oh, this screen is awesome.

Speaker 2 Like, you look like, let's watch it the whole of the whole, let's watch the whole time.

Speaker 1 But this is the first time this is like you know, from first person, yeah, it's actually

Speaker 2 behind his back, basically, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's also a kind of story-driven. Look, look at this, like, this is just like the story there is amazing.

Speaker 2 I, I was, I was looking into this, and I was like, wow, okay, wait, so look at this. Look at this.

Speaker 1 I think this

Speaker 1 is an enemy camp thing. Exactly.

Speaker 2 But look at this.

Speaker 2 He just

Speaker 1 sent him to the camera. He just aggroved there so he would destroy their enemies.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 He just sent him to death. And

Speaker 2 here's another guy who just died.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 I was like, what is happening? Yeah, this is

Speaker 2 such a great story. It's like, wow, okay.

Speaker 1 So he sacrificed the character.

Speaker 1 Ah, geez.

Speaker 2 Wow, it's it's it's so good. It's like, okay, this is this is getting better and better.
Because then, and then we have also these hooks.

Speaker 1 Um, look, sorry, it's first person

Speaker 1 again, you know what that was?

Speaker 1 That's the flamethrower that Elon Musk came out with for the boring company. Oh, that's overwatch.

Speaker 1 That's Overwatch, basically, mace, uh, mace freezing. No, go back, go back, go back.

Speaker 1 Dude, that's the, that's the,

Speaker 1 yeah, it's the, it's the flamethrower that Elon Musk sold online. Oh, come on.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Tell about trends and then the hype for for whatever it takes to just drive the CPIs down. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but you know, it's it's always quite interesting to see what what these guys are doing and then the heads off to to

Speaker 2 heaven because coming up with all of these different uh hooks, ideas, stories, and like how to sacrifice your main teammate, basically, just to conquer their base. That's that's brutal.

Speaker 2 And we have also, obviously, Evony, and I think we should.

Speaker 1 This is quite old still.

Speaker 1 I think we should, we should seen this before, I think.

Speaker 2 No sharks, yeah, no sharks.

Speaker 1 And now there's

Speaker 1 coming to, yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah, they're the logs merged with the log, exactly.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 It's quite advanced

Speaker 2 now. Like the gates, and there's the alligator right there, obviously.
I was just talking about Evoni and how

Speaker 2 they were using a lot of pull the pin. But then

Speaker 2 they actually saw how Total Battle is killing it. And Total Battle is the game that we talked about, which is Forex.

Speaker 2 And they're using kind of the gates, but it's more of a math problem rather than just gates because those like math

Speaker 2 kind of not questions, but well, the numbers are on the on the floor basically it's not the gates but there was that and then everyone came to this and then last war was released so it's it's not exactly like always we we think it is but this is

Speaker 1 what's your theory now like who starts these trends that everyone copies in a couple of days because yeah like who is the who's the first point

Speaker 1 what's your guess so

Speaker 2 my guess is different company for different concepts. So as I said now, it's for Total Battle was, I think, the first that didn't really come up with the gates,

Speaker 2 but they started this numbers game

Speaker 2 in this kind of concept. Then Evoni came up with

Speaker 1 the barrels

Speaker 2 with numbers. And then when Last War launched in December 2023,

Speaker 2 they also didn't have the

Speaker 2 gates yet.

Speaker 2 But then they started using the gates in as like a first kind of iteration. And since then, everybody started copying it.
Everybody, basically. So it's kind of

Speaker 2 when you talk about trends and who's copying who, again, Royal Match, it's going for inspiration to Evoni.

Speaker 1 Always.

Speaker 2 Evony now copies, Evoni now copies basically Last War and all of these, like different things.

Speaker 2 This

Speaker 2 creative, this gate, which is you are shooting in the creative and then the number changes. That's coming from last war.

Speaker 2 That's coming from last war, because then you kind of change the whole gate from negative to positive number.

Speaker 2 And that's the first time we saw that, it was with last war. I'm pretty sure.
So, and then

Speaker 2 Whiteout is coming to, let's say, maybe Township, Idle Lumber,

Speaker 2 maybe Golden Goblins as well. And Township is coming to Idle Lumber and Golden Goblins as well.
So it's

Speaker 2 if you we had this Forex revolution

Speaker 2 kind of thumbnail where there was this this famous person was trying to find out like who is who is who and what the the web of different conspiracies like this is exactly like

Speaker 2 I would need to put it on the whole like board and see like this is connecting this and this and that and that game. So

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 if you work in a creative team let us know.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Also Jakub mentioned it last last time.
Everybody's going to Forex. For Metri, everybody's going to Forex because

Speaker 2 they're in the same position.

Speaker 2 They need to basically acquire all the players for the lowest cost possible. And this is basically the whole

Speaker 2 strategy behind it.

Speaker 1 Every single genre on big scale will start to use. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I will

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 2 every single genre

Speaker 1 also

Speaker 2 merge.

Speaker 2 How is this merge? It looks like

Speaker 1 exactly.

Speaker 2 So, you know, we always

Speaker 2 talk about different genres.

Speaker 2 This is exactly what we are talking about because all the all the games, and this is also not really

Speaker 2 your traditional merch.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is line.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 merge games and other games, they just borrow these mechanics just to get different

Speaker 2 players. And now we are just merging, but it's one-minute-long video.

Speaker 2 We are watching 35 seconds, and already in 35 seconds, you basically saw three different creatives and three different mechanics in there.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 I got so triggered by that ad.

Speaker 1 Like that fail. I was so annoyed at watching that person play in a fail.

Speaker 1 I guess that's the point.

Speaker 2 Also, That's the point, exactly.

Speaker 1 That's the point.

Speaker 2 Where did we see it?

Speaker 1 Maybe this royal match.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, royal match, near-death experience.
There's nothing to kill here.

Speaker 2 Nothing to kill here, but like, you know, the blades

Speaker 2 and all this, like, it's, it's coming again. I have this feeling, which is very

Speaker 2 much connected to

Speaker 2 urgent, like it's again forex.

Speaker 2 All this so, like, we saw it in Whiteout Survival. It's just the beauty part of all of this is how you can actually adapt different

Speaker 2 concepts to whatever your game is about. Because here it's the same thing.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, it's the same thing.
I mean, just

Speaker 2 landscape format. So it's

Speaker 1 insane.

Speaker 2 But yeah, you see, like, oh my god, I need to, I need, I need to merge. But this is,

Speaker 2 they already did the same thing, or I think

Speaker 2 it was triple tile

Speaker 2 or triple match.

Speaker 2 They did the same thing, but it was the old lady which actually was trying to get to the toilet.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, here we are.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 and also, we have the Kylie Jenner again, or still.

Speaker 1 You're still running the same ad though.

Speaker 2 See, I think this is slightly different hook, though, because

Speaker 2 it's quite old, and I think it was a little bit different. Yeah, once I clear my board, it's just so satisfying.
I don't think she was you she was saying this

Speaker 2 before, but anyway, so it's again different genres. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 But you know what's always the same in last year?

Speaker 2 It's just, yeah, exactly. Like, if they haven't changed,

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 it's disgusting.

Speaker 1 By the way, why is it snowing behind the door?

Speaker 1 Not at the right time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. It doesn't have to make sense.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And this, just

Speaker 2 whatever that shape was,

Speaker 2 that's the first thing. The second thing, just to add, like, pin, exactly, exactly, like, again, like, what the fuck is this?

Speaker 1 Physics has left the room.

Speaker 2 Jesus left the room, it went to Royal Match Creatives. It doesn't really have to be in here.
Nothing has to make sense.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, it's again, yeah, nothing.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 again, nothing like you said, like nothing has to make sense. Usually, when you you are out in the snow, you are trying to slice the rotten rotten tomato

Speaker 2 on a pan, which

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, it's kind of, I know, I can see like those emotions there, but for us, it's ridiculous because we work in the gaming space and we know like this is bullshit.

Speaker 2 I guess for the others, you're like, what is this shape again?

Speaker 2 It's

Speaker 1 anyway.

Speaker 1 It's absolutely

Speaker 1 unsolvable pin puzzle.

Speaker 2 Yes, pull the pin, yeah, pull the pin, and that's the same thing all over again.

Speaker 2 This didn't change, right? So it's it's like this for a while. So

Speaker 2 I'm not sure like what's happening with the gaming industry. No, it's not gaming industry, it's just uh human emotions, but it's human emotions, yeah, yeah, human emotions.

Speaker 2 It's all about emotions, of course. Like you have these

Speaker 2 friendly families and emotions. You want to save this.
You don't want to see your chi children to just freeze to death or just you know die in in the in the well or whatever this is,

Speaker 2 so yeah,

Speaker 1 but this is new to be honest. Like, this is new, this is new, unsolvable pin puzzle is new.
I don't think so. Because you're kind of looking, like, how would I solve this?

Speaker 1 And even, like, even though I think these creatives are bullshit, I'm still looking at it. How would I do this? Yeah, exactly.
It's unsolvable.

Speaker 2 And so, and you know, I think again, and maybe this is a stretch a little bit, but this is coming from Evony because Evoni was really the one and the one game that implemented pull the pins in the game, but it was really hard.

Speaker 2 It was like, let's just solve this in a second. It was really hard.
It was actually about the puzzles.

Speaker 1 Was that Evony?

Speaker 1 First, did it? Like the first one?

Speaker 2 Evony put in the game really hard pull the pins puzzles. I was playing the game, I think, like a year and something ago, because they started doing the

Speaker 2 barrels with numbers in October 2023. And I think I played it before, and I was because I wanted to just kind of write about it, and it wasn't really that exciting.

Speaker 2 But I played the game, and there were all the pins. And I think I was in the first five minutes of the game, and it was really hard.
It was really hard.

Speaker 2 So I think they just

Speaker 2 implemented this in the creatives because that worked, that works,

Speaker 2 in my opinion.

Speaker 2 And again, my dear co-hosts,

Speaker 1 what do you think is this?

Speaker 1 This is Rush Royal.

Speaker 2 It is, but

Speaker 2 where is this coming from?

Speaker 1 Oh, hello. Hello, Doodle Magic.
Hello, Doodle Magic. Yes.

Speaker 2 Because I think we didn't really check

Speaker 2 the Rush Royale for a while. And

Speaker 2 I know they were using some level of gates and different creatives. And even

Speaker 2 snake that I talked about in my LinkedIn post last week. And I just started looking into it and saying, huh, I know what this is coming from.

Speaker 2 They changed the whole creative strategy to skeletons. Basically, they are running skeletons all the time and they are merging these different elements, element, yeah, elemental.

Speaker 1 Oh, skeleton snake, there we go.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Skeleton spinning cartilage snake.

Speaker 2 Yeah, whatever that is, exactly. And I look to see make a god.
So you have all this.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 What? What's happening?

Speaker 1 Partnership. Partnership.
Partnership puzzle.

Speaker 2 Partnership puzzle. There you go.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but now they're kind of combining all the different elements there.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 that's it.

Speaker 2 And it's quite...

Speaker 1 I mean, I think

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 quite different. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. But still, I...

Speaker 1 It's a very important iteration, man. Keep in mind.

Speaker 1 These things, I've seen stuff where just adding a visual effect, like

Speaker 1 a particle running against something, is like what? Like 20% CPI decrease? Stuff like that. So keep that in mind.
These small adjustments can be very big differences in scale.

Speaker 2 Maybe I will find

Speaker 2 what I what I did with one thing, but I don't think I can I can find it here. Because I had the

Speaker 2 pocket necromancer where I just put

Speaker 2 fires in

Speaker 2 ice,

Speaker 2 and that one change improved the numbers by far.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 Exactly. So, maybe I can find it somewhere.

Speaker 2 Because that was just

Speaker 1 how this whole creative business works. That's why you need so many iterations because you never know.
And there's no rule set for like if you do this, it will decrease by 20%.

Speaker 1 You just need to test everything.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was the case, I think, some time ago because

Speaker 2 of voodoo and all the hyper-casual stuff.

Speaker 1 Speaking of,

Speaker 1 will we also be looking at some voodoo creatives?

Speaker 1 We'll see.

Speaker 2 I found it in here. So, one second.
So, you see. So,

Speaker 2 this is basically

Speaker 2 wall of text creative, obviously, because it's coming from.

Speaker 1 But look,

Speaker 2 this was already a winner. and i just

Speaker 2 this is what i did this is what i did the improvement yep this is the improvement that's it fire in the eyes like whoa and it changed the cpis dramatically how much how much by by 40

Speaker 2 seriously are you joking no i'm not humanity i'm not i'm not joking but it makes it makes all the sense because

Speaker 2 you watch this and it just adds up on the on the atmosphere there it's like you you watch

Speaker 2 exactly you're trying to read the text and suddenly there is just flames out of those like whoa you go oh this is great so it's it's you know it keeps the tension still uh going so yeah these kind of like small changes can can change uh so much

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 all right

Speaker 2 we kind of discussed this recently on the previous episode so i just i just wanna i just wanna add this this because, yeah,

Speaker 1 we were kind of touching. This doesn't look like anything else, right? Would you even argue this is a bit aged, perhaps?

Speaker 2 Aged?

Speaker 1 Like this type of creative that you'd see maybe two, three years ago?

Speaker 2 It's quite new.

Speaker 1 Okay. No, but if it's new, but the creative, uh the actual creative content.

Speaker 2 Um it's Candy Crush. What do you expect, man? It's uh

Speaker 2 you can't

Speaker 2 turn this into very

Speaker 2 fresh-looking creative and content.

Speaker 2 You see 2024 kink,

Speaker 2 it's again, it's different from what we discussed in the in the previous uh match-free episode because we were talking about different hooks and then different gaming creatives and like where they're they're getting inspiration from the royal match and they are still doing it.

Speaker 2 But I'm trying something else as well, and I think where

Speaker 2 not in-game footage still.

Speaker 1 That's nice.

Speaker 2 Look, there's the race.

Speaker 2 So they're trying to experiment a lot with different things. And I kind of like it because

Speaker 2 I was always kind of bitching about how the creative strategy looks like for Candy Crush because it's really, like you said, it felt really outdated.

Speaker 2 But now they're kind of looking into trends and trying different things because

Speaker 1 they have to.

Speaker 1 They have to

Speaker 2 get outspan by the competition.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is still kind of again, like, they they can't really go real outside of what uh what is in the easy way.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, but this is really refreshing.

Speaker 1 But they're running the the

Speaker 1 like uh near that situation thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's one of the

Speaker 2 exactly. This is just like very new.
They have different um better performing creatives creatives, which are taking the majority of the spend kind of near that experience.

Speaker 2 But here again,

Speaker 2 these guys are not really kind of you know, falling, falling behind.

Speaker 2 Do you remember what we all discussed yesterday on the match 3 episode?

Speaker 2 This is really cool. This is physics, and we have this tube right there.

Speaker 1 puzzle, it is a puzzle, exactly.

Speaker 2 It is a puzzle.

Speaker 1 So, it's green, right? Or is it like it looks like green? It's sand. I think it's sand or something.

Speaker 1 Sand with very thick

Speaker 1 kind of pieces.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 But look,

Speaker 2 you see how complex this is?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, I hope it makes it.

Speaker 2 I will see. I mean, it's 40 seconds, and why doesn't he just like let it be?

Speaker 1 Because then it will be, you know, exactly.

Speaker 2 It's just

Speaker 1 the wall? Exactly, yeah. It's mobile.
It doesn't have to make sense.

Speaker 1 I know physics exited the room. Yeah, he left the room.

Speaker 2 But we have more.

Speaker 1 We have more.

Speaker 2 And look, I was really

Speaker 1 these guys human beings, or you think it's AI that comes up with this, or is it just a really good creative team? Because this is like a blender, coffee beans, and you said coffee has great CPIs.

Speaker 1 Like, they must be just really plugged in, like the UA team and the creative team.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think this is a combination, but I don't style. I still don't see how AI is coming up with concepts like this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I can see them like AI producing this, but I don't see like how AI still couldn't come with this concept because in this concept, you can see the continuation and the history of their previous concepts.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's not possible to still

Speaker 1 replicate with AI. I mean,

Speaker 2 you can feed the AI with the concepts and whatever else, but I don't think it's gonna.

Speaker 2 I can try actually I will try it

Speaker 2 I will try what I'm gonna do which is creates a kind of inspiration I can feed the

Speaker 2 AI with the best performing creatives trying to to get the get it to analyze like why is it working and then come up with different iterations like what can actually perform well what is trending and just combine this with uh with whatever i'm running at the moment but you see

Speaker 1 yeah that's so high quality it is That's what I want to say. So

Speaker 1 polished.

Speaker 1 It's almost like that game has earned a billion dollars in the last year. Oh, wait.

Speaker 2 Oh, wait.

Speaker 1 Wait a second.

Speaker 1 Hey, hello. Hello.

Speaker 1 Hello.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 they're definitely not falling behind at all with the new concepts. And I see like they're iterating a lot

Speaker 1 on this.

Speaker 2 And it's not snake anymore that much.

Speaker 2 I have one

Speaker 2 other thing which is interesting.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 2 we have this again,

Speaker 2 which

Speaker 2 we discussed.

Speaker 1 It's just an iteration of what we keep seeing, right?

Speaker 2 It's an iteration, but there is more.

Speaker 2 There is more. Oh, wait a second, there is this.

Speaker 1 Whoa,

Speaker 1 first person again. This is the third time we see it today.

Speaker 2 Exactly. That's why I'm showing you this.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 look at the models and how the whole art style looks like.

Speaker 1 So basically, this is first-person township resource creative period.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1 This looks like the South Park game on N64.

Speaker 1 Doing the first person shooting. Oh, I know.
I know what you mean.

Speaker 2 But only because of the blades.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, wow.
This first-person trend is great. I want more of it.
Yeah, of course. You know why? Don't worry.
It's super hard to replicate. You need to build this in engine.

Speaker 2 Exactly. It's engine.
And this is basically all the same that we saw before.

Speaker 2 And we have

Speaker 1 Buckle up.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 I just wanted

Speaker 2 to be very

Speaker 1 mindful of you.

Speaker 2 Don't worry.

Speaker 2 This is just what we saw before.

Speaker 2 Because this is Hexasaur.

Speaker 2 It's old, but

Speaker 2 I'm getting there. I just want to be gentle.

Speaker 1 Did Hexasaur just advertise as a no-ads game? How dare they?

Speaker 1 The amount of innovation they've done on ads.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we've we've seen this, and

Speaker 2 you remember what we discussed with in the match 3 episode. The matching

Speaker 2 games is what not matching, the uploading, the makeover stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Close your eyes and tell me what you

Speaker 1 here. We go again.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 When I saw this,

Speaker 2 I was really

Speaker 2 not.

Speaker 1 I mean, I was crazy families with hexas.

Speaker 1 Hexa coins flying into them.

Speaker 2 Exactly. So I

Speaker 2 was surprised, but then I wasn't surprised because I immediately thought, oh, wait a second, it's uploading. So it was

Speaker 2 you just combine all your knowledge basically, and then

Speaker 2 this is what this is what you get.

Speaker 1 So, where is this from?

Speaker 1 The Lions.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's a game.

Speaker 1 I can't remember. It's from.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's been annoying me for so long. Yeah, it's like with Lions.

Speaker 1 Give me a couple of seconds. I'll find it.

Speaker 2 I find it. I find it.
We are just going to now watch the

Speaker 2 whole creative. It's kind of satisfying.

Speaker 2 And they use this hook which they used before. It's all this

Speaker 2 kind of TikTok trend, like here, there, there, whatever else.

Speaker 1 And yay.

Speaker 2 But those freezing families got me,

Speaker 2 killed me

Speaker 1 quite a lot.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 let's look at also the actual stuff that

Speaker 2 which is again changing.

Speaker 2 Look at the iteration.

Speaker 1 Look at the

Speaker 1 interesting. Look, look, look, look.

Speaker 2 Stacking the gates, there's lock, obviously.

Speaker 1 But there's this like dead soldiers. You see that? I mean, this was not there, also.

Speaker 2 It's all, yeah, it feels like

Speaker 2 those are zombies.

Speaker 1 And they killed the boss. Yeah.

Speaker 1 First one. First one.
First time ever they killed the big guy.

Speaker 2 But there are more big guys coming. So, you know, get don't get too excited

Speaker 2 don't get too excited because then i don't yeah oh it's like this is

Speaker 1 i need to die yeah it's scripted of course but you know like you have the you have the this is the first time they they killed him yeah yeah it's look wow

Speaker 2 so much iteration exactly and this look at like tires tires as well tires yeah attire and like how deep it was like in the in the ground now they're calling, kill it again.

Speaker 2 So, you know, like you, you can get some

Speaker 1 hope.

Speaker 1 I killed three bad guys already. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 you can get some hope.

Speaker 2 You can get some hope. Come on.

Speaker 1 Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 2 Oh, now, oh, no, no, you're gonna get killed. But it kind of builds on that suspense and the whole

Speaker 2 would I make it? Oh, look, this is another iteration. There's a lady in here.
Well, wait a second. It's on the barrel again.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 We are ladies now. We have the shotgun.

Speaker 2 They are playing around with all of these different iterations a lot. I love it.

Speaker 2 It's great. I think

Speaker 2 what they could, I mean, this is almost

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 what was it, the medbook? Pocket champs. I mean, it's kind of a stretch still because

Speaker 2 it's not swimming and then climbing and whatever else, but it's

Speaker 2 it's different.

Speaker 2 It's different characters, and then the gates are kind of stacking up on each other.

Speaker 1 It's

Speaker 2 just wow.

Speaker 1 And also, this one.

Speaker 2 You see

Speaker 2 how they go from

Speaker 2 or how they went from just straight road to now they're expanding. I think we saw three.

Speaker 1 A railway.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a railway, and it's different things. Now,

Speaker 1 go take the.

Speaker 2 Oh, what the miss.

Speaker 1 What a miss on that game. I could do better.
Let me download and prove it wrong.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Let me download right away.

Speaker 1 Let me ask you one thing, Matthias. So, if your breadwinner starts to kind of slow down and pretty much stops working, you do some of these.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I know, but you do these magical iterations of like whatever that we are just like being wild at.

Speaker 1 Then, the effect resets, or like, how, how, how does it work?

Speaker 2 What do we mean the effect resets? Uh, if the

Speaker 1 bread winner, like just like this,

Speaker 2 exactly. If you if you have the winning or like the new winner creative, it's gonna perform immediately, either in the same performance or even better.

Speaker 2 So, that's what I did with the Pocket Necromancy.

Speaker 2 I had this first like version five. Since then, I made

Speaker 2 six or seven more creatives. Five of them were performing better than this one.

Speaker 2 and I'm actually getting spend on Facebook on all of those, which didn't happen before. I usually was stuck in that spiral of having one creative, which was getting 99% of spend.

Speaker 2 Now I have seven, which are spending equally, and that's what that's what you want to get too.

Speaker 2 So, with this, also, this is

Speaker 1 again for like one to two months, and then goodbye for the new one.

Speaker 2 One to two months. If one to two months, you are the lucky bastard.
It's one to two weeks.

Speaker 1 One to two weeks. Okay.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 1 I guess depends

Speaker 1 on outliers, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Depends, depends,

Speaker 2 as usual, depends as usual.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 one King creative that's been live for was it four years?

Speaker 2 Exactly. Then they, yeah, they we are, we have outliers for for sure.

Speaker 2 But then we have also different games. It's kind of like you can't really compare King to a normal company.
I don't want to say normal, but you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 It's different. You can't also compare Supercell to any other small to mid-sized developer.
It's just, it doesn't work like that.

Speaker 2 But let's look at what

Speaker 2 definitely works. Can you name the game?

Speaker 1 Blockbiters or Block Blast, right? So either one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. Let's watch.
So you're looking.

Speaker 1 White Top Survival. You're so fucking wrong.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. It's not White Top Survival.

Speaker 2 It's a game that we discuss

Speaker 2 and we discuss quite often.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's Match Factory.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I was wondering

Speaker 2 if you saw the game.

Speaker 1 If you play Match Factory, that's not what the gameplay is.

Speaker 2 Look, look, look here.

Speaker 1 Look at this.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Oh, Royal Match.
Look, they took inspiration from it.

Speaker 2 Look, it's exactly the same

Speaker 2 button there with the strength. It's the same thing.

Speaker 1 Look at it.

Speaker 2 It's exactly the same thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, the turrets hate when they steal from each other. They're gonna hate this.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 But you can see. Oh, even

Speaker 1 that was there.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, oof.

Speaker 2 I need to play this.

Speaker 2 I can't let him die.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 This is their classic. Is that a merge? Is that a merge?

Speaker 2 This is their classic, like, super old creative. And then just like one and

Speaker 2 one minute, yeah, one minute 30 seconds long. So it's basically three different creative stitches together.
We have this.

Speaker 2 Oh my god, have you seen my post about this creative and then what triple match copied exactly the same? So I I asked guys who did it first.

Speaker 2 So Match Factory copied the whole game basically, but then Triple Match copied their creative. It was such an such an absurd story.

Speaker 2 And people are like, oh, the Triple Match 3D creative is so much more polished.

Speaker 2 Like, okay.

Speaker 2 Nah, I mean, kind of yes, but yeah, this is coming from the other way around.

Speaker 2 This is nothing, nothing interesting. Just uh nothing interesting, just plain

Speaker 2 gameplay.

Speaker 2 Which should be the creative, right?

Speaker 2 That should be the main uh main creative. And then we have this sushi and Japanese music,

Speaker 2 which is which is quite new and quite nice.

Speaker 2 Okay, so we're gonna be

Speaker 2 almost at the end, but I wanted to s just pick this up again, because I think we didn't really pay so much attention to it. So

Speaker 2 going back to

Speaker 2 our old Dark War episode,

Speaker 2 they are doing this AI stuff on a weekly basis, a lot of this.

Speaker 2 And it's all about these boats or houses on the water, because that's the main kind of narrative. You know, people are fleeing to boats, to houses on the water because zombies hate water.

Speaker 2 It's all about that.

Speaker 2 It's also if you combine this with the actual sound and the voiceover, the whole vibe.

Speaker 1 I've seen them quite vibe.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the whole vibe is

Speaker 1 awesome.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, tell it.

Speaker 1 And this is also really nice. What did they get inspiration from here?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Last of us.
Last of all, yeah.

Speaker 2 Look, all these emotions there. Like the whole, the small bear.

Speaker 2 Look at the

Speaker 1 reflection in the water.

Speaker 2 It's amazing. Wait.

Speaker 1 Fuck. Okay.

Speaker 2 It's great.

Speaker 2 And it's all of this, everything made in AI. And look.

Speaker 1 Physics left the room again.

Speaker 2 Yeah, nobody cares about physics here as well. So

Speaker 2 what do you actually see here? Tell me.

Speaker 2 What have you noticed in this creative?

Speaker 2 Why do you think it works? And

Speaker 2 did you pay attention to the copy the whole time?

Speaker 1 It's the copy copy apocalypse right

Speaker 1 yes it creates very compelling atmosphere the vibe yes because of all these detailed images and environments and there's think of it how many different images and stills this has compared to normal creative scenes normal creative you have like two to three scenes at max exactly this is like 20 that was my point because they are changing these scenes every three seconds to keep your attention energy

Speaker 1 It's like an Instagram

Speaker 1 wheels. Like, yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, where is this coming from? Do you remember where did we discuss this and with whom?

Speaker 2 All goes back to China and Stan conversation. Again, again.

Speaker 2 All the dopamines and everything, like, you know, like you watch this, you don't really want to lose the attention every three seconds.

Speaker 2 So it's like, yeah, you just want to watch this because every three seconds there is a new scene and then you are expecting something to come again and again again.

Speaker 1 But keep in mind, this is again only possible by AI, because normally it would take you guess how much more bandwidth to just create all of these scenes

Speaker 1 every three seconds, completely fully whatever, new new scene, new video, new everything.

Speaker 2 Yes, but then uh

Speaker 2 also if you just change the the gameplay, it's not that interesting enough. I mean, you can have this different kind of close-ups, zooms, whatever else, maybe change of the the levels.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 So, yes, this is only possible with AI.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's my favorite. Like, these are

Speaker 1 floating Facebook currently.

Speaker 2 These are, yeah, because again,

Speaker 2 Dark War started something, and then the rest of the guys in Forex, they're not really sleeping, they're really paying attention, and they're paying attention heavily because then this is just coming out of.

Speaker 2 And I saw,

Speaker 2 I couldn't find it. I'm not sure who was it.
I saw all the characters just running against the camera. There was this different, like, what was it? Tiger.

Speaker 1 Those like states with character and exactly.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I also.

Speaker 1 It was another another Forex, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know, but I can't remember the name. But yes, exactly.
It was so

Speaker 2 eye-catching, and I really wanted to watch the whole

Speaker 1 stuff.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 that's that's basically it from

Speaker 2 all the different

Speaker 2 trends. But I want to just show you one thing

Speaker 2 which is going to suggest the next episode or the next segment that I was talking about a few few weeks ago with you guys. So here is we have top creatives.

Speaker 2 And these are the top creatives with a lot of spend or just not a lot of spend but share of

Speaker 2 impressions. This is uploading, for example.
So we have on the first place, guess who?

Speaker 1 Hello.

Speaker 1 Royal match.

Speaker 2 Royal match, yeah, exactly. Royal match.
Royal match US uploading. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 And it's again this type of creative.

Speaker 2 Then we have

Speaker 2 Polarix, which fish them.

Speaker 2 See?

Speaker 2 And this is actually playable.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's very nice.

Speaker 1 And they have, by the way, these special levels.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they have it.

Speaker 2 Then we have Match Factory and Royal Match again and Match Factory. So all of these.
This is my favorite.

Speaker 1 Wait, friends from the middle of the map.

Speaker 1 Yeah, cleanup because these apps make so much money. Like, it's insane.

Speaker 1 I know you've been saying it. I know.
Yeah. I know you've been saying it.
But yeah, we've been all talking about it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And also, these are friends from Turkey Codeway. Look, this is interesting.

Speaker 1 What the hook! Sign written on a woman's back. Yeah, what the hook.

Speaker 2 It's amazing. The creativity on this is just never-ending.
So, yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1 Mate,

Speaker 1 the game you're looking for is called Rise of Castles, Ice and Fire.

Speaker 1 In their creative gallery, just wonderful. Rise of Castles, Ice and Fire.
Oh, you know.

Speaker 2 Here we go. Okay.

Speaker 1 Whoa, this is another Forex.

Speaker 1 Obviously. Of course.

Speaker 2 Obviously. Let's see.

Speaker 2 Look. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 This is your colour. Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 This is. I saw.
Yeah, yeah. This is exactly what I want to say.

Speaker 2 This is perfect. So, oh, yeah.
Oh, but look, it's all AI.

Speaker 1 This is all AI.

Speaker 1 Look.

Speaker 1 Norway.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 2 There was a Poland as well. USA, there you go.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 Looks so good.

Speaker 2 It looks so good. Yeah, exactly.
And there was all these, like, these bears and all these animals were just running against me. So, um, hopefully,

Speaker 1 this is actually an evolution of that because you have a human and an animalized human. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The original we saw was only

Speaker 1 animalized, only animals. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Mexico, where is there is there Sweden?

Speaker 1 Where's Slovakia?

Speaker 2 No, I don't. There was Poland.

Speaker 2 Russia, yeah, of course. Like, what do you like? If we had Slovakia there, it would be just a person and then just running.

Speaker 1 Exactly. So, but, like, give me the screen, Matte.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 They have so much more stuff here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, these are so, the listeners, these are the trends, actually.
Uh, we are gonna see way more AI. Um, but yeah,

Speaker 1 no

Speaker 1 potential giant chicken lifting weights turning to our not smart senior.

Speaker 2 This is so good.

Speaker 1 Does this actually work?

Speaker 1 Like, what? Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 So, it's working. There's more.
Like,

Speaker 1 are you kidding?

Speaker 1 So, because as you know, and by the way, you should have a lot of people. Oh, did you see? He just stepped through the, yeah, there's no physics, so AI

Speaker 1 as usual. But so, so you know, that like last month, there were pretty new AI generation models introduced to the world, and now we're seeing the effects of it.

Speaker 2 This is the effect, yeah.

Speaker 1 This is what's gonna happen,

Speaker 2 and you know, you know,

Speaker 2 the beauty part of this is because it's new,

Speaker 2 people want to to watch this. It's beautiful.
That's the thing. People just want to look at this and say, wow.

Speaker 1 Because this is wow. And you never saw these things because they behave unnaturally.
Exactly. Because these molds pretty much are not.
Look at the hair of the line there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. It just creates images and motions that you've never seen before because it doesn't make sense physically.

Speaker 2 And honestly, nobody cares.

Speaker 1 No. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Nobody cares. Actually, the thing is that because it's so unnatural, it's actually its most

Speaker 1 expensive factor. That's why it works.

Speaker 2 See? Exactly.

Speaker 1 Wow. Frost Fang.

Speaker 1 Guys, can you call me Frost Fang from now on? No? All right. We'll do.
We'll do. We'll do.

Speaker 1 We'll do.

Speaker 2 Of course, we'll do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we should definitely do some kind of like best AI creative of the year or something. Oh, we'll be.
Oh, don't worry. We'll do so much.

Speaker 2 We'll do a lot of different stuff next year because what's happening now in the industry on the creative side, finally, some innovation. Obviously, you can see a different use of

Speaker 2 AI, but this is where we are going.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 I can share one creative which we made for one merch game.

Speaker 2 It decreased the CPI by 70%

Speaker 2 in the US. So the baseline was, I think, 120 or something um

Speaker 2 well seventy percent is not maybe the the correct number but the one for it went from one hundred twenty dollars to to thirty five I think

Speaker 2 so it's like what forty fifty percent though yeah more more actually sixty percent

Speaker 1 to thirty yeah that's like multiple hundreds of percent yeah there you go

Speaker 1 oh that's true actually yeah this looks so this looks really like piggybacking on the gladiator to yeah yeah yeah absolutely like uh marketing but yeah i hate yeah good yeah i hate to be the bearer of bad news but us three are wanted at another place

Speaker 1 very soon

Speaker 2 it's true it's true so hope uh you enjoyed the live ama we are just gonna do in five minutes but by the time you hear this it's already in the past yeah so you go go and watch it uh thank you very much for listening you should definitely go and check um our slack and join our slack because that's where we

Speaker 1 oh my god that's where we

Speaker 2 yeah that's where we actually uh i keep it for the ama actually i keep it for the aim we can we can we can check and and and laugh and then please uh check the match free episode uh comment share also for this uh share it with your industry friends and family and everybody uh happy holidays um and uh see you next time thank you very much cheers bye