Puzzle & Dragons: Five Billion $$$ Made, Zero Influence in the West

And the biggest problem is that the whole, like, the level that Matteo was talking about is not the level, it's actually how many monsters you have actually created and then you have.

Because here, you don't get monsters through gacha.

There's no gacha in the biggest gacha game of all time.

And you just take everything from recipes.

Like, you go here, and there's like, okay, there's a recipe for this guy.

Get two of these shirts, these shirts, these shirts, and that's it.

And that's the game.

Like,

and you have some more more dungeons unlocked later here, where you have like this.

This is fucking

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.

Jack up designs, worlds chasing the sky.

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.

But K U A master eyes on the prize.

Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.

Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jackups crafter arounds lift us to the highs.

Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow hockey stick, got your back.

Ads are beautiful, they like the way.

Click it fast, don't delay.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Hello, hello, hello, hello.

Welcome to another episode of To Have Gamers.

And I have to say, this episode, it's gonna be something.

I'm very excited.

I've never been so excited about any game that we discussed.

But before we do that, my name is Matteja Ancheric.

I'm Felix Broberg.

And I'm Erico Bremier.

And we

are your hosts.

Okay, it's gonna be good.

Yeah, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

So

we are talking about an an amazing game.

Amazing, amazing game.

We're making millions.

No.

They already noticed because we talked about the new mics

and

everything in the previous episodes.

But if you haven't,

of course.

Go on YouTube.

Yeah, if you haven't, you go on YouTube because this, you know, I have to say we are just two and a half steps ahead of the industry, as usual.

I wonder how many steps we'll take them to do this thing now yeah we'll see

anyway

as i was saying uh

game it's so much so much money well the game is making so much money but it's game making it what in japan and that's it not much money even in japan actually okay

jesus christ

anyway okay so we're talking about puzzle and dragons yeah we're talking about puzzle and dragons the new one new one yeah

yeah like me i started playing the old one.

Yeah, that's the problem.

Okay, so I guess this episode will be a little bit of gaming history and mobile gaming history, especially.

And we're gonna talk about this one game that's like really the

gacha game and the mobile game of all times.

It's called Puzzle and Dragons, which you see here written in Japanese.

If we go to their original page, you can see I think it's gonna be the fastest episode that we've ever ever

yeah

let's see it's gonna be one of the faster ones but yeah they have like six ios versions for android versions yeah so these guys are the OGs

by Gunho online entertainment from Japan that

this game was the first mobile game ever to reach one billion dollars

as for like revenue

ancient history ancient history and right after it there was monster strike which literally iterated this same game.

So that's there.

But yeah, you may know iterations of these games in the West that are called Empires and Puzzles.

Yes.

But this is...

And there was one also game before Empires and Puzzles that died miserably.

Heroes, Legendary.

Yeah.

What was the company for always forgot it?

Network, because I worked on that game.

Yeah.

I added ads to it.

Yeah.

No joke.

I added ads to Legendary.

Yeah, then it died.

Great.

Not because of the ads, though.

Not because of the ads.

It died because of

small giant games.

Like, yeah.

You know, I think it would have not been dead if

they worked with PVX partners because they could scale the game.

Because today's episode is brought to my sponsors, PVX Partners.

Guys, you know, if you don't have the money for marketing, you should definitely call PVX Partners because it's the most effective and simplest credit line for marketing.

No equity dilution.

You can repay as you get paid fast, flexible, and fully tailored for your growth.

So you can secure funding in less than 30 days, super easy terms in 24 hours.

So don't wait and take control of your UA budget.

Scale your game.

Visit pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you grow your game.

So pvxpartners.com.

Thank you very much, guys.

So what were you saying?

So, I was saying, wait, wait, before I put like ads in legendary.

What do you think the ECPM for those rewarded ads were?

Seven.

Oh, no, no, no, it's it was quite a lot the highest I've ever seen, right?

Yeah, so

eighty

two hundred fifty.

So, global average was like eighty-seven, and the US was a hundred and thirty-two dollars.

Yeah, okay,

so RPG, what can this yeah?

Well, lots of high payers, anyway.

So, let's look a little bit versus It's like how many.

97.

Oh my god.

Wow.

Heads off.

And really, that's.

I mean,

I would kill myself to get

to level three, and I wanted to kill myself.

Yeah, the problem is that this is not the level.

This is the amount of creatures you create.

I don't care.

It's highest.

It's a high number.

That's that I don't care.

I see high number on screen.

It means level.

No, it it means you played a lot.

Did you like it?

Didn't you like it?

I didn't

thank you very much for listening, guys.

Disappointed, to be honest, and very, very hard.

I mean, for I was looking at the numbers and I was like, why the fuck are we talking about this game?

I mean, they were they were a reason why they pulled this from the store or is it what was it, Mon Monster Strike they put Monster Strike.

Monster Strike screw it up because Monster Strike did one very big mistake, whereas they had the updates lagging between the Japanese server and the Global server and people get so pissed off that they just like fuck it and they just went went playing on the Japanese server anyway.

So, the global died down and like complete incompetence.

I'm sorry, but then you read it online, yeah.

They were like, Okay, well, we talk about this game, it's like fine, so you care,

and

I would

from the West, and then the rest of the revenue is from Japan, you'll see.

So, as expected,

why are we talking about this?

Because it's still like

mobile gaming history, and like the systems and the things that

those are still pretty good.

Yeah, let's start from the start.

So, what's great about this game and how it went into being that Jaggerna, they had this kind of a metagame system where you have these dungeons that are elemental based.

You have these monsters, you have the shop, you have the gacha that they kind of invented.

What year is this?

Sorry, Yakub.

What year?

2012, if I remember.

Even this video is 11 years old, so this is 2013.

Yeah, so yeah, they're very, very soon, like, like imagine, like, this is 2012 or 2000, you know, like Candy Crash is 2011 or something like that on anything mobile.

Clash of Klanz time.

So the internet and the mobile stores are still very young, basically, at this point.

And these guys are already kind of killing it

as much as they can.

They have very, very complex meta, elemental systems, dungeons, all these things.

The important part with the match tree thing, and I'll show you as I was playing it, that in the West we don't even have an equivalent of this kind of a gameplay because it's just so hard.

Because, as you see here, you're not matching these things, you're actually moving them around the board, and you can match the whole board with them.

So,

I guess if this person finally plays something,

yeah,

see?

So, you drag one token, and there's literally a timer that tells you, and even

your minions' abilities that tells you that, okay, you can use five more seconds, or enemy boss does a debuff, you can use three less seconds, whatever.

And you see how these things are being matched

in like completely different setup.

Like if you compare empires and puzzles, there's like one click and then cascades.

And you can even put it on autoplay.

This is this is puzzle and dragons.

This is something different.

You see that you literally need to juggle these things out.

I can show you as I

let's go into some kind of a dungeon.

The bonus ones, let's say.

Yes, please.

It's so interesting.

You see my team.

So, because the core is super, super, like, in my opinion, this is one of the best cores.

Like, it's still a little bit more hardcore for the Western audience.

That's why we don't really see it, but literally, like it's really hardcore for the Western audience, not a little bit.

Come on,

you can play a lot with it, yeah.

So, let's say

I want to connect this fire one with three these fire ones with three

these dark ones, the holy ones, whatever.

So let's start.

There we go.

There we go.

There we go.

And maybe just leave this one here.

See?

So you match pretty much the whole board.

This is completely different setup than you would like your typical match 3 puzzle RPG, whatever, whatever.

Because this goes.

You see, here is the timer thing.

Here's the HP of my monsters.

Here is the monsters themselves with their abilities.

They have pretty complex abilities.

Most of them are all pretty much

focused on manipulating these tokens on the board.

As these guys on the top make them worse, and you want to make them better.

Like this guy creates more fire ones.

Again, elements going this guy, they bottomer into water, and so on.

So, for like the systems and everything that they have, it's great.

Do you see like

the look on the Felix's face?

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I don't care.

I'm trying.

I'm trying my best.

I'm really trying.

But sure.

Yeah.

You are not.

I mean, at least don't lie.

Yeah, but I mean, it's like one of the best games ever, honestly.

Yeah, it's one of the best games I've ever pretty much.

My period.

I mean, it's just.

It's super hardcore.

It's super hardcore.

It's very core.

It's very core, yeah.

And that's because,

you know, Japanese users and like the whole Asian audience, they are just much more core by their nature, so it works for them pretty well.

That's how it's just.

Yeah, I must say, I was really engaged.

How how far did you get?

I was playing for an hour and a half.

I was still like, I mean, it's for me, it even for me, it's just like it's too much.

It's too much.

It's just like the the motivation, there's like zero motivation to play.

Like even

the art style, it's just it's too

this is exactly the same art style by the way like everything's the same to the original it's too Asian I mean seriously it's just it's too much the problem that I have here is that I thought that this would be some kind of like western streamlined release or some kind of uh what they were something something I don't know like for instance this month by the way we're only also gonna cover umamusu my pretty derby because it's gonna have its release on 26th of june so you can expect that i i am in the middle of nowhere in croatia with a book on a boat party.

Perfect.

Full game.

Full game, not this.

Please, sister, can you

can you can you ask someone else to come in instead of me?

Yeah, we'll see.

Maybe I'll sell them from Asian friends.

Yeah.

Anyway, so

I thought this would be something like that.

No, it's not.

That's the problem.

It's like watered down version basically.

Because what does it mean?

What does the water down version mean?

So here you have all the glorious special dungeons.

You have monsters, shop, machine means basically gotcha, friends, social helper mechanics.

Like they're ones that invented pretty much the social helper mechanic, where you really need to have strong friends because you can use one of their characters once a battle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

All of these games are all PvE.

Like, no PvP, pretty much all just TVE.

And

yeah, as you go, you see that you have like all of these other things because a lot of the characters that you see here are done through recipes, and then there's gachos on top.

So, the strongest one comes from gacha, and then you have recipes in this watered-down version.

If I do the UI, you can see clearly the difference between the UI.

This, I'm sorry, but this looks like some kind of intern that did like two hours before release.

Snap

that's like shit to me.

Sawa is in the mood.

So,

so you have just the single saga.

This is actually completely single-player.

There's like no online, nothing functionality.

There's not even a shop.

The whole shop is basically just this.

So permanent at exemption pass and permanent fast pass.

So it looks like Felix got the hired.

Wait, wait, would you say that they have a web shop somewhere?

No.

No, but I'm pretty sure that they're talking to FastPass.

No, no, no, no.

I'm pretty sure that they're talking to Fastpring because our sponsors FastSpring

has delivered DT D2C at scale for over 20 years.

What was the year you said?

2012.

Well, it's not, you know, maybe, maybe, because they still power top mobile publishers around the world.

Nobody says it cannot be in Asia.

So, FastSpring, here you go.

You know, if you want to quickly add a new web store or replace existing D2C vendor, just go to fastspring.gg, it's fastspring.gg,

you know,

who drama D2C partner.

There you go.

Thank you, Felix.

I see

you think about the web stores quite often, so that's good.

That's pretty good.

Anyway, not even setting up an excellent web store would say this because there's nothing to put in it.

That's the point.

Of course, well,

think about something always.

Yeah.

So you have a single-player saga here, not even the dungeons, because the dungeons here on the original ones they have like pretty good kind of structure in a way that like they walk you through the elements.

You know, you start with mostly fire stuff, then you go into green dungeon, you destroy those guys, then you get them on your side, then you go to water dungeon, you destroy the water dungeon with green guys, etc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here is just like some kind of watered-down version of like basic gameplay, then a little bit more like uh yeah

harder gameplay and so on so forth like they have this like a little bit of unfolding but then it kind of gets super grindy like it took me literally a week of very

very long sessions pretty much to get here it's still super hard and the the biggest problem is that the whole like the level that matte was talking about is not a level it's actually how many monsters you have actually created and then you have because here you don't get monsters through gacha there's no gacha in the biggest gacha game of all time and you just take everything from recipes like you go here and there's like okay there's a recipe for this guy get two of these shirts these shirts these shirts and that that's it and that's the game like

and you have some more dungeons unlocked later here where you have like this is fucking hard I won't even play this one.

And then you have yeah, these these dungeons are like I think this is the only thing that's been updated during that time where there's like okay there's a new dungeon going to be unlocked tomorrow with like these monsters that you can get later but the problem is that everything is done in this like so linear fashion

and tell me tell me honestly like what did you expect this is gonna be

streamlined version of this thing on the left yeah but like what exactly like what just

because

do you remember what we discussed with uh the legend of mushroom guys last year in China?

Oh, what do you mean, streamline?

Like, what do you mean?

We need to make it easier for Vestor.

What do you mean?

And they were just unable to understand.

That was a good moment.

So, they're suitable.

Yeah, it's like, what?

Like, what do you mean?

Like,

they can't understand.

Like, because it's too cold.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe I was so hooked on that Umamusume release, which is like the full release.

It's pretty much the same as Umamusume that is in Japan, that I was expecting that it would be something like this.

I don't know.

But this is like a this is pretty much like a tribute to the old times.

Like, you can have the game with all the monsters for free, basically.

It still makes

quite a lot of money in Japan, because only Japanese people care about this, and me, and three other percentages.

Jakob, explain to me why they have ads so prevalently.

Also, yeah, like this is my advice.

I also don't get that.

Like, like before the levels here.

Let's go into the level.

Because it increases the drop rate, right?

That's where you watch the TV order ads.

It's double the drop rate.

That's the important thing.

If you use it on the on the daily dungeon here, this is basically the source of a currency, because the currency that you have not not this one, but the the other one when I'm upgrading shit, this one, mana, you can even buy this.

So in the top top dungeon that I unlocked, you have like 9k, and you can double that with one.

Yeah,

no-brainer, no-brainer, no-brainer, yeah.

So, you get that, and then you get five of these tickets, which is basically start the level ticket.

And if you run out of those, you have two healers.

Healers means get five more tickets and get five more tickets for two ads.

That's it.

So, yeah, um, this is pretty much like a watered-down version of the original, in my opinion.

Like, maybe it's some kind of a, like, I don't know, like, you know, I know, for instance, CT Project Grade is doing like Witcher One release, but I know that there will be like new content, all the old content, like so much more stuff in it.

But this is not even it.

It's like some kind of a

more like a companion app rather than just

like, you know, relive your favorite thing that you played 15 years ago or whenever and put ads in it.

Yeah, there's ads, and there's no culture.

You can use money in it, so I don't know.

Do you think they called in rich?

Um, no,

they didn't call in rich, they're actually building gyms in Japan, if I understand,

yeah, yeah, like they have their own gym brand, or they had so much money that like

that was one of the issues, I guess, that because these guys were still and yeah, let's let's look at the charts.

So, the game,

you'll see.

So

96%

revenue from Japan.

That says it all.

And yeah, it's pretty much after 5 billion.

Monster Strike is already after 8.

Can you go to Active User Blade, please?

I want to know how many people paid 5 billion together collectively.

Yeah, not much.

What is going on?

Japan.

Yeah, if you haven't heard, Japan has like three times RPU of US users or four times.

that's Japan

yeah but like why is it why is it dying basically what is the question

population wise or what do you mean no like the active user portal

good one if you haven't ever noticed it is still a gaming podcast

talking about games not population because there's other other big games on on Australia like if I put in monster strike

which is the a little bit

let's say, the other version of this from Mixie, which is a kind of same example of like one hit wonder company basically.

17 million a month?

What?

Oh no, those also.

Oh no, thank God.

These are after 8 billion already.

And they launched after these guys.

Yeah, but like 140

and again, 98% Japan, even more.

8 billion?

Yeah.

Yes.

These guys are doing like 1 billion

easy in Japan without even having any global release anymore.

Show me legendary as well and show me empires and puzzles.

I mean, come on, like, why?

I just want to see it.

Do you want to make them cry?

Do you want to make the meme?

Yeah.

Yes, you have it there.

It's like it's just a small blob.

It's even taken down now.

Jesus.

Yeah, it's here.

Give me a second.

I need to sort it.

So, yeah,

there's your green blob.

And then it's like.

I take back whatever I said.

This Jonier is a genius.

Yeah.

That's the thing with these games.

Like, they just work in Japan.

They're amazing, but they just make money in Japan, period.

And even if you're Empires and Puzzles, which is an amazing job, in in my opinion, in streamlining the thing and making it work in the West, it's still

nowhere near it.

But it's nowhere near because they don't have the Japanese users that send like crazy.

That's the problem.

But why?

What do you mean?

Too streamlined?

Or they just don't care.

They just don't care.

People in the West aren't that attracted to gachos.

You walk a street in Tokyo, there's gachas everywhere.

That's everything.

I just came away from Tokyo.

Gacha is the way of life.

Like, I wouldn't be surprised if they would go, like, you know, come come be my store, and you would, like, pay

Jakub took me to a gacha store.

It was great.

Yeah.

See?

Yeah.

I want to say I take back everything I said about Japan and Tokyo.

We finally went to Japan.

Welcome to the club.

Yeah.

It was fucking amazing.

Which brings me to our thing, which is the

Puzzle and Dragons Zero.

The one that I've seen.

It's actually actually zero.

I mean, I didn't lose them piece, which a zero means like zero revenue.

Zero, everything.

Yeah, so it had some downloads, like, okay, whatever.

Revenue is like,

I don't know, like, and like, keep in mind that this is this is just from those two purchases.

It is nothing else to keep it buying again, like, just those two purchases that showed like fast pass and at free pass.

That's it.

Nothing else can be bought.

Still half a million.

This is still 94% percent

like why

yeah

us is like 6 000 downloads which like three of them is me or whatever no i think you just you just you just uh message all of your friends just hey guys like this is it chance download it

30 yeah i'm pretty close yeah that's you and me and then like 20 other 20 other

you guys are like 10 of the the slovakian user base yeah exactly.

Imagine me and like my other three emulators.

Yeah.

Because I couldn't make this shit work on like all four emulators.

And you know, and there is going to be zero in that revenue column forever in Slovakia because he's never going to pay.

And me neither because I bailed on this.

Yeah.

It like 10, like now, an hour and a half.

I guess this is great.

It's like, you know, on the same level of like me replaying Dungeon Keeper during Christmas for like five hours because I like it, and and that's it, basically.

I guess, but Dungeon Keeper, it's a it's a legendary game that actually makes sense.

This doesn't make sense.

This is legendary for these guys, keep that in mind, it was everywhere during that time.

I know, okay.

So, in their cultural kind of context, is that you know the thing that we are talking about here.

But this, this, like, again, I was I was expecting more from this thing because the game, the original one, let's get rid of this crap.

It's not crap.

What are you talking about?

The original one still makes what?

13 million a month, which is like

imagine like how much of that is pretty much like pure profit.

Like, I can't even imagine how many people are running this game now that it is like 3,000 monsters or whatever.

Like, I don't know how many.

And they're still doing like giant collaborations.

Oh, they do.

Okay.

Yeah, it's not stupid.

One million, something.

An active user base wasn't.

A million, right?

Okay, a million.

Yeah.

Like everyone's in Japan.

But still, like,

I think this is like the textbook example that still

nobody will be able to kind of translate into the West and the other way around.

And like, pretty much, we're just looking at the revenue.

And that's it.

Goodbye.

can really say that now to ads

but

okay

amazing

which brings the whole game revenue to something like 3k per day yeah something like that i guess

yeah 40k per day

i guess we'll stay but again this is just from those two purchases like i can imagine people buying anything else here like you can even buy energy or whatever something like i'm

now and there's no no new updates really, and no

you think it's soft launch?

No, it's not soft launched, it's live everywhere, it's everywhere.

Like you see those downloads in Slovakia.

I don't know, it's just that I guess it's more of a museum piece than like uh something like, for instance, Uma Musume we'll be doing because we can check uma musume by the way, uh, as we'll be

playing it uh anyway.

I'm gonna see some weird Japanese ads,

oh yeah.

Man.

So we'll get to the ads later.

You'll be surprised.

We'll be shocked.

They don't know ads.

Monthly.

Yeah, so these guys are pretty much pulling the same.

What is this like?

What's happening?

Here.

Wijimanusuma?

Yeah.

You see it going down and then you look down at the revenues 1.8 billion and you're like, what's going on?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's still Japan.

South Korea is pretty strong, 4%.

Yeah,

let's go to UA.

Let's just do UA.

So, all in all,

just let me finish that with saying that.

Hello, where'd you go?

Oh, hello.

Yeah, so everybody who didn't play the game and don't want to get

into the original one and like harder one, just go play this watered-down version so you at least can check mark that yes, I played the first game that did one billion dollars in revenue on mobile first.

So you have the experience because some of the gameplay systems are still very relevant, especially the elemental system, how these guys do it, and flesh out the collection.

That's like super good.

But it's just, you know, we just have better stuff to do now.

I mean,

you know, shit, your pens.

Zero UA.

No surprise.

no surprise.

Hello.

It's literally the quickest episode we've ever done.

Absolutely nothing.

Are there UA in no passenger again?

They must have some UA, don't they?

I think so.

No.

Yeah, they have UA, they have a lot of UA man.

They're played.

it's nowhere else.

Doesn't make any sense to make it everywhere.

Of course,

I mean,

what else you would expect?

I miss Japan so much.

Me too.

There's some event with some new character which is coffee teamed and it's coming somewhere in this month.

Yeah, that's right.

Look.

We saw this.

Lots of ads.

Look, puzzle along.

Like, why is it even

what

English?

Why is it even English?

I don't know.

Nobody cares.

Look at Japan.

I mean it's gonna be the same thing because

no

two look

two pages before it was actually 50

I think you're right about this being super profitable it's super profitable it's just like amazingly profitable

actually this

this quality almost look

I can't hear my talking

sound

you could hear it because I I just turned off the

sound

on my end.

Sorry.

Honestly, like this, this is pretty good quality of the ads.

Yeah, I guess it's some kind of a famous Japanese person.

No, it's almost like if you if they were running this on CTV

because this episode is also by Vibe.co,

your CTV

CTV partner because

you know if you ever thought about uh C T V ads and you s you think uh it's only for massive brands, not anymore with vibe.co.

You can launch C T V ads on Holo Rock to be you name it in minutes because it's that simple, totally self-served, and yes, it actually drives real business results.

So go to vibe.co.

It's vibe.co and uh just launch your C T V campaign in a minute because it's easy.

So I think

for this game, we are done, pretty much done because there's nothing else.

Literally nothing else.

I was actually, I was looking

here.

But that tells you how much profitable it is, basically.

Yeah, that tells you how it could run some ads, but it's like a few videos here and there.

I would actually try to filter by date.

I did

a few shorts of this game.

Yeah, like a few shorts here.

It's like 400 views.

I mean, seriously, 1.7.

It's almost like our shorts, like we have 1,700 views, and like this is like the biggest game ever.

Okay, right.

This guy's monetized so much better, you know.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

That again, Japan,

yeah,

but you know, DC champion champions, whatever.

Okay,

I think really interesting.

I was looking into I was trying to find some actual videos

of the game itself.

Oh, you have it there.

I mean, yeah, but for the japan no views no views 4 000 views i was expecting like ten thousand ten million well not ten thousand ten million views only like hardcore people play this now

but the salary man in japan

how to get both out of the block

anyway yeah um it's still nice piece of uh mobile gaming history nice piece of shh

what Yeah, nice piece of something else.

Something else, maybe.

Anyway, okay.

So I think that's it pretty much because I don't think we need to talk about anything else here.

Thank you very much for that.

This is basically a giant trailer for us playing Umamusume 3D Derby later, which we'll definitely do and do some proper justice to these games.

Yeah, I'm not that

sure, but I say it's fine.

I mean, it goes live on 26, which is fine.

So we will record like, I guess, in July.

So we have some numbers.

Okay, thank you very much for listening.

And I mean, really, thank you very much for listening.

Thank you.

Yeah, if you got to this point, like you are

a really hardcore RPG fan, as me

pretty hardcore fan of the podcast because I wouldn't

go until this point.

So, thank you.

See you in our Slack show.

Please comment under the episode if you like it or you didn't.

And see you next time.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.