Journal

Last week I sat down with 4 mobile game studio leads. Real people. Real conversations. 💬 🤗 One topic kept coming up, every single time: Thats why I brought you 9 new puzzle games,Potentially help the problem!Oh, what was the topic? Usual suspects 🫠 ...Cost,Per,Installs,are either too high, or too unstable.When they think they got CPI,They lose it before an update.When they plan on growing on current CPI,They cant keep it under control.I told them they need to focus on:-> Sticky game mechanic that flows smoothly,-> Creatives that shows real gameplay,-> Try different creatives on separate campaigns.And most importantly, stay consistent on bothIteration and updates. Till you define your success.

Sometimes the Butt of F2P Liveops will consume my thoughts for a day. Today is that day. In the talk, Teut Weidemann documents the rhythms of F2P engagement and monetization curves like an archaeologist uncovering a secret code. He illustrates what happens when you zoom in. Like, really in. For instance, concurrent users during football matches (the boring European kind) dip during game time and spike during halftime. Yes, that creates a butt shape (wait until you see his next shape). This kind of minute observation makes Ultra Local Live Ops™ compelling, finally providing a meaningful avenue for the "personalization" agenda."Personalization" has become an ugly stepchild to price discrimination, mainly focused on triggering successive live ops offers. CRM efforts might localize notifications or reference local holidays, but rarely capture the immediacy of "what's happening now" or what's physically around players. […]

"Wait, we need to test 480 game ideas? What is wrong with this industry??" Recently, I met with a former client (a top mobile games publisher) in LA.We had worked with their team to build a new game validation pipeline with the goal of launching one new hit in 2 years.Working backward, here's what we had suggested:• 𝟰𝟴𝟬 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝘀 (CPI tests)• 𝟭𝟮 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 to D1 retention testing• 𝟲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 to D7 retention testing• 𝟭 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 scaling successfully WWOur prescription was both realistic, and also a reflection of the utter insanity of the current market.Testing 480 game ideas?  Have we lost our minds??At a certain point one must ask if we're playing in the industry / fishing in the right pool.This made me curious if a <1% product success rate was unique to our industry. 🤔. How abnormal are we, actually?The […]

Is 𝗠𝗼.𝗖𝗼'𝘀 'no pay-to-win' economy sustainable? 𝗠𝗼.𝗖𝗼‘s referral-only ‘soft’ launch deserves much praise 👏👏👏And out of the gates, 𝗠𝗼.𝗖𝗼 isn’t SuperCell’s 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘵- monetizing game. 😅Squad Busters had a rockier start.That said, I doubt Supercell’s commitment to a ‘non pay-to-win’ / cosmetics- only economy will survive the transition to paid UA.Once the (quite clever) viral / organic honeymoon ends, this game will need $5+ T1 RPDs to support UA at meaningful scale.And that's okay. The economy can, and almost certainly will change in the future.Supercell has done deeper surgery before, and successfully (Brawl Stars).But thus far, cosmetics-only economies have only worked, at scale, for a small handful of games...Battle royale, with large character models to show off during gameplay, come to mind... And little else.❓ Am i wrong?  Can Mo.Co succeed with cosmetics only / 'no pay to win?' economy?

𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗢𝗠𝗜𝗖𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗖𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗕𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗭𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 & 𝗥𝗢𝗬𝗔𝗟 𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗗𝗢𝗠 Dream Games is opening the UA floodgates for Royal Kingdom, deploying significant marketing spend and celebrity-driven creative. This move reflects a familiar pattern: Royal Match itself required about two years to scale effectively. But now, the Dream Games UA team faces a new paradigm: how to optimally scale spending across two titles and manage new franchise-level LTV dynamics. In the short run, allocation optimization is obvious as UA managers frequently “rotate” spend across channels within a day as CPIs spike with additional channel capital. The marginal game should function as a new channel of sorts to balance spend against ROAS. However, franchises also bring new modeling considerations.The expected value of players engaging with both games simultaneously can be modeled explicitly as:expected value,DualPlay = probability,DualPlay(LTV,old + LTV,new)Here, the probability of simultaneous engagement represents the remaining […]

Meme Bots: Obunga Chase Rooms – Trending Game with Pop Culture Characters 👻 Yesterday we had a look at the Top Trending for the last month and noticed these two surprise horror games.We looked into one of them — Meme Bots: Obunga Chase Rooms, now nearing 10M lifetime installs after the recent relaunch 🚀In the game, players run through maze-like maps, chased by meme-inspired characters like Obunga, Sanic, and Tralalero Tralala 🦈👟💡Who are Nextbots?They’re AI-driven pursuers, often shown as 2D meme images, popularized in Garry’s Mod and later adopted across many games.Once again, TikTok trends + high gameplay virality = perfect combo for organic growth 🤭Check out the game yourself.