two & a half gamers The ultimate AI creative breakdown: Why Western studios are late & who dominates the meta?
This is the ultimate AI creative breakdown: 112 creatives in 36 minutes.
Jakub, Matej, and Felix review the best (and worst) AI-generated ads across rise of castles clones, tasty travels madness, fluffy animals, Pixar-style mutations, fake physics, and high-production AI cinematics that now rival outsourcing studios.
AI is no longer “experimental.”
It is the creative pipeline.
What you’ll learn
• How to spot AI in 2025 (lighting errors, physics breaks, muscle glitches)
• The new top AI hooks (animals, food, POV inward movement, waifus, chaos)
• The rise of “high-production AI” replacing studio cinematics
• Why Rise of Castles, Golden Goblins, Tasty Travels, and Whiteout Survival dominate AI usage
• How top teams use loras, inpainting, upscaling & 20-step workflows
• The new East–West gap in creative production
• Why by end of 2026, 50% of ads will be AI-driven
• And the moment Candy Crush uses AI bear attacks 😅
Key takeaway
AI creatives are no longer a gimmick. They’re a production system, and the studios that master workflows will own the CPI curve.
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This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric
Podcast:
Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-2um8eguhf-c~H9idcxM271mnPzdWbipg
00:00 — AI jokes
02:30 — Spotting AI: Botox faces, broken physics, weird lighting
04:00 — Tasty Travels deep dive: AI characters, mutation loops, animal overload
07:40 — AI pets, fluffy rabbits, “cuteness overload” & why animals = low CPI
09:20 — AI POV trends: camera moving towards the object, not the player
11:00 — Rise of Castles AI: medieval films, flying swords, fake Warcraft scenes
14:40 — Engine-quality AI creatives (text errors, menu artifacts, but insane quality)
16:00 — How top teams build AI workflows (loras, upscaling, inpainting, layering)
18:50 — God-hand AI creatives, bear rescues, cinematic transitions
25:00 — Whiteout Survival hooks: 2D, 3D, transitions, smooth animations
27:20 — Idle Lumber & Golden Goblins: the kings of AI hooks
29:00 — Horror hooks, brain-rot, Tom the Train nightmares
30:20 — Full-length AI creatives: stitched shots, Olympics watermarks (!?)
34:00 — Why Western studios are late & who dominates the meta
35:40 — Final insights: AI catching up to real cinematics
Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
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