two & a half gamers

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #11. Discussing the latest news, fun stuff and dropping knowledge. Don't forget, this is a 4am conference discussion vibe so let's not take it too seriously! Let’s dive in and enjoy it. Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič & Steven-Elliot Altman Youtube: https://youtu.be/BjKFpDtcYzA Agenda 18:30 How to increase game revenue by 35% as a Loremaster?  22:00 What genres are more suitable for narrative design? 24:00 How story influences game KPIs? 26:40 Story as a retention driver 27:00 Wooga tracking if players are reading the story 28:10 What kind of data influence the story? 30:00 Different modes of writting 33:00 How do you prepare for writing a story for a mobile game? 47:00 How can movies inspire a storyteller? 51:00 Live ops & story telling  and much more ... Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me

Welcome dear listener! This is a 2.5 gamers podcast with an honest interviews segment #1. Asking tough questions, having fun and dropping some knowledge with gaming industry peeps. Youtube: https://youtu.be/wkEcGZ1-3So Matej Lančarič & Joakim Achren Questions: Why did you start elite game developers and not a new gaming studio? How can someone become a partner at Play Ventures? What are the requirements/skills you need to do your job? What is your due dilligence process? How do you do your homework? -How do you apply that diligence process to crypto games? Is that done more by feel than data as there is no data yet? -When investing in crypto games is token/coin allocation pre drop more important than stock? (Justified that owning stock can take 10 years + to get payback and multiple and having token/coins you can sell as soon as the drop takes place) -If token is important / does that not create the incentive to finance hype pump and dumps? Could you explain what pre-seed, seed or Series A mean? How do you define those stages? What are you looking for when investing in companies in different stages? Pre-seed, seed, series A? How do you really decide where to invest? What is THE KPI?  Why are you as an investor so keen for companies to have internal UA manager? Could you tell me a bit more about the syndicate? Why having only one line on the cap table is better than 20 names.  Why do you think a lot of gaming companies with mediocre/decent results pivoted super quickly to web3? Free money? Why There's Never been a better time to start a games company? Let’s discuss your anti portfolio - what’s the biggest regret so far of a company that you passed on? Model situation: I want to start a gaming studio. I have around 500k from my previous jobs. Should I use this money and bootstrap or should I try to get an investor (just in case)? Why boostrap? Why investor? What is Joakim's favourite book? https://www.amazon.com/Stillness-Key-Ryan-Holiday/dp/0525538585  Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #10. Discussing the latest news, fun stuff and dropping knowledge. Don't forget, this is a 4am conference discussion vibe so let's not take it too seriously! Let’s dive in and enjoy it. Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič Youtube: https://youtu.be/SjtrJ1wG0I8 Agenda News 3:00 Netflix boosts mobile games approach with acquisition of Boss Fight Entertainment 10:20 KRAFTON, INC. SIGNS LONG-TERM COOPERATION AGREEMENT WITH SOLANA LABS FOR BLOCKCHAIN-BASED GAMES AND SERVICES 12:25 Crypto investor Katie Haun raises $1.5 billion, the largest debut fund ever by a female VC 18:40 In-game ads are getting more misleading, sexist and misogynistic, says Meretzky 27:00 Pre softlaunch activities https://lancaric.me/how-to-save-millions-with-marketability-testing/ What can we do pre-soft launch of our game? What to do before we decide to develop a game? Which questions to ask? Market research Target audience USP Game genre Marketing team capabilities Company strategy How to do market research? Tools? Competitor ads? How to define target audience? Demo, motivations, profiles, persona Playtesting What? How? Why? When do we start with UA/marketing? Marketability tests campaign optimisation Fake store pages (tools or DIY) Which channels? What to test? Player survey at the end (what questions to ask?) no suggestive questions! Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #9. Let’s dive in. Youtube: https://youtu.be/0swB8x-YB5U Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič Agenda: News Ad monetization fundamentals AMA Ad Monetization fundamentals discussion: What’s the most important ad revenue metric? How’s eCPM calculated by ad networks? Which ad network is the most trustworthy? Which ad network is the least trustworthy? How do ad networks make money? What is the cutoff point of eCPM degradation? How players become Ad Whales? Ask Me Anything section I have ads in my game, using unity ads only because I have a good deal with them. Should I earn more? Why is admon and UA super connected in hypercasual games? Its usually one person. Why? When do you hire an internal admon person? What scale? Or is there a KPI to look for? (Daily revenue, impressions, number of ad networks in the waterfall) Do you ban competitor ads in your game? If yes why, if no why? Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me Latest News: $2 billion invested into blockchain game sector during 2022 https://gamestx.substack.com/p/2-billion-invested-into-blockchain?s=r Idle Miner Tycoon Launches on Facebook Gaming https://www.kolibrigames.com/press/idle-miner-tycoon-launches-on-facebook-gaming/ Google launches Google Play Partner Program for large game devs https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/15/google-launches-google-play-partner-program-for-large-game-devs/ Mark Zuckerberg confirms NFTs are coming to Instagram https://www.engadget.com/mark-zuckerberg-confirms-nf-ts-are-coming-to-instagram-204435805.html Interest In NFTs And The Metaverse Is Falling Fast https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/03/10/interest-in-nfts-and-the-metaverse-is-falling-fast/amp/

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #8. Let’s dive in. Youtube: https://youtu.be/f_3GRQ8Wl-Y  Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič Game Design fundamentals discussion: Remo asking questions Felix & Lanco answering then Remo using militant pessimism How to start with Game Design? Mobile industry vs Premium/ Indie games? What is hard and challenging about GD? Can everybody do it? (everybody does it already :D) What are the main skills that define a game designer? How do game design tests work? What is an ideal background for a game designer? “Let’s clone this game what can go wrong it is making so much money on the charts we can make at least ⅓ of that” How ideas for new games are born? Ask me anything What’s the most you’ve been able to affect D1, D7, D30 retention with game features? When should you kill (give up) on a game? What’s the difference between a good game designer and shitty one? Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #7. Let’s dive in. Youtube: https://youtu.be/cpR3YZBB5Us Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič  Special Guest: Nicolas Vereecke As NFTs, Crypto and blockchain gaming are filling up the headlines we are doing a special episode on the current state of crypto gaming - not the peak of November 2021 but the fresh look at the end of Feb 2022. Play to Earn - Play & Earn - Play to Own I would start that discussion with the point that  the current consolidation in the big crypto games is more and more pointing to the fact that play to earn is unsustainable as there is “no free lunch” Therefore the buzzword is changing to Play & Earn or even Play to Own as the “earn” part is becoming harder and harder to realize - this is mostly seen in the depreciation of the Axie economy. One other milestone can be considered the recent blog post from Philip La Phil's Views: Axie Infinity Economy and Reasons to Play where admits this and refocuses the view on the original model of any game - to create fun and engaging experience as the primary reward for the player - not an investment vehicle. “we will not be optimizing our game or experiences to drive short-term returns as it’s simply not sustainable” “we will focus on is creating a balanced game economy with proper sources and sinks, just like non-blockchain games have done for years.” Does this imply that Skymavis wants to compete with companies like Supercell, Playrix or King? The biggest innovation of the free to play model is removing the initial friction of a payment before the player plays the game - the first wave of crypto games have even bigger friction funnels on top of reversing this problem. What is the current state of the friction funnel for a block-chain based game? Friction to play a crypto game: current models: Buy crypto assets first to even play - Browser/PC only (Axie infinity, Crypto Raiders) Download the game for free (find out about the secret crypto layer somehow from the game website - sell NFTs there) (Thetan Arena) Have the game on the store and streamline the funnel to crypto wallet Skyweaver Have a functional F2P game with F2P economy and implement the crypto layer into a later stage of the player progression - Future in hybrid? (Chromatic Souls: Afk Raid, Axie Origin?) Burning questions about block chain games: UA Open economy NFT design Gass Fees Business model - the most burning of them all! Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #6. Let’s dive in. Youtube: https://youtu.be/d_BDO5jnRTk  Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič Google to limit ad tracking across apps on Android Google has announced new measures that will limit tracking across its Android operating system, following a similar move by Apple to introduce restraints in the way the online advertising industry can target users. The changes, which will not be implemented for at least two years, are intended to curb the sharing of user data with third parties, restricting advertising tracking for users who move between different apps on billions of devices running Android. Google said it planned to eventually phase out advertising IDs, a code that allows marketers to track individual user behaviour, in favour of alternatives that protected user data while still supporting advertising efforts. Supercell revenue increases 45% to $2.24bn in 2021 Supercell published its financial results for 2021, with revenue reaching $2.24 billion (€1.89 billion) compared to $1.48 billion (€1.30 billion) in 2020 -- a 45.3% increase year-on-year. The studio generated profits before taxes of $852 million (€734 million), an impressive 80.3% growth compared to 2020's $463 million (€407 million). But it's still not quite back to the level of its 2015 heydays, when the company made over $2 billion in revenue and $965 million (€848 million) in EBITDA. The post also said that Clash of Clans and Clash Royale have now made over $10 billion in combined revenue since their respective launches. Spotify is acquiring two major podcast tech platforms  Spotify is making more podcast acquisitions. The company announced today it’s acquiring both Chartable and Podsights — two of the most prominent podcast marketing and ad attribution companies. The deal price hasn’t been disclosed, but this marks the first major acquisition the company has made this year in a long line of audio purchases. This deal is particularly critical for the company as it tries to make its ad platform the best and most powerful in audio. If it wants everyone to purchase ads through its marketplace, then it needs technology to better figure out who’s listening to those ads and what they’re doing after hearing them. AudioMob and Odeeo up next? UA fundamentals discussion - Matej asking questions - Felix, Jakub answer & Matej gives his opinion at the end! How or why to start with UA? My game has amazing organics. I don't need UA! Is that true? Why not? Are all UA channels equal? -Break down the benefits and drawbacks of top 4 UA channels? How to structure an UA budget? What is the payback period we should look at? What is hard and challenging about UA? Can everybody do it? Listen in to learn more! Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #5. Let’s dive in. Youtube: https://youtu.be/9lMdZqLlvvM Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič What is the point of releasing a new game or app to a restricted audience market in advance of a full launch? Soft launch stages I like to divide the soft launch into three stages: Technical, Retention, Monetization. Each stage serves a different purpose and different KPIs are measured. While in the Technical stage, we are mostly focusing on data health, crash rate, and tracking in general, in the Retention stage we measure D1, D3, D7 Retention, FTUE, tutorial completion rate, and much more. Game developers are obsessed with achieving the highest D1 retention numbers they can, but D1 is not the holy grail. I’ve seen games with D1 retention at roughly 25% still being able to generate many millions of Euros in revenue per month. The result was primarily driven by excellent D60 retention, which was 6-8%. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to focus on the ratio between D1, D3, and D7. The monetization stage is where the fun starts. Measuring ARPU, conversion to payment, and Dx ROAS requires running purchase (ROAS) oriented campaigns: AEO/VO on Facebook or tCPA/tROAS on Google Ads. Listen in to learn more! Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #4. Let’s dive in. Youtube: https://youtu.be/ivPbZqA62VA Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič Soft Launching a Mobile Game Ad Mon Perspective What prompted me to want to talk about this is a Statisa article Mobile Game ad spend is expected to grow to $130bn by 2025. That’s up 300% from $32 bn in 2020 With this amount of money being pumped into UA its safe to say Mobile ad revenue will only grow and be a larger part of your overall revenue for mobile games I wanted to provide a how to guide for what you as a mobile game dev should think about when soft launching and global launching your next mobile game First Ask Think of all mobile games generas on a spectrum from hypercasual to Hardcore The two extremes will monetize 97% either from ads or from IAPs Advice here is for the middle ground - not hyper casual or Hardcore If your game genera sits in the middle of this spectrum you first need to decide which ad format to work with 9/10 the ad format that works best for you are Rewarded ads Rewarded ads are the undisputed king of game formats Highest eCPM compared to other formats Highest completion rates Lowest amount of friction from users since its opt-in Large competition on this inventory format from ad networks because it converts super well Listen in to learn more! here https://lancaric.me/how-to-soft-launch-a-mobile-game-ad-mon-perspective/  Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me / lancaric.me 

Hello & welcome everyone. This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session #3. Let’s dive in. Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič Roblox Steam hosts 55K Games vs Roblox 20 Mil “experiences” 47,3 Mil DAU Half of the users are aged 12 and under Current Market cap 38 Bil $ Roblox Cut 75,5% Roblox takes a 30% cut of every transaction on their platform Discoverability Robux Minimum Withdrawal to real life money 100K (1000 $) Second life comparison (10$) Withdrawal only possible with Roblox monthly 5$ subscription On every 1$ revenue of roblox only 17% make it out Historic example of “Company money Scrib” Workers spend their money at the company Workers become afraid to break company rules as company rules over their “money” This dependency increase friction on quitting the system Illegal in US 1938 Platform Capitalism - business model based on unsustainable expansion in order to monopolize a platform Experience based payouts Roblox “editor knowledge untransferable “Make serious cash” claim removed from the website after video Roblox moderation - shut down official forums in 2017 because they couldn’t moderate them Roblox Collectible Market Tie ins with Brands Collectibles that are sold for limited time skyrocket in value from 10 to 15K $ dollars Roblox still takes a 30% form all of the transactions Roblox Black market Rewarded Interstitial ads - 6 months in Around 6 months ago Google and Facebook announced the roll out of Rewarded interstitial ads. An interstitial ad that pops up and users can opt out of and thus forgo the reward Admob are pushing very hard on this format which is still in Beta Facebook were pushing it but not so much anymore Don’t monetize with this format! You’re opening yourself up to unnecessary stress and risk Only FB and Admob support it - thus you’ll get lower prices FB on iOS is pretty much non-existent so you have no competition Calling it now that in 12 months they won’t exist. Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me