Season 7, Episode 7: MDM Mailbag #7 (with Matej Lancaric)

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I'm your host, Eric Sufert, and I am joined day by Matey Lancharich for the seventh edition of the mobile dev memo mail bag, which is a Q&A show where I will ask my esteemed guest questions that were submitted from the audience. So first of all, Matey, welcome. Thank you very much for having me on the show. It's nice to be on the other side of the barricade for once. Yeah, I bet. [LAUGHTER] So you're the interviewer. Yeah. So before we hopped on, I was trying to remember when we first met. I mean, it was years and years ago. I think it was when I came to Pixel Federation and did the consulting project there, right? Yeah, I think so, which was 2015-16? I don't know. It's been-- Yeah, 2015 or 2016. Yeah, I said. Probably 2016, but yeah, I mean, so 10 years ago. Yeah, I came to Bratislava and I'd never been there before, but I like that city. It was like a mini-prog, I remember. Very true. I mean, we're not getting any younger. [LAUGHTER] Just 10 years ago, it's time flies. Time does fly. Time flies. So most people who are listening to this probably know of you from 2.5 gamers, from your presence on LinkedIn, but for those who don't, can you just please introduce yourself before we dive into the questions? Absolutely. Thanks again. So yes, my name is Matey Lancer, you're a gem. I've been in the industry for like 12 years. I'm mostly work as a UIC consultant. I have my own creative team of 10 motion designers. I also do play balls because it's very important. I'm now building my own no-code playable tool, which is called Playable Maker. And I started doing also a little bit of apps in the games here and there, so I'm busy. And I love it. And I absolutely love it. But my main business is still UIC consultancy, so that's that. We bumped into each other at Pocket Gamer, Connects, what, three weeks ago. Yeah, it was a nice show. I love PGC. It's kind of the opening of the year anyway, right? Yeah, so that's actually that's maybe the first question. So this one's for me. This was not from the audience, but so I know I just see from Facebook that you go to a lot of conferences. I think you were just coming back from one right in Barcelona, was that right? Yes, I was in Barcelona. So I mean, there was a time when I was doing way more conferences, but now I tried to pick my battles pretty much PGC, London, then usually games for in Barcelona. I had a long pause for GDC, but I was there last year, but this year I said, maybe just go on a vacation instead. So then I'll be at MAU afterwards. So those are, I think, the first big shows, the beginning of the year, and then I was just trying to draw maybe at the like in summer. That's pretty much it. Well, so that was a question. So which conferences do you prioritize? What about games? Calm, no games calm. Oh, I mean, I was there for eight times, maybe, and it's same people all over again. Everybody ends up in Mario, the Hothel lobby, which is always crowded. Now there's even a balancer that either leads to in or don't. So not anymore for some reason, but maybe I will come back to Gamescom next year. Well, see. So how do you view MAU from like a relevancy standpoint? Is MAU used to be, from my perspective, it used to be the conference. I mean, like, and it was it's broader than gaming for sure. I mean, it covers kind of the whole spectrum of the app space. But how do you view it now? I mean, they got acquired a couple years ago. There's a lot more friction with putting on the side events. And I think it's still very popular. But like, I think basically the value, I think the priority of these conferences got totally reset post-COVID. Like, so pre-COVID, you can't use that as a guide for what's going to be on the calendar now. But actually, I think that worked in PGC's favor. Because. Yes. That blew up post-COVID. Pre-COVID, I mean, it was a good show. But post-COVID, it became a D show. Exactly. Pre-COVID was like, okay. And I was like, oh, maybe I will go now. Which is like, that's the first one beginning of the year. And now it's like 2800 people, which is insane. So definitely. For A-M-A-U, it has changed. I still think it's the conference to go and visit. Now it's not mobile apps unlock, but mobile audiences unlock, which is interesting. And that brought respect to my guess. I mean, I'm now also doing a 2.5 gamers gaming summit before the M-A-U. It's kind of still at the M-A-U content. So it's just like one day before when there is the batch pick-up. So I'm a friend of the conference for a long time. So I think it's still worth it. I think it's still worth it. In terms of the content, most probably not exactly the same as it was pre-COVID. But what's the same, right? Yeah. I mean, M-A-U was, I think, distinguished by the content. The content was always really strong. Yes. So actually, I spoke to M-A-U about doing something similar, like an MDM, you know, little mini conference before. And we never kind of converged around that. But that was, we had sort of spoken about that. Yeah, I mean, I think, and I haven't been to M-A-U in a couple of years, but that's just, I'm just a lot busier now, which you could. I bet. I bet. But it's still like, it's one of the ones that I feel jealous when it's going on and I'm at home. Like, like, GDC, I don't really feel jealous. I feel like. It's a grind. GDC is a grind and just being in San Francisco for a large conference is not necessarily pleasant. Yeah, it's a pleasant experience. I mean, I haven't bought a ticket for a long time and I don't even go to the actual venue. So now it's again, like, meaning, yeah, meaning everybody at like the W-Berryode or whatever else is around that. So that's why I was like, yeah, you know, I vacation GDC? Vacation, yeah. Yeah, right. For sure. So it became a lot more popular in the last few years for companies to build out their own little circuit of events, you know, where they'll do like three or four. I don't want to call them dinners because they're usually bigger than dinners, but it'd be like a company specific event where they'll run out of space and they'll do presentations for the day and then they'll have like a party after any of those that are on your radar that for being like very high quality or like high signal and noise. Uh, well, now when, you know, like when we do like a two and a half gamers do these things as well. So I would definitely call it fine for obvious reasons. But it's pretty much it. I usually don't do these like too many of these side events because it's usually distraction. And again, presentation and then a networking. I rather do a networking sessions because sometimes I feel that people are kind of filled up with content already. So people are there just to talk to people instead of just sit there and listen. So I try to do also my side events as just no music, less of a drink, just talking and people love it. So and that's that's what I also usually enjoy. Okay. And so now moving on to the questions that I didn't write. We got a number of questions about web. So web onboarding web UA. Let's maybe start there. So I mean web UA. Let's let's call a web onboarding. Does that work for games? Have you seen any games implement that in a way that that scale? Well, those are two separate things. So implementing that yes, scale, not yet, I think because it's super, super popular on the upside. And I started talking about this couple of months ago. And I already see some some companies from from Turkey that I already implementing this let's say semi successfully. So it's not there yet. It's not there yet because it's a little bit more more complicated than just putting few quiz questions into the web and that's that's pretty much it. And then ended up with the subscription. So here I'm kind of experimenting with the web where you actually have full build playable. So you kind of play or like like the play the playable after let's say a minute or two minutes you get the you get an event like a down with the game afterwards. So again, on paper works the technical complexity is a little bit different and more more tough to crack. But I'm pretty sure I will see this way more often in 2026 maybe even with like the the subscription or purchase like web shop component there as well. Oh, interesting. Okay. I want to talk to you about that. But let's let's table that for a second. Do you think it's it's a certain type of genre that can make that work? I mean, I don't think like a casual game could could make that work, right? Or do you think it doesn't matter? Well, it's that's fair question. I think I think the genre doesn't matter that much. For example, I saw even her well-matched or much villains using let's say jigsaw it there, which is free by free puzzle playable as their end cards in different U and network ad networks. So if you use that on the web, again, it should potentially work. I don't think it references the real gameplay that much. So it would be a little bit misleading. I mean, even if it's this little bit misleading, nobody cares anymore at that much, right? So I would still rather see like the little bit more a real gameplay on that website and in the in the playable rather than just a fake because then it most probably won't work. So not really the genre, but the actual playable and that's like the style of it. So playtika had the whole web arcade concept where they could do kind of web onboarding because it was synchronized from the web to the app. Do you need that or can you just do web as a pure play onboarding mechanism and then drive people to the app where you expect them to play the game? Yeah, that's two separate things. I think you can still do the web onboarding. And then on top of that, if you have anything connected to the actual web show and then the payment on the web that definitely helps with like more signals back to the UH channels. And then then you send afterwards the players to the app. That's where the complexity kicks in. Yeah, and then syncing everything up. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can still do it with the Facebook conversion API on the landing page and then with the MMP afterwards and then sync up in the MMP. But yeah, it's it's easy to talk about and it'll be hard to sync up in the real life afterwards. Yeah, well, I mean, where do you think at the end of the year we'll see anybody that has 100% 100% I'm pretty sure even well, I'm not sure if the big companies because they move slow. I mean, it's still pretty big chunk of the revenues. But I think smaller teams which are, you know, eager to earn more money on top of what they are, whatever they're earning in their apps. So I think that we will see that. I have to like, expecting it in 2026. Do you have you seen larger companies move slower with anything related to the web because they're worried that Apple will retaliate against them? Oh, I had a few conversations like this. So the companies just in actually in Barcelona, one of the bigger companies from from Israel, they said, oh, we don't really want to do this because we really like organics from Apple and we really don't know if it's going to happen. And it's an interesting boogieman. So I can now I can understand that. Obviously, if I have so many of the yes, it's a big person of revenue coming from apps or then I might be scared. But then I would say high risk, high reward. Could you see any games at the end of this year monetizing almost entirely from the web and not using IPs at all? Oh, so actually one case study interestingly connected to the what we just discussed. They it was an app they removed payments from the from the app and then move everything to web. And then suddenly they saw huge deep in organics. So basically if you're not getting revenues to the apps or which are signals, then well, suddenly you are losing the rankings. I mean, it can be also the tactic from Apple, but also, I mean, logic because if you don't see any purchases, then obviously why why should you get organic installs? So I don't think it's like fully going to happen. Yeah, I mean, that's one of those things that is pretty logical, right? I mean, like you could view that as like some sort of, you know, evil policy. Like, oh, we're going to start start view of organic discovery. If you don't have any IPs, but then how do you tell if the game's any good? If there's no, I mean, exactly. Yeah, that's the point. How can you get the signal and then like, okay, well, do you think it's just an app without anything? Well, I guess does work or is it so exactly? Yeah, and then I mean, you know, it's what Apple said to defend its policy is correct. I mean, they do implement a lot of security and you have no idea what people are doing on the web and there's no way to audit that or it's very difficult and you could be just ripping people off. I mean, there is truth to that. I mean, it's not. It does show. Yeah. But there's also true, like you can actually learn more money on the web shop anyway, which is true. Yeah. My sense is like they could have saved themselves a lot of pain here. And I think it probably, there was a point, I think in the last two years where it probably would have worked out in their favor monetarily if they would have just switched to 15% across the board. Yeah. Yeah. That for sure. Because at 30%, it's not really justifiable to be honest. Yeah. But at 15%, you probably wouldn't have that many people pushing into the web at all. Yeah, exactly. Because like, people wouldn't care that much. That's why it's my opinion. Because it's it is a hassle. Honestly, and it's like, again, there's the gray area of whatever else. So yeah, 50% people would just say, okay, that's fine. Mobile game developers no longer need to pay up to 30% in major App Store fees. With XOla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5% and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics. Start today at XOla.com. That's xsolla.com. Or use the link in the episode show notes. Okay, talk to me about web shops for sort of smaller, less household name brands. Right? So like we all know that like, you know, scoply had been doing web shops for years and years. Superseller have been doing web shops for years and years. Play Tika, we just talked about it. They had the cross compatibility thing. Can smaller games do that? Can they drive people to the web with link out and see this? I mean, how does it conversion rate change from big game to small game? Even even pixel federation does that. I was just talking about it, but it would be them and some smaller companies. They it's still, I mean, you can do, Lika, you can link out the from the app. You can do all sorts of other stuff. It's the email marketing and all the all the different activities, even social media, which if it's good enough, then it can work. Zing guy is doing this. So it still can be like 20, 30% of the revenue on top of it. Of course, if you're not big enough, then it's not maybe as sexy. But even though like for them, it's the additional margin. So I was still I'm talking to our our sponsors as well and they're saying even smaller companies making a couple millions a month, it's still pretty big chunk of the revenue. So why not a couple of a month? I don't know if that's small. That's okay. Medium size to be. Small meaning. Okay. So I'm working with one game, which is let's say 400,000 per month. Bitch is small. Okay. So anything between 100k to 400k, I would still do it less than 100k. Yeah, that's why we just like not really something which is interesting enough. Okay, because that was going to be my next question is like, where's the threshold when you start investing here? Because it is an investment. I need to build stuff. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, you work with Xola, who's a sponsor, thanks to Xola for sponsoring the show. But I mean, you have the pipes and and that's great and it's very helpful and it saves a lot of time. But you still have to build out the store. You still have to get the connectivity going and the fulfillment. So I mean, it's not not work. I mean, it's exactly and someone needs to actually manage that and also you need to find a proper partner. So if the Xola if someone else and also not all these partners are equal because some they some of them they know more. They have the integrations with MMPs. Some they they have not. So it's a yeah, it's actually quite quite the big chunk of work. So you brought up MMPs. So that's actually a question we got and I'm actually curious to hear your thoughts here because this just feels like such a dynamic space. I was I was talking to people at PGC and like there's a large diversity of viewpoints here and I'm curious to get your take. So let me just let me so that I'm I'm kind of taking a couple questions we got about MMPs and combining them into one and adding my own lens on it. But let's say we reconvene here what's today feb we reconvene feb 16th 2027 are games still using MMPs or how many games are not using MMPs or is it just taken for granted that everyone has an MMP or what do you think the the use case for the MMP is in a year's time? I feel I feel even if you do like one year from now like people are still going to use MMPs and it's maybe connected to the question before like some of the people that I talked to there first for some of them they didn't even don't know what MMP is which is terrible if like in this 2026 for God's sake. But I still think people are going to use it. Why not? Because still some of the smaller teams they don't know they don't have data beams they still need to attribute players they still need to use it for running at least some some UA. So I still think it's like it's still going to be here. Of course we have other other companies but still I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. You think there's will there be like let's say like let's let's define big is like I don't know 10 million a month or something in revenue. You think there's any big games where the studios have moved off of MMPs completely in the years time or they'll still be using them but they'll be because my sense is like I've changed my view on this too. I think MMP is here to stay. I think it's here to stay and but you need a lot more tools than just the MMP now than you did. But I mean yeah like I mean some companies use the MMP as their analytics back in I mean that's just what it is. So I mean not not completely but like that's a big chunk of it and so you know you're never going to get rid of it it's it's it's too integrated but could you see a big company just moving away completely building some internal tools that just replace it all together. Well big company not really I mean if it's a big company then it's going to take five years and then a lot of money and then eventually it's like oh we have this internal tool which is great but it's so slow if something moves quickly in mobile games industry or the games industry which often happens then I'm going to be able to react so and I've been yeah I've been working with some big companies and they are always these teams like oh we will build anything in house and it either takes again like as I said like maybe on years or it ever happens because it's too expensive so I think yeah I did not going to move anywhere just people build stuff on top of it that's it that's the kind of more efficient use of the M.P. Yeah let's go back to subscription so how do you see subscriptions playing a role in game growth today so that was that was a question and then I would just kind of add on to it like is that do you see that growing as a share of revenue do you see it shrinking is it not changing or like how do you see that changing over time it's like blast from the past I think like games and subscriptions like that was the thing a couple years ago and then it absolutely disappeared so I maybe with like the growth of apps and that subscription it's going to maybe reignite some of that discussions but I don't think like it's there's anything really meaningful in terms of the subscription maybe the battle passes should be a subscription and recurring one but if would that help I have no idea I don't think it's going to go I mean it's just going to be very small portion of the revenue which is usually like we're like 10% maybe ish 15 yeah so and that's it I don't see like the actual usage of that in games that much yeah well I mean the battle pass makes sense and you know just some sort of recurring you know gem pack or soft currency pack makes sense if you have like a really strong live ops loop yeah but a lot of companies are not good at building those and so you can't really you can't layer a subscription on top of a week live ops loop because no one sees the value right it's yeah and then and then I can see the s**t sort of of people oh I forgot to unsubscribe and now you're charging charging me even more money you evil games so yeah I would really love to see that the discussion so I mean it's interesting too but not for games that much yeah and even in the in the app space I've seen the shape of subscriptions change a lot so you see a lot of like the subscriptions being like differing uh like you know sort of non-stand like not what you'd expect in terms of the regularity of the the recurring payment and just experimenting with that as I've seen companies like unlock a lot more revenue which is playing around with different time frames for the subscription so it's not and then having different tiers of the subscriptions I think yeah my sense is like actually this is a good this is maybe a good follow question but like my sense is like where you know this is so use case specific and so context dependent that you just have to try a bunch of stuff yeah and like gaming companies tend to be pretty bad at that I think just because like because gaming companies I you know I get yelled at whenever I say this but I think it's true gaming companies are not led by product managers or let's let's say games are not led by product managers games are led by producers yes exactly producers wear burais and they see the game as their canvas yeah to express their artistic vision they're not like a PM you know go walk into an app company and talk to the PM and you say I want to change the onboarding flow and you know do this this and he's okay well we'll test it yeah you say that to a gaming producer and they'll yell at you don't touch my baby this is art I've made art you don't understand it you know you brute you buffoon and so like it's just you don't have that and you know look I get yelled at all the time because people like well we experiment with everything and you know we have no sacred cows okay fine you're the exception usually they're not yeah let's say you are but I mean for the most part in the main dealing with producers tends to be kind of excruciating because they don't want to change anything everything has been summoned from you know some deep well of artistic insight that can never be questioned and you know if you as like the analytics guy like I was for a long time try to push like yeah why don't we try this or just have something set up where that allows us to test different things they just reject that out of hand yeah well I remember this discussion when I had like the actual producers guys I see let's say five placements for ads you we can easily implement that and it's like oh don't even tell me like the gravity is growing I mean call me when when is the other way around and when it's gonna be decreasing it's like then after a couple of years then it implemented it as in then during like four or five millions on top of the revenue that they were earning as a guy still really kind of you know realize like it could be already done oh no no no no no no no so like yeah and this is so I know this is a very tough discussion to happen always the I when I see the on different onboardings in the ops business on the ops pace it's insane like how many different variations they're testing just to kind of get better and like the higher conversions I haven't seen these types of A/B tests for let's say special off I mean kind of special offers yes maybe messaging yes but then it's not exactly the same and I can yeah people I can argue like on testing onboarding on apps is very it's easier than testing onboarding and gaming and tutorial and stuff but all the live of things they can be tested so much until forever and I didn't see like that happening that often exactly because because of what you just said it's interesting and it should be it should be tested basically everything even even when when I'm talking like to my team and then producing creatives and we're just having maybe brainstorming and then like people from the from the actual product that they're just gonna then tell me their feedback for creatives and guys I don't want to know your feedback right yeah you you I don't want to know what you think about the creatives because this is gonna be wild and every time they see I'll add to like oh my god we can't this again this is my baby I this can't look like this needs to weigh more polish those guys no how about no let's just sit out then we can we can talk about yeah let me don't get me started on that I mean that is you know this is the toughest conversations I've had about creative I mean you end up having you know really challenging conversations just about call it brand integrity oh certainly certainly like like like fidelity in terms of like representing the actual gameplay and we can we can talk about that because I got a question about that too but someone submitted a question about fake game that's you know you've been pretty vocal about it recently but what I would respond with is like look if you want to provide feedback on every ad we're gonna be here all week you understand that I'm gonna deploy 200 ads this week like there's no time I can't possibly collect your feedback on every single one like we're gonna test stuff and see what works on the brand suitability side yes I accept that and I'm happy to have that discussion and you just give me a list of things that are red lines that I won't cross and that's fine like that I'm totally willing to do that like that's the easiest way to do it but I need to be able to test too many concepts much less variance a week for you to be able to give feedback on any given thing and if you just eliminate things all you're doing is you're reducing that scope of performance I mean because ultimately that's what it is like you're we're gonna find stuff that works and it's some set of coordinates on some you know multi-dimensional plane that I don't even really think it's interesting to try to dissect if it works it worked all that tells me and I mean this is where I get a lot of pushback too I am focused on the process I'm not focused on the output the output work that means the process worked didn't mean that there's something to learn from the output that's been my position for a long time but it's even more so my position now because of the ramp up and volume that you have to produce so if the creative work then it was winter great that means the process produced something that worked now what I care about is the consistency of the winrate I don't care about what the creative looked like and if you say well the creative work because of xyz thing it had a red tint or it had a tank or had a dog I say that's you can't know that you can't possibly know that what I know is that the process produced something that worked and if the hit rate stayed the same and the rate of change is increasing in favor of more winners that's what I care about not the actual output and I'm not gonna try to dissect the output and I'm not certainly not gonna try to cycle analyze the person that clicked on it what I'm gonna say is like there's too many variables here for me to ever be able to comprehend why someone clicked it what I care about is the process if the hit rate is steady or increasing the process works that is yes or no yeah 100% is then yeah we can enter the never ending feedback loop and then suddenly it's like nothing is going to win because we're just stacking the feedback loop forever and then we're not testing enough and I'm yeah I'm also talking about you need to just test the volumes of creatives now it's like I mean there's no other way unfortunately and if the creative looks like sh** it usually keeps performing better than the high-polished ones because it doesn't look like an ad so I don't really care and sometimes when I say oh let's just you know because I really care about the people in the within the company and I say okay let's just review this afterwards I know I made a very big mistake because then that's exactly the never ending feedback loop we don't we want to avoid and then I was like okay we got to stop let's just get back to the testing and then we can we can talk after we get some data in because that's it that's pretty much it you know those channels your colleagues keep bragging about the ones getting all the credit yeah they might be doing squat attribution makes every channel look like a hero even when it's a zero incremental tells you who's actually doing the work it's like a lie detector for your marketing budget start using incremental today get your demo at incremental dot com that's i n c r m n t a l dot com mention that you came through the mobile dev memo podcast for a special 15% discount for the first six months so we did get a question about fake ads I'm going to adapt it to the conversation but but so but there is a red line right I mean there is a red line here I mean some of these ads have gotten perverse and disturbed oh yeah and I don't I wouldn't feel comfortable associating my company or my game with no certainly games that are designed for you know primarily to be played by well I mean kids games are one thing I mean kids games you can kind of put that to decide because I don't really think there are that many successful studios making like kids focused games I mean a lot of the you know for the most part I think you're targeting you know 40 plus women parents anyway yeah exactly even if it's kids game you're targeting or yeah like parents but of course I don't really like like producing sexy sad like anything grows it's just yeah I mean even like the ethical reasons obviously I don't want to do it fake ads or missing ads I don't care that much I also like it needs to have like certain visuals and logic behind let's say the runner games mechanics 4x did these have different like specific elements within the within those ads to make it work but yes like anything which is like freezing families oh yeah freezing babies and like oh my god like come on I can see how it works and why it works but oh my I tried to stay away from that right I mean you know there's a lot of things that you know could could be you know commercially viable that we just just allow in our society yeah yeah no so like I mean some of these ads are are truly perverse yeah it's terrible it's terrible to watch but then again like people are just screaming oh why don't just you know the the platforms don't just band this and then it's like guys they're making money out of these like why would they ever ban anything like this it's just it's never gonna happen and one exactly like amazing example was like one of our friends like Paul West he said like some of their competitors they were using even like their ads with his face on in the video personal face yeah and he was like guys like can you take this down like oh we need more evidence like what more evidence do you need it's this is my face which was in the creative's that our company they're stole like guys come on no we need more evidence so it's like it's it's just a trolling I hope so I really hope so yeah so yeah they just blood first they don't really care that much so why would they and these is just like the great example of it so I'll tell a quick quick story this I mean this is recent like someone messaged me on the mobile demo slack like I don't know two months ago and I had published a course like years ago yeah that was like pretty expensive and I you know it was up for a couple years and I looked at it like a year ago and I was like you know what this isn't I'm not proud of this anymore it's just dated like it just wasn't it just it just it wasn't current and so I took it down like I you know deactivated or whatever and the reason this person reached out was because like they had an account and they tried to like log in and it was it was down and so I was like okay so I just sent them the videos and they said by the way there's a website selling your course for $99 and like my course was like almost a thousand oh I went I went to the website and it had the original price you know on it and then it had just a big line through it and it's like oh you're in luck this is on like 90% discount and I was like what is this and so I looked up like how do you how can I get this taken down and so Google has a way to you know submit a petition so they'll at least exclude it from search right and so I said hey this is my course like it's got my name on it yeah and they you could see the screenshot of you know the video and it's got my face in it I'm like that's me can you please and I don't approve of this can you just take it down and they're like how how and they know someone respond like how do we know it's you and so I just took a picture of my face in front of the screen with the picture of my face on it right like I was like see it's me it's the same brand they just never responded yeah well there you go it's it's because what people do these days it's especially companies from China they just pretty much steal the creatives that you're running and they just crop and the end color yeah just remove the end cars from the actual video and just run it as their own video it works that's like the worst part of that's the whole exercise it actually works and some of the the new wave of the social casinos like the top cycle and carnival tycoons which have the different like different onboarding but then it's just pretty much slot machine afterwards they're using creatives from different games which are out idle games and it works so well so I was like okay let's test it's test this out so my team made like 10 videos for for my let's say plant the identification app or let's say $5 CPIs I stole some or like let's say it's yeah I just downloaded some of the plant apps creatives tested against each other and those stolen creatives have like $1.2 CPI and I was like oh okay interesting so that's why people are stealing the creatives because actually if you find a good one that fits whatever you are running that actually can work way way better than the new creatives is it okay I don't think so but unfortunately people found out about this long time ago and now I can see it they crossed the whole gaming industry so that's like that's I would say like that's where we drove road line up even worse than fake ads like stealing each other's creatives which is the worst case scenario I guess well so that's actually at least another question again I'm going to adapt it to the conversation but so how long do you get like let's say you get a creative out and you know it's just how performs everything it's it's a massive winner like how long do you get to keep that to yourself like before someone discovers it and rips it off and clones it and I think that's just the matter of like a week maybe well yeah depends on like who are your competitors if your competitors are century games then you have maybe couple of days because I know because I know some of my friends from from Turkey they said every creative reproduce like it's it's basically after a couple of days it's already on on century games account and just adapted to their their their games so it's that quick obviously if you have 400 people in the creative team it's quite easy to uncover new teams and creative winners so yeah but then I think even now with the with the picks of law guys and their creatives I think now we are starting to see after their huge success starting to see the the convery belts and their kind of little bit of their mechanics in different games genres like forex and strategy games so if it's the same genre I would say weeks if it's a genre maybe a couple months but yeah it's not like 2014 or 15 no unfortunately unfortunately I'm not sure I can't decide so do do playables insulate you do they act as a defense so little bit because it's just harder to make a playable or no because I mean those are you can basically make them in the same amount of time as a video now yeah I think it's you can make them as well let's say you can make it in like two weeks if you have big team the needs it can be even less than that which all the big companies have but even now like some tools well by included we have like 150 templates so you can just take up template and you have the playable out out there in like a day pretty much and if I when I I saw the jigsaw it there pretty much scaling which is again just like puzzle game and it's pretty much xxo puzzle 3 by 3 or 4 by 4 does matter I just took one of the best performing static images they had for a hidden object game I took that playable put it like to the template put it on on app loving suddenly the best performing playable out of all of the in a couple of days and scale like five x budget and even the Rossi they explored it so you don't really need even weeks anymore that's the scary part is it harder to clone a playable because I mean with the with the video how you can download the video yeah it's a little bit yeah it's harder it's harder to clone the playable you can copy that you just need to swap the assets so yeah that's that's that's the little bit the hardest part and is that why you think playables are becoming a bigger portion of budgets for some studios I think because of Apple I mean rather than just because of that because Apple is already 50% well ish depends on who you talk to but pretty big portion of the of the spent and you need absolutely like playables for Apple and and he when when I was amplified they said top companies produce 60 playbles per month which which is insane but I guess you know like it's like the White House Revivals right while matches and all the big guys but it's a huge number it's a huge number yeah right it's a huge number but it's like a high number of creatives in general to do success and and because success is the same thing for Apple and end the playbles so right now for me I'm just doing one like two free playbles a month at least I do scenario is like five and plus what this is a question we got what tools are you using for creative production what are the what are the kind of like most current most modern tools for producing creatives oh geez I mean where do I start I actually just just five bothers nerdica about the pool and the the actual step-by-step so it's anything from all the AI stuff usually like the cloud chain GPD and Gemini tool the Adobe After Effects blender and regular stuff for for the motion designers but if I am producing a playable a playable video I'm just using all the all the cling and then the V3 pretty much AI stuff and now I'm not working pretty much with the layer layer AI which kind of combines all the all the tools out there so how automatic can I get can I get fully automated it can get fully automated I'm now actually building one one workflow which is pretty much connected to the tasty travels QD animal AI videos which are basically everywhere so now I build this pipeline and I want to automate like fully automated so I'm I have my own game assets I want to to transform these assets with AI to the QD animals and then pretty much add a slide animation on top of it and then stitch together add the end card and then export is like five steps workflow easily done have you seen CD dance too oh it's it's all my Twitter and I also saw the Disney lawsuit against the fight yeah well they yeah well they also did you see the video is the the CD dance produced fight between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and and that immediately prompted a lawsuit yeah yeah yeah yeah I saw also the Wolverine versus Superman and and even Darth Vader versus Thanos I was like oh my god this is exactly what I needed so funny by so so great I mean like the production value oh my god it's insane there was one of it was a curburentusiasm you know clip that was produced with CD dance too and you you wouldn't be able to tell yeah that was not and it was the the person paced at the prompt it was like a sentence and it produced a 30 second and it was funny it was like it came out of the like it came out of the the show I mean it's kind of it's this rendering a kind of bizarre strange new era here but but I think once you can get that hooked up for the purposes I don't know where you can access to dance to right now I was I was trying to plan around the last night I couldn't find anywhere where you could actually get access to it but it's still it's still beta and you still like yeah he'd buy the only but once you get that into a production workflow I mean we're talking like we're talking like real 3d render like live footage essentially that you're being able to add to your your creative yeah 100% even like with the genie free that was launched yeah recently I don't think it's it's gonna like this show games I would rather use this for like building worlds for the creative right I'd be just like it's the way way better a usage of of that product the tools that I'm using now with like all the like the the article I mentioned it's pretty much talking about like the one video would take me or the guys from my team like a week now it's done let's say a day which because then you need to have like a professional voiceover or whatever else right what if seeking style and then like post production all the all the AI like movements and it's a speeds I've pretty much everything if like if you know how to use it more efficiently but then that's it I mean that's a huge help what about the platform tools like are you using any Facebook's creative production tools for games I feel like that's more for e-commerce it's more for e-commerce I tried to use it for for games or some like experiments it's not there yet it's not there yet but think about it you're talking to Facebook about the exactities like if they can build a proper tool for for videos even while using their own data to kind of let's say like showcase what is actually working on the platform for different genres because for small teams and small developers they don't have like big creative teams they have no idea what to do and if they can use their data to just help these guys to spend more and show them like what works and they don't even really need to leave the platform yeah sounds sounds interesting no I mean they absolutely should I I'm a little surprised they've seen to be moving very slowly I would expect them to have already launched these tools for for game advertisers I mean that's that's one of the reasons why I think they're poised for like a big year with gaming because I think they have a lot of stuff that they could launch very easily that would just kind of get them to a state where they're providing functionality that some of these studios just don't have and that's what's going to unlock net new ua spend not just incrementally I mean incrementally new ua spend but like big chunks of it from studios that just don't have those capabilities exactly yeah that was that was exactly my pitch today like guys like if you want to grow again and there I mean sort of an extent to grow again like to have more small size developers and there is a lot of them I mean this is exactly how because they don't need to leave the platform and they need they need creatives I mean they need a lot of creatives and this is how easily can build that analytics what are you using for analytics what's what's state of play what's what's the best of the best of analytics right now oh I mean there's usually I plug myself into whatever company is using so there's usually mmp and then looker or anything for for actual dashboards and then whatever like amplitude and what else I mean obviously Firebase but that's pretty much usually like internal internal stuff so just kind of Firebase plus mmp plus maybe some internal yeah internal stuff yeah internal dashboarding tools and then that's pretty much it all right what about competitive analysis what are you using for competitive analysis oh I usually do I mean if I have if you have paid access to sensor tower that's my go to usually if you don't then I'm you know like as library Google transparency and tiktok and I use even tiktok for trends pretty much but since you know we're doing the the computer at least creative analysis for for podcasts like I'm always in sensor tower got it let me talk about tiktok oh how do you feel about tiktok for gaming oh it's my let's say third best oh it depends on the game but it's like second or third best channel for for iOS really yeah wow really well yeah behind up what's three Google then then meta yeah then yeah usually Facebook is on the second or third spot but well tiktok is always up there with smart plus and then the tiktok one creatives mean amazing still works wow that's surprising yeah and it doesn't matter really like by like what kind of genre it works for me for hidden object for matchery for strategy as well yeah there's there's smart plus hasn't proved a lot you know when they first launched it I was a little bit skeptical didn't didn't do much terrible what's terrible always interesting to see how tiktok evolved over time and especially even like now in last four four months yeah I mean I had a lot of conversations with people that where you know they kind of thought that tiktok had kind of pressed pause on doing anything like really innovative because they just didn't know what the status of the company was going to be yeah I don't know if I find that's I didn't hear that from anybody in tiktok but I heard that from people who apparently new people in tiktok that we're saying that okay I found that a little hard to believe because I felt like well you still can exist I mean no matter what I but and it felt like I mean Trump said I mean you know before even got elected that he was he was going to find a way to not ban tiktok so I didn't feel like there was a huge risk there but yeah and I it's improved tiktok some proved a lot for other categories I don't have too much access to it on the gaming side but okay it sounds like it performs well yeah all right and then this one I'm just really curious to hear what you have to say so what genre are you most excited about this year what do you think it's going to be a breakout or what do you think it's going to be just capturing the most revenue or or was it just you know nothing's going to change I don't think a lot's going to change I know there's at least 104 X games coming from China to the store this year for all my friends which is so that's going to be an interesting battle there but then like there's the first genre that works really well then the second one is metry great what else do we have honestly I'm pretty skeptical I have anything else where do you think hybrid casual sits it sits right before metry because even all like these new titles that are growing IAP revenues are way more close to casual than the hybrid casual that was let's say two years ago so it was a stepping stone towards casual games and I'm pretty sure like the the pizza flow is the the great example it is still close to hypercars but way more casual than the rest that's why they're earning so much money on IAP site right mt there were a couple questions that we didn't get to just have to bring you back again yes but appreciate this this is great we covered a lot of ground thanks so much and you know we feel free to plug your stuff now where can people find you where can they consume your your wisdom and your insight yeah just link in matielan church or it's actually the brutal honest newsletter which is lanchurch.substag.com and yeah just hit me up on LinkedIn or just go to two and a half gamers on youtube and then subscribe there thank you very much thank you so much good to see you good see you thanks [BLANK_AUDIO]