so first of all welcome everybody uh we have the latest crossover collaboration between game makers and two and a half Gamers today yes we discuss a recent post written by Justin ya discussing one of the most successful game studios of last year and continuing on to this year which is first fun aka funfly the developer behind the hit Top grossing game last war survival but in this discussion today we're going to be talking about not only first fun but also River game what is that relationship how are these two companies related and what is behind their billion dooll strategy and so to discuss this very interesting and secretive topic we have for you myself Joseph Kim CE of Leela games uh building shooter game but prior to this I was in publishing at Sega NBC Universal but more appropriate to the discussion at hand I also worked at fun plus and led the development of the game King Of Avalon which became a top grossing game and many of the reskins or our Forex games and helped uh you know fun plus uh kind of like move in the direction of of Forex we also have Justin ya who wrote the post that will be associated with discussion is about background Investment Banking and private Equity but U most recently he's also been writing for novic and is now an NBA candidate at Wharton no comment on getting an NBA for you Justin I'm sorry to hear about that but you know it's all good and from Two and a Half Gamers we have both mate lerich and yako Brar nice two of the two and a half Gamers you know other guys yeah we are the two because well the half gamer when we talk about Forex is never there because there's no there basically no ads so right so many of you guys already know mate longtime UA guy runs a UA agency along with his nobs newsletter and founding and being a co-host on Two and a Half Gamers also we've got yakob also from Two and a Half Gamers uh extensive background in game design at pixel Federation also supercale now as a freelance cons working with many of the world's best companies and so that's your crew and you know ironically as the guy who actually worked on a Forex game I'm probably the least up toate on what the hell is going on with Forex games although you know we did uh do a podcast before that was very popular uh with Monte we had that collab before where we talked about the whole strategy of you know trying to take like hyper casual Concepts bringing them in and all that kind of stuff uh if you miss that we'll put some links in the show notes but this is our crew we will be talking about this topic and so maybe I could hand it over to you Justin to like set up the context of History what the hell's going on and to help us understand more about this stuff mon do you have something say start about the history I kind of had post where I was talking about first fun and River game as a one company and there were people in the comments like well you got it wrong this is a different company it's not the same like only if you know like yeah there's a lot of different yeah I think first first fun is the entity that is in Singapore I guess funfly is the Hong Kong entity and then companies it's the same thing as we discussed top girl which is developed by well top for fun but it's it changed their company name on stores like five times already so it's like but we have some friend it's that up for fun by the way up for fun nice okay but I'm sure it's all legit right so uh everything's legit always so yeah nice yeah so like there's like like a million developer accounts and like many different entities but like if you actually play the game you realize it's the exact same gameplay same design same art like same stuff recycled art assets as well this goes this goes by the way all the way back to machine zone They also were doing this like Epic War epic time or whatever where the like mobile strike or the other accounts like it was not game of war was just alone there sitting in the portfolio wait when you have the the Forex uh core then like why rain went the wheel you just reskin but yeah we'll get there we'll get there it's not reskinning anymore yeah all right uh so let me let me dive into it um but like before we start like let's turn back the clock a little bit um as we know like first fun River game we've discussed sort of the same entity um but this partnership actually like goes back a very very long time uh so the founders actually met at this company called Alex technology uh which was a very successful Chinese game developer and they actually initially started by making games for social platforms uh their first like hit game was a game called Happy Farm which actually looks a lot like Farmville if you take a look at it and um that got took off um in like I think Asia as well as some other regions and um that helped them get some money from tenson in 2009 uh that helped them expand Beyond social platforms into other platforms as well like into Mobile specifically and I think over time they became known for their expertise with Forex games and especially their ability to ship those games globally as well and in 2013 they launched a game called Clash of Kings uh which grossed over a billion dollars over its lifetime and early on it showed a lot of Promise so they actually sold the business shortly thereafter to a Chinese strategic which was trying to build mobile games uh for $400 million uh so it was an amazing exit for the founding team and obviously his investors like tensent obviously loves these guys and um After exiting I think they had pretty long non-c competes like I read somewhere there it was like five years long so the founder of first fund uh was the founding CTO of Alex technology he spun out and found his own Venture Capital firm called ch Capital which has over a billion dollars asset under ad ad management and um they backed Moon uh which was sold to B dance in 2021 for $4 billion also back to River game which is other main character in our story and which was founded by an early Alex technology PM so around 2020 I think the founder started getting like the founder of first fund started getting the itch again he was like oh my non-compete is over maybe I'll start something um so he started first fund and quickly got some money from his old friends at 10cent and I think he took some of that money and acquired a significant minority stake in River game like 40% stake or so uh that really formalized their partnership and you can sort of see it in their games and um I don't think like there's much information online about how they exactly work together today but it's very clear if you play their game like it's all the same they're working together very very closely like their Flagship title last war was sort of built off of the river game IP of top war and then launched under like the first fun name and um sort of like it's really interesting how they're looking to redefine the Forex genre and like now they have like three of the top 10 Forex games using this like sort of same Playbook of like combining UA and the product together and having it come together and uh before we let uh mat dive into the UA magic I'll pass it off to Jacob wait wait wait wait wait wait it's m m just who just right there ah he's going to he's going it's fine don't worry don't worry yeah for me for that but um make a lot of fun of it always I'll pass it off to Jacob whose names is easier to pronounce played a lot of these games disc business mat before yeah before we go there I think this is really really interesting stuff that you can't really find anywhere basically on the Internet only thing that we like how we know these teams are kind of connected that we talk to to Heaven from Century games and he said look man like they know they know each other they know each other quite well from backing the days so this is this is quite interesting how the whole kind of setup is is done yeah like he actually introduced us to River game CMO because these two guys are basically AR Rivals there but they're very good friends they were doing this silly photo where one was smiling the other was not like oh this will be us next year this is you 2023 this is me 2025 yeah and you guys know the relationship also between centy and fun plus right yeah so there there there's all these they're they're very well connected there it's uh yeah it's a small Ro very it's a small Ro yeah it's a small Ro it's basically the street of Forex OG people all doing their games and all knowing each other like a small the thing is now what uh what river game or first fun is doing they have not only last for but dark war as well top heroes and last war z or whatever that's that's something which is in the soft Lounge yeah the one yeah that would be briefly discussed and then there is another pop heroes followup so it's like it's really becoming interesting even more in Forex they're cementing themselves on the top spot it's insane yeah the just to just to get that right top heroes is is the one game and then top heroes idle battle AFK RPG is the other one if if I understand and I didn't even say top four so there you go it's like it's five games already anyway anyway it's fine yeah that's just pretty pretty pretty cool that's why I think uh Century games is a little bit behind so the like high seas hero it's a new thing but it needs to really catch up quickly because even though you you may like say like white out survival made like 8 million a day like few a few days ago or weeks ago but it's not enough yeah doing TR yeah the I think the interesting thing though is that from all I can tell uh everyone is going full focus on Forex there's there's no like oh wait a minute maybe maybe with you know if fingerprinting goes away maybe this maybe that they're like no no no no no uh nobody cares we're going all all in on Forex we're investing we're doubling tripling down so it does seem like uh like the the guys that are in the space are basically very enthusiastic and very optimistic about the growth of the space or the rest of the market just sucks well that's that's true that's true as well but the thing is we are discussing here Forex and when when when you talk to to other people in the industry like oh my God Forex BL they are not even there yet they think still like Forex is from the yeah Game of War days but we are so far ahead of that era and now when we talk about Forex and all of these different onboarding situations that that they Implement in the game or different themes art styles whatever else I'm going to show you with dark war especially and their UA this is just us let product design it's just like this is it this is where we are at the moment yeah but you need to do it right because there are examples like if you take for instance the New Age of Empires Forex game just like that's not how you do it guys it's just like even though you're no this is not how you do it and the game's basically dying as we speak yeah because that's like uh it's mandatory now to to build the game around the the onboarding and like that's the the key so all the fingerprinting and all of the priv changes nobody cares like nobody cares like you build basically now games and and events and onboarding and everything just to around the UA and around the algorithms let's think about it you need to be able to send such a big amount of events from the game to Facebook to uplo especially to Google Tik Tok wherever and you need to take that into consideration when you are all like already when you're building the game and when where and when can you do it ideally in onboarding so that's why you have the core which is Forex and that you can squeeze the money out of basically everybody and then you you you borrow the on boarding from like any other game that can have low cpis pretty much like that's the key so M you you mentioned that there are a number of Innovations in Forex uh clearly like the the UA sort of top of funnel to a game play integration trick is there um yakob mate are there any other like other tricks that or advances that you think we should call out specifically um yeah like having a very good Forex game is because because I think like this is the issue here also that people just focus on this like UA tricks on the beginning and everybody's talking like we are also talking just about that but again needs to be like Forex first in a way so that's important like just just to I want to bring up this article that uh we got from Ying friend that we met in Shanghai where he talks about like few metrics just like a metrics to kind of look for in order to understand how Forex works and it will I guess smoothly go into the marketing part so first is the the part where he talks about that Forex is based on Forex servers it's not one game for everybody is Forex servers and these kingdoms are kind of working with their own ecology and this is super important because you create a new server literally like every 3 days and you try to stuff that server with new players and then because after those three days it doesn't matter let's say it doesn't make sense to put in new players because everybody is so far ahead you start the new server because a lot of these things are about having an equal starting point where where at some point people in the Kingdom get so far away from each other so you're basically you can't nothing compared to the W yeah you can't play you're just like like you know trying like an end beating an elephant basically so you need to continuously create different servers in order to kind of keep this equalized position which is again driven driving the UA and then the other thing are the Dynamics of the server itself how to can of keep it running and how to know if it's if it's dying or not dying because uh a lot of it goes into the social interaction between the alliances and between the tensions of as they're expanding on the map you know they're bumping into each other killing each other so on so forth blah blah blah all these like social dynamics we seen this many times working very well even in games that are what was it the Empire strike thing Empire take I forgot the name Empire takeover which literally has zero UA makes half a million a month fight other yeah yeah exactly so that that's like the strength of it like these social dynamics that works there but again you can just kind of check the benchmarks there to know that basically after day 30 usually the whole server is just paying players because everybody else just like gets sto to the ground and then uh n n pretty much goes into like direct examples like how to count it up by just checking the alliances on the server and the leaderboards and by that kind of estimate you can get a good kind of round down of okay if this server is alive or not and then then just like all of these metrics that he's pretty much going around where like how much can you know spend people and blah blah blah don't don't want to go like in super details but pretty much what it means that you end up with something like 30 to 80k uh installs for a day for one server which is the D demand that you're going for because it's just so high and the CPI in Forex is so high yeah so and that's that's that's like the just the starting default point to can enter the game and that's why we go into the second part of this whole thing think which is why are we just you know going after UA and taking down the CPA as much as we want with different implementations of course on boarding and Hyper casual systems basically yeah and I I think the point that you're making yakob in terms of like the how important server and player management is is something that uh you know I'd love to see this post I've never seen anyone write about it but you know and the word on the street is that like the main reason that most people attribute to the failure of of Wars they like oh they they inflated their economy and they basically leave it at that but then you you ask well why did they inflate their economy why were they giving such massive sales and discounts well it's because to the point that you were talking about you've got all these super killer whales and everybody else in the middle got nuked and so then you're trying to take the lower level and get them high enough so that they can be the sheep for the Wolves at the top right and and so like yeah it was like it's called feeding the whales that was Lally the UA T yeah yeah so like if somebody has written about this I mean that's just pure gold because I I've never seen anyone write about it so yeah we we should definitely we We'll add the links to whatever that that post is in in the show notes and if anyone is a a PM or a systems designer you you absolutely have to be aware of these these kinds of issues for sure yeah like it's it's again it creates a very big tension that's what he talks about in the article on the company where like again literally citing this the remaining users are mostly acquired by blah blah blah uh Campaign which may cost 50 to $300 per inst yeah exactly this this is the thing we're talking about $50 to $300 per one install like people are still super surprised when I talk about how really expensive it is in match free or merch like $50 to $80 for purchase campaign I like oh my God no like yeah well this is not 2 13 anymore where it's like you you you were buying CPI campaigns for $5 and that was already super expensive like just wake up 2025 it's not going to get any better hly any better like this is this is the reality yeah and then you know you just count the numbers if the players are so so expensive and then you need 30 to 80k downloads a day in order to stuff that server up yeah a lot of money on a daily basis and that's but the thing is uh with all these like we talk about this as a trick like UA trick you use the the hyper casual but it's not trick anymore it's like it's it's really baked in the game like you play you have to play you have to play those uh Hy let's call it hyper casual levels and all these GES mechanic you need really need to play it so it's not it's not fake anymore it's just it's it's not called mini games as it was back in the days with garden scaves and homecapes it's just it's another core and that's it it's just drives down the CP Ando up the funnel because of how actual G on the looks like which is brought brought from the hyper casual like that's that's the main thing and we know that from Total battle which is also a Forex game which is the only Forex game top seven not from China and it's it's from our friends from score Warrior they they were kind of trying to nail this for a long long time and trying to find like what kind of mini game is is going to work and this game is already eight years old and they started scaling like a couple of years ago back so because they were trying to figure it out yeah yeah exactly just like to to to syn this in it's like a 2017 game release so which is like now years old and it after those 8 years old is hitting record revenue of half million a day so just just still this tells you how how like strong the strategy is if executed it like that's uh where it's it's actually growing like that's when they figured out the actual combination of the mini well onboarding yeah yeah yeah so in in Revenue size for last 30 days they are basically on seven with something like 20 20 and a half a million a month but still like nothing compared to last four which is 10 times bigger literally 10 times bigger that's that's the we yeah and I mean I I think it's important to underscore that like some of these you know we we we we can kind of be a little bit glib and just you know kind of hand wve and call them tricks and dismiss them but like uh it literally means the difference between success and failure and like you know people may or may not know I we may have already talked about this mate but um white out survival was actually a failed game right so it was I I think it was like a zombie game or a mafia game or something like that and then the the theme Frozen City and yeah the taking drawing from Frozen City because they're like oh look look look at all the you know look at the metrics for Frozen City so that literally made the difference between success and failure and not only like a small success it's like a massive top grossing success right and so um I I think that kind of though begs a question so we had I would say in like the the last um the wave before this was we saw a wave of themes right it was all about reskins and like you know whether it's like game of war to mobile strike to Final Fantasy and fun fun plus or had you know um king of avyon to state of survival to uh I think they also tried a um a pirate ship kind of boat thing too they had a dinosaur thing but it was all themes and then now we've got like the the you know UA game hyper casual game ation um integrating like that that that that initial onboarding part so then what's next did I I don't know how how would you guys do you think there's more room to run on this current current Trend or are we gonna have to shift to the next Trend um I would I would pretty much like categorize like the Forex era of like what you just said pretty much which which ended with something like rise of Kingdoms like rise of Kingdoms I would consider kind of yeah the the last of the yeah yeah the the old generation of forex's where they implemented Heroes gacha very Sleek super cish UI like very good experience and again it was at its height it was doing like three million a day somewhere in start of 2021 and that's I guess the the era of Forex still going and straight without additional stuff to kind of because it was like the hide of Corona cpis were completely different stuff like that so yeah all the external factors afterwards as you can also see here on the chart where pretty much from its height from April 2021 it just went down to something like a thir of it scale of for whatever it's the time where all of these other kind of big Chinese L is also Chinese of course but I would say the second generation of forex's comes in which are designed with the premise that the Forex is like up to par with everything that was done before all the knowledge everything is just like up to part it's like nothing's there but the important part is that uh where where we are uh yeah last four so that's what launched June 2023 Yes somewhere there where UA is the main focus and U you you are missing one big Point Mr Mr yakob over here because before last war there is Evon and where the [ __ ] you have Evon in these grass and sensor Tower Mr yakob that's that's because what they did and they saw what playrix is doing they started doing pull the pins and start and implemented in the game so like that's very very important and that's exactly where they started scaling but check this yeah yeah 2021 where lit's rise of kingdom was at it height it was one1 of it it was 300K a month but then again 2022 2023 it went on its full scale where it's like bought like one million a day pull the pin that's that's there but pull the pin pull the pin is still like just uh I would say it's like Pikachu to Raichu basically where it's just the first stage of like trying to kind of you know do the onboarding more like fake is yes but then both white out survival both last war both like all of these other Chinese games are doing it now as an integral part of the game it's not any more gimmick it's an integral part of the game and it stretches through the whole game white I would I would argue it's not exactly like last war because the white out Survival on boarding is just isn't onboarding it's frozen City and that's it and then you have Forex but in last war you actually you have another core right kind of it's it's a last war unlocks the world much sooner yeah but you have still the the the hyper casual or Gates mechanic gameplay what what do you have in in white white out survival you have only Forex id id idle it's idle idle like it's exactly the same as if we go to High yeah we'll get there yeah there Forex by the way so this is high SE hero which is the latest iteration on the market of this because this is now three cores not two because if I click here even though it looks looks like fallout shelter this is basically Frozen City different skin yeah with different Visual and 2D thing but if if I go like stuff like here or or you you see like the reactor here that I can change engine and stuff it's the same as Frozen City basically it's it's the same this is the Forex map with the world again the same we all know this part but the main main start as this start is Legend of mushroom so they basically layered it with Legend of mushroom then Frozen City and white out Forex part so it's basically white out survival plus Legend of mushroom on top so you actually go through three cores now this is the game that hasn't been scaled yet it's doing 40K a day which is I guess just the maintenance mode where Century games is trying to complete so this this is the next Generation JK when you ask like where are we going if it works if it works no no no no no there is no if it works you look at the charts last were five games Century games one so this this absolutely has to work this has to work there's no there's no way about like yeah it's just matter of time not if okay so the next is multiple basically yeah we we literally got told by Century game CEO who said that on my post that like yeah we still figuring it out than words on the [ __ ] is like this was RPG game before but Forex you can squeeze way more out of the players and you already know Forex from the white out survival so yeah so so this is one thing where I would say the Evol solution is going again to be more hidden more more kind of total addressable Market where you're taking different players from different genres and trying to you know squeeze them into the Forex score where in the end they meet with this like high profitable LTV engine which is Forex and then there's the other one and we go back to our image here which is topgirl by the way just to kind of validate this picture this is the chart that you're talking about this was released November last year and it's currently doing 200k yeah more than 200 what happened to that big drop there was a problem with abolutely yeah I don't know probably some kind technical problems I would say like I don't know if it's also on download yeah oh or maybe it's to you I got I still see I still see those I still see those but yeah yeah I I don't know what's happening here but it's very suspicious but anyway it's scaled up and the thing here is the other way to do Forex which is completely hide the Forex and never even talk about it and even though it looks like a Forex you just take completely different naming team everything so here for instance this game is based on the premise that you are running uh as a manager you are running a pop group of girls that you get from gacha and they have different uh AI generated visuals or whatever they porn basically slapped on Forex yeah like dating stuff they they like text you and and and so on I don't know where's the where's the messenger yeah where they like send you AI pictures and stuff like that that these guys really went full on AI on on this there's even the the part where like if you record with them it's the game starts to play um like um videos of K-pop Stolen videos K-pop craphy yeah kidding like this is how it is basically so you see the effort the guys put into this in order to masquerade the part of it and instead of soldiers you're creating fans instead of monsters on the map you're going against shopping malls and hotels instead of whatever players you're like defeating stadiums or like it's all within this like pop group whatever if you don't really know like you are playing Forex and you are just a regular type of player you wouldn't even notice that you you will never say this is Forex there's not even like oneit yeah and and the whole mechan by the way it's like very streamlined because usually you would expect Forex like I can't skip that okay I can't skip that because I'm C Level 25 or vifp sorry for that uh but if we go here just to kind of show you yeah so media reviews on the song Blah Blah Blah also like all all of these that it doesn't make any sense you just click you just click and in the beginning it starts as an idler again the the Y maybe you can help me understand though because again I'm I'm an old school Forex guy so the the the real the beauty of Forex when we were working on it was basically around the economy right because unlike a like a gotcha driven game you have the ability to have a consumable economy where you're building a lot of troops and you have like these build war Cycles where you're building troops and then uh you're going to war which drains the economy of all the stuff that you built up and that's how you are able to monetize almost infinitely better than a game with limited progression for example um so in because there's distruction of prop in this example what do you do do you build up a bunch of girls and they battle each other and they die we like how how do you train the economy here the fans the fans die the fans die fans die fans are the soldier I see I see okay so so if we go if you go you go R the shopping mall yeah you go R the shopping mall but I want to go to uh to show you how to actually build up soldiers uh here so you build them by idle sales or whatever and again this is building 800 soldiers per hour 800 fans so so so imagine like this whole screen is basically that whole simplified funnel of a city where you upgrade every single building where you know you need to upgrade and Tech like Tech three the soldiers from like level one level four level whatever this just like super simplified it's super simplified but the mechanics are kind of the same okay where again I have a lot of soldiers and if I go somewhere here on the map and there's whatever concert yeah so we go perform and then uh I guess we can we need to go to like a shiter one so we go perform and then we select uh the girls soldiers so we have 48,000 soldiers we have like five girls is like the pretty much similar to rise of Kingdoms again gacha based Heroes we go by car and uh there we go and that's it and we have two two l in simp look like marching the Army in the on the right hand side which is dark I guess and then the left hand side is just driving a car to shopping mall yeah but this this is exactly the same thing as I'm doing here on the right side where this is Dark World exact same thing nothing so it sounds like you're still able to push on themes a bit you've got the multicores is there anything else in terms of how you guys see the progression of Forex going Justin do you have any thoughts on where where you think Forex is going so one thing is again more onto like adding different cores different kind of fake stuff to kind of widen the funnel the other one is this top girls thing where like completely different team like non battling non whatever simplification to like I guess the premise is creating new forx players which are which are oblivious to the point that they are playing Forex of course like again going around the market market and then uh yeah I guess this is where we end up like I don't see anything else currently working on on the other end because you can't just start with Forex it's just like too complex too hard to get to and it's it's almost like with you show the Forex or you show the Met Tre and cpis are yeah cpis are 120 well 200 like dollars immediately yeah yeah so it's not possible like again if if it would be possible Gam like like this like uh rise of Kingdoms they would be be doing great they're not doing great it's just like the game's great I played it for multiple months just like not possible uh so yeah we end up into the you know UA decides the the product now and because of that the product completely shifts on the onboarding but the end state of it is still you need like a proper Forex destruction of property a map Kingdom social Guild mechanics and all these other now just now now now we talk because he is trying to catch breath so now is your turn because if yeah no um that's how it works yeah so I think like for like I played last war for like 30 days then top heroes for like 60 days and I think like the way that at least first fun is tackling in I can't speak to the broader Market as a whole they're actually trying to like integrate the game Loops like to be more deep and like to keep that illusion for longer so I think for last war I think the gates mechanic went away by week one or get there we'll get probably yeah and I don't really play it I don't really engage with it anymore but at least for top heroes there there was more reason for me to re-engage with that core Loop there was like bosses that I had to kill every single day for like Loot drop and I had to go back and expend my energy and go back to that gameplay Loop every single day so there was more integration I think the retention overall for top heroes is actually better than what I saw for last war yeah and and uh I'm now I'm trying to just kind of jump into into the UA and and part and the creatives because we are talking about this and and the top war that we didn't touch that much they changed the whole tutorial and on boarding like four times throughout the years and now completely completely yeah like you look like you look at this and this like top war this was their like creative like the signature creative they were merging and they were using these merge kind of mechanics because merge was was sexy before and this is what worked for them but then merch got crowded and it wasn't that sexy anymore I mean it's really expensive as well it does create an interesting uh retention profile or iing up on that side but this this was it like they were trying to push the the merge a lot but then they yeah they did all of these hyper casual stuff as well obviously so they were like they went through a big big evolution and that now when you look at what they are doing in terms of the the creatives you wouldn't even notice if it's if it's a top war or if it's a last war they're literally using the same creatives and I mean it makes sense and now there the what what everybody in terms of Forex are doing now and even the the the White House survival or well the high seas hero is just borrowing the the best parts from the from different games and that's what I think dark war is also doing because dark war on the other hand and I'm jumping between the games and dark four on the other hand is just it wi out survival basically with a with a different theme and and they they now doing so well because because Crea and wait second July it's not it's not exactly the the way but they also went through a big big shift so these were like the the creatives they were running before and do you don't see any any kind of AI generated stuff but then what I think we didn't talk about is that all these companies between each other like they steal [ __ ] like you you basically come or they come to the to work like what are we going to create this today for for the for the videos like oh let's see what the other guys were running yesterday so this is to brief and like literally we we thought the dark war started this AI uh kind of Revolution but they actually oh I was digging a little bit deeper and they they didn't they were using all of these so let's stay with dark ore again kind of survival theme nothing look us nothing really AI driven but then uh I think they when they started running was kind of uh November or October and that definitely helped them scale like heavily and I've seen this million on face on the other other stuff and this is pure AI I was when when we were talking about dark War I was able to create this type of video during during the the recording in in in five minutes in five minutes yeah and they they scaled already to half a million a day from October last year and this like this goes well with the theme and uh and this again like very much touches the point with the the top girl where you use AI also the creatives as well and I everywhere so like but again like the dark were like the the integral part of the of of their success again like here uh they were not scaling that much before they started doing this AI stuff it was just like it was okay maybe it was all only in soft Lounge but as soon as they hit this it just scaled massively and now they're still continuing on scaling and like in terms of the U like this is this is great because think about the efficiency here you have if if I am able to create a video during the recording in 10 minutes and I'm a UA manager and I talk on the about this game and while I talk I I do this stuff they have [ __ ] enough people in the creative team they're just pushing new stuff on a daily basis in hundreds of the videos yeah by the way let me let me stop you right there a little bit I think people underestimate how many people are there on the creative teams of Forex game in China we're talking hundreds like hundreds hundreds like 200 150 it's a baseline I think for game like white sural it's just like no way around on the on the creative team also if you I mean I I think you don't really hear the sound but anyway like all of these like look they I will show you like how how many how many creatives they have but this is also like with uh if you if you check like how the white out survival is doing and I will get there they have engine to build the creatives like you see you see the quality you see like the different like every every month when we talk about the creative Trends why survival has like let's say 100 or 200 new creaves like it's insane every single because like this is this is the game like this is exactly the game that you just U like like the UA like when we talk about is like how UA is dead yes it is because this is this is different thing you you really need to push on the like volume of creatives and you need to add new creatives into the campaigns on a weekly basis yeah in dozens in ideally hundreds of course like if you don't have the scale in fight out survival not that many games have but still it's still like it's it's about the volume it's about the volume this you have they have 600 pages of creatives that's insane and this is this is dark war this is dark war which is uh now if we look at the January like what they are doing like they started kind of experimenting with different stuff as well not only not only AI but it's still yeah like it's like this is this is just like the insanest thing in in the whole whole UA yeah you have you have now the combination of of AI is ugc I don't know if this girl is is real or or no maybe no I I can't I can't I can't even even say that anymore so so this is how you scale the how to scale the UA like these days and if we if we go to last war it's basically their their UA is is now like iteration of all of these all of these different guge mechanic and and oh my God they're doing such a good job because this is from last last month this is January and you see like it's the concept like nothing new but the iterations there it's uh it's it's all about the quality if we go back to let's say 2000 when they launched 2023 I think in December it wasn't all uh Gates mechanic I mean kind of but they were using these type of things right it's like the slingshot and all of the all of the fun stuff but I think well they did launch 2023 or 2022 soft launch June 2023 started scaling November because I was looking into into the into the creatives it was wasn't always as as as great as as it's now and you look on you look at this and you immediately see age of Origins which we also didn't talk about but it was age of Origins and then last war where they basically last war copied almost everything that age of Origins did before so they it's like it's it's either Evony or age of Origins then it came to last war and now like the how all of these kind of no ID IDE ideation or but who is inspired by who is like Evony uh then other Forex and then it comes into Royal match after Royal match also goes after creatives after Royal match comes play so basically Forex between each other is like within weeks then few months it comes to to match then then it go goes back to to plays afterwards and M what's your outlook in terms of UA for Forex in the future uh I mean do you think you know like one you know I think there was a question before somebody had been asking about the profitability based upon UA spend but also just the Outlook in terms of do you think that this continues in terms of whether it's the size of the UA teams or the amount of creatives is this sustainable what what's your just general outlook for for UA uh I think the the the the general Outlook and like where they are going from from here is that's what I think like it's happening to high SE hero it's you need to have the onboarding suit suitable for the broader market and the marketability needs to work on that side of the equation if I think what's what's going to happen next with high SE Heroes is they they kind of find better theme or something which is not really that core as Legend of mushroom and uh and the whole Navy kind of um art style and theme because it's just that's too core it I it drives High LTV players yes but if you look at basically this yeah this is top girl this so this is top girl so it's all Ai and now they're yeah freezing families Trends coming from uh from casual games so this is going to be like the unfortunately or fortunately the the EV the next evolution of the the whole the UA is with the dark war and all the AI stuff because if we actually go even further and go the right our where oh wait a second I think it was last they went so AI that it's like you can't go more yeah yeah it's like this was just our ai ai where is this where can I find all of this AI stuff it was just insane like it's all oh yeah Facebook mainly Facebook you're right it was mainly Facebook was oh Facebook only I guess it's just all AI maybe it's I need to go back to to November as well and just go all yeah it's and then they they do this into the music which is the gangdam style obviously and like they borrowed all of these different stuff which you know like people really really want to watch these things because it's new and it's that that's look great and if you see like how the the the AI video tools progressed in the last few months it's like the you can you can do 10c videos so that's why there's always like so many cuts but as soon as we get into the 30 second or 20 second videos length with AI like it's it's going to be unstoppable you won't be able to to see yeah mate can you give me the screen I have some of the best ones save on my computer oh Jesus chist I'm not sure like people are ready for this because like and and this is this is what I think it's uh it's it's going to be the the next step in in the UA and I use a lot of AI on on all the games that yeah all the games I I manage because it's uh that's where everything is heading yeah and and and again the the corrent trend is basically that it's so bizarre and so new that you want to watch this even though it's like completely nonsensical but it's still because the generation is just getting so good lately you still want to watch this and there's like many iterations of this that these guys are pulling off and it's just amazing just to look at like what they're capable of doing I think I saw one the the morph one where was the morph there was a lot of different stuff we we talked about this in the last creative Trends episode as well where we saw Pikachu Marvel DC all the IP infringements in the AI world yeah this one this one this one's my favorite and this is the thing like nobody cares yeah Fusion ah so yeah I didn't even see this oh my God yeah I told you I have save some very very specific ones because you won't be able to see them anymore but this is the trend this is the trend these are very easy to create very easy to pump out and pretty much You Catches the trend and you just hop on it that's it like we seen this on multiple games pretty much going over it and it's just there it works and that's like the thing is everything that Forex does now and we see it's a basically because if if it works in Forex it means that you are able to actually buy against all of these 30k 40K uh thousand installs so now it's kind of coming into the other genra so Forex is two steps ahead than everybody else so everything we see in Forex is going to come to the the other part of the industry it's like this is how it is yeah right and I know all three of you guys were kind of keying in on Forex was it because of the revenue or like Justin why why did you start keying in on Forex and like following these games is it the top grossing nature of these games or for for what reason yeah it was it was the revenue number just how high these games were going and how high they were charting but I think like a good question is like like you said like the margin side of the equation right I'm sure this stuff like when you launch at this sort of scale it isn't cheap and I think it goes to sort of like whether or not this like business model is sustainable as well over the long term and like love to hear your thoughts on it as like probably some of these cpis get more expensive what do you think payback window is mon is it is it 24 months is it what I it's so I think it's 24 months but then I I heard some some rumor on the street as well that like white out survival is is getting way way quicker the money back which sounds unreal but still like the how they can sustain the low cpis and low meaning anything between 30 to 50 instead of like 300 like that's that's the key and I can see that work honestly looking at the looking at the revenue numbers yeah but also also if you look at these games I mean the new generation all of them are pretty much up exactly like all all of them are like from left to right going up like this is basically how the market works like the only one as I Rise of Kingdoms the old one like total battle is the only I guess exception to the rule that kind of is Breaking All the Rules here and people should really study it where where like how because it's not only the UA trick that they're doing they're actually even told us like it's many things that they did in order to improve the game from like it's initial version in 2018 to where it's now where it's doing half a million a month yeah but uh too right that game's been around for freaking forever they somehow they're they're like a like a cockroach but a top grossing cockroach they they started doing the P the that's where it it went up and then now they're doing the gates mechanic because they borrowed it from last war so that's why like everything is connected and I think the next kind of the the generation that we are talking about is free course but it's actually more skewed towards the last war and the like the visual style how that looks like but this is again the thing that it's confirms the assumption that Forex engine just works the best only thing you need to do is pull pull the lever on the CPI part of the equation that's it like you have it you have money and that's that's where it goes honestly like why I started looking into Forex I hate that gameplay I can't play it really yakob is the one that's playing that I'm not but the Innovation on the UA front like it's that's insane so like we can learn so much from Forex it's it's like that's that's the new generation of the the creatives the UA approach everything basically yeah I think that's like no single genre on the planet currently that's innovating so much on both the UA front and product front which is just like even if you will never do Forex in your whole life you should still study Forex they need to innovate because they have to because if you if you pay $300 for CP it's not sustainable and you need to figure it out you end up like of Kingdoms if if you know you don't innovate you go down that's it exactly and again the IP thing won't help you hereen we seen the Age of Empires thing how they ended up for because you might actually be at a disadvantage because of the the royalties and yeah the licensing fees so like if you need every bit of margin you can um yeah so then it would seem like the way that you could compete would be to figure figure out how to gain additional margin I'm sure they're all doing web shops I assume of course and if if you found a way of of like driving K factor that would be another another way of uh improving your margins as well yeah but you think yeah but D driving K factor is basically having the to game like it was by the way the most watch video on our Channel with like that video went absolutely insane like viral AB I haven't seen it literally because it's it's it's ranking on the top girl gameplay on the first place and we hit like 40K views which we obviously didn't have before anywhere and it's still getting [ __ ] ton of views that's why we that's why I actually made made the song about it as well because yeah because by the way we we released a two and a half Gamers music album which is the the most random thing ever and like people love it so yeah but yeah like this is like this exactly this is exactly the thing but again this is the same thing where if you remember the save the dog thing that was trending at some point on T Tok where you would like draw with your hand like this kind of obstacle to save the dog against the Beast so there was what was the name panoramic RPG guys who literally yeah so they literally duct taped the levels into their own boarding and is shoed them up to like million mon from 30 or 40K a month to basically 6 million in within like few months yeah nice yeah Ju Just because of that because again they change the whole store screenshots all the creatives everything to this one trendy thing and then but it's like it's basic math you pour more people into the game there's High higher chance of them becoming payers them getting converted that's it yeah okay we we could be here for for forever I love it yeah I love it I love it so do do we have any last thoughts in terms of uh I don't know if there's any other topics we could uh discuss or maybe maybe just your general Outlook or um how how about we can end with a um non-consensus prediction so uh a prediction in terms of the Forex Market that uh you know you think most people would disagree with you about interesting I think everybody disagrees with us anyway because we think Forex is Forex is the Forex is like far ahead of everybody and like that's like my main problem with half of the industry is that they don't just pay attention to Forex and they should and they should yeah like maybe one okay let's do this one maybe one bold thing is that what you saw there on top girl uh the Streamline version of the Forex engine Corp which just why why are you doing this helping my mind process because you know it's smurfed into this like very small stream thing so you need to you need to play your a if you as you're talking anyway so because it's so streamlined and it still works very good because just that map the interaction the unlimited spending and like all these other Dynamics just is the best LTV engine in the market what I think will happen that probably we'll see the other way around later down the line where games that were predominantly not or genres that never have anything to do with Forex will implement this as an additional engine the other way around where here we are at the point where we put a lot of fakeness and lot of like different shortcuts and stuff in the beginning but it all leads to Forex this would be the other way around where we have something and Forex will be an addition will be Forex end game end game will be something plus Forex but it won't be just Forex okay yeah I was I was going to concur with that that view exactly I think like Nick I don't I'm pronouncing his name wrong but he he writes for novic as well and I think he's a supercell game designer now and he sort of talks about sort of like Pier Forex games which we talked about earlier like improved ux then you now have genre mashing and then later on you have this idea that's like used as a meta game like for like other genres and like this is exactly what's happening I think long ter I mean I I I wouldn't consider Forex a uh a meta personally I I I feel like it is gameplay but like um I I would say probably my probably non-consensus prediction would be that I think that the next big wave or or like the next big Forex game will actually innovate on on the gameplay side rather than through genre matching or things like that that it'll be a unique kind of gameplay because I think if you look if you think about like the idea of of you know um of timed March battles and um also of alliances that I think that there's things you can do that are different from how the game play orients today and I think that's where you're going to have a big new win P personally um you mean something like the avatar game that never went away of soft lunch which had Clash Royale style combat in the Forex map no like so so for example I mean if if you think about like one one of the things that we found in in Forex is that if you join an alliance very early the LTV profile of the players that joined like on day one or very early were dramatically higher um so you you can kind of Imagine is there a game play that is um from the very beginning oriented more socially in which everdale ever everdale tried he didn't work that so so yeah so like I mean I I I won't I won't say the specific idea but like you know um today when when you look at like the the the way the gameplay behavior of so many people especially after covid is in groups and teams and people playing together um so if you could Orient the gameplay more towards a team based thing or like the entire like this idea like and and I know fun plus was excited about um the high seas and having Forex on a boat for a very long time sea of Conquest they have the Sea of Conquest now yeah yeah I mean I I think like almost for for like every year after I left f plus I think I think Andy had mentioned some form of like you know of pirate c c based like Forex team but like the the notion of like um of of uh of of changing up the gaml where um you know maybe something like that where where you're actually not landlocked where there's some notion of being in a real-time M anyway I won't go over the specific ideas but but you guys kind of get where I'm going right yeah that you don't have to rely on this kind of like you know like a static map where you're jumping around but but like the elements that are core to Forex the ability to you know um to build and get rid of troops or whatever units that you're talking about but if you can change that gameplay in a way that is different and refreshing but you're taking those same things it's it's the whole notion of um the strange attractor right you take something uh novel and then you take something that you're used to and you kind of combine those together I think that's coming um I I already have a a few ideas personally um I just haven't done them so I'm sure other people have plenty of ideas along those lines where you can kind of make it feel a little bit different right rather than it's just being another theme another skin something like that other people already working on it h don't don't don't get the the the suspicious look yov let's let's let's end there let's end there let's end there okay I I I see him just catching a breath and there going to be like another hour another hour sure let's save it for for a followup podcast because this is I think this is not the last time we talk about Forex so there you go yeah yeah we should definitely do some kind of Forex recap of the year like we used to do for web three which we don't need to need to do anymore we need to what what we need to do is a a Forex uh genre overview like a complete one but we need anyway okay that the the 4.5x episode yes definitely yes great all right okay well I think that seems like that's it so for the audience if you stuck it out this far thanks for hanging out with us and hearing what we have to say and for our audience we will catch you next time thank you very much Justin mate yakob this uh ridiculous collab between game makers two and half Gamers and Justin so all right thank you guys and we'll catch youall later thank much cheers bye bye [Music] [Music]