two & a half gamers

Our monthly Playable Trends is back. Matej, Ondrej and Robin each bring three playables that caught their eye and take them apart. Matej opens with Royal Kingdom’s “harder than you think” ball-physics level (save three characters, no snakes for once), a raft-rescue survival playable that turns out to be a 4X game, and Paper.io 2 using a Pocket Champs-style hook without hiding which game it is. Ondrej brings three from Voodoo: a Pixel Flow-style conveyor sort that is honestly harder than you think (he still can’t beat it), a satisfying ball-drop sorter you finish just by tapping, and a room-based platformer that sent us straight back to Dangerous Dave.

Robin shows a sushi reskin of Pixel Flow (Ondrej rebuilt it in Playable Maker), Car Evolve’s slingshot upgrade loop, which ran five minutes before the CTA appeared (Robin fed the source to Claude to start with 5M coins), and Last Asylum running four different mechanics for the same game: Township-style building, Kingshot-style tower defense, roguelike survival and 4X. Last Asylum has gone from a handful of playables to ~1,200 in 30 days, and Kingshot still makes far more money. We close by filtering Sensor Tower to Asia (spoiler: good playables work everywhere, maybe with more family drama and a bit more grind) and looking at seasonal creatives: Golf Clash running Halloween for a year, and a Christmas video still live in July because it was the best performer.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: the playable that never ends

05:23 – Matej: Royal Kingdom’s “harder than you think” physics level

10:26 – The WTF pick: a raft rescue that’s secretly 4X, plus Paper.io 2 with a Pocket Champs hook

17:23 – Ondrej’s Voodoo trio: impossible color sort, ball conveyor, Dangerous Dave vibes

24:25 – Robin: Pixel Flow, but sushi

27:13 – Car Evolve: 5 minutes before the CTA, and we hacked it with Claude

32:25 – Last Asylum: one game, four mechanics, ~1,200 playables in 30 days

40:18 – Asia vs West playables, and do seasonal creatives actually work?

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Reskin a proven mechanic (Pixel Flow → sushi) and you have a new ad

— One game can be sold through four mechanics; each one attracts a different player

— “Harder than you think” works only if it is actually hard, but finishable

— Mechanics travel across markets; difficulty and grind may need tuning for Asia

🎙️ HOSTS

Matej Lancaric, Ondrej Monsberger, Robin Kuyer

🙏 SPONSORS

Potensus – premium ad network with direct brand deals (Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone) and Playable Maker-built formats: https://potensus.com

PVX Partners – fund your UA with PVX Card, credit that grows with your ROAS: https://pvxpartners.com/cards

Kinoa – AI operating system for live ops, segments and game ops: http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100

FastSpring – the no-drama D2C for mobile publishers: https://fastspring.gg

Data courtesy of Sensor Tower

Seen a playable we should cover? Drop it in the comments or the Slack channel.

Subscribe for more playables, creatives and UA: https://www.youtube.com/@twoandahalfgamers

#playableads #playables #mobilegames #creatives #UA #useracquisition #Voodoo #RoyalKingdom #LastAsylum #PixelFlow #PaperIO #PlayableMaker #SensorTower #twoandahalfgamers #Potensus #PVXPartners #Kinoa #FastSpring

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

---------------------------------------

If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

A rare live episode. After almost five years of podcasting, we finally tackled one of the games we had been saving for the right moment: Hill Climb Racing 2 from Fingersoft, part of a franchise with more than 2.5 billion downloads across Fingersoft’s games. Felix and Jakub are joined in person by Oona from Fingersoft (ad monetization manager) and Denise Farley from Google (EMEA monetization) to go through the game design, the ad setup and the UA flywheel behind one of the most downloaded games on the planet.

Jakub starts with the design: physics-based arcade driving, many layers of power progression, car upgrades as a soft-currency sink, and a parts gacha that drives most of the IAP revenue. That puts HCR2 at roughly 70/30 IAP vs ads, while the first game is still almost all ads. Then Una covers the ad monetization: almost 30 rewarded placements, some with no daily cap and no limits for payers (“purchasers buy and then they watch”), an ad progression bundle in the style of Monopoly Go chain offers that lifted day-1 rewarded impressions for new users by more than 10%, interstitials that are delayed after every rewarded view, and tests where delaying or removing interstitials barely changed retention. Denise and Una also explain how Fingersoft dropped geo-based mediation groups for 5 tiers based on impression value, built behavior-based custom CPA events to feed back into UA, and use hybrid mediation and ad preloading in AdMob.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: the ad progression bundle

02:12 – Live from Mount Olympus: meet Una (Fingersoft) and Denise (Google)

03:51 – Game design: physics, progression layers, the parts gacha, 70/30 IAP vs ads

08:55 – Ad progression bundle: +10% day-1 rewarded impressions for new users

09:46 – ~30 rewarded placements, no caps for payers, events like the Halloween pumpkin smash

14:42 – Interstitials vs retention, rewarded cooldowns and the meta rewarded placement

19:48 – Behavior segmentation, custom CPAs and 5 tiers based on impression value instead of geo

23:19 – Hybrid mediation, preloading, and why creatives must match the store page

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Payers are also heavy rewarded watchers, so don’t hide ads from them

— Delay interstitials after each rewarded view to steer players to the higher-paying format

— Segment by impression value, not geo; some tier-3 users bring tier-1 eCPMs

— Your ads and your store page have to show the same game

🎙️ HOSTS & GUESTS

Felix Braberg, Jakub Remiar

Una – Ad Monetization Manager, Fingersoft

Denise Farley – Monetization, Google (EMEA)

Subscribe for more game deep dives, ad monetization and UA:

https://www.youtube.com/@twoandahalfgamers

#mobilegames #HillClimbRacing2 #Fingersoft #admonetization #AdMob #rewardedvideo #hybridmonetization #useracquisition #gamedesign #mobilegaming #gamedev #SensorTower #twoandahalfgamers

Two Gamers this time (our half is on the other side of the world), and we play Duck Survival from JoyNet Games, the studio behind Legend of Mushroom. We expected a 4X game. There is no 4X map, but nearly everything else from 4X is there: a roguelite tower-defense core lifted from Kingshot’s creatives (move your duck, build towers and walls, call the waves, pick 1 of 3 skills, autoplay), with the full Legend of Mushroom meta on top.

Then the creatives: 4,700 of them and only 70 playables. There’s 4X slap-slap fake gameplay, Dark War-style transformations, high-production AI, and the same AI Japanese actor (most likely a LoRA) in almost every ad. Matej shares how he localized his own Gandalf video with Korean and Japanese soldiers.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: very deep game, very nice core

01:29 – Two Gamers only: Duck Survival from the Legend of Mushroom team

03:15 – Core loop: roguelite tower defense modeled after Kingshot’s creatives

09:13 – The meta: Legend of Mushroom template, capture mechanic, gachas, server gating

20:06 – Numbers: Western launch, then Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and an iOS-heavy Japan

24:12 – JoyNet portfolio vs Legend of Mushroom, and why it won’t fly in the West

29:05 – Tower defense top 10: Lucky Defense, Bang Bang Survivor, Clash of Creatures, Arknights

33:46 – Creatives: 4,700 ads, 70 playables, 4X fake gameplay, the AI Japanese actor

This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.

http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100

Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.

If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.

It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.

Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Fresh back from Istanbul, we review Brain Puzzle 2: Logic Twist, a game where the word “logic” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Jakub plays it live so Matej doesn’t have to: three-minute riddles, point-and-click solutions with zero logic, a shark fail state, and an interstitial after every win.

And it works. Launched June last year by a Chinese studio, it is now at 2.5 million DAU, 500–600K downloads a day, and roughly $83K/day in ad revenue on a pristine tier-3 mix

The UA engine: ~4,000 creatives in 30 days (570 playables, 3,000 videos), mostly AppLovin and Mintegral, with 10–20 cent CPIs, makeover and body-shaming concepts that bring Matej back to 2018 “who is the killer” ads, and a spend roughly equal to revenue at an estimated 15% margin.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: guess the daily ad revenue

01:20 – Back from Istanbul; meet Brain Puzzle 2: Logic Twist (ad simulator, sorry, “riddle”)

04:20 – Jakub plays it live: shark fail state, door levels, the dumbbell, interstitial on every win

07:37 – The ad setup: 5 rewarded placements, interstitials from level 7, no cooldowns

11:39 – The business model: tier-3 installs, 10–18 interstitials, $1.40–$3 eCPMs

12:18 – Numbers: 2.5M DAU, 500–600K downloads/day, 75% women, $83K/day revenue

16:03 – UA spend, paybacks and retention: D7 13%, D60 ~1%, 140 levels, Brain Test comparison

19:08 – Creatives: 4,000 in 30 days, makeover ads are back, AppLovin + Mintegral, 10-cent CPIs

25:06 – Margins (15%), the Chinese studio behind it, “would you change the UA strategy?”

This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.

http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100

--------------------------------------

Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.

If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.

It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.

Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Solo Dev Journey #2 is here because you asked for it. This one is about the single question every developer, my own programmers, and even Andre keep asking: “You spend $4.5K a day and make $4K a day… and you’re happy? That makes no sense.” It makes perfect sense, and I open my Singular account on camera to prove it.

I walk through the CPI vs LTV equation the way a UA person actually uses it: the time element (D7, D30, D90, D365 LTV, never D0), why the payback period is set by where your retention curve dies, and why Robot Breaker sitting at $250K spent and $170K back is not a problem, just a cohort that hasn’t finished paying. Then I switch to One Mage Army, launched September 6–7 on Android only, and show the real numbers: 60–80% day-1 ROAS, 120–200% ROAS days, 103% ROAS for the whole month on $40K, and scaling from $200 to $1K/day in a week to $2.5K/day now. The game is maybe 30% feature-ready. Mark my words.

Plus: the channel mix (AppLovin started terribly and is now one of the best; Unity Ads surprisingly good; Google and Mintegral added), how organics move with paid spend, the cheaters sideloading APKs and faking IAPs from Germany and Vietnam, the license-key fix in Singular, and the dashboard I built with Singular’s MCP and a “UA senior Matej” skill so I can make daily decisions without spending eternity in spreadsheets.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: $200 to $1K/day in a week, 103% for the month

01:15 – Sponsor: Potensus

02:24 – Why Solo Dev Journey #2 exists

03:45 – “You spend $4.5K and make $4K?” – the CPI vs LTV equation explained

05:20 – Robot Breaker: $250K spent, $170K back, 30-day payback and why that’s fine

06:45 – One Mage Army month 1: 60–80% D1 ROAS, 103% on $40K, scaling 5x

08:30 – Channel mix: AppLovin, Facebook, Unity, Google, Mintegral and organics

10:15 – Cheaters, fake IAPs from Germany/Vietnam, license key + the Singular MCP dashboard

12:00 – The playbook: CPI, channel, LTV curve, geo, creative – what to track and when to scale

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— LTV has a time element; your payback window is where your retention curve flattens

— Spending more than you make today can still be profitable; cohorts pay back over 30+ days

— Every channel, geo and creative has its own LTV curve; tailor UA to each

— Verify purchases in the store console; cheaters will fake IAPs once you get popular

🎙️ HOST

Matej Lancaric – UA consultant, co-founder of Playable Maker,

🙏 SPONSOR

Potensus – premium ad network with direct brand deals (Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone) and Playable Maker-built interactive formats: https://potensus.com

Got questions about scaling your game? Drop them in the comments – they become Solo Dev Journey #3.

Subscribe for more UA, creatives and mobile game growth: https://www.youtube.com/@twoandahalfgamers

#mobilegames #useracquisition #solodev #gamedev #UA #LTV #CPI #ROAS #indiegame #OneMageArmy #RobotBreaker #Singular #AppLovin #twoandahalfgamers #Potensus #PlayableMaker

Jam Bus Sand Fall is Bus Traffic Fever with sand: trucks (Matej says buses) line up at the bottom, colored sand pours in from the top, and you watch. There is no speed-up button, no rewarded “go faster” placement like Colony Flow.

Felix failed the FTUE four times. Jakub calls the category Torture Sort, and the numbers say torture pays: $80K a day in IAP last week heading for $100K, 65K downloads a day, up 1,300% in a month, already #19 in the sort category at roughly $1M a month, with Russia driving downloads and the US driving revenue.

Ad revenue is only ~$7K a day, 12–16% of the total, app-ads.txt hasn’t been touched since January and Unity isn’t even in it.

Whole UA strategy for the category: make images as many people as possible relate to, then solve them. The bigger story is the category: sort is ~$60M a month in IAP, ~$120M with ads, half the size of merge and still growing; Goodroid is at $350K a day and $75M lifetime, Colony Flow at $500K a day, Cube Away at $60K a day out of the gate. Matej tried to build one and hit 20–25% retention: if you don’t have a senior level designer, don’t. Less torture, more fun.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: a 17-minute level

01:30 – Jam Bus Sand Fall: buses, trucks and sand

04:39 – Torture Sort: no speed-up, fluent fail state, level 30 = level 1

06:40 – Admon: five rewarded placements, $7K/day, no Unity, stale app-ads.txt

11:18 – $80K/day, 65K downloads, +1,300%, Russia vs US

13:05 – The sort category: Goodroid, Colony Flow, $120M a month

20:24 – UA: 600 videos, 5 playables, 95% AppLovin, AI dead eyes

28:40 – Why these games don’t scale and Matej’s failed sort attempt

This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.

http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100

Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.

If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.

It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.

Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Solo news week, and the action is all on the platform and ad-tech layer. Miniclip launched AdSurge, a new ad network built with Tencent and Easybrain: Miniclip’s casual portfolio and addressable pool, Easybrain’s Sudoku-grade monetization data, Tencent’s scale behind it, landing exactly as AppLovin sits in legal trouble and Unity bets everything on Vector. It won’t dethrone anyone overnight, but a well-funded entrant with real first-party data means more auctions and pricing pressure, and that’s leverage for all of us. Matej is testing it the day he gets access and says you should too. Then the shutdown wave. Supercell is killing Squad Busters: pulled from stores December 1, servers off December 14, barely two years after a global launch Supercell almost never grants and almost never reverses. If the best hit-rate instincts in the industry can push a game to global and lose it this fast, the bar for worldwide launch is very high. Ubisoft is worse: Rainbow Six Mobile shuts in January, Helsinki studio RedLynx is poised to close with 52 jobs at risk, and the number that explains it all is $5.3M lifetime IAP from 13M downloads. Installs are a vanity metric; monetization is the business. Also: we broke it first, Luis de la Camara (ex-Rovio, King, Gameloft) is the new CMO of Smadex, go watch Felix’s episode with him. And the 30% fight boils over: Google defending Play Store commissions in a £1bn UK class action while the CEOs of Rovio and Sega say Apple and Google aren’t earning their cut. No shit.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: the shutdown wave

00:25 – AdSurge: Miniclip, Tencent and Easybrain’s new ad network

02:05 – Luis de la Camara joins Smadex as CMO

02:20 – Supercell kills Squad Busters

03:05 – Ubisoft: Rainbow Six Mobile, RedLynx and $5.3M from 13M installs

04:00 – Apple and Google’s 30%: UK class action, Rovio and Sega speak up

🎙️ HOST

Matej Lancaric – UA & Creatives

👉 Got AdSurge access? Tell us in the comments

👉 Felix + Jakub back next episode

👉 Join the 2.5 Gamers Slack

#MobileGaming #AdSurge #Miniclip #Supercell #SquadBusters #Ubisoft #AdTech #UserAcquisition #TwoAndAHalfGamers

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

---------------------------------------

If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Luis de la Camara spent 20 years on the client side, six in AAA, then Gameloft, King, Scopely, and five years at Rovio through the Sega exit, and he left a few weeks ago. Felix got him on before the news broke: Luis is the new CMO of Smadex. So this is a conference-bar conversation on tape.

The brand question first: even with Angry Birds and Candy Crush, nobody has cracked measuring brand on top of UA; broad awareness campaigns brought the same quality users at a much higher CPI, so the real power of brand is cheaper performance, and incrementality testing is the only way to know whether App Store search is growth or just defending your own IP.

Felix’s thesis: the networks know your users better than you ever will, so stop fighting it and segment on their output. His hack: track eCPM decay per user; shallow curve means IAP-optimized traffic, steep drop means ad-ROAS traffic, and you can tell who will ever pay.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: incentives that make rewarded cohorts perform

01:17 – Who is Luis: AAA, Gameloft, King, Scopely, Rovio

03:36 – Brand vs performance: the battle Rovio never fully won

05:25 – “The networks know your users better than you”

09:11 – Felix’s eCPM decay hack for spotting payers

10:24 – UA Society takeaways: segmentation, rewarded users, Papaya

14:29 – Retargeting, CTV and incrementality done simply

21:30 – DSPs are winning: Moloco, Liftoff and how to work with them

25:47 – The BREAKING news: Luis joins Smadex as CMO

🎙️ HOST & GUEST

Felix Braberg – Ad Monetization

Luis de la Camara – CMO, Smadex (ex-Rovio, Scopely, King)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/luiscamaraking/

This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.

http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100

--------------------------------------

Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.

If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.

It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.

Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Deepstash is “TikTok for smart people”: key ideas from books in bite-size, level-like chapters, now part of a portfolio (Paladin for history, Imperio for business) that founder Vladimir calls Smartheads. We had him on with Jeff Cohen from PvX to unpack how an education app scales like a game. The numbers: more than 50% of paid subscribers now come through web2app after “a billion iterations” that Vlad himself thought would never work, 3,000 creatives in the last 30 days from a 30-person UA and creative team, niche organic pages that surface what goes viral before it becomes an ad, and contextual cross-promo (read the Iliad in Deepstash, get Achilles in Paladin) converting 10x better than generic ads. Felix’s homework for Vlad: you’re on AdMob only, add two or three networks and watch ad revenue double or triple, then go the Duolingo route and show ads to the users you know won’t subscribe. Jeff explains why web2app fits subscriptions better than games (one purchase decision, then opt-out), why consumer apps are now half of PvX’s ~$40M/month in funded UA, and why he keeps telling Vlad to spend more. Plus GTA, Halloween and Dracula as cultural-moment content, tiered AI models for creative production, and the one gap Matej couldn’t let go: no AppLovin, no playables, yet.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: web2app

01:17 – Meet Vlad (Deepstash) and Jeff (PvX)

05:05 – The product: ideas as levels, Paladin, Imperio

12:34 – Cross-promo that works: context = 10x

15:15 – Felix: one network is “ripping your eyes out”

18:58 – Web2app: 50%+ of subscribers, why games struggle

30:00 – Seasonality, Q5 and where PvX came in

41:35 – 3,000 creatives, 30 people, organic pages, AI tiers

51:00 – No AppLovin, no playables. Yet.

🎙️ HOSTS & GUESTS

Matej Lancaric – UA & Creatives

Felix Braberg – Ad Monetization

Jakub Remiar – Game Design

Vladimir Oane – Founder, Deepstash / Smartheads

Jeff Cohen – Origination Lead, PvX Partners

#Deepstash #Web2App #UserAcquisition #PvX #SubscriptionApps #MobileMarketing #TwoAndAHalfGamers

--------------------------------------

Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.

If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.

It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.

Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Rotate Rings is two weeks old, already at 1M DAU and 500–600K downloads a day. The twist: the core mechanic was a UA creative first. Century Games ran rotating-ring fake gameplay for a year, Tasty Travels used it as a minigame, and now Nebula (Felix's "good authority" says Hungry Studio, the Block Blast team) turned the ad into the game. No timer, no fail state, "another Arrows," and still only $45–50K/day in ads because interstitials are delayed Block Blast-style: Jakub hit level 34 without one. 3,000 creatives in three weeks, AI IQ-test guys, Einstein, sunglasses to hide the AI eyes. UA is 70% of the success, and the clones are coming.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Why the traffic isn't pristine

01:37 – A UA creative became a game

03:08 – Gameplay: rotate, disconnect, shatter

08:20 – 1M DAU in two weeks

11:04 – Hungry Studio's delayed-interstitial playbook

14:32 – Creatives: AI hooks, 3,000 ads, 90 playables

23:12 – $50K/day verdict and clone prediction

This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.

http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100

--------------------------------------

Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.

If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.

It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.

Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

---------------------------------------

If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric

Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai