3 ms·

Ugh, if they make an ad that has non-game game-play that gets a lot of clicks... why not make that game instead/too?

• jprete 2y ago
  I've heard that they do metrics on the ads to pick particular pseudo-games to implement. But they don't make money on clicks, they make it on whales, so they are also going to get rid of pseudo-games that can't get whales to spend more microtransaction money.
  • tivert 2y ago
    > But they don't make money on clicks, they make it on whales, so they are also going to get rid of pseudo-games that can't get whales to spend more microtransaction money. This video did a very good job of explaining it, to me, someone who never plays mobile games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhajAqI66nU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhajAqI66nU (https://archive.org/details/youtube-NhajAqI66nU https://archive.org/details/youtube-NhajAqI66nU). tl;dr: it's all about getting whales into the game. The type of games people will download based on ad game-play are not the most monetizable (b/c whales). So the main game is a highly monetizable city-builder (which whales spend on), with the ad's minigame somewhere (which at most only has a few minutes of playtime). The ad's mini-game is often developed as a concept for the ad first, then only actually implemented later after A/B testing the ads. It doesn't matter that most people will get frustrated and delete the game when it's not as advertised, because the people who do that aren't whales.
    • bonestamp2 2y ago
      Does anybody know how much money someone has to spend to be considered a mobile gaming whale?