7 ms·

How Game of War makes more than $1M a day

72 points by hodgesmr 12y ago

catshirt 12y ago
"in-app purchases" no surprise here
- tomjen3 12y ago
  I have some experience with game development and that is essentially the only way you can make money on the app store these days. If you charge more than the minimum (which may currently be zero) you will have no chance of getting into the top 10, so no way to make your money back. With in app purchases you can also make a lot more money from your whales, rather than charging everybody 10 usd - it doesn't quite solve the consumer surplus demand curve issue, but it does help. And the gaming industry is such a bad bet financially (I am pretty sure the industry overall loses money) that you have to make as much as you can.
tempestn 12y ago
We were bound to get to this point, but I'm still a bit disappointed. I have very little desire to play a game which intentionally skews the playing field based on in-app purchases. Personally I would far rather pay $60 or whatever for the game and then compete based on skill and luck, rather than on who wants to waste the most money.
- whysonot 12y ago
  Agreed. I think these games teach its players harmful life lessons too. They're rewarded for spending the most money (like GoW) or for showing up (like an MMO). That's not how you get good at things in real life. I've been a (relatively serious) gamer since I was a kid. My parents always thought it was a waste of time. But I think I learned more about dedication and growth playing WC3 than I did playing sports. I definitely would not feel that way had I played GoW instead.
  - FanaHOVA 12y ago
    "They're rewarded... for showing up (like an MMO). That's not how you get good at things in real life." It really is though. If you show up every day and put in the work, you WILL get better at whatever you're doing. That's also something your colleagues and the people who surround you appreciate, see Cal Ripken, Jr. for example. He wasn't an outstanding player, but he didn't miss a single game for 16 years, he showed up every day, no matter what. Not sure what sports you played and at what level, I played basketball growing up at national level but also competed at LANs across the country on COD4 and learned lots of lessons from both.
    - whysonot 12y ago
      I should have clarified that there's a difference between showing up and mindfully playing / practicing and simply showing up. You and Cal Ripken Jr showed up to practice with the intention of getting better. If you're to actually get better at your job, you show up and try and get better at your job. But if you show up and just go through the motions (the real-life equivalent of clicking a bunch of buildings to mine resources) you will be squandering your potential. I think we agree--I just wasn't clear enough in my first comment.
    - emsy 12y ago
      In competitive games (UT, Quake, CS etc.) you get better by playing and critical analysis of your and your enemie's playing. In WoW, you get better through, more or less, mindless grinding. At least so mindless that you can pay peons to do the work for you, so you can enjoy your level 100 character.
      - Fomite 12y ago
        Having once been a fairly serious raider in WoW, there's a ceiling in WoW wherein you no longer get better through mindless grinding. A level 100 character is nice and all, but serious end-game raiding or PvP requires more than just "Push button, collect loot."
  - parasubvert 12y ago
- matt_s 12y ago
  I'm with you, I've played some tablet games that have in-app purchases but don't purchase. The game gets to a plateau pretty quick to the point where it is boring and uninteresting. SimCity for instance is free on iOS but has in-app purchases. I'd rather have paid like $5-10 for it but the developers would have to completely change the game mechanics. I wonder what the long term/lifetime value per customer is in that model. It sort of operates like a SaaS but the purchasing cadence is up to the customer. In-app purchases are in a way like the analogy of how you can slowly boil a frog and the frog won't notice, but if you drop the frog in a half-inch hot water it will immediately leap out.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Is it good? Article is silent on that. Not one screenshot.
- thephyber 12y ago
  Does it matter? It's compulsive. That's why whales will spend $40k of money they don't have on in-app purchases.
  - mod 12y ago
    I got the impression the whales can afford it. I'm sure there's counter-examples, but I'd imagine the "whales" are just very wealthy people, generally.
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    There is a reason at least one the really big casual gaming company allow you to deposit checks to get in game currency - because the really big whales are in the middle east and that is how they like to spend their money. The people spending 40k can afford it, don't worry - and they might as well use the oil money for something.
    - bartman 12y ago
      Which company would that be? A quick google search doesn't turn anything up.
      - tomjen3 12y ago
        I think it was Zynga, they may have discontiuned it.
        bartman 12y ago
        Thanks, sure sounds like it could have been them. Gawker reported that Zynga had set up a "Platinum Purchase Program" allowing members to purchase virtual currency in amounts over $500 at favorable rates by making a payment via wire transfer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Platinum_Purchase_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Platinum_Purchase_Progra...
cheriot 12y ago
At least South Park has taken criticism of their model into the mainstream. http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-free http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-f...
simonsarris 12y ago
In a funny way it's players teaching game developers bad lessons. Consumers don't wanna pay 60 bucks for a phone game. Or even 6 bucks. They do want to make in-app purchases. The saying may go don't hate the player, hate the game, but its a funny turnabout one level up, where players influence developers. Don't hate the nature of the game, hate the nature of the player. Tant pis.
- leppr 12y ago
  I think it's just a case of novelty. The average mobile gamer hasn't been playing video-games for a very long time, so contrary to veterans gamers who will from the very start model the game as a system in their head, they just interact with it in a more primitive fashion. Therefore they won't feel that the game is unfair or dumb because they don't see the ropes long-time players do see and criticize. And just like mobile UI designers are starting to reintroduce more complexity as the average user becomes more familiar with touch interfaces, I'm sure we'll see a decline in "pay to win" games as the average mobile gamer becomes more experienced and long for more interesting games.
  - therealdrag0 12y ago
    You can have successful in-game-purchase games that aren't "pay to win". Cf. League of Legends.
  - drawkbox 12y ago
    True there are hills and valleys but certain addiction game designs will always draw a crowd. You can look at any top list in grossing, free or paid and still see casino games of all types because the new mobile games like Game of War or Clash of Clans still tap into that PvP or beat the system type competitive behavior. I prefer games with gameplay but others play games just to compete and it fuels PvP type games and pay to win. People get hooked on them that are competitive, it is why Clash of Clans had to be banned on the MLB Kansas City Royals (http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/24762153/royals-world-series-journey-almost-derailed-by-clash-of-clans http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/24762153/royals...) because the low impact, frequent replay, low action game fit perfectly into their day and fulfilled their competitive spirit, once they got invested they were also paying to win which is an element of competing in the real world and works.
BillyParadise 12y ago
On behalf of the Minister of Mobile Gaming, Canada thanks all your freemium gamers. Now we can have our new hospital.
okasaki 12y ago
What happened to that page? Did Bloomberg hire Maddox to design it?
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  I was going to ask the same thing. It's like they hired a designer, told him or her to go look at current internet culture for design cues, and he or she still managed to fail. It's like stabbing myself in the eyes every time I look at one of those articles.
- leppr 12y ago
  It's obviously to fit with the game's art style: http://www.androidrundown.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screenshot_2014-06-08-01-12-37.png http://www.androidrundown.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Scr... The darker background is nicer on the eyes than the usual pure white honestly.
parasubvert 12y ago
Does no one here play arcade games? Okay granted In-App purchases are generally more than 25-50 cents or the 1-2$ it costs these days at your local AMC, but I don't think it's disappointing in the slightest (and pretty predictable if you look at gaming history) that many people prefer to throw a few bucks a week at a casual game vs. spending $60 on something that might sit on the shelf. Though, I'm more a Clash of Clans guy...
- kristianp 12y ago
  As a sample, how much do you spend on Clans? It seems hard to find people who will admit they make in-app purchases. I play simcity buildit and I'm not tempted to buy things, I find it a challenge to get by without purchases. I can imagine as time goes by that games will get less playable without the purchases.
  - on_and_off 12y ago
    same thing here. I played some PvZ2 without buying anything. A pity, I would have easily paid 7$ for it as a full game(I know I must be in a minority though). The new content pack (beach themed) seems to focus on arcade like experience where you need to pay some credits in order to advance. At that point I just stopped playing.
  - christoph 12y ago
    I have spent a total of £15 on it, in around 18 months. I bought 2 builders near the very start. Then I got frustrated with slow progress about 12 months ago and hit buy on some gems to speed things up. The first purchase I never regretted. The second I regretted almost straight away and promised myself never to buy/spend anymore. I got a brief glimmer of a future filled with regret looking at how much I would pouring into the game regularly and decided to not walk that path. I still play occasionally play (been on TH9 for a long long time), but it's pretty much open it in the morning, collect elixir/gold, refill traps & xbows, donate troops to clan members, spend anything I've accumulated (probably once a fortnight now). It's more of a habit than anything and frankly one I'm glad I don't spend any money or serious time on.
gdilla 12y ago
only 3% of users buy something? Wow. if that's true, trying to hack conversion rates would rain money on them like no other.
- fnayr 12y ago
  That's the general rate across all freemium games (1-5%).
atriix 12y ago
That is one ugly site
aesthetics1 12y ago
I found this to be ingenious: To allow for the building of alliances within the game, the app needed a sophisticated chat feature. In the middle of development, Leydon decided it made sense for all players, no matter what their native tongue, to speak the same language. So he built a messaging platform that included a translation engine based not only on Google Translate but also on crowdsourcing. Within Game of War, text messages, comments, and push notifications are translated with about 70 percent accuracy. Log in to the game in Polish, and everything you read from other players is in Polish, too. The game’s players correct any errors they notice in exchange for virtual rewards within the game. From the start, the average player corrected 10 misspellings and slang expressions per day.
- vxNsr 12y ago
  After reading this I didn't understand why they hadn't been bought by Google or Microsoft just for that feature, access to a near real-time translator that not only gets the usual words and uses but lots of slang and edge cases that nerds like us love to use. I mean google built/bought gVoice and GOOG-411 for the voicemails and transcriptions, they have that weird empire land based game for maps, and here's a chance to greatly improve gTranslate and possibly even gNow... As a windows phone user, I, of course, want microsoft to snap them up (for cortana), but they don't have the foresight to make these types of buys (yet?).
curiously 12y ago
it confuses me as to why some people are more susceptible to paying for in game items where those are not. as soon as I see in game purchases, it's immediately uninstalled. I want to pay for a game and compete based on some dexterity or skill gained over time not on the wallet.
- mrjatx 12y ago
  Some people have more money than time or interest in spending that time grinding games. I've been level 12 in Battlefield 4 for years. I don't get to play it more than a few times a month. I'd love to pay $20 to have all of the unlocks so that I can actually use the weapons that everyone else has. Because to me, that $20 is worth FAR less than the 100 or so hours I had to waste getting those weapons.
  - curiously 12y ago
    I don't see it as a grind because part of what makes leveling up fun is gaining more skills, the unlocks are a nice add on and certainly make an incentive.
moron4hire 12y ago
It's really disappointing to see this trend, both as a consumer and as a developer. On the consumer side, freemium games are designed to be inferior to their pre-paid cousins, or else there wouldn't be an incentive to spend on in-app purchases. And the lucrativeness of the market has turned the heads of most of the game development companies in the world, so it's getting harder and harder to find games that don't use this model. And as a developer, I want to make things that people enjoy. I want to recreate the same feelings I had as a kid, the delight of mastering a game. Or the bliss of a program that enhances the user's capabilities, without adding new impediments of any kind. But consumers have so gone towards this freemium model that they just don't seem to pay attention to pre-paid programs. How do you compete against a company that can take a game that is as big of a piece of crap as Game of War and turn it into a printing press for money--can afford to spend $40 million to have Kate freaking Upton show up? I'm sure it's stupid of me, from a business sense, to declare I'll never make a freemium game. But dammit, I went independent specifically because the general lack of ethics I had encountered in industry bothered me so much. If I can't make it on my own terms, I guess that's the fate I'm going to have to take.
perdunov 12y ago
I guess I will never make something popular because I am apparently on the different side than all those people who are happy eating shit (playing games that try to rip them off).
aros 12y ago
Yawn. Just another "free"-to-play app masquerading as a game in order to take as much money as possible from gullible people.
ChrisArchitect 12y ago
Read this article hoping for more about the Upton / marketing angle. One thing I took note of with this game - has anyone noticed on networks like instagram, all these pretty amateur model girls taking selfies with Game of War playing on a tablet in the picture, talking about the game etc? I have never seen that sort of promotion and I keep wondering if it's natural (maybe followers of the "Upton" aspirations) or if GoW marketing reached out somehow..... never seen that sort of mainstream viral promotion

72 points by hodgesmr 12y ago

catshirt 12y ago

"in-app purchases" no surprise here

tomjen3 12y ago
I have some experience with game development and that is essentially the only way you can make money on the app store these days. If you charge more than the minimum (which may currently be zero) you will have no chance of getting into the top 10, so no way to make your money back. With in app purchases you can also make a lot more money from your whales, rather than charging everybody 10 usd - it doesn't quite solve the consumer surplus demand curve issue, but it does help. And the gaming industry is such a bad bet financially (I am pretty sure the industry overall loses money) that you have to make as much as you can.

tempestn 12y ago

We were bound to get to this point, but I'm still a bit disappointed. I have very little desire to play a game which intentionally skews the playing field based on in-app purchases. Personally I would far rather pay $60 or whatever for the game and then compete based on skill and luck, rather than on who wants to waste the most money.

whysonot 12y ago
Agreed. I think these games teach its players harmful life lessons too. They're rewarded for spending the most money (like GoW) or for showing up (like an MMO). That's not how you get good at things in real life. I've been a (relatively serious) gamer since I was a kid. My parents always thought it was a waste of time. But I think I learned more about dedication and growth playing WC3 than I did playing sports. I definitely would not feel that way had I played GoW instead.
- FanaHOVA 12y ago
  "They're rewarded... for showing up (like an MMO). That's not how you get good at things in real life." It really is though. If you show up every day and put in the work, you WILL get better at whatever you're doing. That's also something your colleagues and the people who surround you appreciate, see Cal Ripken, Jr. for example. He wasn't an outstanding player, but he didn't miss a single game for 16 years, he showed up every day, no matter what. Not sure what sports you played and at what level, I played basketball growing up at national level but also competed at LANs across the country on COD4 and learned lots of lessons from both.
  - whysonot 12y ago
    I should have clarified that there's a difference between showing up and mindfully playing / practicing and simply showing up. You and Cal Ripken Jr showed up to practice with the intention of getting better. If you're to actually get better at your job, you show up and try and get better at your job. But if you show up and just go through the motions (the real-life equivalent of clicking a bunch of buildings to mine resources) you will be squandering your potential. I think we agree--I just wasn't clear enough in my first comment.
  - emsy 12y ago
    In competitive games (UT, Quake, CS etc.) you get better by playing and critical analysis of your and your enemie's playing. In WoW, you get better through, more or less, mindless grinding. At least so mindless that you can pay peons to do the work for you, so you can enjoy your level 100 character.
    - Fomite 12y ago
      Having once been a fairly serious raider in WoW, there's a ceiling in WoW wherein you no longer get better through mindless grinding. A level 100 character is nice and all, but serious end-game raiding or PvP requires more than just "Push button, collect loot."
- parasubvert 12y ago
matt_s 12y ago
I'm with you, I've played some tablet games that have in-app purchases but don't purchase. The game gets to a plateau pretty quick to the point where it is boring and uninteresting. SimCity for instance is free on iOS but has in-app purchases. I'd rather have paid like $5-10 for it but the developers would have to completely change the game mechanics. I wonder what the long term/lifetime value per customer is in that model. It sort of operates like a SaaS but the purchasing cadence is up to the customer. In-app purchases are in a way like the analogy of how you can slowly boil a frog and the frog won't notice, but if you drop the frog in a half-inch hot water it will immediately leap out.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Is it good? Article is silent on that. Not one screenshot.

thephyber 12y ago
Does it matter? It's compulsive. That's why whales will spend $40k of money they don't have on in-app purchases.
- mod 12y ago
  I got the impression the whales can afford it. I'm sure there's counter-examples, but I'd imagine the "whales" are just very wealthy people, generally.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  There is a reason at least one the really big casual gaming company allow you to deposit checks to get in game currency - because the really big whales are in the middle east and that is how they like to spend their money. The people spending 40k can afford it, don't worry - and they might as well use the oil money for something.
  - bartman 12y ago
    Which company would that be? A quick google search doesn't turn anything up.
    - tomjen3 12y ago
      I think it was Zynga, they may have discontiuned it.
      - bartman 12y ago
        Thanks, sure sounds like it could have been them. Gawker reported that Zynga had set up a "Platinum Purchase Program" allowing members to purchase virtual currency in amounts over $500 at favorable rates by making a payment via wire transfer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Platinum_Purchase_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga#Platinum_Purchase_Progra...

cheriot 12y ago

At least South Park has taken criticism of their model into the mainstream. http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-free http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-f...

simonsarris 12y ago

In a funny way it's players teaching game developers bad lessons. Consumers don't wanna pay 60 bucks for a phone game. Or even 6 bucks. They do want to make in-app purchases. The saying may go don't hate the player, hate the game, but its a funny turnabout one level up, where players influence developers. Don't hate the nature of the game, hate the nature of the player. Tant pis.

leppr 12y ago
I think it's just a case of novelty. The average mobile gamer hasn't been playing video-games for a very long time, so contrary to veterans gamers who will from the very start model the game as a system in their head, they just interact with it in a more primitive fashion. Therefore they won't feel that the game is unfair or dumb because they don't see the ropes long-time players do see and criticize. And just like mobile UI designers are starting to reintroduce more complexity as the average user becomes more familiar with touch interfaces, I'm sure we'll see a decline in "pay to win" games as the average mobile gamer becomes more experienced and long for more interesting games.
- therealdrag0 12y ago
  You can have successful in-game-purchase games that aren't "pay to win". Cf. League of Legends.
- drawkbox 12y ago
  True there are hills and valleys but certain addiction game designs will always draw a crowd. You can look at any top list in grossing, free or paid and still see casino games of all types because the new mobile games like Game of War or Clash of Clans still tap into that PvP or beat the system type competitive behavior. I prefer games with gameplay but others play games just to compete and it fuels PvP type games and pay to win. People get hooked on them that are competitive, it is why Clash of Clans had to be banned on the MLB Kansas City Royals (http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/24762153/royals-world-series-journey-almost-derailed-by-clash-of-clans http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/24762153/royals...) because the low impact, frequent replay, low action game fit perfectly into their day and fulfilled their competitive spirit, once they got invested they were also paying to win which is an element of competing in the real world and works.

BillyParadise 12y ago

On behalf of the Minister of Mobile Gaming, Canada thanks all your freemium gamers. Now we can have our new hospital.

okasaki 12y ago

What happened to that page? Did Bloomberg hire Maddox to design it?

drivingmenuts 12y ago
I was going to ask the same thing. It's like they hired a designer, told him or her to go look at current internet culture for design cues, and he or she still managed to fail. It's like stabbing myself in the eyes every time I look at one of those articles.
leppr 12y ago
It's obviously to fit with the game's art style: http://www.androidrundown.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screenshot_2014-06-08-01-12-37.png http://www.androidrundown.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Scr... The darker background is nicer on the eyes than the usual pure white honestly.

parasubvert 12y ago

Does no one here play arcade games? Okay granted In-App purchases are generally more than 25-50 cents or the 1-2$ it costs these days at your local AMC, but I don't think it's disappointing in the slightest (and pretty predictable if you look at gaming history) that many people prefer to throw a few bucks a week at a casual game vs. spending $60 on something that might sit on the shelf. Though, I'm more a Clash of Clans guy...

kristianp 12y ago
As a sample, how much do you spend on Clans? It seems hard to find people who will admit they make in-app purchases. I play simcity buildit and I'm not tempted to buy things, I find it a challenge to get by without purchases. I can imagine as time goes by that games will get less playable without the purchases.
- on_and_off 12y ago
  same thing here. I played some PvZ2 without buying anything. A pity, I would have easily paid 7$ for it as a full game(I know I must be in a minority though). The new content pack (beach themed) seems to focus on arcade like experience where you need to pay some credits in order to advance. At that point I just stopped playing.
- christoph 12y ago
  I have spent a total of £15 on it, in around 18 months. I bought 2 builders near the very start. Then I got frustrated with slow progress about 12 months ago and hit buy on some gems to speed things up. The first purchase I never regretted. The second I regretted almost straight away and promised myself never to buy/spend anymore. I got a brief glimmer of a future filled with regret looking at how much I would pouring into the game regularly and decided to not walk that path. I still play occasionally play (been on TH9 for a long long time), but it's pretty much open it in the morning, collect elixir/gold, refill traps & xbows, donate troops to clan members, spend anything I've accumulated (probably once a fortnight now). It's more of a habit than anything and frankly one I'm glad I don't spend any money or serious time on.

gdilla 12y ago

only 3% of users buy something? Wow. if that's true, trying to hack conversion rates would rain money on them like no other.

fnayr 12y ago
That's the general rate across all freemium games (1-5%).

atriix 12y ago

That is one ugly site

aesthetics1 12y ago

I found this to be ingenious: To allow for the building of alliances within the game, the app needed a sophisticated chat feature. In the middle of development, Leydon decided it made sense for all players, no matter what their native tongue, to speak the same language. So he built a messaging platform that included a translation engine based not only on Google Translate but also on crowdsourcing. Within Game of War, text messages, comments, and push notifications are translated with about 70 percent accuracy. Log in to the game in Polish, and everything you read from other players is in Polish, too. The game’s players correct any errors they notice in exchange for virtual rewards within the game. From the start, the average player corrected 10 misspellings and slang expressions per day.

vxNsr 12y ago
After reading this I didn't understand why they hadn't been bought by Google or Microsoft just for that feature, access to a near real-time translator that not only gets the usual words and uses but lots of slang and edge cases that nerds like us love to use. I mean google built/bought gVoice and GOOG-411 for the voicemails and transcriptions, they have that weird empire land based game for maps, and here's a chance to greatly improve gTranslate and possibly even gNow... As a windows phone user, I, of course, want microsoft to snap them up (for cortana), but they don't have the foresight to make these types of buys (yet?).

curiously 12y ago

it confuses me as to why some people are more susceptible to paying for in game items where those are not. as soon as I see in game purchases, it's immediately uninstalled. I want to pay for a game and compete based on some dexterity or skill gained over time not on the wallet.

mrjatx 12y ago
Some people have more money than time or interest in spending that time grinding games. I've been level 12 in Battlefield 4 for years. I don't get to play it more than a few times a month. I'd love to pay $20 to have all of the unlocks so that I can actually use the weapons that everyone else has. Because to me, that $20 is worth FAR less than the 100 or so hours I had to waste getting those weapons.
- curiously 12y ago
  I don't see it as a grind because part of what makes leveling up fun is gaining more skills, the unlocks are a nice add on and certainly make an incentive.

moron4hire 12y ago

It's really disappointing to see this trend, both as a consumer and as a developer. On the consumer side, freemium games are designed to be inferior to their pre-paid cousins, or else there wouldn't be an incentive to spend on in-app purchases. And the lucrativeness of the market has turned the heads of most of the game development companies in the world, so it's getting harder and harder to find games that don't use this model. And as a developer, I want to make things that people enjoy. I want to recreate the same feelings I had as a kid, the delight of mastering a game. Or the bliss of a program that enhances the user's capabilities, without adding new impediments of any kind. But consumers have so gone towards this freemium model that they just don't seem to pay attention to pre-paid programs. How do you compete against a company that can take a game that is as big of a piece of crap as Game of War and turn it into a printing press for money--can afford to spend $40 million to have Kate freaking Upton show up? I'm sure it's stupid of me, from a business sense, to declare I'll never make a freemium game. But dammit, I went independent specifically because the general lack of ethics I had encountered in industry bothered me so much. If I can't make it on my own terms, I guess that's the fate I'm going to have to take.

perdunov 12y ago

I guess I will never make something popular because I am apparently on the different side than all those people who are happy eating shit (playing games that try to rip them off).

aros 12y ago

Yawn. Just another "free"-to-play app masquerading as a game in order to take as much money as possible from gullible people.

ChrisArchitect 12y ago

Read this article hoping for more about the Upton / marketing angle. One thing I took note of with this game - has anyone noticed on networks like instagram, all these pretty amateur model girls taking selfies with Game of War playing on a tablet in the picture, talking about the game etc? I have never seen that sort of promotion and I keep wondering if it's natural (maybe followers of the "Upton" aspirations) or if GoW marketing reached out somehow..... never seen that sort of mainstream viral promotion