Survivor.io & Top War: UA creative strategy masters
People usually talk about amazing global launches and then forget about the game ASAP. Well, this is not the case. I am still following very closely the games I wrote about, mainly survivor.io (read the case study here) and those that I talked about (e.g. Topwar in the fake ads piece.)
Those articles were very well received and if you like them, please share them (again) with your industry friends. It would mean a lot to me.
Anyway, enough of this bullshit. Let’s take a look at the creative strategy of these games and some others, because the creative strategy evolves all the time.
Survivor.io is a creative beast!
Survivor.io is simple yet unique. It utilises minimalistic 2D graphics to deliver an immersive gameplay experience. It seems they are using the same items and hero progression as they do in Archero or Punball this time with time-based levels.
You already know this, right? But do you know how much money they make on a daily or monthly basis?
Yep, 31 MILLIONS a month! Only in IAP. As we discussed on our podcast they were making 500k/day on Ads, now most probably even more. All in all, if we are generous they make additional 15-30 MIL on ads on a monthly basis. BOOOM!
With this type of revenue, you would be spending large budget to maintain or even grow the game. And as we can see on their monthly revenue, they are definitely growing. With large spend, you need shit ton of new creative concepts. This is definitely not an easy job, but they are doing it super well!
Creatives
Where do you get inspired? Which games to follow? What should you do? Honestly, you don’t need to go far away. Look at your UA.
These are actually from the other side of the barricade, but you get it right? If you don’t, you will. Keep reading. This is pure gold!
Survivor.io global launch creatives:
Super simple, straight to the point. EFFECTIVE! Here comes the interesting part. They are not only looking at different games (competition obviously), but also different genres:
Can you guess which genre is this coming from? No? Lets continue with examples, maybe you will get it…
Lowpoly graphics or noob vs pro creative concepts. Is this you, hypercasual genre? You bet it is. Survivor.io started expanding the creative strategy beyond the classic gameplay I talked about earlier when they global launched. But this is not all of it! What else do they have in their UA creative strategy?
Hmm… this looks really familiar. Where did I see this? Wait a second!
Topwar as an inspiration
Ultimately, I still believe Gold & Goblins was the first game that brought this creative concept to life!
But let’s get back to Survivor.io and their creative strategy. There are some nice concepts to showcase here.
Oddly satisfying (ASMR!)
These are oddly satisfying, I would almost call them ASMR. It’s really amazing to watch all of those zombies to perish. Anyway, let’s move to other concepts.
Sniper games?!
What the hell? Why sniper creative concept? Well, sniper games were always really popular and had pretty nice organic uplift. E.G. Only Sniper 3D from Wildlife studios had 18Million downloads per month in peak. I guess in this case, survivor.io was looking at the Topwar, which was stronger motivation to copy this concept.
Other game genres you might recognize
If you watch closely one other Fishdom concept, I believe they are checking each other out quite often. Do you see the magnet over there? I wonder which game is it from … Oh wait, survivor.io?
Okay okay, starting to be boring, but there is more!
These last two examples remind me brain teasers or female oriented games rather than male driven. But who am I to judge? If you make 1.5 mil a day, you most probably spend equal amount on User Acquisition. With that kind of budget, you need to run SHIT TON of different creatives and test the hell out of it.
Topwar
As you might have noticed, I mentioned Topwar multiple times in this article, but also in the previous ones. Why? Because I think this game’s creative strategy is by far the most advanced.
Are they using fake ads? Yes! Do I care? Nope.
They are also pioneers of the adoption of hypercasual game mechanics in the creatives. The one and only prediction I wrote about last year, which actually happened. Let’s look at the recent Top war creatives:
Where is the inspiration coming from?
Well, guess what?
https://youtu.be/dAxUhmUkEMghttps://youtu.be/iJw32oQMCOU
All of these games were big hits back in days and accumulated multiple millions of downloads. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
No bullshit gaming podcast two & a half gamers break
two & half gamers gaming podcast
3 Videos
session #40
session #39
0:16
session #38
0:16
As always, special thanks goes to Social Peta & Mobile action for providing the creative insights! You are awesome!
Takeaways & last comments
- Pay attention to your competitors. Look into your User Acquisition data. Dig deeper and find out which of the sub-id’s on ad networks is performing best. Look at their creative and get inspired!
- Look at the history of hypercasual games. Dissect games with most downloads to this day. Steal, ehm borrow their game mechanics and use it in your creative concepts.
- Use humour and fun in creatives. Oh wait, I didn’t mention that in this piece. But here is an example of that. Enjoy!
Oh wow! You made it until here! You must be very engaged. I like that type of players.. Ehm, people!
Please share this article with your industry friends. It would mean a world to me.
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