4 out of 5. Old-fashioned borrowing. How creatives ramble back and forth.
This time I’m going to talk about borrowing in gaming. This one is really interesting. We are used to think that strong expertise in games with millions of downloads monthly is self-evident.
And as a part of this one expertise in marketing creative production goes without saying. But sometimes you can see some staff that is literally cloning competitor’s concept. This area — is our topic to look at today.
I won’t aim to show how hypercasual games give birth to numerous mechanics and later they are implemented all over the game globe (if you’re interested — here’s my article).
If you missed previous part you can find them clicking links below:
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Pair 1
If you monitor trends you might obviously know about Frozen City. This game by Century Games shown great traction. Moreover the team that makes creatives is outstanding! Look at this creative:
Looks very interesting. But what would you say about shifting main concept to farm? Klondike Adventures has an answer:
So people die due to not having tomatoes?! Well, maybe theory is interesting. But metrics show that creative doesn’t serve this game well.
Pair 2
You definitely heard about Royal Match. Maybe you follow them to grab some insights. And this video was very good not so long ago:
Match-3 genre is one of the most competitive in the whole mobile gaming. Red ocean as it is. And Cookie Jam knows it for sure. It’s hard to go to war with King, Playrix and Dream Games. But you are definitely able to get a piece of pie that leads juicy audience. Check it out:
Adaptation is really good. Main hero rescue is one of the best movements you can do in a current market statement.
Pair 3
Toon Blast is not match-3 but collapse game. This mechanic is quite similar but you don’t have to match elements. You click on cavalcade of elements instead. But, as I said before, rescue is a great hook! Let’s see how they want us to save the bear:
Cookie Jam (we are going to back to it several more times) is always looking for something to grab more installs keeping KPIs good. This one is looking fresh and new but core mechanic and actions serve same goal: to save panda. Watch:
Pair 4
Playrix is a leading player in match-3 genre. If something is copied by market — check Playrix titles first. Most likely Playrix took it and invested in own (and later market) creative mix.
Here’s an attempt (unfortunately failed) to succeed with drawing:
Looking for inspiration is hard. Sometimes it’s easier to copy concept to understand if it works in general. This step was realized by Toon Blast:
Looks really interesting. If you don’t track market trends :)
Pair 5
BlockuDoku by Easybrain. What a game! Fun, simple, relaxing — all in one. Recently they presented rhombus filling that blasted market! Look how catchy it is:
Cookie Jam in da hauz! They even keep rhombus concept in the core. But anyway it looks tasty and familiar to a newcomers.
Woodoku is more similar to BlockuDoku comparing to Cookie Jam. There’s no characters and main concept is close to Easybrain hit. No surprises they found out a way to implement it in their creative strategy:
It’s a great example of how exploding feature is replicated widely.
Pair 6
What comes to your mind when it comes to a city builder game? I’m sure many of you consider Township and it’s absolutely right! But there’s a lot common with farm games — especially resources.
Managing resources opens up a door for a huge waves of creative development in both of these genres. Let’s watch this video by Playrix:
Purely farm game — Klondike — of course would fail not trying to implement it in their creative strategy. Here’s a result. I’d like to highlight that video by Vizor was iterated numerous times and creative below is one the iterations:
Century Games are great especially in terms of soaking ideas from competitors and dragging them into their own videos. Family Farm Adventures did it once again:
Pair 7
Towers are wide-spead across a lot of games. It mostly spread among battle ones but there are exceptions. This Battle Arena creative shows us how towers in games like this really used: moving step-by-step to face and defeat uber boss in the end. Check it out:
Creative below looks differ in comparison. This one is aimed to another audience — predominantly female. Of course it looks brighter and softer but look at its timings and logic of actions. You’ll find something familiar :)
This creative by Angry Birds Dream Blast is a great exception — how to transfer concept from another type of audience. Hard work was done for sure!
Pair 8
Attack Hole by Homa Games is one the most popular games right now. They revived core concept by Hole.io and got a super catchy game! Look at this creative — one of the first iterations:
Mighty Party brought us Towers that later were popularized by Hero Wars. So it was surprisingly for me to see this mechanic in such kind of game. But anyway — video is done and shown for users. Check it out:
So there’s one of the most important things about creative testing once again: test it as it is to check how main concept performs in general.
Key findings:
- Often different games lead similar audience. It’s okay to focus not only on your genre competitors. Look broader.
- Doesn’t really matter what competitor game is about. If it lead enormous amount of users it does mean that it represents huge layer of audience. So there could be some of users that may be interested in your game.
- It’s ok to clone creatives as an initial concept without massive changes. But adopt to your audience request — must do.
- Some players use “copy only” strategy. It works but it definitely won’t throw you in top-5 of the category.
- It’s hard to be on the top. Your creative strategy could be copied. Your marketing strategy could be copied. Your product strategy could be copied. You always have to fuse speed and quality. Only few are ready.
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