two & a half gamers

We sit down with Katie Madding (CEO, emhanceAI, ex-Adjust CPO) and John
Hobson (founded user research at Bungie and Blizzard, 20+
years on Halo, Destiny, WoW). The conversation walks through
two real case studies — a Skullgirls Mobile playtest and a
creative comparison — using emhance AI's facial-emotion
analysis (0.89 ROC AUC, basically "lie detector" precision).

The findings are uncomfortable. Skullgirls' tutorial pauses
combat to teach mechanics players don't need yet. Every
level ends with 5 passive screens stacked back-to-back. And
the creatives with "near-death experience" hooks within the
first 4 seconds genuinely outperform — not because Chinese
UA teams said so, but because the emotion data shows it.

If you build games or ads for mobile, this is required
viewing.

The link to the report is here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0v1sLM0

Peaksel case study: https://www.emhance.ai/success-stories/peaksel-emhance-case-study

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — designing the engagement curve
01:30 Welcome + Katie and John intros
03:48 How AI facial-emotion playtesting actually works
07:57 Skullgirls case study: the first 15 minutes broken
11:25 The attention budget — what it is, why it caps at 3
17:14 High vs low engagement moments in Skullgirls
24:13 Creative case study: Cat Match Two vs Sheep Swipe One
29:52 Why "near-death experience" creatives win — confirmed

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— emhance AI uses facial-emotion analysis (0.89 ROC AUC, "lie
detector" precision) to identify exact moments of high
and low engagement during playtest sessions. Engagement
= emotion + attention combined.

— Skullgirls Mobile tutorial findings: pausing combat to
teach optional mechanics players don't need creates
frustration. Players come away thinking the game is
shallow because the tutorial fights are too easy and the
text walls killed momentum.

— John's "attention budget" rule: teach maximum 3 things
at a time, then give players space to digest. From his
Halo days: pop up a tooltip → if used, snooze 5 minutes
→ if not, repeat. Snooze 15 minutes after second use.

— The "5-stack of boring screens" problem is universal.
Win → victory animation → reward screen → loading
screen → cut scene → talking head → finally back to
gameplay. Nobody designed this stack on purpose. Real
playtesting reveals it.

— Why 6 out of 7 AI ads still suck: the concept is right
("save the character") but the small execution details
matter enormously. Emotion data lets you identify which
4 of 15 things in a creative actually worked rather than
throwing out the whole concept.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎙️ HOSTS
Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant
Jakub Remiar — Game Design consultant
Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

🎤 GUESTS
Katie Madding — CEO, emhance AI (ex-CPO, Adjust)
John Hobson — Game user researcher, ex-Bungie/Blizzard,
20+ years on Halo, Destiny, WoW

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

Every new mobile game is now a copy of a copy. And that's
not a complaint — it's the strategy.

We dig through the soft launch charts to surface 15+ new games released in the last three months. Voodoo's Block Pals (which is literally just Block Jam 3D again). Moon Active's two new merge games are chasing Gossip Harbor. Spike's Hexa Out, Quick Send, and Solitaire Sort. Grand Games hiding its new Aerogem on the Zimbabwe App Store to dodge takedowns. SuperSend's template-driven creative-first approach with FROZIA and
Daily Farm Harvest Empire. Plus the bigger structural question: is Overwatch Rush actually going to make it?

The pattern is clear - 80% works, 20% iteration. Every serious studio is following the same playbook. The question is who executes it best.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — merge is the new match-3
04:04 Field Day by Bitod — ex-Supercell startup goes GTA
06:15 Overwatch Rush — Blizzard's mobile play (high CPI face)
09:53 Moon Active's merge wave — Reality Bay + Family Bay
12:43 Voodoo's Block Pals + Century's DakiMage Color Puzzle
15:35 Turkish section — Rolik, Spike, Grand Games dominance
25:16 Aerogem hidden on the Zimbabwe App Store
27:00 Arrows hits 6.5M DAU — the new template everyone copies
28:38 SuperSend's creative-first templates: FROZIA, Daily Farm

— "80% works, 20% iteration" is now the default soft launch
strategy. Every game in this episode is an iteration on a
proven winner — Block Jam, Gossip Harbor, Pixel Flow,
Lesmore's Arrows, Township, Last War Creative.

— Merge is officially being treated as the new match-3. Moon
Active alone has two new merge games in soft launch.
Caveat: merge is much harder to balance and live-ops than
match-3, so most of these will fail.

— Grand Games is hiding its new game Aerogem on the Zimbabwe
App Store specifically because legal teams from incumbents
(likely MiniClip / Lesmore) don't operate there. This is
apparently a real soft launch tactic now.

— Spike has abandoned its main App Store account and is
publishing everything from a new "testing" account,
releasing Hexa Out, Quick Send, and Solitaire Sort in
rapid succession with the same template strategy.
--------------------------------------
PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.
Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/
They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.
- Scale fast
- Keep your shares
- Drawdown only as needed
- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you
+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors
---------------------------------------
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]

MoonActive just launched the obvious counter-punch to Monopoly Go — and it's already pulling 2.2M monthly downloads against Monopoly Go's 1.8M, with 10x fewer creatives.

We break down Coin Master Board Adventure end-to-end: the stacked core
loops (board + merge + Klondike + bombs + idle tree pets), the static-vs-seasonal album split, the 5-pop-up energy trap, the UA creative library, the launch trajectory, and why social casino monetization is still a money printer that the rest of the industry can't crack.

Plus the question that opens the episode and pretty much defines the genre: what is the D365 retention of users spending $5,000+ a month? (Spoiler: basically 100%.)

If you work on UA, live-ops, or social casino product, this one's required viewing.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — D365 retention of $5K/month whales
02:55 The setup: MoonActive's counter-launch to Monopoly Go
04:13 Coin Master is a $70M/month plow horse — for years
08:50 Walking the actual game: pop-ups, energy, board core
13:12 Five stacked cores: merge, Klondike, bombs, idle tree
20:00 Launch trajectory — $300K/day, 80K downloads/day
21:27 UA creatives: 1.5K running, why CPIs stay at $90+
31:21 Year-end predictions and the Las Vegas granny
--------------------------------------
PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.
Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/
They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.
- Scale fast
- Keep your shares
- Drawdown only as needed
- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you
+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors
---------------------------------------
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
Podcast:

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

The mobile gaming industry just posted record revenue
($195.6B) while simultaneously firing 44,000 developers.
Here's what's actually going on.

Matej Lančarič flies solo this week to break down the five
stories that matter most: NTE's massive global launch,
IronSource's official shutdown after one of the worst
acquisitions in mobile gaming history, the State of Mobile
Gaming 2026 report and what its genre data really tells us,
Adam Foroughi's spicy 20VC interview, and Google's ad tech
antitrust ruling that's about to reshape programmatic
advertising.

Five stories, one signal: the market growth is real but
extremely concentrated. If you're not in the right two
genres or one of the live-service giants, you're competing
for table scraps.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Record revenue, record layoffs paradox
00:50 NTE / Neverness to Everness global launch
02:30 IronSource is officially dead — RIP $4.4B acquisition
03:45 $195.6B revenue + 44K layoffs — the concentration story
05:15 Adam Foroughi on 20VC — $83M payday, AI, layoffs
05:45 Google ad tech antitrust ruling — what comes next
06:30 Closing — the week ahead

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Global gaming hit $195.6B in revenue in 2025, the highest
annual total on record. Meanwhile 44,000+ dev jobs have
been cut since 2022, with another 2-3K already gone in
2026. One in three US developers laid off, 48% still
jobless.

— IronSource is dead. The $4.4B Unity acquisition is one
of the most controversial deals in mobile gaming history
— Supersonic is being sold off, and three and a half
years later there's almost nothing left of IronSource
inside Unity. Unity Vector grew 48% YoY though, so the
ad business itself isn't dying.

— NTE (Neverness to Everness) launched globally April 29
on PC, Android, iOS, PS5, and Mac with cross-platform
progression. Same team behind Tower of Fantasy. Massive
IP, production values, and gacha — benchmark is Genshin
and Zenless Zone Zero.

— Adam Foroughi's 20VC interview is required listening.
$83M CEO payday after a 92% stock drop, AI vs layoffs,
AppLovin's run as one of the best-performing tech
businesses right now.

---------------------------------------
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
Podcast:

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

Welcome to Review Radar #11 — the "broken dreams and hopes" edition. We revisit every game they reviewed between September and December last year to see which ones survived, which ones got killed, and which ones genuinely broke through.

The verdict is brutal. AceCraft dropped from 800K downloads a day to 4K. Galaxy Defense never scaled. The Squad Busters of the world joined Supercell's graveyard. But there were real winners: The Tower, Level Devil, Sunday City (the "Casino GTA"), and Heads Down all proved that smart design beats hype every time.

If you want to understand what actually predicts mobile game survival, this is the episode.
#mobilegaming #gamedesign #useracquisition #liveops #f2p

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop
--------------------------------------
PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.
Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/
They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.
- Scale fast
- Keep your shares
- Drawdown only as needed
- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you
+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors
---------------------------------------
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

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Cold open — "broken dreams" radar incoming
01:51 AceCraft, Galaxy Defense and the September graveyard
07:54 The Tower — one of the best games we've reviewed
12:01 Sudoku Master and the puzzle category check-in
20:11 The Supercell post-2018 graveyard + MoCo's slow death
28:38 Sunday City — the "Casino GTA" winning at $100K/day
34:00 Final verdict — who survived and who didn't

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