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Tag: insight

Fake ads consequences

Published by Paolo on 18/12/2025

I read the post from performance marketing expert Matej Lancaric on “fake ads”. With data, he demonstrated that big spenders do not care about fake ads, and they help to lower CPI (cost per install) for mobile games. Fake ads are regulated in other industries, not in mobile games.

From 200 real payers (including whales):

75% uninstall instantly when the game doesn’t match the ad

40% leave negative reviews

27% ask for refunds

But 17% of paying users STILL stay… and STILL spend

And here’s the uncomfortable part nobody wants to admit:

Those 17% often represent 60–80% of total revenue in 4X, SLG, and Casino.

Whales don’t care about fake ads.
Whales care about depth, progression, and competition.
And if fake ads drop your CPI from $60 → $15, the math wins. Every time.

The point here is that we, game creators, rely on algorithms to distribute our games nowadays. Speaking simply, a computer program decides on the visibility of our creations. We need to make good games but also think about how to trick the machine in order to make our craft arrive to the people. In the case of free-to-play the thing is worse because we need huge volume of people to find our real clients who are big spenders (described as “whales”, a term that comes from casinos).

The post doesn’t clarify WHY big spenders don’t care and fake ads spread rapidly. Also, it doesn’t explain what happens when people are exposed over a long period of time to fake ads. But we can make hypotheses:

  1. Whales are often addicted to gaming, so anything that stimulates their dopamine system is OK.
  2. Algorithms prefer easy to get, average, exciting moments.
  3. On the long term, brands corrode because of continuous exposition to fake ads.

I am still worried about those 75% of people who uninstall instantly. I mean, we are still paying for those people to install in first place. What if, instead of making fake stuff we make simple onboardings and put those into our fake ads? Maybe the conversion would be better and we could find more players.

Pragmata first impressions

Published by Paolo on 15/12/2025

While I am preparing my classes for this week, I have played the demo of Pragmata the new game by Capcom presented at The Game Awards. In Pragmata, you control a gunner with a little girl on his shoulder and you need to arrive from point A to point B solving spatial puzzles and destroying robots. To do that, you control the man to shoot at enemies and the little girl is a cyborg, capable of hacking the robots’ systems.

While you aim and shoot, then, you also have to move a cursor on a grid and solve simple puzzles. During the exploration you can find extra tiles for the grid that give you benefits (on damage, basically) and extra weapons for the man.

Pragmata is a game designed for people like me, 35+ year old, mostly male, who may or may not have children. The movement speed, the weapons feeling and the general pace reminds a lot of classic 2000s games, like Gears of War. The use of robots is savvy, because they are pretty slow compared with aliens for instance, so you have time to think in both the shooting and the puzzle. Capcom promises to publish a cool game, I am sold.

Feelings for 2026

Published by Paolo on 13/12/2025

My feeling is that 2026 will be the year of people with the courage of creating new worlds and putting them out. We have not only tutorials, but plenty or resources to visualize and realize our dreams. To make them playable from people from all over the world. My feeling is that independent creators will benefit the most from recent technological advancements.

Of course, there are many factors that can influence the course of events so don’t take it as a prediction. I loved The Game Awards, I watched it with emotion, including some tears of joy and nostalgia. And the desire of helping build something memorable.

My takes on The Game Awards

Published by Paolo on 12/12/2025

Today my post came later because I wanted to watch the whole show of The Game Awards, so I took my time. I loved the show, in my opinion it is getting better and better. I liked it better than last year, because I found the new teasers less like a Tool video and with more hope.

The first take is that it is a great time for independent developers. The creative director of Sandfall told that he is thankful for youtubers for putting out tutorials because he had no idea on how to make a game. And the game he made with the team was the most appreciated in the history of TGA, so yeah… I guess it’s easier to make games nowadays. The important part is the creativity, now more than ever. And I believe that now it’s a moment where we can, and should, risk a little bit more in that sense. Avoid repeating formulas, find new recipes. Now the tech permit beat everybody else with less than $10M.

Another trend I am noticing is that horror and monsters is casualizing. Monsters are getting cool, I saw zombies dressed like rappers and cool things like that. Sci-fi, instead, is animalizing always more, with bears and dogs in tech armor. These are two new trends that have been started years ago (in my opinion, from Twilight and Guardians of the Galaxy, respectively) but that now are exploding.

During my view of the show there were tears in my eye. First reason is because the show is fantastic if you love videogames. There is music and stunning visuals, incredible people coming on the show. There is everything I love. But I cried also for a little bit of nostalgia/sadness: it’s because it’s very hard to participate into something like the games presented there. Most of the work in games is on very poor experiences, so I feel that maybe I am losing my time. Maybe I do need to really care about my own world, things I want to put out there, and leave the chase of the next client. I have to think about that.

Steam Sale Games in Italy

Published by Paolo on 06/12/2025

The fifth edition of the Steam Sale Games in Italy is underway, the initiative dedicated to Made in Italy video games powered by IIDEA!


From today until Tuesday, December 9th at 7:00 PM, discover over 400 Italian titles, including video games, DLC, and additional content: a vast selection that celebrates the creativity of our studios and offers numerous special offers on productions of all genres.

Common ground beliefs

Published by Paolo on 05/12/2025

Marketing works better if the marketer believes in the product. Game design can help with this, if the company allows the communication between designers and marketers.

Sometimes, though, we are working on a game we don’t really believe in. We are there just for the job, someone above makes all the calls and we do not see any value behind the strategy. It happens, more than it should actually.

Everything gets more complicated from there, so one of our duties in this case is to find common ground and push to focus the efforts on that. Because only that may become unique, in the end.

Interesting interview to mr. Owen Mahoney

Published by Paolo on 03/12/2025

Mr. Owen Mahoney is one of the few outspoken gaming CEOs out there that speaks actual game development language. I listened to this interview and one thing has made me think a lot, also because it’s not well explained.

Mr. Mahoney talks about the importance of looking at the future intentions of a team or company to understand its shape. He makes the specific example of the founder of Embark, who wanted to make something new, something different. But that’s always the case whenever there is a sales opportunity. We do want to show what we did, our experience, but we also want to say, “Hey, we are building the future here; do not miss the opportunity to go with us towards it.”

How can we really understand when we are in front of a good company? Now I want to switch my discourse from the perspective of an employee or a consultant. How to understand that the client or employer we have in front of us is the right bet for our next 2-5 years? That’s a matter of gut feeling, but is there a way to make a sort of due diligence? That’s what I would like to ask Mr. Mahoney.

I beat “Detroit: Become Human”

Published by Paolo on 02/12/2025

Yesterday I completed “Detroit: Become Human” for the first time. I think I reached the worst possible ending, but still I loved any minute of the experience. I believe that Quantic Foundry is a fantastic company and should expand its business vertically, reaching more devices with its games and not changing completely its business.

In fact, they are very strong in high quality single player hardcore games, and in recent news I read they are making a MOBA. Apart from the fact that the MOBA genre is not well accepted in the western audience, I believe that these business line extensions are too dangerous for a business. They should insist in going stronger into single player hardcore AAA games, in my opinion.

Detroit: Become Human is a game where your choices matter, the story is the most important part of their formula. And in its story equation we have a unique (and weird) things in its characters. The world is a normal world (accepting the characters of course) and the plot is a good but predictable one in terms of umbrella plot. Then there are lots of interesting twists and expansion that make the experience memorable.

The fantasy of the game is that you are the mind of a robot, but since you have a human mind (right???) it’s interesting that somehow you give a conscience to the artifact. On top of this fantasy, which is cool, the actions are: answer choices, attacks, jumps, defense, movement. The quick time events fit perfectly in the concept of robots and algorithms.

The economy is based on completing story sequences of the three protagonists of the story and earning new story paths and points you can invest into unlocking special content like artworks, models, music and so on.

The world is our world but in the future, the technology is sci-fi and the artstyle is realistic. The story is fantastic, is about cyborgs adquiring concience. Right from the menu you can feel the story with one of them interacting with while you select the game mode and prompting you surveys with existential questions.

I see few games like this and I personally love them. I hope Quantic Foundry will surprise us with something new like this in the future.

True stories

Published by Paolo on 30/11/2025

Performance marketing for mobile games has become lately a synonym for scam. There is not other world to describe the act of copying others’ creatives and produce massive quantity of low quality, repetitive content to try to catch the attention of people.

Marketing expert Matej Lancaric is happy to show off every week the disaster that mobile marketing as become

The good news is that marketing cannot be like that.

Marketing is the generous act of showing up with a true story that helps people get to where they’d like to go.

Seth Godin

Game design can seriously help to find the true story to tell to the people. The issue stands in the business model of free-to-play, of course. In a model where 5% (at best) of people pays something, and that something is variable and potentially very high, you need a massive volume of installs.

But maybe mobile gaming could be different and not just free-to-play. The point is to convince founders and CEOs to believe in this.

Start making memorable levels

Published by Paolo on 29/11/2025

If you are making levels professionally, you cannot just jump in the engine and placing shapes and mechanics here and there. You need a way of plan and communicate your design choices ahead. The big picture of the level and how it fits into the overall scheme of things is very much needed.

That’s why we use beat charts, a spreadsheet that puts everything in perspective. In my case, I have these fields:

  • Level ID: Unique name for the level, it should also correspond to the actual scene or map name inside of the engine.
  • Layout: a screenshot (or a link to a screenshot) of the level so that you and your teammates can directly recognize them when you have dozens levels.
  • Skill atom: the original unique thing the Player should learn or confirm during this level
  • Twist: if there is a special twist, describe it here. This can be filled later and just planned with a true/false text
  • List of mechanics: each column a single mechanic and a true/false if that mechanic is present inside of a level. Put the columns in order of appearance
  • Difficulty: the % of players who will not pass the level or die at least once.
  • Narrative: a short brief of what you are conveying to the Players (it can be a story, but also specific emotions)
  • Mood: useful to suggest your mood to environment art or in general artists. Try to put a mood board for them to understand. You can reuse the same mood boards over and over, of course. In this way you will also predict the weight of your design choices.
  • Music: similar to mood but put your musical references focusing on the feeling the Player should experiment during the level.

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