All three of us review SchoolCraft Party, a 7-year-old blocky action sandbox that is hitting record numbers. It looks like Minecraft, plays like GTA Vice City from Wish, and every “player” walking around with a country flag and a name is a bot.

The numbers: launched in 2018 (it used to be called Nightclub Craft), with spikes in August 2022 and last Christmas. It is now at a record ~4–4.5M DAU and still ~250K downloads a day, almost all from tier 3–4 markets (Indonesia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, Pakistan). Felix’s estimate is ~$70–75K/day from ads, from a small Ukrainian team running on AdMob with only Google, Unity and AppLovin in app-ads.txt. His plan: move to MAX, add Pangle, Mintegral, Moloco, InMobi and GAM, and set smarter cooldowns to double ad revenue.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: double the ads, 6x the users

02:19 – Gameplay: Minecraft looks, GTA Vice City loop, watch 10 ads to remove ads

07:45 – Every player is a bot: the offline game pretending to be online

16:24 – ~14 rewarded placements, and Google’s three-ads-in-a-row lock-in

19:02 – Only 3 ad networks in app-ads.txt: Felix’s plan to double ad revenue

22:39 – Numbers: 4.5M DAU, 250K downloads a day, tier 3–4, ~$70–75K/day

24:37 – A 262M-view YouTube short, 5 creatives, and Matej’s 6x UA plan

30:26 – Blocky art = cheapest CPI, the reskin portfolio, Nightclub Craft rebrand

This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.

http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100

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Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.

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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.

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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

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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

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Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me

🎒 SchoolCraft Party: 4.5M DAU, Fake Players, ~$70K/Day Ad Stack That Could Easily DOUBLE

two &amp; a half gamers

🎒 SchoolCraft Party: 4.5M DAU, Fake Players, ~$70K/Day Ad Stack That Could Easily DOUBLE

two & a half gamers