I've been playing the 'Phone Destroyer' game on-and-off for the past several days, and I thought I would write about it given that most websites just contain regurgitated press release statements.

It's a perfect time to release franchise games during their TV show hiatus since all of the fans are desperately clawing for any new content. Fans have just been watching the same gameplay videos of 'Phone Destroyer' and 'The Fractured But Whole' over and over just to satisfy their cravings until new episodes come out. The same is happening with 'Rick & Morty', where any fan-made videos become instant viral hits.

Before I write any further, I wanted to remind everyone of what Matt Stone & Trey Parker actually think of Freemium games.



So,

Matt & Trey found it offensive that shortly after playing the game, they were asked to spend $100 on tokens. And, they had ethical problems with freemium games built like slot machines or contained intentional frustrations programmed into the game in order to force the player to buy something. They also mentioned how "fucked up" it was to prey on psychology weaknesses and create an addiction machine.

The audio and visuals for South Park Phone Destroyer are awesome of course, which is to be expected when working with the teams from SP Studios. However, after playing the game for a long time, it's obvious that Ubisoft must have spent a lot of time planning their game design strategies around neuroscience practices and also spending a lot of time deciding how they were going to pitch the game idea to Matt & Trey. I honestly believe that Ubisoft must have sent a highly skilled salesperson to convince them that this game was different than other exploitative games.

Here are some of my various observations:

• Whoever designed the card-opening mechanic was brilliant. All of the card packs are essentially pinned to a corkboard. They swing back and forth based on feedback from your motion sensor, giving it a great feel. After you select a card pack, you rip open the top and the cards spill out. It's a really great alternative to the classic tap-to-open-treasure-chest mechanic. A nice feature, like the Fallout Shelter 3D effect when turning the phone, that I'm sure certain other games will copy.

• PVE and PVP gameplay is really fun, but it will take you a while to learn which combinations of players to use, and when to use them.

• The game requires a persistent online connection. This has both it's pros and cons. It's helpful in mitigating certain types of cheating, but if you have weak connectivity, you're going to have a very bad time.

• The game has a great start but I was hoping for more story development and South Park videos as the game progressed (ie, a reward system as you progress to different stages.) However, it appears that they blew their load on the new user onboarding experience instead of lengthening the foreplay.

• The story writers put in very little effort. The startup South Park video you see is the only one, there aren't any more after that. So, the rest of the game will be fairly disappointing. I was expecting video sequences after each zone. There's nothing really too funny after the first 30 minutes of the game, there's no story development, all characters are pretty much the same... and, when you finally reach the end and beat level 60, the South Park characters criticize you for not spending enough real money, brag about how they took advantage of you, and beg you to spend real money on the game. I suppose it was meant to be funny, but it really wasn't. I was expecting a really great ending, and they just kick you when you're down.

• I've never played a mobile Ubisoft game, but I always suspected that they were extremely bloated based on my experience with their PC offerings. Even on a high-end Android device, I endured very frequent and long loading times, graphical slowdowns, and many crashes. Especially during any loading screens: if you lose connectivity, or even just a minor traffic bump, expect the game to hang indefinitely.

• The game will frequently freeze during PVP matches, and I'm assuming that opponent bandwidth is also a requirement to have a positive experience. If they lock up, you'll probably crash too. During any online matches, also make sure not to switch windows or you'll return to a black window unable to target anything while your opponent pummels you. If you won the game, but the proceeding loading screen hangs for any reason (which is often), you'll lose your win.

• If the opponent leaves the game, or swipes to another screen, while you are waiting searching for an opponent or "Waiting for the Opponent..", it will cause your game to crash as well. It will hang indefinitely until you restart. If the game starts acting buggy after multiple restarts, you'll need to reboot your phone to correct South Park.

• 'Phone Destroyer' is an apt name. It's a huge memory & CPU hog, and it can drain my batteries faster than any other app I've ever used. I'm not even mad, it was amazing to watch.

• The PVP matchmaking system is very fast (ie, less than 2 minutes), but it's also very unfair. Be prepared to fight players several levels above or below you. I feel bad for those who will be joining on the official release day, they are going to be viciously steamrolled by players who have been levelling their characters during early access. It's extremely unbalanced leaving most new players with a sense of unfair treatment.

• After seeing how the matchmaking and PVP ranking systems work, however, I'm sure this is all likely intentional and very little changes will be made in the future. Being steamrolled by another player certainly gives you an incentive to purchase all of the P2W microtransactions that are available in-game.

• Almost no effort went into the achievement system, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of what they're attempting to achieve. It seemed like a rushed afterthought, and they threw it in merely to mimic other competitors. So, after your hard work collecting achievements, you'll be rewarded with some incredibly unrewarding rewards. They essentially made the achievement system the opposite of what it was intended for.

• The achievement system was also designed very poorly, likely because of it's hasty implementation. It will break if you get too many achievements too soon. For example, say you receive an achievement for killing 10 rats, then 50 rats, and then 100 rats. If you killed 100 rats, but didn't claim for your achievements each time, it will freeze on 0/50 rats and you can't claim any rewards at all or increase the number after that. The "claim" button just disappears.

• And, there was very little wisdom and inspiration invested in the notification system. I was really curious if Ubisoft would finally get mobile notifications correct this time by ensuring that notifications only arrived during normal human operating hours. But, I was unpleasantly surprised when I started receiving IAP reminders at 12AM, 3AM, etc. Even _after_ I turned off notifications in-game.

• During PVE missions, if any asset or NPC is slightly off-screen to the right, you can target them with direct damage spells, but they will actually be immune to damage. Random damage immunity of this nature often occurs in PVP as well.

• The game has an automated Cloud Save feature that you can't exactly control, and linked directly to your Google Play account. As far as I know, there's currently no way in-game to delete your character and create a new one. So, I'm stuck with the same player I created on day one. What's cool though is that the cloud save will carry through to any other devices that you install the game on. So, you can play it on your desktop (via Android emulator), and continue playing on your mobile device when travelling.

• Due to the online nature of the game, changing money variables will be impossible. But I'm not sure if everything is governed server side. There has been some evidence of speed and health hackers during PVP matches, and I would imagine the game could be botted quite easily as well. Even an AutoIT script (through an emulator) can run nonstop PVP matches for you. There is also a modded APK available for rooted devices which makes the game region-free, however it requires the hacked version of the Google Store as a prerequisite.

Minor Notes:

• The screen focus handling is a little different than other games I've tested, likely due to some responsive resolution code they have in the game for multiple screen sizes and devices. So, it may mess with your swipe controls or go to a black screen when switch back-and-forth.

• During a couple of my PVP battles, I noticed that the sprite frames of custom characters were glitchy. I'm surprised this was missed in QA.

• Notifications will happen at inconvenient times, I would recommend turning them off from your O/S settings. You can turn off notifications within the game settings menu, however they may randomly turn back on.

• The Bandito Sally (kindergartner Sally Bands) character was renamed to Kenny's Sister. So, when you see the Kenny's Sister card - that's not actually what she looks like.

• There is Character Art used in various menus, Environment Art, and then Combat Art used during the battle sequences. The developers took some of the Environment art and tried to recycle it for Combat Art, resulting in very blurry and improperly scaled images. The Holy Water asset is a good example. Same with the Character Art, if you jump through the various zone selection menus, the characters appear crisp and clean, but one of the Cartman images is all blurred out and scaled wrong. The Cartman character with the staff is the wrong asset, but the one with the phone in hand is the correct one.

• In-game interfaces that require scrolling are very sluggish, and randomly unresponsive. It doesn't feel smooth when scrolling. This is due to the bloatyness of the game unfortunately. And likely the reason why they have the Deck Builder menu built the way it currently is: I suspect that scrolling horizontally was very frustrating in earlier testing.

Levelling your characters or cards in the game can be very confusing. There are many Upgrade Items, that only work with certain themed cards, and also require a combination of other duplicate cards, and vast injections of cash/points.

You will also be very confused about what they mean by a "Stage". For example, right now when you receive in-game ads ("NEWS"), Early Access users are notified that they will be rewarded greatly for "Destroying the Indian Fortress in Stage 10". However, what the hell is "Stage 10"? There are neighbourhood stages that represent Card Themes, and each neighbourhood has a Stage, however each of those Stages also has up to 15 replayable stages. There are also different Episodes with their own Stage numbers too. For example, you can be in "Stage 3 of Stage 25 in Episode 5 of Stage 5". No, I'm not joking.

The freemium game that Matt & Trey described could might as well be 'Phone Destroyer'. In the beginning, you'll collect a lot of money points and upgrade items. However, the difficulty curve quickly goes from easy to cruel. Moreso than most other similar games. Shortly after you're able to construct your first deck, it becomes extremely difficult to progress in PVE or PVP. In PVP, you never go down in ranks, and the rewards for winning are met with quite unfair diminishing returns. In PVE, as you progress through the different zones, the difficulty suddenly curves up as well and you're forced to replay old zones to collect upgrades. However, since you move up in ranks as you replay old zones as well, so you get quickly locked out of those in terms of difficulty.

In a nutshell, here's how the game works (and please note that it happens very quickly):

You play through the Story PVE stages. You hit a road block. You switch to PVP. Rankings significantly diminish rewards. You switch back to PVE. Even more diminishing returns, making the climb very difficult until you hit a road block. You're forced to replay older PVE zones, but you can only play each once or twice, since they _also_ ramp up in Stages, becoming exponentially difficult. Then, you hit an obstacle where you can't progress at all unless you buy packs and upgrades. This can all happen in one or two days of playing.

The art and sound effects are great, but other than that, it's hot garbage. The game will crash on you very frequently. And it won't give you any error codes to research, it will just simply freeze up on you indefinitely.

Now you could wait for the free pack every 4 hours and collect unpredictable cards over several days to overcome the obstacle, but the road blocks happens exponentially faster each time. Or, you can take the easy path that all human beings are wired for, and visit the IAP store to keep up with the Joneses.

Since everything in the game uses a specifically crafted ranking system with exponentially diminishing returns, the entire game very tightly squeezes you from every single side, and the only way out of it are making payments to Ubisoft. I'm feeling claustrophobic by just writing about my experiences. But, this is how they hide everything that's going on behind the scenes. They cover the game in glitter, bright lights, several varieties of "upgrade items", too many different point systems, and rewards. All of these keep you distracted from how the game is influencing your behavior.

But in the end, I think Ubisoft is going to make a ton money from this game. They are using some very classic and highly manipulative successful casino game design strategies that work very well on addicts players.

I have to wonder if Ubisoft managed to convince Matt & Trey by telling them that they would give players free card packs on a regular schedule. To the inexperienced, this sounds like a altruistic gesture. But heroin dealers have a common term for it.. it's just "a taste."

IAP sales from the game should impact their stock price positively, especially with fears of a take-over attempt looming.

An old fan contacted me about my last post, enjoyed the investment information and asked for my opinion on other potentially lucrative investment advice. So, I figured I could make a list of "Top 5" companies I've been following so far this year.

I would say that the entertainment industry is a really good investment to be in, even during the bad times like a depression, recession, bubble pop, financial failure, or another form of tragedy or hardship. When things are rough, humans turn to comfort and various escapes from their harsh reality. Drugs, alcohol and the world's oldest profession are common escapes, but for those that don't take risks or can't afford them, they turn to entertainment options like music, movies, and especially video games. People will always need entertainment, and they'll always find ways to pay for it. And there are many public video game companies that are worthwhile long-term investments, even overseas, like in Japan.

1. Nintendo of Japan (today: 25,600 JPY)

Usually I don't follow Japanese companies because I don't have many contacts there. So, I use various tools to measure trends and statistics across several social media sites and internet sites to determine the future popularity and potential sales of new hardware or software. Based on what I've seen, Nintendo is going to do very well this year with the Nintendo Switch and many of their exclusive games. I double-checked my suspicions by calling up several call centers, and learned that practically every retail store is completely sold out on pre-orders as well as their suppliers. And, they were still receiving thousands more in requests. It even reached a point where they will need to cancel pre-orders because of the shortages (and because their own employees and VIPs want some themselves too.)

The NS will be much hotter than most anticipate and the Nintendo stock is very low right now. It's a very safe bet to get into the company right now, and I'm confident that the stock will surge once word gets out that Nintendo will need to increase production levels. I wouldn't be surprised if they doubled it. So, I would get in on this investment right away. It's going to go nuts this year.

2. Best Buy (today: $48.00 USD)

Normally, I would tell you to STAY AWAY from shitty retail stocks. Stay away from all of them. BUT, in this unique case involving the Nintendo Switch this year, you'll see a spike in Best Buy stock. Keep in mind, that this will just be temporary. So, you're going to go in and out on this one. Normally, you do not want to invest long-term in retail stocks as they are slowly being consumed.

Invest in Best Buy sometime soon, but then follow Nintendo announcements. Once they make a statement about their pre-order or production numbers, you'll see their stock surge. This will also follow suit with BBY. Wait until it peaks out, and then dump your stock before it slowly drops over the proceeding one or two weeks. This will net you a short term profit, but I figured I would mention it due to my high confidence in Nintendo this year.

2(b). Twitter (today: $14.40 USD)

Speaking of shitty things to invest in, Twitter has been at an all-time low this month so it's a good time to buy a lot of their stocks. Twitter is actually horribly overvalued, but rich assholes and clever stock-brokers have been manipulating this market for a long time, and they are going to continue pumping up this stock.

I'll be getting another short-term gain from this company, but Twitter is not something I want to long-term invest in. They have a high market cap, but little actual value. Smart people will invest in this company to take advantage of the stupid people who think Twitter will actually be profitable in a few years. So, buy now, wait for it to go up another $5-8, and then sell it all.

3. Gameloft (today: $14.98 USD)

Although I don't know a lot of people working for Public Japanese Companies, I definitely have contacts and listen to people from Activision Blizzard and Vivendi. =]

I've been told to invest in Gameloft as soon as possible. I suggest you do the same. You may have missed out on the Gameloft takeover by Vivendi, but there's another opportunity now to make a little bit off Gameloft right now still. There is tons of chatter in the office places about Vivendi making some major investments into them, so it appears that there's a really big push coming to strengthen the company and expand.

4. Glu Mobile (today: $2.25 USD)

I mostly ignored this company, mostly for personal reasons: I didn't like their game library and offerings. But, word is that they have been talking to a lot of different franchise companies, and they have had successful negotiations on various IP licensing. They're moving into sports franchises, which is going to be really hot on mobiles this year and next. Card games too will be very popular on mobile for the next few years, so this is a very positive trend for the company. Once they get their name out there some more, I'm sure that other sports franchises will be more interested in working with them as well. So, now I'm actually investing in them that now I have more confidence in their future.

5. Zynga Inc. (today: $2.78 USD)

Ah Zynga, the prancing fool. They've made a lot of foolish decisions, but I think someone in management is finally learning their lesson, and trying to correct their mistakes. They still have strong revenue from their highly addictive games (Zynga Poker is trending big), but now they are finally making deep cuts, laying off staff, and significantly reducing their operating expenses. This is a very good indication, and it means that they are significantly undervalued at the moment. I won't be surprised if they can reach $4 again in the near future. This is another solid investment to be in right now.

Investments

If you know anything about me, you might say that I have an unhealthy obsession with video game companies, particularly their inner workings. I do a significant amount of digging into financials, business practices, employee posts, public boards, talk to industry employees, and listen to chatter from the industry.

I've written a lot about Activision, Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft in the past. But, what you might not know is that I also frequently invest in video game companies. I won't invest in something I don't fully understand however. Investing is like gambling, except you can have an edge simply by doing proactive research. Activision, EA, and Ubisoft.. their futures were fairly certain in the beginning. I've owned stocks in ATVI since they were $10-11, Ubisoft at $5, and EA at around $15. I had invested in Tencent back when they were 50 HKD too, and I've written about them many times in the past due to their relationship with Blizzard.

You won't find me investing in much other than entertainment, gambling, electronics, and gaming companies.

Now one company that I have been following for a VERY LONG TIME is Guillemot Corporation. I was initially interested in them back when they manufactured video cards, but was surprised when they acquired Hercules. Shortly after that time, the company lost a huge amount of value and they've been quiet for several years. These days, they just do a little amount of sales and they own the ThrustMaster line of gaming joysticks. It is a small, but profitable business. But what many people don't know is that this company was the birthplace of Ubisoft, and they acted as the gaming company for a short time, before splitting off and creating the Ubisoft Corporation as a separate entity. If you look back at ancient versions of the Guillemot website, you can see their old game releases.

Takeovers you say..

Back in November, there was some industry chatter about several different movements taking place within the Guillemot Corporate family, especially within the Shanghai Ubisoft management structure. Something big was happening. I suspected that it might have something to do with fears of a hostile takeover by Vivendi. They already snagged the Guillemot family's Gameloft, and many experts believe that Ubisoft is next on their target list. My suspicion is that key employees, and potentially licenses/contracts, are being juggled around companies within the Guillemot sphere of influence in order to protect themselves, or at least create some obstacles, in the event of a hostile takeover.

Guillemot Corporation was really their only other public company under their complete control, so I purchased various stocks at around 1.30 EUR. I think something big is going to happen here, including some assets being moved from other Ubisoft facilities to this one. It's climbed about 0.20 EUR since then, but I honestly think something big is still going to happen in the near future that will drive up public interest and value in their stock. And even more events taking place until the end of the year.

Of course, this could just be Vivendi attempting to drive up the stock price of Ubisoft, before selling it off. They haven't fared too well in the gaming industry, and it's something they should abandon. Nothing increases stock prices more than increasing your stake in a company, spreading rumors and then denying them.

And you mentioned something about "penny stocks"?

But now my attention is on a smaller public gaming company. It's a penny-stock too, something I've never really invested in before. It was a Canadian company called Imperus Technologies Corp., who renamed themselves to 'Tangelo Games' (currently at $0.04) after acquiring Diwip Ltd. out of Israel, and Akamon Entertainment out of Spain. There's really nothing to write home about these companies, they don't create anything too special or unique like the big guys, but they have a lot of experience constantly pumping out small gambling and casino games for mobile devices. And, they are very successful. Currently, the company is very profitable, but they are also massively in debt from previous investments and decisions.

There are two primary players in this company that interest me: James Lanthier (CEO) & Vicenç Martí (previously owned Akamon and was made President of Tangelo).

Vicenç owns another company too, called 'Billy Mobile' that operates in the exact same building as Akamon Entertainment. Interestingly, just a few weeks ago, the offices of Billy Mobile were raided by police in Spain. The operation was related to mobile telephony fraud. =]

From what I dug up however, it's only because of their very aggressive marketing (too many text messages to users who complained.) They'll get off with a slap on the wrist and a small fine. But, that Billy Mobile company he owns looks like it's going to be highly successful. If it was a public company, I would have invested in it by now. I think it's going to make big waves, but only in certain countries where their aggressive strategies are still legal. And, I suspect that Billy Mobile will be utilized by Tangelo Games in the future as well. Billy is Vicenç's baby, the golden son, and where I think most of his efforts are currently being placed. He sees it as a billion-dollar company, and he's not wrong.

Now the CEO of Tangelo, James Lanthier, he's a different creature. His primary passion isn't exactly creating video games, but rather increasing the value of entertainment companies, and then selling them off as a complete package. He's into acquisitions and being acquired. Two men with different drives. From what I see, James has been working on reducing company debt - so I don't think there's going to be any problems here. It's a highly profitable business, really just running on old titles at the moment, that will be able to pay off the debt within a reasonable time frame.

And from the developer stand point, the teams are all still busy and hard at work. They aren't developing new games, but rather porting over all of their existing libraries onto a new platform (Unity) so that it can be supported on new devices. New graphics, new engine, and more devices of simple casino games that have worked. There is currently a hiatus of game releases, however there is going to be a huge rush of titles being released simultaneously at the end of this year.

So, what we have is a hugely undervalued company, with very little investment risk, a flood of titles coming out at the end of this year and early next year, and managers who are driven to make the company valuable enough to be acquired. That sounds like a reasonable investment to me, and if you also want to make some money with little risk, I would advise investing this company at the $0.04 rate or under before the end of 2017.

Much has changed within the past five years leading a better level of comfort, I guess you'd say.

For example, the public is much more aware now of the type of internet harassment and intimidation that takes place. And, there are more laws slowly appearing to protect internet users from cyber-bullying. Back when I started, death threats and attacks against female bloggers weren't well known of at all, and the term "misogyny" just started to go mainstream. So at least now it's a known and public issue, making it more difficult for aggressors.

So, what's all happened in the past five years?

• A handsome rogue leaked confidential NSA information, verifying what most rational thinkers in the world already knew.
• We were all supposed to die of Ebola according to main stream media.
• We were all supposed to die of the Zika Virus according to main stream media.
• The Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House failed.
• Blizzard pulled off the best Legion marketing stunt ever when they turned the Olympic pools green.
• Various game developers successfully hyped extremely disappointing games. The gaming media agreed that they would never be fooled again.
• Project Titan was cancelled, and scavenged to create a successful TF2 clone competitor.
• All of the big names have left Blizzard.

A little bit about me during the past five years:

I've been doing consulting work with AAA developers and publishers, helping them sky-rocket their wealth. And, I've launched three very successful titles that I designed. Occasionally, I have some free time on my hands, and decided to fire up the old blog. I haven't decided what to write about yet, if I write anything at all, but I thought some old readers would at least appreciate the nostalgia.

If I do write about something, I will try to make it original content. I dislike re-posted garbage, and opinions on trending news items. I can't talk specifics due to non-disclosures, but I may enjoy writing about the gaming industry from a general development or finance side.

I love the work of indie developers, so I can definitely provide some useful advice and strategies that they're currently not aware of. I may even review some indie games who don't know how to market themselves.

Who knows.

I'll try this out with comments disabled. It'll be better if people can't send "messages" to me directly. I've gone back and cleaned up the blog, removed irrelevant posts (e.g. exploits and gold making that no longer apply), and tried to focus it some more. Unfortunately, it looks like some old imgur links have died but I can't do much about that.