Creative is an advertiser’s best opportunity for a competitive advantage in social advertising. Soon, the combination of Facebook’s and Google’s Media buying automation with Apple’s removal of IDFA will make ‘winning’ creative ﹘the five percent of Facebook videos that are successful﹘of paramount importance. Here we break down Simulation role Playing Games with competitive trends & creative recommendations, so you can learn from their creative best practices.

Simulation Role Playing Games Competitive Analysis

• Top Competitors: Avakin Life, Chapters: Interactive Stories, Choices: Design Home, Cooking Diary, Covet Fashion, Design My Room, Episode: Super Stylist, Episode: Choose your Story, Fill in 3D, Hollywood Story, House Flip, I Peel Good, Icing on the Cake, IMVU Avatar, Ink Inc., Journeys: Interactive Series, Lily’s Garden: Design & Relax, Linda Brown, Linda Brown: Interactive Story, Love Sick, Moments: Choose Your Story, My Cafe, My Home: Design Dreams, My Story, My Story: Choose your own Path, Paint by Numbers, Party in My Dorm, Pottery, Secrets: Game of Choices, Storyscape, Super Stylist, Township, What’s your Story?
• To view competitive videos, click here

Simulation Role Playing Games Competitive Trends

• Event/Date Prep with Character Reaction: Picker utilized for hair/makeup/clothing, with character reaction (Hollywood Story, My Story, Lovesick)
• Choices-Style situations: Empowered female characters given option to choose their next move (Episode, Choices, Avakin Life, IMVU Avatar)
• Men Behaving Badly: Women triumphing over adversity and badly behaving men (Choices, Episode, Love Sick, My Cafe, many others)
• Female characters in peril: Females suffering and crying but overcoming the obstacles and ultimately having the last laugh
• Mean Girls: Cruel characters making fun of unpopular/weak girls, but ultimately losing against them
• Relaxing, Mindless Expressions of Creativity: Decorating, painting, and cooking apps that display simple gameplay, sometimes comedically (I Peel Good, Icing on the Cake, Fill in 3D, Pottery)
• Creative Expression/Design: Using pickers to create and furnish rooms, houses, etc. (Design Home, My Home: Design Dreams)
• Time Progressions: Narrative style ads where present conflict is explained by going back in time or forward to the future.
• Outfit Selections Montage: Showing many outfits or makeup choices. Dressing up girls for an event/date/contest
• Choosing between two interests: Main character torn between conflicting interests (Best friend and lover, two lovers, money or love)
• Awful Dates: Female characters enduring awful dates/relationships but finding a better partner in the end or having to decide what outcome to choose
• Competitive Nature: Friends competing for better dates/outfits/more likes on Instagram/popularity.

Concept: Timed Character Reactions

• Add personality to timed picker challenges by allowing models to react, either with expressions or with talk bubbles. (Hollywood Story, Love Sick, IMVU Avatar)
• Make the timed challenges more story-focused to engage players (e.g. boyfriend is almost there) (Hollywood Story, Love Sick)

Concept: Choices-Style Situations

• Precede picker situations with simple, choices-style situation that necessitates new style/design (Choices, My Story )
• Simplify situations with dual picker (Avakin Life)
• Create stories where makeovers help a woman get over a bad relationship, insensitive man, etc… (My Cafe, Choices)

Concept: Poor Pregnant Woman

Trends: Females in Peril, Awful men

• A pregnant woman about to reveal baby news to the future dad.
• Plot options
  • A) Guy has other plans
    • He’s about to reveal he doesn’t love her anymore/is leaving her.
  • B) She finds him cheating on her with someone else (Sister/agent/friend)
• Ending
  • A woman has to make a difficult decision as a cliffhanger

*Competitor and SOV: Journeys 20.5%

Concept: Revenge with Timing Elements

Trends: Mean Girls, Time, Competitive

• Bullied girl gets her payback years later
  • Starts in the present time with the bride crying/husband cheating with sexy attendee
  • Sexy attendee memory takes her back to High School days
  • Turns out the bride was very mean and bullied sexy girl 

Options appear with

• Revenge
• Let it go
• The scene returns to the present time with the choice made and the consequences

*Competitor and SOV: My Story, Journeys 25.5%

Concept: Ugly Betty with a Twist

Trends: Mean Girls and Outfit Selections

• The girl is made fun of because of her looks
  • She decides to go home and change her appearance
  • A picker screen appears next to her
  • She selects new make-up, clothes, hair and removes glasses/braces
  • (I’d avoid doing the weight loss part)
• Her “new me” comes to school and tries to seduce her crush
• Two options appear
  • Crush rejects her because she’s now like everyone else
• He lusts after her and dumps his girl

*Competitor and SOV: My Story, What’s your story 18.5%

Concept: You vs. Your Friend with a Twist

Trends: Competitive, Outfits, Two loves

• Friends compete to find the hottest date
  • Two frenemies go to Tinder to find a hot date
  • Side by side screens show each swipe
  • Both choose a guy but this part is not revealed
  • Next, both girls are seeing choosing different outfits (fast montage)
• Twist end, they both arrive to meet the same guy
• The guy must make a choice
  • He chooses one
  • He chooses both

*Competitor and SOV: Kim K. Hollywood  31.5%

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