Haha, no. I did not pay someone to do that. I paid someone to find out how much of these economies are copied. We had numbers for everything including cost of unit per level, earn rate per minute per level, etc.
Everything followed the same pattern, not just level and XP.
I'm the author and I highly doubt that. They are far from the first company to really focus on conversion optimization.
I paid a statistician to reverse engineer the economy of Dragonvale, Tap Pet Hotel and Tap Zoo. All of the games follow a VERY similar pattern on every stat. Here is an example on XP and Level ratios:
We've done ton of research on this and most of these games copy each others economy very closely.
I could go on about that forever, but go play Galaxy Life and then Clash of Clans. You'll see it's the EXACT same tutorial story and setup. I mean, screen for screen. I'm not hating, it's just the nature of the business.
The fact is this:
Innovation is a risky business model. The companies can see what worked, tweak the theme and add to the game content, and have a MUCH higher chance of success.
They copied the gameplay style and tutorial. Again, I mentioned many times it's a smart move. I don't think they copied CODE or did anything shady. But go play galaxy life and then Clash of Clans. It's dead obvious.
