Rewarded ads in an idle game: why my first boost paid nothing, and where interstitials belong
Idle games and rewarded ads go together. The player wants time, and the ad gives time. Most of the money in Genesis comes from rewarded videos and one Remove Ads purchase. Getting there took a few wrong turns, and one of them is almost funny.
The boost that boosted nothing
The first rewarded ad offered "+3 hours at 1× speed". The game's normal speed was also 1×.
So a player watched a 30-second video and received exactly what they would have had without it. For a while, nobody noticed, including me. The button looked like a reward, the ad played, and the text said something positive.
The fix needed a decision about the whole game's clock. Genesis now runs at a slower base speed by default, and a watched ad (or Remove Ads) runs it at full speed. In the interface this is always called the 2× boost. The base speed is never described as "half", because nobody wants to be told they're playing a slowed-down game.
Slowing the clock risked ruining the opening, so I protected it. The tap value isn't scaled, and the first Extinction needs much less, so the first few minutes feel exactly as quick as before.
What Remove Ads sells
Remove Ads in most games removes banners and interstitials. In Genesis it also makes the 2× clock permanent while you play. So the offer isn't "fewer interruptions", it's "the game runs at full speed forever". That's a much better reason to pay, and the store text says it that way.
At my word games' banner rates, a single US$4 Remove Ads sale is worth more than days of ads. In an idle game, where the purchase also buys speed, I expect it to matter even more.
Interstitials and the prestige loop
The first version showed an interstitial after every Extinction. That sounded reasonable for one reset every half hour. Then I looked at how an engaged player actually plays: in testing, about 200 Extinctions by day seven. That's an ad every few minutes, aimed squarely at my most loyal players.
Now:
- interstitials start only from the third Extinction, so a new player never sees one in their first session's discovery phase,
- at most one every four minutes,
- an Extinction never waits on an ad. The next ad loads a minute ahead, and if it isn't ready, the reset just happens.
Fairness rules
Two principles I won't break:
- No purchase or ad makes a challenge easier. Crucibles switch boosts off, and entering one doesn't burn banked boost time. A paying player faces exactly the same gates as everyone else.
- Errors never blame the player's build. An early version told a player with an ad blocker "Ads are unavailable in this build", and every failed purchase said Remove Ads was "only available in the Android app", even inside the Android app. Unknown ad errors now suggest checking an ad blocker, VPN or DNS filter, and the raw reason is logged so I can see what actually happened.
The ad-close bug I didn't know I had
One problem turned up across every game at once: closing an ad could press the game button underneath the player's finger. In an idle game that might mean an accidental Extinction. That got its own post.
Will it work?
I won't know until real players arrive. What I'm hoping to see is a hooked player playing a long session, reaching several Extinctions, sitting through a few interstitials and choosing to watch a rewarded ad because the boost is worth it. The bet is that idle players will watch ads and pay for time, as long as the deal is real.