From the Movies to the UA Creatives: My Evolution in Mobile Game Advertising

🚥The Beginning

In 2020, the pandemic thrust me from a Hollywood VFX studio into an entirely unfamiliar world—game user acquisition creatives. With a background in 3D animation and years as a film VFX veteran, I suddenly found myself creating 30-second ads for mobile games (Good heavens, and for SLG mobile games no less... I needn't say more).

On my first day at the gaming company, I was informed that I was the first woman in a team of over 40 people—and the only one transitioning from the film industry. Everyone was watching, wondering if I’d survive.

Two years later, my work consistently ranked among the top performers in annual UA spend.

This isn't a success story about "how to win." Rather, it's about the journey from reluctantly taking on a challenge to discovering I could confidently continue.

Today, I'd like to share what I learned about mindset, creativity, and maintaining my identity as a filmmaker while transitioning to gaming.

🎨Lesson 1: Forget Your "Artist Identity"

What did the film industry teach me? Obsess over perfection, serve the director’s vision, work in month-long cycles with zero data feedback.

UA Creatives? At our company, each person produces 12 3D creatives monthly. In a team of 40 people, our work competed weekly, with only the top 1-2 pieces advancing to formal ad groups. There’s intense pressure to produce and an extremely high elimination rate. Performance data judges everything.

Initially, I struggled to adapt. After years of creating "aesthetics-first" content, suddenly catering to "mass appeal" felt like betrayal.

The turning point came in the first month. I crafted what I thought was a “high‑end” ad—with impeccable composition, rhythm, and detail. Yet it flopped—it didn’t even pass the test phase.

Comparing it with top-performing ads revealed the truth: viewers aren’t there to appreciate your artistic nuance—they mindlessly swipe, and only halt if something stops them enough.

So I began to "crouch down"—literally, psychologically lowering myself to stand at eye level with target users. I imagined my own reaction if I encountered this ad while scrolling through TikTok or Facebook. Would I stop? Would I click?

That mindset shift marked my true entry into this world.

🧍Lesson 2: You Are a One-Person Production Team

Film VFX production is highly specialized: concept artist, modeller, animator, lighting artist, compositor… each person handles one pipeline step.

UA creative isn’t like that. You are the scriptwriter, director, cinematographer, editor, and producer all rolled into one. From idea to final cut—you're in full control (at least at my company).

The pressure was intense at first—but soon, it felt like freedom. No one questioned too much about your ideas. No endless approvals. Think of something, execute it immediately. That from-scratch control is something the VFX industry can't offer me.

But freedom comes at the cost of accountability, for sure. Every decision you make carries weight. Miss your deadlines—or underperform? That means a wasted ad budget and a blow to team results.

🧭Lesson 3: Creativity Needs a Method

Many people think UA creatives just need to be wild—or occasionally tacky. I don’t entirely buy that.

Over these years, I've developed many techniques that work effectively across various games. To simplify, one relatively stable strategy is: “When others don’t have it, I create it; when others have it, I go faster; when others go fast, I do it better.”

• When others don’t have it: Seek novelty

  UA ad space is hyper‑competitive—with hundreds of new ads launched daily. We need to create something different to give audiences freshness and capture the first wave of traffic benefits. Of course, constant innovation is difficult. There are many methods to spark creativity, and I usually try to find inspiration outside of games.

  
  

  Games are part of the broader entertainment industry, with trends and popularity that can influence each other. I study popular elements in short videos, comics, novels, and film trailers, observe which emotions or narrative techniques are amplified on social media, and then apply them to UA creatives.

  
  

• When others have it: Win on speed

  As soon as a creative trend drives high traffic, copycats emerge fast—this is extremely common in the UA advertising industry. They've all achieved "seeking speed." In today's information explosion era, trends have increasingly shorter lifespans. Delay, and the opportunity vanishes.

  
  

  My personal rule: when facing creative breakthroughs, I must have preliminary iteration plans within 24 hours, quickly implementing them in ads to capture remaining traffic positions, then evaluating the data. This time pressure often forces unexpected good ideas.

  
  

• When others go fast: Outperform with quality

  Speed matters, but with numerous competitors, if everyone moves at roughly the same pace on the same track, they can only compete viciously in a limited traffic pool. Latecomers won't get much quality traffic. When you're on the same track as others, how do you stay ahead? My experience: use quality to create distance.

  
  

  In the ad creation process, many procedures can be extracted and improved. For instance, when borrowing a hit ad's story script, we can enhance the narrative, optimize editing, improve the plot; or we can upgrade visuals by enhancing character animation, rendering effects, shot composition, etc.; we can also improve UA strategy, adjusting testing methods for faster, more effective data feedback. I'm sure you've seen the ads for crappy puzzle games, but you've definitely also seen hyper-realistic 3D versions—this is a quality optimization approach.

  
  

  Within your budget constraints and team capability limits, improving what you can will help you pull ahead of others.

  
  
  
  

⚡️Lesson 4: No Path Is Wasted - Using Film VFX Industry's Industrial Thinking to Transform Creative Processes

Based on my personal observation, compared to the film industry, game companies' UA creative teams generally have an issue: unstructured processes and suboptimal efficiency.

It's not that they don't want to improve efficiency, but rather that the industry is so young it lacks mature industrial systems. Just considering software support: there are numerous service-oriented software solutions for the VFX industry, but I've yet to see tools specifically designed for UA creative teams. I guess it's because gaming companies all operate differently, making standardization difficult. Practitioners therefore don't know their efficiency ceiling, and outdated, inefficient processes continue to be used.

I imported several VFX industry practices:

More professional asset management: It looks easy, but many teams didn't do it well. Asset folders can't be randomly placed and accessed; establish unified folder structures and standardized file naming.

Semi-automated project management: Let machines do what they can—don't waste human resources. Traditional online spreadsheets and documents, when managing the simultaneous production of massive videos/statics, have high error rates if you're manually annotating each one, resulting in a meaningless workload waste.

I applied the film VFX industry's approach to tracking CG shot production to the UA creative industry. Although there are no UA creative-specific management tools on the market, some platforms and software offer high flexibility. I evaluated over 20 project management/automation platforms, ultimately building workflows and scripts that met team needs and improved efficiency.

And much more: The production process has many steps that I cannot enumerate completely. When I develop a better communication approach, I'll publish another article specifically discussing efficiency improvements.

🌏The Global Value of Chinese Experience

All my experience comes from Chinese game studios, but I believe these methodologies have global applicability.

In the first half of 2024, mainland Chinese gaming companies remained the largest international advertisers, consistently leading in overseas creative volume. Creative strategies and workflows that survive here should work well in other companies too. Efficient data feedback, industrialized creative processes, and cross-industry content innovation are fundamentally borderless concepts.

I hope my sharing can be of some help to you.🌹