Reviews are a key element of consumer game sites. But they don't make much sense for a business-focused site like PocketGamer.biz, which is why we've come up with Monetizer.

It's our version of a review, which provides objective analysis of new free-to-play mobile games, specifically in terms of ranking their monetization.

You can see previous columns here, and we're highlighting different techniques daily on our Tumblr page.

You can also read my handy explanation about how we calculate the numbers here.

Welcome gift

GREE's been having a tough time of it recently, which makes its latest title Dragon Realms even more crucial.

Developed by its US internal studio in San Francisco, it's labelled a medieval MMORPG, although could be described as a card-battling RPG with city-building elements.

Certainly, it's not the best-looking game: style-wise it looks more an HTML5 game than native app.

The opening tutorial sequence is well managed, however, with a splash screen telling players that they will gain a reward worth $13 for completion; an excellent 1-day retention encouragement.

Another nice reciprocity option is a heavily discounted item bundle. The Heroic Pack contains $19.99-worth of items for $4.99.

All that glitters

In terms of gameplay, battles are generic in that you just repeatedly tap on enemies to destroy them; the game working out what damage is dealt based on the attribution of your equiped unit cards and the enemy statistics.

Success means the usual loot drops, but to gain decent items you have to complete higher level tasks.

In terms of city-building, that's the typical building and upgrading cycle to generate gold, one of the game's soft currencies. It's used to buy buildings, props and permanent boosts, which lower construction costs.

The other hard currency is gems. These are used to speed building, buy Stamina and Energy - required for battles - as well as buying Summons.

Summons are how you gain the high level cards you need to build your fighting group. Low level cards are generated by completing tasks and can be used to (mainly) to enhance your equiped cards.

The final in-game currency is Honor.

This can't be purchased, but has to be earned by PVP battles. It's used to buy a specific set of high level cards via the Summons store.

Hone to a point

As you can tell, this is a sophisticated in-game economics system, something that's reflected when we perform our Monetizer number crunching.

Thanks to its multiple currencies and minimum IAP cost of $4.99, Dragon Realms has a Monetizer score of 349.

We treat any game with a score higher than 100 as being 'highly monetized'.

Dragon Realms ranks alongside recent titles such as Codemasters' Boom! Tanks, although it is lower than GREE's long-time success Modern War. Released way back in 2011, it has a Monetizer ranking of 499 (the highest ever).

Waiting game

Looking at our other Monetizer metrics, Dragon Realms has only just been released so it's impossible to tell how successful it will be.

Typically, we wait for 2 months from launch to gauge a definite score. In terms of our Success metric, it doesn't yet rank either on iPhone, iPad or Android as it hasn't reached the top 10 top grossing charts in any countries.

To-date, its best performance is #24 in the Swedish Google Play store and #18 on the New Zealand App Store for iPhone.

Buy high

The final thing to consider is the game's Discount Currency ratio.

Both when it comes to gold and gems, Dragon Realms scores 1.5.

This seems to be a GREE standard, as recent release War of Nations also had a DCr of 1.5, which is well within the industry range of 1.3 to 1.8.

Conclusion: Dragon Realms

Success coefficient (iPhone) = 0

Success coefficient (iPad) = 0

Success coefficient (Android) = 0

Currency Discount ratio = 1.5 (for both gold and gems)

Monetizer coefficient = 349

As is typical with GREE releases, Dragon Realms ranks as a highly monetized game on our Monetizer ranking, thanks to its $4.99 minimum IAP and complex soft and hard currency economy.

It's yet to demonstrate any commercial success; something that will be interesting to follow given its low quality og presentation compared to other games in the genre, especially when it comes to graphics.