Insights and tips about the games industry

During this year, our tech teams have been working hard on updating our tool to bring some significant improvements to GameAnalytics, such as A/B Testing and Benchmarks+. As our platform increases in popularity and usage (we now have over 70,000 developers using our tool), a key focus of ours continues to be improving the performance for all of our users. To do this, we’ll be making some changes to our data retention policy, querying capabilities, and event ingestion rules (for legacy SDKs), in mid-April 2020. Here’s an overview of what we’re changing and how this affects you. Data retention policy One of the most important changes we’ve made is our data retention policy. As always, you can query Historical Data for the last 13 months across all of our features (except for exporting your data, you can do this for...

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on LevelUp by Joakim Achrén, the Founder and CEO of Elite Game Developers (a Helsinki-based company that helps gaming entrepreneurs in starting their first games company). You can find the original version of the post here.  No, this is not an article about how the hyper-casual market has peaked. This isn’t an article about how poorly hyper-casual games generate value for advertisers who buy ad inventory. And this isn’t an article about how crowded the market of hyper-casual games already is and how big studios are cloning and fast-following all the successful hyper-casual incarnations. No, this is an article about why hyper-casual has positively impacted the gaming industry and why its approach to development should be emulated by other genres. 1. Fast shipping speeds up the learning curve This past fall, I’ve been...

Thousands (if not millions) of people have been working from home this month, and in return, gaming has boomed. And with the now announced lockdown in the UK and other countries, we’ll likely see a higher increase in downloads, session length, and session counts. I’ve been working from home for my entire life, and games have been there for me. It seems they’re helping everyone else in the same way now, too. This month, I have specifically taken a look at hybrid games (games that smash together two different genres to make one great game). And if you pay any attention to the mobile gaming industry, then you’ll know that this is a trend that has been getting more traction over the years. So, as usual, I’ve picked out my five favorite games in this genre, and deconstructed them to...

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Adam Stevens, Chief Product Officer at Luna Labs. You can read the original version of the second of this two-part series here. TL;DR Over the past two years, hypercasual studios found their way to make playable ads drive significant results. In doing so, they propelled this format to the main stage. However, the methods they found to be successful for this format cannot simply be “replicated” in other game genres — these studios must now find their own paths for success. And as playable ads evolve, studios need to also overcome some additional challenges, for the format to continue its growth and significance in the ecosystem. Creatives didn’t suddenly become important — for many years, the quality of the creatives you produce as well as your ability to analyse results and improve...

Ahead of the release of their newest title, Pitch Black, I spoke to the developers at Purple Jam to learn how they’ve gone about creating an audio-only game, and what they have learned along the way. Thanks for joining me today. Before we get started, would you be able to give us a bit of background on your team? Sure thing. So, Purple Jam consists of three audio specialists turned game developers. We first met each other last September when we were powering through our Masters’ at the University of Derby. But it wasn’t until we reassessed our lives did we decide to join forces and create the game of all games – Pitch Black: A Dusklight Story. In a flash of inspiration, Harry Cooper (commonly known as ‘The Mastermind’), had the idea of creating a binaural based audio game....

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Adam Stevens, Chief Product Officer at Luna Labs. You can read the original version here. In 2019, playable ads rose to the forefront of mobile advertising as a top-performing creative format.* Today, nearly every mobile gaming studio is looking to un-tap the creative potential they can bring. At Luna, I experience this in every conversation we have with our partners, and the results we see. Playable ads have become an integral part of any attempt to scale a game with a healthy margin. Finding shareable data on the extent to which playables have contributed to the success of today’s top games is difficult. Studios tend to keep such information close to their chest. However, I can say with certainty that when you find the right game and the right playable ad flow,...

A tad late on this one, I know. But kicking off the year on a high note, I have a handful of high-quality free-to-play games to share with you. This time, I wanted to not only look at what makes these titles great, but also touch on how these free games make money and keep themselves afloat. From deck building to platformers to minimalist puzzle games, the following five titles all bring something unique to the game dev community. So, without further ado, let’s dig in. 1. Mineblast!! Developer: Neutronized Launch date: January 15th, 2020 Price: Free, with in-app purchases Available on: iOS & Android The combination of physics, platformers and puzzles is something I have seen pop up recently in a few games (take Projection: First Light as an example), and is something Neutronized has done really well. Their...

We know it’s been a couple of months since our most recent product update, so let’s get you back up to speed with the latest changes to our platform and family of SDKs. To fill you in, we’ve listed out what we’ve improved within the GameAnalytics tool – whether big or small. If you have any questions or feel like we’ve missed something feel free to get in touch, and we’ll get back to you right away. Important Update: A/B Testing is now live! [June 2020] We’re glad you found this page, but it’s a bit outdated now. We’ve actually published A/B testing, which can be accessed in our tool by all developers. We strongly recommend you read our latest blog post on this to learn what you can do and what you can expect. You can read it here....

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Vitor Margato, Senior Data Science Manager at Wildlife Studios. You can read the original version here. Data science has been a hot topic for the past few years, but it’s often hard to understand what data scientists actually do in real companies. They seem to be behind whatever is going on when your favorite streaming app recommends you new songs, or when a ride-hailing app assigns you a driver, but what exactly is their role? In this post, I don’t try to describe how data scientists can help companies in general — I’ll focus on mobile gaming companies, because that’s where I have firsthand experience. Hopefully, some concrete examples will help you form a clearer picture of data science. But first, let me just take a step back to explain why I think those companies absolutely deserve...

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Mobile Free to Play. You can find the original version of this post here. HyperCasual is quite a perplexing genre to many creators of mobile games. When you download a game about Ironing, Coloured Sand or WaterSlides you wouldn’t expect them to be the most popular games on the store, downloaded up to 20 million times in a month.  The simplicity of the titles and the scale of the audience are both shocking and inspiring. HyperCasual as a market has grown from strength to strength over the last 3 years and is only now hitting the top of it’s S curve. Simplicity is still the ultimate sophistication, when it comes to mobile hits. This article analyses the market and how it has grown and potentially where it will continue in 2020. If you...

As Voodoo has put it, the key to a successful hyper-casual game is making sure it’s short, simple and satisfying. When working towards this, there are a lot of different mechanics you can use and combine for your gameplay, so we thought we’d explore which ones do the best, and why. These mechanics are the building blocks of game design. The more you know, and the more you experiment with them, the more engaging your games will become. Please, use this list as a base for inspiration, but don’t be afraid to combine multiple mechanics. We’ve seen that many fusion games with a fresh twist often perform best. Do your research Researching similar games can help you find what works and what doesn’t (as well as discovering your own niche). We’ve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering...

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by Kalle Heikkinen, Chief Game Analyst – China. With over 400 games analyzed under his belt, Kalle has a solid understanding of what works and what doesn’t in the mobile game market. Is blending multiple genres into a single package a success formula or a recipe for disaster? Are there ways to cater to a bigger audience across the casual-mid-core spectrum? GameRefinery has been following the market for so-called hybrid games closely, such as titles that are mixing elements from multiple different game genres to create a hybrid genre like Idle RPG. All data and examples in this post are gathered from the GameRefinery service, check it out here. If you’re interested in researching over 200 in-game features, their popularity, and implementations or checking out feature deconstructions of hundreds of games, you might...