Insights and tips about the games industry

If you’ve read our helpful guide to launching mobile games in China, you’ll know that there are a number of stylistic and cultural differences between the kinds of games that Chinese and Western gamers choose to play. But how about the differences in when and how they play the games themselves? With that in mind, we’ve picked out five insights that we think will help Western game developers better understand and appeal to audiences in the East. 1. Fewer Chinese gamers spend money… Just as in the West, Chinese mobile gamers mostly play titles that are free to download, but which monetize through IAP or advertising. When we compared the proportion of free-to-play gamers that converted to paying players, Chinese players were around 20% less likely to convert than players in the rest of the world. However, the big swings...

Editor’s note: The yearly Rezzed event run by Eurogamer.net is a great way for indie developers to showcase their games. One title we got to look at was Kenshi, an open-world RPG with a map that reaches over 870km² and a new danger seemingly lurking around every corner. After initally getting absolutely wiped out within minutes of starting, we discovered that this isn’t like most titles around. Kenshi requires strategy, wits, and leadership skills. How did you become a game developer and end up working on Kenshi? I started about ten years ago, self taught, and just decided to start making it from scratch. The first version of the game was made completely single-handedly. It looked a lot rougher due to this – it was a lot smaller and less complete. I got it alpha-funded. So, before Steam Greenlight I started releasing and selling it...

Back in 2012 when we released the first Fun Run game, we had little idea that the series would pass 100m downloads over the next few years. We came to realise that it’s possible to reach the masses by word-of-mouth, with players sharing Fun Run with other people they thought would also enjoy it. This led to us founding Megacool, to help other games to grow organically through improved content sharing. From that moment on, we’ve immersed ourselves in the world of GIFs and developed some best practices that we hope will help you make GIFs an essential part of your marketing strategy. Let’s start by taking a quick look at why you should choose GIFs over video or images. GIFs + Games = Greatness First, let’s be clear that a GIF is a great format to show what your...

By now, many of you will be aware of the fact that GameAnalytics is about to undergo a major technical overhaul. For the past 18 months, myself and a small team of engineers have been rebuilding (and also migrating), our existing infrastructure to an innovative new solution. That solution is called Druid, and it’s essentially a high performance data store. In this post, my aim is to give more of a technical overview of the new systems and solutions that we’re putting in place. I hope this helps to give all users of our service more context about the change, why it was necessary, and the benefits it will bring. For more information about the upcoming changes, you can check out this Beta announcement post. What is Druid? Druid is an open source data store designed for real-time exploratory analytics...

Editor’s note: this post was originally published by Nicolas Boulay on the Space Ape Games Tech blog. Nic has 10 years experience in mobile UA and ad-monetisation. He previously worked at Gameloft and Badoo and joined Space Ape in the early days of 2012.  About Fast Lane Fastlane has reached 16M installs, approaching $30M run rate, and is on an explosive growth trajectory 10 months after launch Fastlane is an evolved arcade shooter game available for free on iOS and Android phones From $5,000/d to $45,000/d from ads in 4 months: what are the lessons learnt from our holistic iterations and partnership with Unity Ads We are setting a new benchmark for ads at $0.13 ad arpdau in the US Our Ad LTV – lifetime value – is now based on true ad performance to gain accuracy We multiplied our User...

What do we do when we experience something amazing, profound, funny, emotional or just plain weird? We talk about it. We want to share that experience with our friends, so that they can jump right in and see for themselves. This, of course, is word-of-mouth – and it’s one of the most powerful marketing tools out there. Whether you’re making mobile games or selling underpants, the dream scenario is that whoever engages with your product loves it so much that they have to tell their friends all about it. Think about how often you’ve received a personal recommendation for an app, or a book, or a restaurant – and how often you then actually acted on that recommendation. Contrast that with seeing an advert for that same product, and how likely you’d be to act upon whatever call-to-action the ad...

The yearly Rezzed event run by Eurogamer.net is an absolutely fantastic way for indie developers to display their games and get them noticed. One such title on display this year was Disco Elysium, an amazingly inventive and constantly hilarious open-world RPG where you play as a policeman and seemingly every choice you make can change how the game is played. I spoke to Robert Kurvitz, lead writer and designer of Disco Elysium, about creating a world with so many choices, the consequences of doing so, and the ability to wear cool hats. Disco Elysium is an absolutely incredible game, where did you get the idea from initially? We were at a really dark moment in our lives, there were a lot of people who were, I was personally at a dark moment in my life. So, my executive producer came...

If anything can be said to be ‘old school’ or ‘traditional’ when it comes to digital, it would be classic search marketing. That’s the case for nearly any product you want people to discover online, whether it’s a t-shirt, a gadget, or a mobile game or app. All of these can be searched for online, and are easier to find when good SEO has been applied. Search marketing is about a lot more than just using the right keywords; you have to understand the philosophy and thought process behind creating your game’s app store listing and website in order to properly optimize it. Here’s how to get started. Search Listings = Pull Versus Push One of the first things you should remember and one of the main arguments for the effectiveness of search engine optimization (or app store search optimization...

Ahead of the release of Idle Factory Tycoon, I spoke to Nate Barker, Director of Business Development at Fluffy Fairy Games, about the history of the studio, what makes the genre of Idle Games so appealing, and the company’s future aspirations of becoming the Supercell of the genre. Can you tell us about your journey to Fluffy Fairy Games? How did you end up working there? I was at Casual Connect in Berlin in February 2017 working for a live-ops company in the social good space. During a Happy Hour, I happened to sit down with a few folks from Fluffy Fairy Games, not realizing who they were. The next day, I had made the terrible choice of a morning appointment (always a bad decision during a conference), and it happened to be with the same two people who I...

Board games have always celebrated their physical and tactile nature. Reading the rulebook, unpacking the pieces, and setting up the board are all an intrinsic part of playing the board game. However, digital companion apps have also long been part of this ritual. Some games, like 7 Wonders, have a free app that helps players to calculate points at the end of the game. As the game has a limited number of scoring sheets that can run out, and the point calculation process is quite complex, the app was always a welcome helper. Digital board games also had their own place in the hobby, serving as digital recreations of the physical game on phones or PC that are primarily targeted towards solo play, although they tend to have some multiplayer options too. However, for the most part, physical games and...

We spoke to Paul Lawitzki about making a community from unlikely places, maintaining a healthy work culture and knowing when it’s okay to put that project on hold, and creating a good company in their upcoming title Good Company, a charming 80s pastiche that sees you creating your own robot manufacturing empire. We did not talk about Skynet.  What is your role in the team, and how did you end up working at Chasing Carrots? I’m programmer and lead game designer at Chasing Carrots. Formally, my employment started in April 2017, but I’ve known the team for much longer; I worked here as a freelance programmer and project lead on Pressure Overdrive for more than two years before my permanent employment. [bctt tweet=”How do you create a community, maintain a healthy work culture, and know when it’s okay to put...

On March 22, the Las Vegas Strip welcomed its first eSports arena. eSports Arena Las Vegas, a 30,000 sq. ft. venue that hosts large live gaming events, stands as a physical symbol for where the industry currently stands, and how far it has come. 10 years ago, in March 2008, Soulreapers/pure.gaming won the Play.com UT3 National Championship Final and took home £30,000 (about $71,000, adjusted for inflation). Four days before the Las Vegas arena opening, however, the Russian team won $800,000 from a prize pool of $1.5 million during the Dota 2 competition at WESG 2017 . Simply put: an eSports team in 2018 won over 11 times the prize money in a single competition than a team in 2008 won from an entire tournament. Starker still, in 1998, there were a total of 9 tournaments and 34 players in...