Chay Hunter

Cracking the hyper-casual market is more challenging than ever. Why? Quite simply, there’s too much competition. This simultaneously drives up the cost of getting new players and makes it easier for players to churn. And that’s particularly problematic because – with higher acquisition costs – studios need higher retention rates if they’re going to make a profit. But a new genre has emerged: Hybrid-casual. Studios have realised that if they’re going to keep retention high, they need to layer in more features and aspects of meta-game. The tact is to keep the core gameplay short, simple and satisfying, but add meta-features that encourage players to keep coming back. Features like progression systems and collectibles that add more depth to the core game. (You can read more about why the shift is happening in our other post on the topic.) In...

Imagine this. You come into work, load up your dashboard, and you’ve got a map of the world – each country a different colour. The greener the country, the more your game is making there. Visualizing your data can help you understand how your games are performing on an instinctive level. Numbers don’t often ‘click’ in our minds. But visuals – those give us gut feelings. They can help you see your data from a different perspective, and let you spot important insights you would have otherwise glossed over. But what can you do? Let’s dive into the top data visualization techniques and how to use them. 1. Line charts: Think time Line charts show us how values change over time. They’ll let you spot trends, like whether you have a lull in your installs on the weekends. Need to...

The goal of marketing your mobile game? Drive awareness and increase installs. It sounds simple when you narrow it down to that. But there’s a world of tools and techniques you’ll need to research to get it done right. The mobile games industry is a vast one, filled with thousands of games. And making yours stand out is just half the battle. So to give you a fighting chance, we’re rounded up the best articles and resources for you to get started. Let’s dig in. First off, understand your audience Before you even consider sorting your marketing strategy, you need to know who you’re selling to. Sure, you made the game – so you should have an idea of who your audience is. But you’ll need to understand exactly what your players’ motivations are and why they’ll want to play...

Line yourself up, recruit. You can now track ranking games across more types of charts than ever before; made up of an entire new division of 80+ sub-genres. Including everything from ‘Snipers’, ‘Tower Defense’ through to ‘Romance Games’. We have three main changes for you to get through today. In GameIntel, you can now: Filter the charts by over 80 sub-genres. Sort the ranks by specific metrics, like highest retention or longest playtime. Unlock this with our new Starter tier (only $99 a month). There’s a lot to explain here. So gear up and let’s get started. What’s new in GameIntel 1. Filter the charts by over 80 sub-genres In addition to the standard App Store categories (such as hyper-casual, RPG, and Sports), you can now explore aggregated GameIntel charts for more than 80 additional sub-genres (like Tower Defense, Snipers,...

We’ve just launched our new mobile intelligence platform, GameIntel. With it, you can follow market trends, see which games have the best performance indicators, and supercharge your game research and ideation. But what exactly can you do with GameIntel? Well, how long is a piece of string? It really depends on what you’re looking for and what questions you need answering. But to get your creative juices flowing, and give you an inside look to our new platform, here are a few things to get you started. 1. Be the first to know about breakout hits Nice and easy one to kick us off. You can track the top charts in real-time, around the world. Free or paid. Updated hourly. You’ll get all the key information you need about these hit games. All of the key info about each game...

Raise the curtain and turn on the spotlight, because we’ve got an exciting new tool for you. It’s called GameIntel. And it’s here to bring accurate game-industry insights to developers of all shapes and sizes, whether you’re a small indie outfit, or a serial top-ranking publisher. With GameIntel, you’ll be able to follow market trends in real-time, see which games have the best performance indicators, and supercharge your game research and ideation. What’s more, you’ll also have access to the popular Benchmarks+ service included within your GameIntel account. You can try it out for free here or read on to learn more (including how to claim a special discount — up to 40% off 12 months access to GameIntel). Details below. Why did we build GameIntel? Most mobile intelligence tools cost a small fortune. With GameIntel, you now have an...

Idle games don’t involve much in the way of thinking from the player. And they don’t have an end goal – you just continue to play them, earning more in-game currency and upgrading as you go. They’re usually free to play, relying on in-app purchases and currency passes to make money. But how can you make sure that your players want to keep coming back? In this blog we’re going to tell you how to do just that, and also share some stats on engagement metrics. Why idle games appeal to both players and developers On paper, idle games sound a bit ridiculous. Why would anyone want to play a game that involves hardly any, well, playing? The numbers say different though – idle games have really high retention rates, and users keep coming back, even when they’ve been playing...

Product update: Benchmarks+ is now a part of GameIntel (25th May 2021) We’ve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering which from today will be the new home for Benchmarks+. There’s a ton of new features, functions, and capabilities you can dig into here. You can find all of the details about it here. And in case you missed it, we now have more hyper-casual sub genres in our tool, too. ************************************************** Update from 10th march 2021:  Our data chefs have been hot in the Kitchen, and the next order is up. This week, we’ve launched two new main courses; our Trending Games and Global Hits dashboards. These new features will help you see which games have been climbing and falling in the charts, and which ranking position the top hit games have across each key country. Let’s...

Product update: Benchmarks+ is now a part of GameIntel (25th May 2021) We’ve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering which from today will be the new home for Benchmarks+. There’s a ton of new features, functions, and capabilities you can dig into here. You can find all of the details about it here. ************************************************** Update from 23rd Feb 2021:  Strap on your hiking boots and equip your telescope, we’re here with yet another big update to Benchmarks+. Say hello to Game Explorer, where you can now search for specific games across a range of criteria. Including 100k+ sub-genres to make your market research more precise and relevant. You can now easily discover games in specific genres or sub-genres that reached a certain position in the charts, or even specific titles released by a particular publisher. Want to...

Product update: Benchmarks+ is now a part of GameIntel (25th May 2021) We’ve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering which from today will be the new home for Benchmarks+. There’s a ton of new features, functions, and capabilities you can dig into here. You can find all of the details about it here. ************************************************** Update from 27th Jan 2021:  We’ve got some pretty nifty updates to help boost your market research in 2021. Our first Benchmarks+ bundle for this year (one of many) is the new beta version of our Top Charts dashboard, where you can now access detailed rankings for the top 500 free and paid games on iOS.   We’ve had a ton of requests from indie developers and large studios wanting more detailed insights about the broader market, including specific titles in the charts. And...

The match 3 genre has given us some of the most successful, long-running games of all time. With Benchmarks+ we can see what metrics make the best match 3 games successful. We recently updated our Benchmarks+ tool to include 25 sub-genres – one of which is ‘match 3 puzzle’. So now that we can see this classic, much-loved sub-genre in all its multi-metric magnificence, let’s take a look at what a successful match 3 game looks like. To start with: what is a match 3 game? Pretty much any game that challenges you to put matching objects together can be classified as a match 3 game. They started back in the eighties, with games like Tetris, Chain Shot! and Puzznic. In the 2000s, there was Candy Crush and Bejeweled Blitz. And more recently, there are popular titles like Ticket to...

Product update: Benchmarks+ is now a part of GameIntel (25th May 2021) We’ve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering which from today will be the new home for Benchmarks+. There’s a ton of new features, functions, and capabilities you can dig into here. You can find all of the details about it here. And if you missed it, we now have trending games in our tool.  ************************************************** Update from 9th Dec 2020:  Clear the runway, as we’ve just rolled out an exciting new bundle of sub-genres to Benchmarks+. In our last update, we added new filtering options and more shooter genres. But for this one, the hyper-casual (HC) genre takes the stage with seven new mechanic-focused options now available. Read on to find out just what they are. Hyper-casual games are simple and often rely on just...