As games move more towards a hybrid-casual model, the potential for new avenues of revenue opens up. As your retention rises, so too do the opportunities. Let’s look at six ways you can increase your profits.

1. Incorporate native advertising

Native advertising is where adverts are embedded in the very fabric of the game. They’re far less intrusive than traditional advertising, allowing you to place ads in your game that don’t disrupt how the gameplay flows. They feel natural; in places where players would expect to see them in the real world.

For example, a native advert might be on an in-game billboard, the banners alongside race tracks, superimposed over the field of a tennis match, posters on the wall, or holograms in the street.

These adverts can either be static sponsored content or dynamic ad space that brands can purchase in real time. The key is that you don’t pause the game to show the ad.

2. Add audio adverts to your game

Did you know, 73% of mobile players have their volume at or above 10%? It might not be loud, but it’s enough to catch people’s attention. This makes them a useful addition to your monetization strategy.

They also have similar benefits to native advertising. Audio adverts are far less disruptive than traditional methods: they play in the background, allowing the gameplay to continue unhindered.

Due to the nature of audio, it’s a relatively simple approach to insert into your game. Pause the music, play the ad, and return to normal once it’s finished. They are also suitable for rewarded ads, allowing players to gain power-ups or in-game currency far quicker than needing to watch a video. Which makes them an effective method to increase your advertising revenue without hurting your retention.

3. Make IP deals with brands

Partner up with a brand to offer in-game cosmetics or extra content using their brand assets. These could be characters, items, or even entire levels. Not only does this give you additional content to keep your game active, but it can also bring in new fans.

Another method is to wrap your game entirely in the brand’s IP. For example, you could approach a brand with your match-3 game and use the same mechanics and gameplay loop, while using their characters and universe.

4. Sell merchandise using your own brand

Once your hybrid-casual game has a following and community, it’s inevitable that certain characters or phrases will become popular. These are perfect for turning into merchandise. T-shirts, mugs, plushies – these can all feature your game’s art. Manufacturers like Alibaba make this even easier. You can buy products and have your own logo and designs printed on them.

You can even create unlockable content for your players, which they only gain access to by achieving certain milestones in your game. For example, every achievement in your game could have its own baseball cap. Players would need to unlock the achievement before they could purchase the cap in real life.

This gives your achievements more value and encourages players to seek out the hardest ones for the prestige of owning the real-world item.

5. Encourage fan-made content

Reach out to your community and run competitions to have their creations enter the game, such as levels, items, or cosmetics. This fan-created content can keep your game active and fresh while also giving you an opportunity to engage with your community.

Ideally, you would also offer an incentive to the creators, such as a cut of the purchase price. This makes it worth the player’s time and makes it far more likely you’ll get quality submissions. It also encourages the player to spread the word about their creations, which could bring even more players to your game.

6. Port your game to another platform

Expanding onto PC or console can help you open your game up to a new market, extends your game’s life, increases your return on investment, and leads to longer session lengths.

It’s a useful way of making the most out of your most successful games. You can read more about the process in our article on porting.

Data is key to any new approach

Whatever route you choose, make sure you keep track of which avenues are successful and bring in the most revenue. You want to make sure that you’re spending your time efficiently. The most effective way to do that is to bring data in from multiple sources and study the trends together. That’s where DataSuite comes in – it allows you to create your own player warehouse and track trends across platforms and different data sources.

At some point, when making a multiplayer game, players need to find one another. You need some way to either match players with similar skills or just fill out the lobby. Especially if in mobile games. That’s where a matchmaker comes in.

What is a matchmaker?

A matchmaker is a script or third-party tool that decides which players go into a lobby together. It’s like a good host at a formal dinner. The players ask the matchmaker for a seat, and the matchmaker figures out who they should sit next to, and then leads them to the best table – filled with similar people.

Exactly what criteria the matchmaker uses is up to you – the developer. But typically, you want players of similar skill to play with one another. That’s the main point of the matchmaker: to make the matches fair and equal. You could just shove players into the first available lobby, but it probably won’t be a good match and you’ll just get one player curb-stomping everyone else.

There are generally two ways matchmaking can work:

1. Server browsers. You show a list of servers to the players and they choose which to join. This doesn’t need a matchmaker.
2. Playlists. Players ask to join a specific mode, like deathmatch or capture the flag, and the matchmaker puts them into a lobby that matches their skills and preferences or makes a new one.

Depending on your game, you might decide to show this lobby to the players. Maybe let players talk before the match and change the settings. Other times you might keep that hidden and just launch the match once it’s ready.

What criteria should I use?

Depending on your game, you’ll have different priorities. A competitive game, like Dota 2 or Overwatch, needs fair and balanced matches. That’s why those games have ranking systems. Don’t match bronze players with diamond, for example. This is particularly important in mobile sports games, like Tennis Clash. But a casual mobile game like Hole.io might be far more concerned about short queue times.

There are three main areas you’ll want to balance. Bear in mind, you’ll probably need to compromise on one of the three. The more criteria you add, the longer it’s going to take to find the perfect match.

1. The player’s skill. How are you going to judge a player’s skill? A common way is to just use the Elo rating system, but you can always come up with your own way to rank players.
2. The player’s latency. How fast is the player’s connection to the server? If there’s a big difference between the players, the person with the fastest connection is going to have a major advantage. You probably want to group players with similar latency together.
3. The queue wait time. How long are players willing to wait before they join a match? A few seconds? A minute? Depending on your game, this can vary wildly. As a general rule of thumb: the longer the match will last, the more willing people are to wait to make sure it’s good.

Source: Among Us

These are the three basic areas you’ll want to consider when fine-tuning your matchmaker. But it should also handle a few other aspects:

• How will it stop players from joining a lobby with someone they’ve blocked?
• Do you have crossplay in your game?
• Will you let players join an ongoing match?
• When should it stop searching and just launch a new lobby?

There aren’t any right or wrong answers here. You just need to decide which is your main priority and how long you’re willing to wait for the ideal scenario before the matchmaker broadens the search.

Matchmaking differences on different devices

Theoretically, there isn’t a difference. The third-party tools you’ll use and the way the matchmaker works are identical. But practically, you’ll have different priorities than a game on console or PC.

For example, mobile players aren’t likely to wait very long. So you’ll want to prioritize queue times above everything else. Seconds, not minutes. That also means, you probably don’t want to connect players to a lobby and let them chat while they wait. Just pop them in the match and let them loose.

Source: Activision-Blizzard

You’ll also need to think about latency problems. Quite a few players are unlikely to have a good connection – they might even be travelling as they play. So make sure you don’t group up those hardcore players at home with the more casual players, sitting on a train and going through tunnels every five minutes.

Which matchmaker should I choose?

There are plenty of options to pick from. Every major tech company has their own matchmaker you could use. Valve has their Steam Matchmaking & Lobbies, Microsoft Azure has PlayFab, Amazon has FlexMatch, and Google has Open Match. Even Unity has its own matchmaker and there are also other options like EdgeGap, Photon or AccelByte.

Which one you decide to use will often be tied into which company you decide to go with for the servers themselves. However, you could always build a custom matchmaker yourself and plug it in if you don’t want to get tied into any specific provider.

As for quality, there isn’t really a bad choice here and it depends on how you set it up. Make sure you look for a matchmaker that lets you adjust your settings and prioritize the three criterias we described earlier.

Keep experimenting to find the right balance

The important thing is to keep track of whether your players are waiting for a match or not. GameAnalytics can help you keep track of whether people are dropping out before they enter a match, and then adjust your settings until you find the right balance.

It can also help to ask players after the match whether they enjoyed the match and their fellow players. This can help make sure the matchmaker is doing its job correctly. Bear in mind, even if a player gets defeated, they might have found the game fun if the game was a close call.

There’s a common misconception that cybercriminals only target big business. But small businesses are actually three times more likely to be a target than larger companies. From the hacker’s perspective, it’s easy pickings. Small businesses have less security and fewer safeguards in place to protect themselves.

But protecting yourself isn’t necessarily hard. Not if you’re aware of the techniques hackers use. So, with data breaches becoming increasingly common in the news, we thought we’d give a little advice about how to protect yourself.

How do hackers attack game developers?

It’s not just your game that hackers might target. They could target your business and infrastructure, too. That’s why it’s important to think about how your game, backend systems, and internal tools link all together – especially if you’re making a multiplayer game.

For example, if you’re a small developer, you might decide to host your multiplayer matches on your own servers. But if those are the same servers where you store your player database, filled with usernames and passwords, you’re making it easy to find that data.

Social engineering is the biggest threat

Research from CS Hub found that social engineering is the number one business threat. This is just a fancy way of saying that the easiest way to hack someone is to trick the people themselves – your players or your employees. In other words, if you want to break into a vault, it’s far easier to get the manager to open the door for you than to drill your way in.

Hackers will go to extreme lengths to trick you. It might be as simple as an email that looks like it’s from one of your tools. Or it might be complicated. For example, they might look at your CEO’s Facebook page, hack their daughter’s account, and send a message from her asking for information that could help them guess a password.

Eventually, they could end up being able to send emails directly from the CEO’s personal account. Would you question an email from your boss telling you to send you an access code? Probably not. But you should.

Exploiting your game

Hackers can either look at your game code directly, try to inject code, or just generate random inputs until they strike lucky. This is usually fine in a single-player game, where spawning in an item doesn’t matter. But in a multiplayer game, where there might be real-world value to those items – it can be a serious problem.

Admin commands are particularly juicy for hackers. If you’re running an MMO, those admins might have tools to block players, reset passwords, or see people’s real names. Having those commands could help them trick a player or even blackmail them.

Targeting your infrastructure

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is where a hacker will send thousands – if not millions – of commands at your servers in a hope to overload them and make them crash.

At the very least, it can be irritating. Your game falls down and you lose revenue. But hackers might also use it to blackmail you by holding your game hostage.

They could target your file storage, your databases, your employee’s laptops, your emails – everything around your game.

Protecting your game from hackers

Most security experts tout one rule: Zero trust. Approach everything with scepticism. Do that, and you’re far less likely to succumb to trickery.

Teach staff and players about social engineering

Education is key. If people know the techniques hackers might use, they often think twice before giving away valuable information. They question whether that email is legitimate or whether they should really be giving that code they were texted to the person on the other end of the phone.

Obviously, it’s far easier to teach your staff. But you want to educate players, too. If you have an in-game chat function, remind players that you’ll never ask them for their password. Or to never tell anybody the two-factor authentication code you just sent.

Source: The Sun / Epic Games

Check through another medium

Now that your people are familiar with the types of attack, they will hopefully avoid giving out sensitive information. But what if your CEO really does need that access code?

Simple. Check using another communication tool. Give them a ring or set up a video call. That way, you’ve got proof it’s actually them asking for the information.

Make sure every layer of encryption is strong

It’s all well and good to have super strong encryption on your player database. But it’s all for nothing if someone’s email is just “password123”. There’s a reason “the weakest link” is a common phrase.

Keep everything up to date

As tempting as it is to hit “remind me later” whenever you get a popup for an update, just update it. Whether it’s your operating system, your game engine, or some third-party plug-in you’re using. Make sure everything is up to date.

Test your game for exploits

Try breaking your own game. Think like a hacker and see if you can summon items, use admin commands or launch services. Generate random inputs and try to inject code into every text box you have.

You can even offer rewards to players if they find bugs. Sure, most of those might not have any serious ramifications. But some might.

Hide sensitive code from the client-side image

Put blockers in place to stop hackers from directly seeing the code that’s requesting information. And make sure the data itself is encrypted. For example, if you need to call on a player database to get their name, don’t call it directly from the player’s image. Otherwise, the hacker could find out what service you’re calling and even get the IP address of the database.

Instead, call the server-side image and get it to do the heavy lifting. It can then encrypt the specific data and send it back to the player. Even if they break the encryption, they don’t get access to the database itself.

Keep your data safe with DataSuite

If you’re collecting and storing analytics data from lots of different sources, you probably want a data warehouse. With DataSuite, we host and keep all that data secure on our servers. And we never share it with any third-parties, so you have total control over it. Read more about DataSuite and see if it’ll work for you.

AI is definitely going to change how we work, play and live. But right now, it’s not exactly great at being original. It tends to churn out a lot of generic advice and content. But, while you can’t (yet) plug in a prompt and have it develop a fully functional mobile game, you can use AI to help you come up with ideas and speed up your process. Here are a few ways you can use AI when developing your prototypes.

How should you use AI?

Regardless of whether you’re playing around with Midjourney, ChatGPT or any other AI, there are a few rules to getting the most out of it.

Make your prompts specific

The more detailed and specific you are in your initial prompt, the more useful the response will be. If you’re generic, you’re going to get generic responses. Asking it to come up with a “unique mobile game concept” isn’t going to get you far. Instead, make sure you give it as much information as possible. Write in your prompt like you’re describing a brief. The more you put in, the more helpful the response will be.

Don’t stop at the first response

Using AI is all about refining your prompt and becoming more and more specific until you get to a response that works. When testing the AI, we often needed to add caveats or get it to perform tasks one by one if we wanted to get the best result.

Use multiple AIs

We’ve found that it’s best to give multiple AIs the same prompt. Ask Bard, Bing and ChatGPT the same question, and you’ll get much more varied responses. So mix and match between AI if you want some variety. It can also smooth out some issues we’ve found with certain prompts. What works with one AI might get completely different results with another.

What can you use AI for?

It’s best to use AI when you’re looking for a very specific output that would take a team ages to do themselves. If you try to use it to come up with original ideas or themes, you’ll find that your prompts are too open-ended. Those are best left to real humans. For example, if you just ask it to come up with themes for your mobile game, it’ll likely rehash ideas that are already popular – basically telling you to create games already in the top charts. Not particularly useful. But specific tasks – that’s where AI shines.

1. Brainstorm your concepts

This is an area where AI can excel. Coming up with thousands of ideas in mere seconds. With the right prompting, you can get it to create a huge list of concepts to add to your own ideas. Even so, most of those will be duds (much like in any brainstorm). But that’s fine. You’re just using them for inspiration.

As for the prompt, it’s best to ask it for ideas using a specific mechanic or with a specific theme. For example, “show me a long list of themes for a hyper-casual game that uses swipe mechanics.”

2. Make snippets of lore for your items

If you have thousands of items, it can take up a lot of time writing a paragraph of text for each one. With AI, you can generate these snippets of lore almost instantly.

We asked Bard to create lore snippets for various magical items in a game.

The responses you get won’t be perfect, but they give you a starting point. Edit them and make changes to fit your specific needs, and you’ve saved yourself a ton of time. Similarly, you could use AI to write the backstory for locations, bosses, levels, or even power-ups.

3. Write short descriptions for multiple items

While lore can add flavour to your game, you’ll often find you need to have a few short sentences as hover-over text for every item in your game. Give the AI a list of items you need to describe, and you can speed up that process.

AI can easily put together short descriptions for multiple items at once.

4. Create characters in just a few prompts

By building on multiple prompts, you can develop a whole host of characters to populate your game. For example, you could start by getting the AI to brainstorm a list of twenty Japanese names suitable for an archer. Once you have your name – we’ve chosen Yumi (meaning “bow”) – you can ask for a more detailed description.

With a name in hand, we know have an entire character bible for Yumi the archer.

By telling Bard to use specific headings, we can generate multiple snippets of information that will be vital in making Yumi a rounded character.

5. Write dialogue to sprinkle into your game

There are numerous situations where you might need a short piece of dialogue from your characters, whether that’s when they level up or when they first enter the dungeon. By telling an AI about the character and listing the various situations, you can get it to produce all these snippets at once.

Giving AI a list of headings is a useful way to get multiple results at once.

If you need more, tell the AI exactly how many snippets of dialogue you want. Or maybe you include multiple characters and see how they interact with each other.

6. Help refine your mechanics

If you know what type of game you’re creating, you can get the AI to help with specific tasks. Maybe you need a puzzle for a dungeon or a list of items a shop might sell. For example, imagine you’re making a crafting game. You can feed in your resources and have the AI come up with a list of recipes.

Kickstart the design process by getting AI to come up with some baseline crafting recipes.

7. Refine the writing you already have

It isn’t just generating text that you can use AI to help you with. As we’ve mentioned, AI can be rather generic if you’re too open-ended. So if you want truly original thinking – develop the lore yourself and then get the AI to refine it.

We tell Google Bard to rewrite our description of Yuttgard.

From our – quite bad – description of Yuttgard, Bard has produced something much more enticing. It’s not perfect, but it’s got way more flare than our original and would be ideal if we’re only trying to put together a prototype.

8. Write marketing materials

Scripts for videos. Headlines for banner ads. App store descriptions. These all need words that you might not have time to create yourself. Just remember to give as much information in your prompt as you can.

Even if we don’t use the exact wording, the AI can give us a good starting point for our App Store description.

Use analytics to track your success

Once you’ve made your prototype, you’ll probably want to run some A/B tests to see what’s working with your players, and whether your idea is as rad as it sounds. In which case, try out our A/B testing tool and get all the data you’ll need.

Taking a game from console or PC to mobile is tricky. The controls are far more limited and the screen can easily get cluttered and unreadable. The hardware can’t handle as much physics, especially when that game is a premium title. But the developers at Psyonix did a fantastic job when recreating their Rocket League game into the mobile sensation, Rocket League SideSwipe.

This wasn’t just a copy-and-paste job. Psyonix made some serious changes to the gameplay, design, and mechanics. All for the better. Aside from the obvious theme of rocket-fueled cars, this feels like an entirely different game. In this article, we analyze what exactly those changes are, and what you can learn from them.

Three rules when taking your game from PC to mobile

When making mobile games, you should aim to hit three principles: make them short, satisfying, and simple. When we compared the differences between the two games, we found every change the developers made contributed to one of those rules.

1. Make your game simpler and consider the screen size

There are some key differences and limitations between PC, console, and mobile. But user interface aside, playing on a smaller device is a heck of a lot different to when you have a large screen and controls.

That might mean removing or limiting certain features to make your game work for your mobile version. Or completely rethinking the gameplay itself.

Here’s what you can do.

Understand what limitations you’re working with

You have less CPU power, less space, and less time from your players on mobile. So you need to understand what limitations you have and adjust your game to cater for them.

Psyonix decided to make the game 2D, instead of 3D, for example. Not only did this make it simpler for the player, but this also avoids the massive amount of physics calculations that a 3D game would have. Fewer dimensions, fewer calculations for the device, faster game.

The developers also limited how many players can have in a match. While you can have up to eight players on console or PC, you can only have up to a maximum of six on mobile. This not only makes it quicker to find matches but makes the games less overwhelming and busy.

Build your game to work on a smaller screen

Mobile phones are getting larger, but you’re still comparatively working with a much smaller screen. For example, if the map for Rocket League SideSwipe was any bigger, the player would need to zoom out. Players would struggle to see their own car, with their thumbs blocking most of the action.

2. Keep the session lengths short and snappy

Players don’t have much time when playing on mobile. They could be anywhere. On a bus on their way to work, in a queue at the bank, or even in the bathroom. You don’t always have their full attention for long. So you need to keep your game short and snappy.

Cut out features that don’t add to the mobile experience

On mobile, clutter will cause your players to drop out. Psyonix got around this by cutting out instant replays on their mobile version. This kept the matches shorter and punchier. Because the maps are smaller, it’s also quicker and easier to score a goal. Having instant replays every 20 seconds would just constantly interrupt the match.

Rocket League SideSwipe also removed the chat function and instead replaced this system with stickers. It’s easier and quicker to communicate with your teammates (or mock your enemies).

Test to find the perfect session length

In the original Rocket League, the matches were five minutes long. But in Sideswipe, they’re only a minute and a half on average. This keeps players engaged and decreases any potential dropouts. When we looked at the data from Benchmarks+ (part of our new pro tier), we found that the typical session length for casual games is about 4 – 5 minutes. So for a game like Sideswipe, this is around 2 – 3 matches per session.

This can vary from game to game. So make sure to test what session length works best for your players by watching your retention and drop rate.

3. Make your players feel epic

Your players will naturally spend less time in casual mobile games, so you want to make sure they have a great experience when they do. That way, they’ll keep coming back.

Replace inactive players with bots

Drop rate on mobile is much higher, as players could leave for any reason – lost signal, got a phone call, or reached their bus stop. If your game is online, consider adding bots to replace inactive players, so as not to interrupt the game for everyone else. This is what Psyonix did, and it works fantastically.

Cater for all types of players

With mobile, you’ll find yourself with a lot more casual players. Having an offline option, difficulty levels, or a top-tier matchmaker to pit them against players in their own skill range can make sure your game stays fun for everyone.

To cater for more ambitious players, introduce leagues, training arenas, and competitions. Just remember not to overcomplicate any of these – you’ll need to strike a balance between customization and options, and simplicity.

Make the game rewarding wherever you can

When playing on a console for a couple of hours, overexaggerated sounds, graphics and notifications can get annoying. But this is crucial for shorter sessions on mobile. You need constant feedback and rewards to keep your players satisfied.

Psyonix did this in their mobile version. In SideSwipe, the graphics are a lot more exaggerated when you hit the ball and score. There’s a lot more excitement and colors. Whereas in the console game, it’s less so.

Use data to perfect your monetization models

There are plenty of monetization models you can adopt for your mobile version, and there’s no ‘one size fits all’ strategy when it comes to your mobile game. It’ll take a lot of testing and tweaking to strike the right balance of fun for your players, and a healthy ROI.

Rocket League SideSwipe is a completely free-to-play game, where players earn items, skins and cosmetics through levelling up. Nothing more. The mobile version helps Psyonix reach new players for their console version, where they make money through their Rocket Pass subscription, in-game purchases, physical merchandise, sponsorships, and DLC.

In a 2022 interview on GamesIndustry.biz, Psyonix co-studio head Phil Piliero, said:

We’ve seen significant growth in territories outside our core playerbase, especially in international markets where mobile is the primary platform for gaming. This has allowed us to reach new audiences in addition to our console and PC players, and gives these players their first experience within the Rocket League franchise.

What Psyonix did may not be the best route for your own title. You’ll need data to find out what’s best for your games. And a lot of it. Our free tool can help you answer all of your major analytics questions. And if you’re looking for something more advanced, then our DataSuite products can help you out. Get started today, or speak with our team on how we can help you.

Partnering up with a social media influencer can bring in hordes of new players. There are thousands of influencers out there who rack up billions of hours of consumers’ time (a recent YouGov survey showed us that Q3 2019, the number of hours of live gaming content watched has more than doubled, from 3.8 billion hours to 9.0 billion in Q2 2021). GWI’s latest report estimates that 84% of gamers use YouTube for gaming content and news.

And with new laws around privacy and advertising affecting UA campaigns, now might be a good time to look at alternative ways to get exposure for your titles and bring new players to your game. But which influencers should you work with? And how do you find them? Here’s what we know.

Figure out your objectives

Depending on your budget and preference, there are a few ways to find the right partner. The first is to buddy up with an agency that works with influencers. This can be a much easier and simpler process than doing it yourself, but it comes with setbacks. Or, you can go about it yourself. This can be a longer and more tedious process, but it can reap more results (and save a cent or two in finders fees).

Before we dive into the how, when, and why, you’ll need to get a few things in order:

• Perfect your pitch: This should be short, simple, and sweet. You’ll want to include a catchy and descriptive title, a short description of your game, and any trailers and imagery. You don’t need to oversell here – let your work speak for itself. You can even use AI to lend a hand here. Just make sure to personalize it and use the suggestion as a guide (rather than just copy and paste).

• Define your audience: There are thousands of influencers, all covering different genres and games. Define who your target audience is (age, gender, likes), and you’ll have an easier job of vetting who you should work with.
• Figure out your budget: This’ll help you decide how many influencers you can work with, how long you want your campaigns to run, and whether or not you can afford to work with an agency.

Using an agency to find influencers

If you’re short on time, pairing up with an agency could be a good way to go. They can save you a lot of hassle and cut out a lot of the legwork.

Five agencies to consider:

• Matchmade: They specialize in YouTube and Instagram, and cater for all gaming platforms.
• Game Influencer: They can can help secure Let’s Play videos, integrated ads into their content, product placement, and pre-rolls.
• Disobey: They have over 15K creators connected on their Twitter, and work with studios like SEGA, Raw Fury, and NVIDIA.
• Pocket Whale: These guys specialize on YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and Snapchat.
• The Handbook: This tool acts much more like a directory which you can sign up to. It costs around £70p/mo, and has a long list of influencers you can reach out to.

What can an agency help with?

• Cut out a lot of the admin. If you’re doing it yourself, you need to be organized. So that’s research, spreadsheets, and time you could better spend on your game.
• They’re the experts. They can help you find the right partner, perfect your pitch, even advise on when is best to reach out to an influencer (so you avoid conflicting with other game launches and events, to increase your chance of being accepted).
• They have a foot in the door. It’s not a complete cold outreach. They work with these influencers every day and have built a relationship with them, so you’ll likely get much better and faster results than doing it yourself.
• They can scale with your game and budget. These agencies can work with and scale with your success. They can tap into their network of influencers to create campaigns of different sizes and scopes, depending on your needs and budget, which they can adapt over time easily.
• They can help optimize your ROI. Influencer agencies have tools and dashboard to track campaign performance, and can make adjustments to optimize your return on investment (ROI). A good agency should also be sharing insights and their recommendations to increase performance (from creatives, pitches, through to picking the right partner).

What are the drawbacks of using an agency?

• They might not focus on your niche. There are plenty of genres and sub-genres (especially within mobile gaming). If you’re building a puzzle idle mobile game with a ‘dog plumbers in space’ theme, well that’s a very specific game you have there. And some of these agencies might not have contacts that specialize in that area.
• They might not have the influencer you want. There are thousands of influencers out there. If you have a specific influencer in mind, they might not be connected with any agency – they could be handling their sponsorships and partnerships themselves. So you could lose out on the perfect match. Take The Frustrated Gamer for example. When looking on their YouTube channel, they direct any business enquiries to their personal email. And although they might also be working with some agencies, they could easily be a missed opportunity. Or the agency might be charging you for something you could find yourself.

• It costs money. Depending on what the agency’s model is, it could cost you a pretty penny working with one. Some usually charge a flat rate for every video, where others can take a commission on top of your results.
• No guarantee of getting sponsored. The influencer still needs to accept the job. And there’s no guarantee that they will. So you could be paying with no actual outcome (depending on their model).
• Lack of control. When working with an agency, you might have less control over which influencers you end up picking, the creative direction of your campaign, and the timing and scheduling of content. You could also have to give up some control over your overall messaging, which might not be ideal.
• Room for error. They say don’t shoot the messenger. But in this scenario, if your agency partner miscommunicates something about your game, gets the pitch wrong, or even isn’t as convincing as you would be when reaching out, well it can affect your campaigns, or even chances of getting picked.

How to search for influencers yourself

Finding influencers for your games isn’t necessarily rocket science. It just takes some time, patience, and a good pitch. When looking, you want to make sure you reach out to as many as possible, with different ranges of popularity and niches. The more popular they are, the harder they’ll be to convince (and the more they’ll probably cost). So have a large, focused list of who to target. Here are a few things you can do:

Cast a wide net

It’s tempting to go for the best influencers out there. Afterall, why wouldn’t you want PewDiePie raving about your game? But micro-influencers (smaller, and sometimes are more specialized) can be just as effective, and even have higher engagement rates. Take Retromation – he has around 200k subscribers and specializes in rogue-like games. But he regularly gets over 25% of his subscribers watching his videos. Meanwhile, a star like PewDiePie has over 100 million subs, but only around 5% watch regularly. (And most of his content isn’t actually gaming.)

Also, the more popular an influencer is, the more competition you’ll be fighting against to grab their attention. So reaching out to a range of influencers will give you the best chance of landing a few partners to work with.

Search for similar games

Use key terms like “gameplay”, “review”, “let’s play” or “guides” while searching for your competitor’s games on social channels. If you find any gamers making content around those similar titles, chances are they’ll like and cover yours, too.

Look at your direct competitors

You can see who your competitors or similar studios have partnered up with by heading to their social media accounts, saving you from starting your search from scratch.

Check that they’re the real deal

You want to make sure whoever you partner up with has real followers and high engagement rates. Influencer marketing tools like HypeAuditor and BuzzSumo can help you do a background check, and find out what their engagement is like.

Keep an organized list

Your outreach should reach triple digits. So you’ll need an organized excel spreadsheet (or any other organizational tool), to keep track of who you’ve contacted, what the status is, how large that influencer is, and what you’ve secured.

Plan ahead and give yourself time

Whatever route you go down, make sure you give yourself plenty of planning time. Ideally, you’ll want to reach out to agencies or influencers a few weeks before you launch your game. That way, you should have perfected your creatives and game, and give yourself enough time to reach out and schedule your game into a creator’s calendar.

With any transaction, there’s an exchange of goods and services. It used to be black and white in gaming – you pay money upfront, and you have that game. Done and dusted.

But it’s not quite that simple anymore. With more types of games, devices, and models entering the market, that exchange of goods is becoming a blur. Today’s big topic is people complaining about the price of games for what they’re getting. But why is that? Are studios becoming too greedy? Or are business models evolving so quickly that players can’t keep up with the trends? And what can you do to keep your games equitable and your audience happy?

Games have always been expensive

The first console to hit the stores was the Magnavox Odyssey. It was $99. That equates to just under $700 in today’s market, and it came with twelve games. Seems fairly pricey. But you can see their reasoning for something that was a completely new piece of technology.

Let’s fast forward to the 90s. The PlayStation 1 was released in 1994 and cost around $299. Today that would equate to over $700. Once again, publishers could charge that much because it was new technology with mind-blowing graphics.

Back then, there was no downloadable content, campaigns, battle passes, liveops. There was only one transaction. And it was clear what you were getting. Yes, you can argue that even that’s expensive. But it was transparent; then the price can’t be an issue, right? Players have been spending hundreds of dollars on their games for years. And with inflation, games aren’t that expensive compared to a few decades ago(at least, games that are one-off payments).

Gaming is much more complicated now

The gaming world has evolved. Let’s break it down:

• We have different device types: Mobile, PC, console, VR, Switch, and more.
• We have more sub-genres and game types: We can find all types of different genres in the stores. Take role-playing games as an example; we have ARPG, MMORPG, Strategy RPG, Tactical RPGs, and a range of hybrid genres.
• We have different audiences and preferences: We only thought of a gamer as a teenager on the PlayStation. But with the increase of genres and technology, almost anyone could be considered a gamer.
• Games are now a service: Not many studios end development when they launch their game now. Many, if not most, pump time and resources into regular new content to keep their players engaged. And that needs to be funded.

All of this meant we needed new monetization models. It didn’t make sense to always pay upfront for a game. There had to be a different exchange. Free-to-play games gave birth to the ads monetization model 10 to 15 years ago, and players accepted that exchange (to an extent – too many ads and the exchange starts to feel unfair).

“Each customer is an individual, not a generalized demographic.” – Peggy Ann Salz.

Options are a good thing. We don’t deny that, especially in today’s market. What we’re talking about is a fair exchange. Are developers losing sight of that? Are they focusing more on money than the experience?

What do we consider to be a ‘fair exchange’?

You can argue that a fair exchange comes down to the individual. Their taste and preferences, their income, and how much they value art. A $70 game for a ten-hour campaign could be expensive to most gamers – but to the lifelong fan, it could be nothing.

But there’s definitely a benchmark in the industry. When paying that much for a premium game, you can expect the campaign to be at least 30 hours or so, with some extra side quests. If your game is any less than that, it could be considered a rip-off. The key here is setting expectations. What is the other value you’re offering? And does your player know that?

There are three primary areas to consider:

• Gameplay Length
• Overall price
• Quality (this could be the graphics, story, mechanics, etc).

You want to try and hit two out of three. AAA games have a longer overall playtime and are higher in quality. But they’re not cheap. That seems fair. “Okay, I’m getting a really cool game with lots of gameplay and mechanics and graphics. I don’t mind spending more money on this.” There’s a value to the exchange. The same applies to casual games. They’re lower quality with simple gameplay, have loads of replayability, and are either free (or with ads) or very cheap (around a couple of dollars).

There’s a problem in our industry

Whether we call it corporate greed or just a lack of critical thinking, we’re seeing more developers push the boundaries for pricing, and underdelivering in gameplay. Let’s have a look at some examples and ask ourselves: “Does this feel like a fair exchange?” 

Overwatch 2 locks content behind battle passes

There was a lot of hype over the last few years for Overwatch 2. We were promised story-led campaigns, skill trees, customizable character abilities, and more. When they released the title, they made it free-to-play, with battle pass options (similar to games like Fortnite and PUBG). In theory, this all sounds good. But we found three issues:

1. They shut down Overwatch 1

Players could no longer play the original game, which was a paid title. Sure, they got Overwatch 2 for free, but so did other players who didn’t have the previous game. It’s easy for those legacy players to feel shortchanged.

Rather than rewarding their loyal players, they instead punished new players to Overwatch 2. For completely new players who don’t pay, they have to play to unlock certain characters – even ones from the original game. From what we can see from this interview, a new player has to go through 150 matches to unlock Echo from Overwatch 1.

2. They’ve locked new characters behind their battle pass

In Overwatch 2, you can unlock characters in one of two ways: pay for the battle pass or grind to unlock them. The latest character unlocks after reaching level 55 (around 60 hours of gameplay). Yes, players who couldn’t afford to pay could get the character. But Blizzard sure didn’t make it easy for them, putting those people at a disadvantage. And their players weren’t happy about this.

3. They didn’t deliver on what they promised

Unfortunately, a lot of the content and features they promised weren’t in the game during launch. Aside from new characters, maps, and a cleaner user interface, there wasn’t much difference between the two games. Which frustrated a lot of players.

Is this a fair exchange? No. From what we can see, the approach they’ve taken has annoyed their players into spending their money or pushed them away entirely.

Diablo IV charges one-off payment and offers battle passes

When we heard that Blizzard decided to release Diablo IV as a full AAA game, but with a battle pass option on top, we definitely raised an eyebrow. Usually, games are either free with battle passes or have a one-off payment but no battle passes (as we can see with Overwatch 2 and similar games).

Diablo IV, recently released on all major platforms and goes for around $70. And they have just released their first battle pass. From what we can see, it has three tiers:

• Free to play: With 27 tier rewards and 20 smoldering ashes.
• Premium: With 63 tier rewards (costs around $10 a month), an armour set and two mounts.
• Accelerated: Same as premium, but also provides 20-tier skips and a special cosmetic item.

Is this a fair exchange? We reckon so. They haven’t locked the free players from anything too important. But we’ll know more when we see more of their reviews.

And if they release content for the paid players as well, then it could work. For example, if they release new classes or core mechanics to everyone, but leave purely cosmetic stuff to the subscribers – that could be fair.

Cyberpunk launched with too many problems

We’ve heard this story all too often now. When CD ProjekT Red launched Cyberpunk 2077, it was a bit of a disaster. The amount of bugs and broken promises inside the title was laughable.

But what was the real problem here? Aside from launching far too early, the biggest problem was the price. If you’re charging someone for a premium game, you’d expect a premium experience.

Is this a fair exchange? No. Maybe if they released it as early access to iron out bugs, postponed the launch until the issues were fixed, or reduced the price, then it would have been fairer. But players around the world were rightfully annoyed and felt ripped off.

Grand Theft Auto: Definitive Edition costing $60

When Rockstar Games announced that they would be remaking their classic trilogy, players were thrilled. Unfortunately, when they released the remake (Definitive Edition), we saw a lot of backlash online. The titles were marred with poor graphics and bugs.

Since the launch, the studio has released a lot of updates and fixes. But the biggest issue we can see is that they just didn’t meet players’ expectations and charged a high amount for a quick facelift (ranging from $59.99 to $69.99, depending on the console).

Was this a fair exchange? No. Players were left disappointed with the poor graphics and overall price. So much so, a player remastered San Andreas themselves, quoting “Rockstar didn’t do a very good job.”

If Rockstar had set more realistic expectations, delivered what they promised, or even lowered the price, then the exchange would have been much fairer.

How can you keep your game fair?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It really does depend on what feels fair for your players and your studio. But to give you some direction, you can follow these rules as a guide:

1. Don’t lock important content behind passes

You want to make sure there’s value in your battle passes, otherwise why would someone buy it? But don’t screw over any of your other players. As we can see with Overwatch, it can create a negative experience for a large chunk of your audience, which can harm your studio in the long run. Instead, think up creative ways to reward your paying customers. Collectables, skins, and emotes are a good place to start.

2. Don’t release half-baked games at full price

We’re used to seeing the odd bug here and there. But if your game has some serious performance issues, then don’t launch it. The creators behind Baldur’s Gate 3 actually handled this quite gracefully. They perfected the first part of their game, released it as early access, and kept their community informed about the full release. It was a great way to create hype for their game, while also gathering crucial feedback, and keeping their audience happy.

3. Set realistic expectations

Too much hype for your game can be your downfall. Cyberpunk’s marketing campaign was so good, players were excited for years. Only to be disappointed when the game was released with only half of the promised features. As for Grand Theft Auto, if they were a bit more honest or open with what they were creating, perhaps players wouldn’t have reacted so negatively.

4. Be transparent with what you’re charging

With more complex models, it’s easy for players to get lost or confused. Nintendo is under fire at the moment and has been accused of using “dark patterns” to encourage players to spend money without them realizing it. So make sure your players know what they’re doing and buying. Diablo Immortal is also currently feeling the heat for their microtransactions. Their community were left shocked and frustrated with the game’s legendary gem upgrades and how unclear the game’s monetization model has been. Someone did the math and reported that it can cost up to $110,000 to fully upgrade a character in Diablo Immortal, all due to their new gem system. If that’s the case, it doesn’t feel particularly worth it.

5. Don’t punish your players

If Blizzard changed their approach to rewarding existing and new players, then Overwatch 2 could be a much more positive and enjoyable experience. Let’s look at rewarded ads: you watch a video to earn more coins or another life. But you can take it a step further. Homa Games have actually made item upgrades unlockable in their game Aqualand by watching ads. Suddenly making those ads a lot more desirable and fair.

Similarly, Tennis Clash actually uses ads to mitigate losses and amplify wins. If a player loses a match, they can watch an ad to recoup their lost coins. But if they win a match, they can watch an ad to double their winnings.

Test to see what works

We’ve shown a lot of AAA and premium game examples, and we appreciate that mobile games can be more complicated when combining so many monetization techniques. So data is crucial for understanding and perfecting your models. Maybe you can charge $1.99 for your game and still show ads. Or perhaps you can rely solely on subscriptions and charge $20 a month. Without testing the waters, looking at your data, and listening to your players, it can be tricky to figure out what your game is worth and what will make for a fair exchange.

If you want to get more out of your game’s data, sign up to our tool today (for free!).

VR games are growing in popularity – with predictions that 23 million VR-related jobs will hit the market by 2030. And with better technology and increased interest, more and more developers are shifting towards this new field.

But even with better tools, online tutorials, and a larger community, making a VR game is still a challenge in the park. It’s very different from what you may be used to building. To get ahead, we’ve been doing our own research and interviewing the best VR devs to get their top-tier advice. So, here’s what we learned and what you need to know.

Controls being second nature

Depending on your audience, you can expect your players to have some experience with games in the past. They should understand controls and button layout, which may be different for VR.

For starters, VR controllers are a new concept. PlayStation and Xbox controllers have been around for decades and are usually the first thing people think of when you mention gaming. But unlike other platforms, your players can’t see their hands with VR. Saying ‘Press X’ isn’t enough in this situation. They can’t remember where it is or see their hands to figure it out.

Think up creative ways to lend them a hand. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is a handy tool here. You could have a semi-transparent image of their controller pointing out which button to press and showing exactly where it is on their controller. Seeing where the switch is on their controller can help them understand what they should be pushing. That’s what Half-Life: ALYX did, and it worked well for them.

Playing for hours upon hours

Unlike other platforms, people can’t wear their headsets for long periods. It’s very easy for players to experience eye strain, headaches, and motion sickness if they play their VR for too long.

So you may want to think about a target session length. Too long, and your players may quit halfway through with a pounding head. If you’ve created hyper-casual games before, then the rules of ‘keep it short, sweet, and satisfying’ can easily transfer to VR.

With that in mind, it depends on the type of game and players you have. Ramen VR’s Zenith MMORPG game saw players spending two hours at a time in their title. So take this section as a guide rather than a strict rule. Use data to listen to your players and find what works for them.

Cutscenes or forced camera perspectives

Cutscenes can be great to help tell your story or highlight important events. And in traditional gaming, it’s fine to shift your player away from first person and into a cut scene or even certain camera perspectives. But the sudden shift of perspective in VR can be very jarring and disorienting, if not done correctly.

The unique element with VR is that your players are always in a first-person view. So rather than watching from the sidelines, your players can be in those cutscenes, experiencing them first-hand.

Quick-time events

Quick Time Events, where players are prompted to press specific buttons within a time limit, are great for adding tension to your games. But not so great in VR. For one, the sudden change can break their immersion and slap them back into the reality of they’re just playing a game. And keep in mind that your players can’t see their controls, so they may struggle to react quickly if they’re also processing which button to press.

Focus on more natural and immersive mechanics to add tension. Or, if you want to add a time-based element, run focus groups to see if that’s what your players like. You’ll probably need to test this quite vigorously to find the right balance of fun and challenging without being overwhelming and disruptive.

HUD elements

In most games, you’ll have some key information on-screen (like health bars, mini maps, objective markers), which convey crucial information to your players. But in VR, these elements can hinder their immersion and obstruct their view.

So consider how you’ll relay this information without overloading your players. We recently interviewed Halfbrick Studios, the developers behind the Fruit Ninja series. When designing their HUD, they opted to instead create a pad with all of the info their players needed in the form of a ninja scroll. It made it so much more natural for the player and kept it in the game’s theme.

Don’t underestimate the power of level design here, too. You don’t always need to spell things out for your players. Having clear objects, buildings and landmarks with certain colours and shapes can help intuitively guide your players to where they need to go without relying on a mini-map. This technique has been used many times in open-world games, too.

Nintendo devs actually revealed that they use this technique in their Zelda games. Key landmarks were always in a triangular shape. When players saw those shapes (usually mountains), they had two options: walk around or climb up them. Both actions led the players in the right direction. This same technique can be used in VR, too.

Written information

The screen of your VR is right in front of your eyes. And that can sometimes be uncomfortably close, especially if you need to read things. Having too much text for your players to read can break the immersion, add to their eye strain, and cause headaches.

So you’ll want to get creative when relaying information. Using auditory or visual cues whenever you can keeps the players immersed but also eases up on their eyes.

Precision controls

When playing games on consoles, PC, or even mobile games, your players can get pretty precise with their aiming. When playing multiplayer games with a mouse and keyboard, a flick of the wrist is all your players need to do to target their enemies. With mobile, you just slide your finger across the screen.

VR games can be a little trickier. You will be directly mapping a player’s hand movement to virtual weapons, so they may not have the same level of precision. Consider what limitations you’re working with. And depending on your game, perhaps give the option to increase aim assist or develop mechanics that feel natural and responsive.

Robo Recall, one of the first games to come out on Oculus, tackled this quite nicely. Here’s what we could see:

• They used very clear visuals: You can grab weapons, enemies, and even bullets out of the air easily. There’s a clear white circle around where you can grab them, so you know exactly where to point your controller.
• Time slows when catching objects: In the game, all of the bullets coming at you are slowed down. One, to help you dodge (otherwise, you’d be overwhelmed). But you can also catch bullets and fling them back to the enemy. Lots of fun. But impossible to do in real time.
• They use larger hitboxes for items: You don’t need to be precise when catching or picking up objects. If you’re close enough to a weapon or object, you can easily summon it by pointing in its rough direction. This is very common in VR, considering how restricted players are when moving around.

Lots of assets

In most games, you’ll have lots of background objects to fill the scene. Otherwise, the game can feel bare and barren. The issue with VR, everything needs to be rendered twice (as you have essentially two screens). Not only that, but every object should arguably be interactive. If a player tries to pick something up and can’t, well, that’s just another reminder that they’re just in a game. It can be confusing to know what’s interactive and what’s just background stuff when you have loads of objects. And think about the frame rate and CPU power – the more you have, the more power you’ll need.

So you’ll likely have less clutter and objects in the background. But that’s okay. Just make sure that whatever you have in your levels, your players can engage with them in some way. Even if it is just picking up a mug and throwing it across the room.

We recently interviewed Schell Games, the creative minds behind ‘I Expect You To Die’ and ‘Among Us VR’. They had items in their game that didn’t do anything and were just there. But after testing, they noticed their players trying to interact with it. It led them to decide to make it a unique object that they could pick up and break.

Get started making VR games

Some of these techniques and rules may not always apply to you. That’s where data comes in. Sign up for free and download our SDKs to get going.

Everyone wants hype around their game. Get the players excited and let the word spread naturally. But sometimes, building hype can backfire. When developers overpromise and don’t deliver, it can damage their relationship with their audience.

In this article, we explore what problems can arise if you overhype your game. And our top tips for building hype safely.

Good games can struggle with bad hype

Even with the best game in the world, if it doesn’t meet the hype, you will have a bad time. Take Cyberpunk 2077, objectively a fun RPG.

Unfortunately, Cyberpunk didn’t meet the expectations the developers set. They’d promised a world where every single NPC would have their own schedule and live out their lives. This was nowhere near the level of complexity the game ended up offering. Instead, the NPCs were just like any other open-world game. Similarly, other promised feature had to be dropped due to design restrictions.

Bugs and overhype aside, Cyberpunk wasn’t a bad game. It currently has 7/10 on Metacritic from the players, and it has won plenty of awards. But in context, its reputation was severely tarnished because they arguably released too early and without everything they’d promised. Had they been more upfront – saying that they were releasing a beta first or that they’d release certain mechanics and features later – they might not have received the same backlash.

It’s possible to recover

Just because a game gets off to a bad start, doesn’t mean that it can’t become a beloved game. No Man’s Sky is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon.

No Man’s Sky failed to deliver on many of the promises it made. In fact, The Internet Historian talked about this on his channel. He even created a handy table of all the features they promised, whether it was available at launch, and whether they eventually released it. Ringed planets, crash freighters to explore, factions with different attributes – all of these were promised, but missing at launch.

Now, the developers have listened to their players. They’ve released update after update, rolling out these mechanics over time. The game has evolved significantly, with the developers even releasing features they’d never promised in the first place.

By staying active, taking on feedback and engaging with their community, Hello Games has really turned No Man’s Sky around. They’ve rebuilt their reputation, and the ratings show the change. When it launched, it was getting mainly 4 or 5 out of 10 from users on metacritic. Now, it’s getting 9s and 10s, with phrases like “this game finally delivers on the original hype”, “the game runs really well now” and “deserves a second chance.”

Sadly, many people are unaware of the changes that Hello Games has made. So its reputation is still sullied by its lacklustre launch. Had they been a bit more clear and upfront at the start, No Man’s Sky would likely be a household name.

How do you avoid overpromises?

We’ve looked at the damage that you can cause by overpromising, but what should developers do? Clearly, building hype is still a useful tool.

1. Be clear about your roadmap or give regular updates

If you’re upfront about what features you’re going to release and in what order, you’ll make it much easier for your players to digest any setbacks or dropped features. (Or if things are taking longer than you expected.)

That doesn’t mean that you have to release every surprise and reveal all your plans. But explaining what’s on your list and what’s going to be available at launch, and what’s coming later down the line, means that players don’t get disappointed.

Larian Games, the creator of the Baldur’s Gate series, actually opted against having a roadmap for their title. It seems like the third instalment in the series is a lot more complicated than they expected. And although they give regular updates on their Steam and social channels, they opt to avoid promising specific dates – most likely to avoid disappointment.

2. Set expectations, then exceed them

It’s better to set realistic expectations and then release with more features than you promised than the other way around. In both cases, the game is exactly the same. But the perception of that game is completely different based on the expectations that you set.

So hold back some surprises and let them discover them when the game actually comes out. It’s better to surprise than disappoint.

3. Be honest about your limitations

It’s tempting to over-egg new mechanics or features in your game and go ham on the marketing. But if it’s a truly innovative idea, it’s very likely you’re going to have bugs or it won’t live up to the hype.

When releasing new features, let the gameplay speak for itself. Don’t try to ‘sell’ it. Show it in action and give the facts straight. Don’t push the ideas hard. If it’s really that good, you won’t need to say anything at all.

On the flip side, be honest with what people can’t do. If you’re making an open world, make a developer diary and have someone ask the challenging questions. “Will I be able to speak to every NPC?” “No, but we’ve added dialogue options for hundreds of characters that you’ll meet randomly. But no, not everyone.”

4. Don’t make promises you can’t keep

Deadlines, features, downloadable content, your pricing model. Whatever you’re talking about, only talk about it once you’re sure that it’s final.

This is particularly important for aspects of your game that might have bigger business considerations. Maybe you fun the game through a battle pass or maybe you have it be a one-time purchase. It’s much better to say that you haven’t decided yet, but you’re considering X or Y, than doing a complete U-Turn.

5. Admit mistakes early

If you do need to change your mind or limit the scope of your game, tell your players as early as possible. Apologize, explain your reasons, and tell people how you might compensate them for it. Maybe that’s offering a refund for preorders or that you’ll be releasing a different feature instead.

However you break the news, make sure you’re honest and upfront with your players. Otherwise, you’ll lose their trust and their loyalty.

Stay in the loop

If you find advice like this helpful and want to see more of it, then make sure that you sign up to our newsletter. And if you want to see the impact of your design decisions, try out our free analytics tool.

Discord is rapidly becoming the gamer social media channel. It’s the go-to platform for developers wanting to build a community. And it’s no surprise – players already use it to chat with their friends while playing games. Discord is the perfect space to add more content and engage with people.

But what exactly should your Discord server look like? How do you build that community? How do you keep it vibrant and active? It all comes down to five steps.

Step 1: Get familiar with the types of channel

Okay, you’re raring to go. You’ve signed up, given your server a name, and maybe even uploaded an image to ensure it stands out. Now what?

Well, first of all, you can make two types of servers: a private server or a community server. You’re going to want the latter. This gives you some extra options regarding channel types (and a few other features we’ll explore later).

The five types of channels are:

1. Text. This is the default. It’s what you expect.
2. Voice. A virtual conference room. You can also stream video and use your camera. Good times.
3. Forum. Like a regular forum, people can post topics and keep it all together. These are particularly useful for FAQs and feature requests.
4. Announcement. These are where you can post updates, but people can also follow them to post on their own servers.
5. Stage. These are a special kind of voice channel for significant events, where you want a few speakers and a big audience. They’re best for those AMAs, fireside chats, or webinars.

The best Discord servers are the ones that use a good mix of these types.

Step 2: Organize your server

Now that you know the difference between the channel types, you must decide what channels you need. And how to organize them. There’s not only one right way to group them, but generally, you’ll want sections like support, internal, general chat, beta testing, announcements, and in-game advice.

Whatever your structure, there are a few specific channels you should include:

1. Welcome. A holding channel where newbies can say hello and get to know the community.
2. Rules and guidelines. Your second channel should typically have your community rules to ensure everyone is on the same page. Make sure you fill this out before you go live. If you need a starting point, we recommend checking out Discord’s rules. (You’ll need to follow these anyway.)
3. General chat. This is typically an off-topic channel for general chit-chat.
4. Play together. If your game is multiplayer, having a channel where people can find a squad and team up is useful. It is particularly useful for games with specific roles, like Overwatch or World of Warcraft – where you might be looking for a healer.
5. Announcements. You’ll want at least one channel where you can post updates about your game.
6. Support. You want a place where people can ask for help. You might want to split this into bug reports and general help or have separate channels for different aspects of your game – like game modes.
7. FAQ. This makes a good forum channel. You can have each FAQ as a separate post. The fact that the forum channels have in-build search and tags makes this much easier to use than a regular text channel. As part of your FAQ, consider whether you should include in-game tips and tricks or tutorials.
8. Feedback and feature requests. This is another channel which is best as a forum. You can let people post ideas and even tag them. Just make sure you keep an eye on the channel and incorporate the most popular changes (or explain why you’re not going to).
9. Beta testing. Getting your community involved in your beta testing is a great way to engage with your players. But you’ll want to have a private channel for those players so they can discuss their feedback with you.
10. A community update channel. This is where you’ll get Discord updates relevant to your admins and moderators. (You’ll need this once you’ve turned your server into a community server.)

Those are the main channels that you should definitely include. But it’s worth getting your team together and brainstorming other channels specific to your game. For example, do you have players in lots of regions? Maybe you need to separate those out?

Step 3: Set up your roles

Once you’ve decided on your channels and overall structure, it’s time to think about the roles you’ll have. This should be pretty simple – your typical admin, mods, and general – but you also have an opportunity to create a bit of friendly rivalry or prestige.

For example, if your game has factions – like the Horde and Alliance in World of Warcraft or the houses in Harry Potter – you might consider letting players pick a side. Maybe you even lock certain channels to certain factions so they can plot and scheme against their rivals.

Or maybe you want to uplift particular players. People who are part of your Patron or are content creators might get a special role with a few extra benefits. Maybe they get a special flair they can use or you add them to a monthly prize draw.

Step 4: Convert to a community server

With your basic server set up, it’s time to turn it into a community server. A community server gives you extra functionality (like being able to make those forum channels or getting data insights once you hit 500 members). And – when you’re big enough (10,000 members) – you can even get listed in the public discovery section in Discord.

You can turn your server into a community server by going into the server settings, heading down to community, and clicking on “Enable Community.”

As you go through the process, there are a few channels that Discord makes sure you have. You can either create new channels for these or pick from ones you’ve already created. It’ll also ask you to set default channels that people will see. For now, make sure you don’t hide your channels away.

Create a welcome screen

With your community server set up, it’s time to add a bit of onboarding. If you have a lot of channels and users, it can be a bit overwhelming for newbies. So Discord offers a welcome screen – you pick a few key channels based on common activities and send people straight to those.

This helps get people past that ‘choice paralysis’ that can happen if you just open a new server with a hundred different channels. Just write in your description, pick the top four activities that people might want to do and then link to the relevant channels.

Let people customize their experience

Discord also offers customization options for community servers. Most servers miss this nifty feature, but it’s a really useful way of making sure that people only see the channels they care about. (And join the right roles.)

It’s a simple questionnaire where the results decide which channels you see and the roles you join. It can be a great way to make sure that players in – say – Europe, get added to the Europe channel, rather than the USA channel. In fact, PUBG Mobile uses it really well.

In this example, it’s a pick-as-many-as-you-like situation. Players can choose everything if they want. But if they don’t click, they won’t see those channels. They’ll only be added to the ones they actually care about.

We also particularly like how inclusive PUBG made their server, going so far as to include pronoun preferences as a role.

This is a single-select option. Here, they’ve used it to decide which of these three roles a player wants assigned to them. But you could easily do the same with your game’s factions.

Don’t hide your channels

One mistake that people can make when setting up their server is having too many hidden channels. If you don’t make a channel default, people are unlikely to find it. That’s because most people won’t click the “channels” button at the top of the list and browse all the hidden ones to turn them on. They’ll just accept the status quo.

This is where the questionnaire can be really helpful. If you do find you have loads of channels, either make sure you set them as a default channel or that you’ve at least got a question in your onboarding steps about that channel.

Step 5: Keep engaged

Now you’ve got everything set up, it’s time to actually start building your community. The key here is to make sure you’ve regularly got an excuse to engage with your community. There are a few ways you can do that.

1. Run Q&As. Set up a Stage channel and host a fireside chat or something every week. Let players chat with your lead developer and answer questions.
2. Host in-game events. Set up a channel and set up a tournament. Do prize draws. Set a daily challenge. Depending on your game, there are plenty of ways to get people playing your game slightly differently.
3. Promote content creators and fan artwork. If you start getting YouTubers or Twitch streamers regularly creating content around your game, make sure you set up an announcement channel so people can follow their content. You could even give them special roles. Likewise, if you’re getting a lot of fan art, set up a separate channel to showcase it all.
4. Add bots for more fun. We won’t get into all the different bots that you can add to Discord. But there are loads to choose from, including games like Truth or Dare or dice-rolling tools. Maybe you could even set up a role-playing channel?
5. Hire a community manager. At this point, with all these activities. You’re going to need someone to be keeping an eye on everything. They’ll need to host these events, gather the feedback to send to the rest of your team, and generally field questions.

Stay in the loop

With that, hopefully, you’ll have a great bedrock on which your community can grow. If you’d like to keep up to date with our own news, sign up for our newsletter and make sure you never miss a blog.

“Hello? Is this thing working? Can anyone read me?”

It’s with these three simple sentences that the original Lifeline begins. And the player has to make their very first choice. How do they respond? Already, your path can diverge (though it’ll quickly circle back). After learning that Taylor has landed in a rocky desert, the player can recommend investigating a crash site or heading for a white peak.

It’s here that Lifeline’s true mechanic begins. As Taylor walks to their destination, the player will have to wait in real-time – sometimes hours – before Taylor sends their next message.

And that’s the key to the Lifeline series. Players don’t just respond and pick a path; they wait in real-time and can reply through their phone or smart-watches notification menu – as though responding to a real person.

How a text-based adventure fits on mobile

As a premium game, with over half a million downloads on Google Play alone, a 4.6-star rating, and seven sequels – 3 Minute Games has clearly done well for themselves. In fact, the series was so beloved that the original developers bought back the rights to the IP and started releasing sequels due to the sheer amount of fan demand.

But 3 Minute Games didn’t start as a separate studio. It was originally part of Big Fish Games – an experimental arm to test new waters and explore new spaces. Lifeline wasn’t the only game they came up with – but it was the one that stuck.

We spoke with Mars Jokela – Lifeline’s game designer – and Dave Justus – the writer behind the scenes – to ask them what advice they had for other developers and what it was about Lifeline that worked.

Focus on a concept

“Notifications were the key,” Mars told us. “Apple had just announced that there would be an interactive lock screen on the iPhone – you could reply right from the lock screen. That was the genesis of the idea.”

The idea actually sat around for a while until Apple announced the Apple Watch.

“That lit a fire under the concept,” Mars added. “It was obvious that this wearable device was going to be perfect. So we thought – let’s keep the scope small and focus on this one specific idea. We actually put out six or seven different games – super simple and small concepts. Hyper-casual, before hyper-casual was even a thing.”

They were essentially creating prototypes, like Poll Party, where you’d get prompted to answer a quick poll. But all of them shared the same initial concept: Use the notification menu somehow.

“That was the philosophy at the time: How do we address this concept we’re trying to make?” Mars said. “Most were simple ideas but ended up needing too much backend work. We put out about seven games in that first period, all based on the game idea. That’s why it’s so important to express that singular concept.”

In fact, Mars explained that you don’t need to be completely original. You just need that one nugget that’s unique to your game. Branching storylines like Lifeline have been a cornerstone of gaming since the ZX Spectrum – but the notifications and real-time schedule transformed it into a unique game.

Execution does matter

The key to making sure that your game or prototype is going to be successful is polish. You don’t need to add hundreds of meta-features straight off the bat – if you’ve got the core gameplay loop sorted. Those extra mechanics can come later.

“Even if it’s a small game, make it feel good and honest to your concept,” Mars said. “Don’t ship out games with half-finished content or mechanics. They can be small and focused, as long as you fully express your idea. With Lifeline, we had just enough at the start – you can make binary choices, and you’re stranded on the moon. That was enough to work with.”

Once Dave – the writer – joined the team, that concept evolved and changed dramatically as he wrote the story. But the core concept remained.

Figure out your guard rails

Constraints can actually lead to more creativity. The actual story behind Lifeline was heavily influenced by the limitations the mechanics imposed.

“We didn’t want the character to be gendered, we wanted it to be three days of real-time, I could only give players two choices, and we could only communicate through dialogue”, Dave explained. “So I was looking for places to add delays. An hour of walking. Eight hours of sleep. Even if it was ten minutes heading down a corridor.”

These creative constraints are what make Lifeline feel so real and compelling.

“Writing these games is very different to writing a comic script because it’s all dialogue,” Dave said. “Even if it’s expositional, like ‘I’m looking at this crater or spaceship’ – all of that needs to be words coming out of a character’s mouth. That can be tricky to make sound realistic.”

It’s not just narrative constraints that can help a developer create a realistic game. There are technical constraints, too.

“I’ve worked a lot developing for new platforms, with different interaction models,” Mars said. “Developing for a watch means you have to think differently about the game design. You have to think about how people are going to have to raise their arm to fiddle with the controls. What’s natural?”

Think of dialogue vines, not trees

Branching paths in the narrative are a huge part of a story-driven game. But they can be a nightmare to write.

“If you let it branch out too much, you’ll never capture the story,” Dave said. “It’s about taking little deviations from the main line and then weaving them back together. It’s actually easy to keep branching, but if you do that, you’ll end up with 64 passages with no endings.”

Instead, Dave suggests finding ways to get to the key story moments you want to tell. You don’t want to tell stories that are going to be hidden away on some tangential path that nobody will ever see.

“It’s more like a vine, than a tree,” Dave said. “Don’t hide your best scenes.”

Make sure choices matter

Writing your dialogue like a vine – rather than a tree – might sound like individual choices aren’t important. But that shouldn’t be the case.

“What makes a game a game is player agency,” Mars explained. “It’s a delicate balance. The player needs to feel like the choices they’re making matter. Even if that choice is that Taylor dies early. It’s fine to cut a path off and end it.”

Another technique is to bring back an element later in the story. The branch might come back together – run along the main vine for a significant time – but having that item or talking to that character might push the player down a completely different path later down the story.

Listen to feedback

As a story-based game, Lifeline doesn’t need to track how people progress through levels. But they do need to keep their finger on the pulse.

“We look at player sentiment a lot, read reviews and stay active in the community,” Mars explained. “What matters most is engaging the players – the strength of the writing.”

“The amount of love and devotion has blown us away,” Dave added. “We never thought this level of fan love was possible – we even get fan art and cosplay.”

Me and @Ghost_Logic went as the weirdly cool space and magic nerds at #dragoncon this year! @lifelinegame pic.twitter.com/QIYSp0NLqf

— Holly (@PekaSairroc) September 7, 2017

One key challenge from the community came when the team experimented with a free to play model.

“Lifeline’s player base didn’t love it, so the Lifeline Universe app never left beta,” Mars explained.

One reason for this was that micro-transactions break the immersion. Players need to suspend their disbelief if they’re going to relate to your characters and story. So interrupting them with ads or micro-transactions doesn’t work.

“The second your friend wants to charge you to tell you a slightly better joke, that’s when you stop talking to them,” Dave said.

For story games, it seems the best model is a one-off payment or subscription.

“We recently released Lifeline+ on Apple Arcade,” Mars said. “And it’s been great seeing a resurgence in activity. That subscription model, getting regular stories without interrupting the gameplay, that’s perfect for us.”

Keep up to date with the latest news

We definitely recommend keeping an eye on this space. Mars hinted that they’ve got a new project in the works, but that they’re not quite ready to talk about it. It should be coming out this year, so make sure you follow them on Twitter to get any updates there. And if you enjoyed hearing from 3 Minute Games and learning their advice, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter to stay in the loop.

In August, Zynga announced they’re releasing their first Web3 venture – Sugartown. While they’ve been keeping schtum about the details, Sugartown looks to be a platform – a collection of games all tied together using NFTs.

It’s an interesting concept that could open the way to a new monetization model in gaming, if it’s successful. Rather than in-app purchases or advertising, the game would rely on players buying, trading (and potentially earning) assets. So let’s dive into what we know about Sugartown and what it means.

Web3 games are games based on the blockchain

Typically, a Web3 game is one where you can buy or earn virtual assets. For example, in Axie Infinity you buy, trade, battle and breed Axies. In Gods Unchained, you own the virtual cards and can trade and sell them just like physical ones.

It’s essentially about ownership. In a Web3 game, the player owns a virtual asset. For Sugartown, this will be based on the Ethereum cryptocurrency – meaning the value of those Oras will rise and fall with Ethereum.

We won’t get into the pros and cons of NFTs and cryptocurrency here. What’s important is that – in concept – they allow players to actually own something. And in Sugartown’s case, that’s an Ora.

Sugartown isn’t a single game

It’s perhaps best to think of Sugartown as a franchise – a universe, like Warhammer or Star Wars – but underpinned with NFTs. Players will buy an ‘Ora’ – a deity-like character within the universe – and this will give the player access to the games within Sugartown.

We imagine Oras will be like Pokemon. You buy (or earn) the Ora, presumably trade them, and play the games associated with them. Though, exactly how it’ll work we’re yet to see.

Regardless, Sugartown is a platform, not a single game. But Matt Wolf, vice president of Web3 at Zynga, spoke with Shotgun on X Spaces recently. During the conversation, Matt explained that the exact lineup of games will be driven by the community.

“The games themselves are simple, but they’re difficult to master,” Matt said. “We have a direct relationship with that community and they have voices that will be heard.”

So it seems that the first iteration of games will likely fall into the casual category – short, simple and satisfying mobile games. But they’re open to seeing what the community wants in terms of genre and complexity.

Sugartown will start small

You’re unlikely to hear big news about Sugartown for a long time. Matt describes their rollout as “crawl, walk, run.” For now, they’re focusing on their core Discord community – their hardcore fans.

This includes how those first Oras will be distributed. The first batch will largely be reserved for those first players, essentially treating them as investors in the idea. How much? Zynga has yet to say. But you can keep up to date with the minting process by following their X page or joining their Discord.

Sugartown is rich in lore

The universe itself is actually a continuation of one of Zynga’s most successful franchises ever: Farmville. A few of the animals from that game struck out, found a new home in Sugartown, and caused a rift to open. This rift has let the Oras into the world.

“Oras are games, because they’re the lives lost of all the lives we’ve lost when we played,” explains Tommy Ngo, head of product at Zynga, in that same X Spaces interview. “So what you’ll experience in Sugartown was most likely constructed by Oras.”

This ‘rift’ opens up options for Zynga to partner with other franchises and link together their worlds.

“The rift allows us to move through the space-time continuum,” Matt explained. “As we head into future chapters, the rift can allow projects to meet. It might even be able to move through projects we don’t know yet.”

What does this mean for gaming?

In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of Web3 games come out. Sky Mavis released Axie Infinity, Nplus Entertainment has League Of Kingdoms, Bright Star Studios made Ember Sword. The idea of owning your digital assets is clearly quite important. In fact, Web3 gaming accounts for almost half of all blockchain activity.

But it’s not exactly become mainstream yet. There are actually only around 2 million Web3 players out there, according to Zipdo. That’s a tiny percentage of the 3 billion mobile gamers across the world.

One reason is that players are cautious to get into NFTs and cryptocurrency. But it’s also just plain difficult to understand and get set up. Quite simply, it feels like a hassle. Wallets, currencies, minting, changing valuations. It sounds complicated. But that doesn’t mean it can’t work. Many developers are realising that it’s just not a selling point to the casual gamer. It’s just another feature. Selling a game based on the fact it uses a technology is like trying to sell it based on its collision dedication – nobody really cares how it works.

Sugartown could help Web3 step into the mainstream spotlight, though. Zynga is a massive player in the industry and their approach to Sugartown – evolving the game to suit what the players actually want – will make it much easier for the average player to get involved.

It could even change the typical monetization models we’ve come to expect. As players learn that they can – for example – sell their purchases or use them across titles, they’ll become less willing to make in-app purchases that don’t give them that same freedom.

Make sure you understand your players

If you’re interested in getting into developing a Web3 game, you’re going to need to make sure you do the same. Listen to your players and make sure you understand their behaviour. The best way to do that? With data. Check out our tool to keep track of how your players are engaging with your game.