Insights and tips about the games industry

Marketing is a dirty word within the walls of many independent developers. Even for those who acknowledge it’s something they should be doing, it’s still often a task tackled right at the last minute – a reluctant last tick on a checklist. As with any job handled in a half hearted manner, however, it often doesn’t deliver the results developers are expecting. Or, indeed, any results at all. Much of this is down to the fact that, even amongst industry veterans, marketing is a misunderstood art. So often deduced to be little more than “promotion” (even by some who actually work in the field), marketing is actually something successful firms working in any field being to take on before their product even exists. What sticks in the mind for me is a lecture I was party to when studying at...

This post comes bearing news for all you great developers using GameAnalytics: we have released two new iOS SDKs (native and Unity) and their other platforms counterparts are on their way! Why should you be excited about it? This major update brings a lot of new features by introducing in-game economy, dedicated player progression, brand new custom dimensions and much more. Check out the video below, in which our Senior Product Designer, Kristoffer, presents all the goodies the new SDKs have to offer. For a full picture of how awesome this update is, and to get the details of the rollout plan for the rest of the SDKs, take a look at this comprehensive presentation of our SDKs. If this wasn’t enough, we also have a new and very pretty website, you should definitely check out!  

In our last data science report on what makes a game successful we looked at the evolution of key game metrics over 90 days after launch, across 400+ games. (If you haven’t read that already, we definitely think you should before going forward with this one.) One of our findings was that most successful games show a better handling of their initial installs, dubbed the Golden Cohort. We thought it would be an interesting venture to dig a bit deeper into this. And so the queries began. Methodology Sample description We look at players from 208 games that hit 1000 installs during 2014. They represent the games that on a cumulative revenue basis are in between the 50th and the 90th percentile. This ensures we analyse the most successful games in terms of revenue in our network (games that pertain...

Forenote: The goal of this article is to give you pointers about how habits work, beyond good and evil. It tries to depict some unconscious habit-related mechanisms that come into play in our games. Only that way can we get a better grasp of how we function from a psychological standpoint – and take design decisions in consequence, aware of the consequences of our choices. “We are what we repeatedly do”, said Aristotle. In other words, we human beings are shaped by our habits. Each and every one of us has hundreds of habits. Be it heading to the kitchen as soon as we wake up to make some coffee… or logging onto our preferred MMO to tackle our dailies before work. As you know, habits are mechanical. A player who gets used to playing your game well will most likely keep coming back to it. A player who gets used...

Players leave games. According to Marc Robinson’s 2013 GDC talk, “On average, less than 40% of players return to a free-to-play game after just one session.” [bctt tweet=”On average, less than 40% of players return to a free-to-play game after just one session!”] And as you know, our first duty as professional game designers is to create compelling experiences. We make games for the players to enjoy and play! If they leave our games too fast and too often, we have failed. Thinking of the reasons why players are leaving your game is a great opportunity to put yourself in their shoes. Not only that, your financial success largely depends on the size and fidelity of your audience. In particular if you are monetizing your game with in-app purchases. The data science team here at GameAnalytics recently unveiled the results...

So you’ve made a great core game. The mechanics are rock solid, the first time user flow feels great and people can understand how to play, but somehow your game doesn’t feel quite right. Since gamers first began interacting with controllers, designers have struggled to make experiences feel better, this adaptation of your games feel is often referred to as a game’s juiciness.   What is juicing all about?   Game Juice is a pretty wide yet specific concept. As the term suggests, juicing is about taking a game that works and adding layers of satisfaction to improve game feel. Satisfaction is created by the senses, every visual and auditory input has the ability to make something that is virtual work in a way that is more believable.  It’s not the art of realism, but more the art of illusion that leads a...

Your game’s intro can make or break its retention. Nathan Lovato offers tips on how to get your players through the intro and make sure they stay long enough to get a taste of the best your game has to offer.

Each year brings with it a set of new fads in gaming, some make it, some falter, but one question is ever present: what makes a game successful? In an attempt to answer this, we looked at the evolution of key game metrics over 90 days after launch, across 415 games released in 2014 and spreading across multiple genres and platforms.

As game designers, we tend to perceive our activity as a mix of art and science. After all, game design is deeply linked to psychology, as well as design! The design part is pretty straightforward and well-documented. There is plenty of reading on the topic, starting with Jesse Schell’s famous textbook.   It is different with game analytics.   The domain is still young. 10 to 15 years ago, we lacked both the processing power and the connectivity to track player behaviors. But today, it is different! Game analytics offer an exciting array of new possibilities for everyone in game studios! Game analytics can change the face of game development. They are helpful from alpha testing to QA, community management to monetization. Where we had to guess before, we designers can now make decisions based on real data! This is...

As some of you may have noticed, we have in place a seamless integration with adjust – the business intelligence platform for mobile app marketers. But what does this mean for you? Everyone knows by now that in today’s market making a great game just doesn’t cut it anymore. So, if you’re using adjust to consolidate your ad campaigns, and GameAnalytics to track and analyse your players’ in-game behaviour, this feature can help you thoroughly evaluate and optimise your marketing efforts. Through this easy-to-set-up integration that only requires you to copy-paste your GameAnalytics game key in the adjust analytics partners settings, you’ll be able to take full advantage of what both these great tools have to offer. Take Playraven, the Finnish game development studio behind Spymaster, for example. They’ve been using the adjust-GameAnalytics integration to pull their attribution data into...

The fear of losing the fun of your game when you start implementing analytics is ever present. But taking a look at the classics from which most developers get their inspiration, will reveal seamless ways of integrating game design and analytics. One of the problems when you start looking at data for your game is that you might get lost in it. Usually, a game developer starts designing a game based on that single spark of inspiration. A radical ambition of creating a fun and memorable experience for players. All too often, the use of analytics and data gets added as an afterthought. A necessary caveat to make informed decisions, not really to make the game better, but to make the game better at putting butter on your bread. To many game creators, therefore, the use of analytics seems alien...

Mobile gaming is a fiercely competitive, fast changing field. Developers are under constant pressure to make games better. Meanwhile, advertising costs are climbing, as industry leaders like King Digital (maker of ‘Candy Crush’) buy up much of the available ad inventory via Facebook and Twitter. Start-up ‘Seriously’ is taking a more creative marketing approach. Founded by two executives who previously worked at Rovio (maker of ‘Angry Birds’), the company successfully launched its first game ‘Best Fiends,’ on iOS in October. To get the word out about the game’s latest update on iOS (and its launch on Google Play), Seriously is teaming up with YouTube mega-star, PewDiePie. Here’s our Q&A with Co-Founder/CEO Andrew Stalbow: How would you describe Seriously’s strategy? We’ve seen an enormous audience shift, from traditional media to mobile devices (tablets, phones, etc). We believe the next generation of...