Insights and tips about the games industry

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in 2016. As it’s been a while since we’ve explored what the best tools are that you should be using, we thought we would go ahead and give this post a refresh. Let us know if you think we’ve missed anything important.  How can you lower acquisition costs, improve engagement and drive more purchases? Where will you find the time? From basement to studio, game developers manage a growing remit of technical skills… yet the hours in a day stay fixed. For sure, there are thousands of time-saving apps and services that you can make use of – but figuring out which are best is tricky. That’s why we’ve curated a list of the top game development tools, as voted for by game developers, to help steer you in the right direction and free-up your time to...

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Om Tandon, Founder/Games Consultant at UX Reviewer.com. You can find the original version of this post here. Since the early days of app store gaming, Match 3 games have been consistently one of the most popular top-grossing casual games category (Candy Crush Saga launched in 2012 being a classic example genre’s long reign). Reasons for this genre’s mass popularity with players have traditionally included: Simplified core loop with low barrier to entry for new players and first-time gamers Game mechanics leveraging mobile-first, intuitive touch gestures on smart devices like tap, swipe which even children can figure out (literally) Relatively less player effort & user friction via low strategy puzzle core loop. Short gameplay sessions with low time commitment making these games effortlessly easy to pick and drop on the go. You can successfully play a session in a...

The RPG genre has changed dramatically over the past few years. Going from pen and paper to tabletops, from desktop to mobile, the genre barely looks the same as it did all those years ago. Despite this, there are a few elements that hold true in them all. And in this post, my goal is to highlight what those elements are, how they work, and what you need to remember when making a hit RPG game. There are four main sections you can check out, so feel free to skip to something in specific: Audience Get your pacing right Smaller experiences Customization Let’s get started. So, who the hell plays RPG games? As you’ll probably know, audiences don’t just slip into one neat demographic. There are a ton of reasons why someone would play your game. If you look at...

At Crazy Panda we publish loads of different types of titles – like World Poker Club (the biggest poker game in the Commonwealth of Independent States), Stellar Age (a mid-core mobile MMO strategy game) and Household (a social networks-based farm game). These games might look pretty different, but they all have one thing in common – in-app purchases monetization, and personalized offers. In fact, at Crazy Panda, personalized offers are between 50% and 80% of our revenue, depending on the product. So we’ve spent a lot of time making sure we get these right. And we’d like to pass on a bit of what we’ve learned to you. We think you can use this for most, if not all, games with in-app monetization. Before we begin Let’s start by nailing down a few technical terms which you may or may...

Editors Notes: This article was originally published on LinkedIn by Youssef Gasmi, Communications Manager at Voodoo.  Measurability of value has become a key factor in game publishing, a set of metrics that define what games get made, and which concepts are invested in. Successfully understanding the core strengths and the impact a game will have before it is released is a vital part of the development process in mobile games. This is becoming more important due to the highly competitive nature of the market in 2020. As result, what were once seen as hard and fast rules, namely 55% D1, 22% D7 retention and CPIs below $0.25 are now considered short-sighted. At Voodoo, we have become the leading publisher behind Hyper-Casual games, and we have used a robust testing methodology to establish a game’s retention, and cost per install values,...

A lot has been going on here at GameAnalytics. We’re working on new features, products, rebranding and more. And now, we’ve made some new feature releases, a couple of which you’ve likely already heard about. But for those of you who haven’t, let’s get you up to speed with the latest changes to our platform and family of SDKs. To fill you in, we’ve listed out what we’ve improved within the GameAnalytics tool – whether big or small. I’ve kept this quite snappy and to the point, so if you have any questions or feel like we’ve missed something, feel free to get in touch. We’ll get back to you right away. So, let’s get to it. Remote Configs You can now apply Remote Configs to specific groups of players. Players can be filtered by three categories: Country, Build and...

Editors note: This blog was written by hyper-casual specialists, JoyPac. JoyPac specializes in publishing hit hyper-casual games across the globe, and today they have agreed to share their insights into testing and developing hyper-casual games.  On Wednesday, May 13th, we’ll be hosting a JoyPac webinar all about making successful hyper-casual games using rapid testing and development. This blog is your preview for the topics we’ll be discussing and some of the advice we’ll be giving. The hyper-casual mobile genre is evolving Hyper-casual mobile games use very simple gameplay and a business model based on in-game advertising. The genre emerged as a sort of backlash or nostalgic revival a couple of years ago. But even though it’s a fairly new genre, it’s already starting to shift. This evolution seems to be branching off into two sub-genres: Ultra-casual games—pushing the simplicity of...

As millions of people work from home or are on furlough, they’ve needed something to pass the time: streaming TV shows, learning instruments and, of course, playing games. At least, that’s the assumption. We dug into our data to find that playtime has soared and people are spending more, but each genre is affected differently. We’ve analyzed our data in two ways 1. Global network analysis Our first approach was to look at the overall data across our network. Over 75,000 developers use GameAnalytics to analyze how gamers are playing. That’s about 40,000 active mobile games, all in all, including 40 of the top 100 most downloaded games on the app stores. By combining all this data, we can see how more than a third of the world’s mobile players are behaving. Specifically, we analyzed playtime and how much people...

A couple of months ago, we had the pleasure of attending Google’s GameCamp, which was filled to the brim with gamedev content delivered from the best and brightest in mobile gaming. While there, Elif Büyükcan, the Business Intelligence Director at Rovio Entertainment, shared with us how they’ve been using rewarded ads in their games. We’re here to report on their story, and what you can learn from them. Elif’s main message was this:  “Getting your monetization model right is incredibly important. It takes a lot of time, thought and testing. You need to be constantly measuring, learning and adapting. This makes machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) your best friends.” And today, we’ll go through everything we learned from their talk (specifically about machine learning), including: The process Rovio use to hone their monetization models, a case study of...

Editors note: This blog was written by hyper-casual specialists, JoyPac, and is based on their recent webinar: Design Strategies for Hyper-Casual Game Development. JoyPac specializes in publishing hit hyper-casual games across the globe, and today they have agreed to share their top tips and strategies. To develop a successful hyper-casual game at hyper-fast speed, you need to have a clear production process that focuses on game design. A lot of developers jump into creating hyper-casual games without proper planning and without proper testing. This often leaves them with little idea of how much appeal their game will have, and with a lot of hard work going to waste. We (JoyPac) recently hosted a webinar on this exact subject, along with Umami Games and SuperPlus Games. Based on that webinar, we’ve put together five major things to consider before you set...

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on LevelUp by Joakim Achrén, the Founder and CEO of Elite Game Developers, a Helsinki-based company that helps gaming entrepreneurs in starting their first games company.  One of the earliest and most important decisions founders face when starting a games company is the level of complexity of their first game: should it be casual or mid-core? As an angel investor, every week I get to take a look at pitches from founders and I see them struggling with the same problems over and over again. So, how does one decide where to start and which approach will bring the most successful long-term? Here’s what I’ve learned through my experiences creating a games company and going through countless pitches since. The economics of mobile game ventures After hearing the pitch for a game, I...

We’ve been a bit quiet these past few months in regards to major product updates, but for good reason. Alongside new features and capabilities coming in 2020, we’re also updating how you’ll manage your accounts in our tool, with our new concept: Organizations. We’re launching the first version of this feature within a few days. Here’s everything you need to know. So, what is an ‘Organization’? In short, an Organization will be the heart of your GameAnalytics account. It will be a central place for managing your company, containing all your games and users (even multiple studios), and will function as a trusted environment for collaboration between your users. How our account management currently works At the moment, our account management is user-focused. This has worked for smaller companies and studios (those who deal with just a handful of users...