Insights and tips about the games industry

We are all creatures of habit, whether we like it or not. Not every habit is bad – especially when you’re a developer who’s got players that make your game a regular habit or part of their everyday activities. After all, a player who gets used to playing your game will keep coming back to it, and that’s the key to forming a steady community of players in the long run. [bctt tweet=”A player who gets used to playing your game habitually will keep coming back, and that’s the key to forming a steady community. Read more:” username=”GameAnalytics”] Repeat Customers Are The Best Customers This is the case in nearly every business, but  especially true in gaming. After all, most users aren’t going to finish any game in a single session (and if they can, is that really the right...

After 2 years at Shoryuken and attendance at countless fighting game tournaments, I spoke to Fighting Game Community expert Keegan Spindler about the difficulties of adapting the genre to mobile, the fine line microtransactions have to take to make competition viable, and his tips on how being open with the community can help it grow around you.  Can you give us a little background on your role and what it is you do now? I was the Features Editor for Shoryuken. About 12 months ago we looked at our numbers and realised that by staying as a news network, we weren’t keeping up with things like social media. So my job role evolved as we realised the need to create higher quality, bespoke long-form work around fighting games and the community. I’ve stepped down a bit as I’m about to...

Some of us may associate gaming with guys more than we do girls, and when we picture them, it’s often the stereotypically geeky or nerdy sort. It’s an image that gaming can’t often shift, and that’s despite the fact gaming of all kinds has become pretty mainstream! From eSports on ESPN to mobile games becoming some of the most popular apps in the world, gaming is hardly limited to one gender or a few niche interest groups. In fact, in the realm of mobile gaming, women are more likely to be avid participants than men! According to a 2017 Google Play and NewZoo survey, 65% of U.S. women ages 10-65 play mobile games – and that is a huge audience. What’s more, according to the same survey, women make up nearly half – 49% – of all mobile gamers, and they...

Every developer who thinks he doesn’t need to soft launch his game is, in my opinion, simply wrong. A successful soft launch is the best way to optimise your game for global launch. Soft-launching allows developers to collect data, identify bugs and receive early feedback from players. A soft launch will provide you with the opportunity to test your server infrastructure and ensure it will be able to handle the load of a global launch. For free-to-play games, and especially for those with in-app purchases, it is important to determine how well the game will do globally and if it has a good retention profile and monetisation mechanics. This will tell you if your game will be profitable and you should aim for global launch or simply kill it. If you plan on looking for a publisher for your game,...

In November 2017, EA released Star Wars Battlefront II, developed by DICE studio. The company was met with extreme criticism after it seemed to have not learned from its mistakes with its season pass approach in the first instalment. Famously, EA’s response to that criticism led to the most downvoted comment in Reddit’s history. The reason EA’s response garnered so much negative attention was that it ignored the growing discontent over its use of loot boxes, an increasingly common monetisation strategy in the gaming industry. Though the strategy has been around for over a decade, the success of Blizzard’s Overwatch was a pivotal moment for the loot box model, vastly increasing its visibility and popularity. It has only been in the past few years that the public dialogue has broadened to include parallels to gambling, and whether or not there...

Ads are a part of daily life for pretty much everyone, and in most cases, we’re probably all pretty good at tuning them out. Whether it’s a TV commercial, a billboard, a banner ad on a website, or a pre-roll message on a video or podcast, the various ads that we’re bombarded with probably barely register for most of us, eventually causing ad blindness. While ad blindness might be a good thing in your personal life (who wants to view advertising on purpose, really?), it’s definitely not a good thing for game developers who rely on clicks and perhaps affiliate marketing as well. With that in mind, how do you optimize your ads for actual productive views and engagements, while keeping mobile ad blindness to a minimum? What Is Mobile Ad Blindness? Let’s start with understanding what ad blindness actually...

In recent years board games have had a revival – the hobby is growing faster than ever and the diversity of the games on the market is truly extraordinary. Even though part of the appeal of the hobby is its physical and social format, digital board games soon followed its analog brothers and sisters, proving that good game mechanics can adapt to many formats. Whether you are struggling to get a group of people together to play, or just want to quickly try out a few strategies, or even simply avoid the ponderous rule book and learn the game in an interactive way, digital board games are here to oblige. You might have already been playing a game on your phone or iPad without even knowing that it was originally designed for the tabletop! Here are some of the best...

Good news, everyone! We here at GameAnalytics are proud to announce that our software is now compatible with Apache Cordova, making it even easier to optimise your games made with the free-open source software that allows you to create your games with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and target multiple platforms with one code base. It only takes a few steps to integrate, and you can download the Cordova SDK from the download and installation page. You can now integrate Apache Cordova with our free tool in order to get information about your players’ behaviours, including where they get stuck in your games, average play times, and retention rates. For more information on which Key Performance Indicators you should pay attention to, we’d recommend this article on the top 50 KPI’s to measure your mobile game or app. What is Apache...

Ric Cowley has been working at SteelMedia for nearly 3 years, and has recently been promoted to the role of Editor at PocketGamer.co.uk. We spoke to him about the biggest trends in mobile games, what he enjoys as a consumer, how to get your games noticed by the press, and the overwhelming prevalence of games like Clash Royale. Ric, tell us, how did you get into mobile games? I initially started out at PocketGamer.co.uk as an intern for three months, then I was hired as a freelancer for PocketGamer.biz, and then when a job came up after 2 months of doing that, I was hired as a full-time staff writer, and then have worked my way up from there to the role of Deputy Editor of PocketGamer.biz. Now I’m the Editor of PocketGamer.co.uk! What would you say is one of...

Sport simulation games have been a massively popular genre in video games industry since the early 70’s. Many of you must have grown up playing franchises like NBA, FIFA, Ashes, Madden NFL, NFS, Football Manager, Tiger Woods – PGA and many more sports titles across PC and consoles. “Real world sports games imbibe natural qualities like competitive rulesets, challenging opponents, strategy, skills & mastery that video games & gamers already subscribe to. This makes them a natural fit for a digital makeover.” It’s no surprise that the top 10 – 50 grossing charts on mobile games also boast their share of sports simulation games. Source : ThinkGaming 2/03/2018 Mobile space is dominated by many sport titans which are either tactical or strategy based. There is a plethora of choices from basketball, cricket, football manager, golf and tennis to car racing. Heavyweights that dominate the top...

With any analytics dashboard, you’re going to get a lot of information, possibly more than you know what to do with. While all of it is valuable in its own way, you’re probably not going to be parsing every detail of each metric or stat on a daily basis, so you need to be aware of the stats that you should prioritise in order to maximise your game’s revenue – and maintain your own sanity! There are some metrics that you should know by heart, but for some they could prove to be a bit much to take a deep dive into on a daily basis. So without further adieu, these are the metrics you should prioritise if, like most game developers, you want to boost your game’s earning and revenue potential. 1 – Daily Active Users/DAU For your game...

To say that the gaming industry is large has become an understatement. For some perspective, the forecast for the number of cars sold worldwide in 2017 is 79.6 million, which brings the current estimate for the total number of cars on the road up to around 1.5 billion. Compare that with the current estimate for the total number of people who play video games: 2.2 billion. According to Newzoo’s latest Global Games Market Report, the global games market will have generated $108.9 billion of revenue in 2017. This is a 7.8% increase from the previous year, and is expected to rise to $128.5 billion in 2020. As we move into 2018, gaming is becoming less comparable with that of the film industry, and more with that of professional sports. However, regardless of size, bourgeoning industries come with obstacles, and gaming...