Author profile

Chay Hunter

EVP, Marketing at GameAnalytics
Marketing Library Article cover
7 min read
#Guides

The game developersโ€™ library for marketing mobile games

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

Ranking Data for Over 80 Sub-Genres Now Available in GameIntel

Line yourself up, recruit. You can now track ranking games across more types of charts than ever before; made up of an entire new division of 80+ sub-genres. Including everything from โ€˜Snipersโ€™, โ€˜Tower Defenseโ€™ through to โ€˜Romance Gamesโ€™. We have three main changes for you to get through today. In GameIntel, you can now: Filter the charts by over 80 sub-genres. Sort the ranks by specific metrics, like highest retention or longest playtime. Unlock this with our new Starter tier (only $99 a month). Thereโ€™s a lot to explain here. So gear up and letโ€™s get started. Whatโ€™s new in GameIntel 1. Filter the charts by over 80 sub-genres In addition to the standard App Store categories (such as hyper-casual, RPG, and Sports), you can now explore aggregated GameIntel charts for more than 80 additional sub-genres (like Tower Defense, Snipers,...
Idle engagement blog
5 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

How to Keep Players Engaged and Coming Back to Your Idle Game

Idle games donโ€™t involve much in the way of thinking from the player. And they donโ€™t have an end goal โ€“ you just continue to play them, earning more in-game currency and upgrading as you go. Theyโ€™re usually free to play, relying on in-app purchases and currency passes to make money. But how can you make sure that your players want to keep coming back? In this blog weโ€™re going to tell you how to do just that, and also share some stats on engagement metrics. Why idle games appeal to both players and developers On paper, idle games sound a bit ridiculous. Why would anyone want to play a game that involves hardly any, well, playing? The numbers say different though โ€“ idle games have really high retention rates, and users keep coming back, even when theyโ€™ve been playing...
9 min read
#Ads & Monetization

The Metrics That Make for a Great Match 3 Game โ€“ And How to Reach Them

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

More Hyper-Casual Sub-Genres Have Landed to Benchmarks+

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

New Shooter Genres & S/E Asia Filter in Benchmarks+

If youโ€™ve been keeping up with the latest Benchmarks+ buzz, then youโ€™ll know that we recently added a huge batch of sub-genres into our tool just a few weeks ago. Now, following popular demand, weโ€™re pleased to announce that weโ€™ve included more shooter genres to this growing roster: โ€˜snipersโ€™ and โ€˜tactical shootersโ€™ (and weโ€™re not stopping there). More details on this below ๐Ÿ‘‡ A few of our users also asked for insights on Southeast Asia, which weโ€™ve slipped in with this release, too. (The data is available from the beginning of the month, for the App Store genres only.) Again more details below. But if youโ€™re a paying user, you can dive straight in and check the data here: This is just the start of many changes to come (with a big update coming soon). But for now, here are...
7 min read
#Data & Analytics

5 Key Takeaways From Our H1 2019 Mobile Benchmarks Report

If you havenโ€™t seen the news, then let me be the first to tell you that weโ€™ve recently released our latest โ€” and biggest to date โ€” mobile benchmarks report. Now covering 1.2 billion monthly active players across nearly 100k games, weโ€™ve highlighted the key trends and insights from H1 2019, so that you can see how your title truly compares to the rest of the industry. Short on time? Not a problem. In this post, weโ€™ve summarised the key takeaways from this study, and what this means for mobile game developers around the globe. Donโ€™t forget to download yourself a free copy here for later ๐Ÿ‘‡ How to read our graphs Weโ€™re packing a whole lot of data into one report, with analysis that covers both seasonal trends and breakdowns by genre. So, to keep things simple, we presented...
10 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Deconstructing Meta Features In Social Casino Games (With Examples)

Why study social casino games? Thereโ€™s a huge amount that any developer can learn from social casino games. The casino genre has some of the most avid and engaged types of players, and developers have therefore built many sophisticated meta game features in order to support the success of these types of titles This means you can find a much greater array of unique rewards, challenges or even enhanced purchasing options that provide an important distinction and added value to the players that dedicate a lot of their time to these types of games. People donโ€™t play for real money here, so these features are crucial in order to keep them engaged. So, thatโ€™s why weโ€™ve written this post โ€“ to showcase some of the most innovative ways to complement your core game and keep your players engaged. We look...
11 min read
#Ads & Monetization

6 Ad Creative Strategies To Nail Your User Acquisition

In an increasingly competitive mobile games market, developers and studios vying for greater user traffic to their titles must pay closer attention to their User Acquisition (UA) strategies. Weโ€™re seeing that even tried and tested processes that have gathered impressive numbers of new users in the past are now at risk of becoming ineffective. This is just as much due to overall market competition as it is to the increased automation and machine learning potential of platforms like Google and Facebook. Essentially, automatic optimization of mobile ad creatives has made it harder for titles to differentiate themselves from competitors. And there now remains only a few ways to truly stand out from the crowd. From recognising the importance of original concepts to testing different ad formats, we dig deep into what the best creative strategies are for advertising your mobile...
4 min read
#Data & Analytics

A Behavioural Analysis of Chinese Mobile Gamers

If youโ€™ve read our helpful guide to launching mobile games in China, youโ€™ll know that there are a number of stylistic and cultural differences between the kinds of games that Chinese and Western gamers choose to play. But how about the differences in when and how they play the games themselves? With that in mind, weโ€™ve picked out five insights that we think will help Western game developers better understand and appeal to audiences in the East. 1. Fewer Chinese gamers spend moneyโ€ฆ Just as in the West, Chinese mobile gamers mostly play titles that are free to download, but which monetize through IAP or advertising. When we compared the proportion of free-to-play gamers that converted to paying players, Chinese players were around 20% less likely to convert than players in the rest of the world. However, the big swings...
Black Snowflake Games Interview
7 min read
#Game Deconstructions

The Viral Potential Of HTML5 Games โ€“ Black Snowflake Interview

Hi Filipp, thanks for chatting with me. Could you share a little about yourself and your studio? Sure. Black Snowflake is a specialist developer of HTML5 games. This really became our core focus after 2013. Since then weโ€™ve developed more than 25 mobile-first HTML5 games, working with big brands like Spil Games, DOCOMO and Nickelodeon. Personally, I believe in HTML5โ€™s potential and promote it at events like Pocket Gamer Connects, DevGAMM and White Nights. So then, why HTML5? The first thing to state is that Flash can be considered obsolete right now. Adobe have said they will finally kill Flash in 2020. Itโ€™s pretty obvious that if youโ€™re going to succeed in todayโ€™s mobile industry you need to stick to actual emerging technologies. Every mobile platform has already discontinued native Flash support. When speaking about mobile HTML5, I canโ€™t not...
An interview with Voodoo games
14 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Breaking into Mobile Games Publishing: An Interview with Voodoo

Editorโ€™s note โ€“ this is an interview from 2017. Since then, weโ€™ve had a couple more interviews and talks with Voodoo. You can find them here:  How To Create โ€œHyper-Snackableโ€ Casual Games โ€“ Tips from Voodoo How GameAnalytics helps Voodoo identify and release hit mobile games each month Hyper-casual in a Hypercompetitive Market (VIDEO & PRESENTATION) Thanks for taking the time to talk to me Hugo, could you kick things off by describing a little about Voodoo, yourself, and what drew you into the gaming industry? Sure. My nameโ€™s Hugo and Iโ€™m currently a Publishing Manager at Voodoo. I met the co-founders, Alex and Laurent, 4 years ago when the company was still a small startup. I was actually completing a 6-month internship for them at the time. We immediately got on very well and after finishing the internship I...
FRVR Interview
23 min read
#Game Deconstructions

From 0 to 2 Million DAU: An Interview with FRVR

Editorโ€™s note: This innovative studio has released 7 games so far, with another 15 in production for Q2 2017. In less than 2 years, FRVR has gained more than 2 million daily active users and 70 million all-time players. We chat with the founder of FRVR, Chris Benjaminsen, to draw light on this success. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Chris. To kick things off, could you give a little background about yourself and what motivated you to start FRVR? Of course. Back in 2013 I had worked as the director of gaming for Yahoo! for two years, and it was very clear to me that I needed to do something else. I wanted to go travel the world while still generating income, and taking on as little responsibility as possible. Essentially, my initial motivation was to...