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Author profile
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Chay Hunter
EVP, Marketing at GameAnalytics
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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 thereโs a world of tools and techniques youโll 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, weโre rounded up the best articles and resources for you to get started. Letโs dig in. First off, understand your audience Before you even consider sorting your marketing strategy, you need to know who youโre selling to. Sure, you made the game โ so you should have an idea of who your audience is. But youโll need to understand exactly what your playersโ motivations are and why theyโll want to play...
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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 โSnipersโ, โTower Defenseโ through to โRomance 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). Thereโs a lot to explain here. So gear up and letโs get started. Whatโs 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,...
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5 min read
#Marketing & Publishing
How to Keep Players Engaged and Coming Back to Your Idle Game
Idle games donโt involve much in the way of thinking from the player. And they donโt have an end goal โ you just continue to play them, earning more in-game currency and upgrading as you go. Theyโre 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 weโre 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 theyโve been playing...
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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 โmatch 3 puzzleโ. So now that we can see this classic, much-loved sub-genre in all its multi-metric magnificence, letโs 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...
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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) Weโve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering which from today will be the new home for Benchmarks+. Thereโs 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 weโve 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...
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3 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
New Shooter Genres & S/E Asia Filter in Benchmarks+
If youโve been keeping up with the latest Benchmarks+ buzz, then youโll know that we recently added a huge batch of sub-genres into our tool just a few weeks ago. Now, following popular demand, weโre pleased to announce that weโve included more shooter genres to this growing roster: โsnipersโ and โtactical shootersโ (and weโre not stopping there). More details on this below
A few of our users also asked for insights on Southeast Asia, which weโve 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 youโre 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...
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7 min read
#Data & Analytics
5 Key Takeaways From Our H1 2019 Mobile Benchmarks Report
If you havenโt seen the news, then let me be the first to tell you that weโve 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, weโve 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, weโve summarised the key takeaways from this study, and what this means for mobile game developers around the globe. Donโt forget to download yourself a free copy here for later
How to read our graphs Weโre 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...
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10 min read
#Game Deconstructions
Deconstructing Meta Features In Social Casino Games (With Examples)
Why study social casino games? Thereโs 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 donโt play for real money here, so these features are crucial in order to keep them engaged. So, thatโs why weโve written this post โ to showcase some of the most innovative ways to complement your core game and keep your players engaged. We look...
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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. Weโre 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...
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4 min read
#Data & Analytics
A Behavioural Analysis of Chinese Mobile Gamers
If youโve read our helpful guide to launching mobile games in China, youโll 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, weโve 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 moneyโฆ 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...
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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 weโve developed more than 25 mobile-first HTML5 games, working with big brands like Spil Games, DOCOMO and Nickelodeon. Personally, I believe in HTML5โs 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. Itโs pretty obvious that if youโre going to succeed in todayโs 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 canโt not...
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14 min read
#Marketing & Publishing
Breaking into Mobile Games Publishing: An Interview with Voodoo
Editorโs note โ this is an interview from 2017. Since then, weโve had a couple more interviews and talks with Voodoo. You can find them here: How To Create โHyper-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 nameโs Hugo and Iโm 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...
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23 min read
#Game Deconstructions
From 0 to 2 Million DAU: An Interview with FRVR
Editorโs 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...