Chay Hunter

You asked, we listened. We’ve introduced sub-genres to our mobile market intelligence platform, Benchmarks+. These sub-genres offer more granular filtering options, for more specific gaming insights. So far, this has been one of the most requested features for Benchmarks+ so we’re thrilled it’s now live. We hope this helps to supercharge your game research and analysis. Why did we introduce sub-genres? The standard gaming categories on the App Store are broad and often misleading, especially when you consider the growing diversity of the mobile gaming market. Over the past couple of years, we’ve had hundreds of game developers reaching out to us, asking for more detailed insights about their particular genre niche. Simply said, the standard App Store genres are just too vague to be helpful for providing this level of detail. That’s why we’ve released our own taxonomy. So...

As Voodoo has put it, the key to a successful hyper-casual game is making sure it’s short, simple and satisfying. When working towards this, there are a lot of different mechanics you can use and combine for your gameplay, so we thought we’d explore which ones do the best, and why. These mechanics are the building blocks of game design. The more you know, and the more you experiment with them, the more engaging your games will become. Please, use this list as a base for inspiration, but don’t be afraid to combine multiple mechanics. We’ve seen that many fusion games with a fresh twist often perform best. Do your research Researching similar games can help you find what works and what doesn’t (as well as discovering your own niche). We’ve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering...

Happy New Year! Welcome back to our series on what we can learn from the best games of 2019. And how the big trend has been simplicity. In parts one and two, Kelly and Sarah have covered story-driven games and casual games. So to end the series, I’ll be sharing three of my favorite mobile games from last year – all of which have a multiplayer aspect. 7. Magic Brick Wars Developer: Halfbrick Studios Release date: 15th November 2019 Available on: Android, iOS Price: Free with in-app purchases Genre: Multiplayer strategy Inspired by card-building and auto-chess Magic Brick Wars is a mix between a tower-defense, a card-builder, and an auto-chess game. These are all similar genres anyway, but Magic Brick Wars brings it all together pretty well. You put down barriers and monsters on your side of the field who...

If you haven’t seen the news, then let me be the first to tell you that we’ve recently released our latest — and biggest to date — mobile benchmarks report. Now covering 1.2 billion monthly active players across nearly 100k games, we’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, we’ve summarised the key takeaways from this study, and what this means for mobile game developers around the globe. Don’t forget to download yourself a free copy here for later 👇 How to read our graphs We’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...

“I’m sorry Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” If you’re a sci-fi film fan or (ahem) of a certain age, that quote from HAL 9000, the sentient computer and antagonist of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, will likely have sent a small shiver down your spine. Artificial intelligence, or AI, has long been a go-to Hollywood villain – think Skynet, Ultron and, arguably the most evil of them all, Proteus IV from ‘Demon Seed’. Luckily, though, science fact hasn’t mirrored fiction (not yet, at least) and “friendly AI” is now in almost all our homes in the form of Siri, Cortana, Alexa and the like. It’s also used in more mundane processes like search engines, email filtering, and chatbots. However, AI in game design needs to catch up. Chances are you’ve heard lots about AI playing games – famous examples...

Why study social casino games? There’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 don’t play for real money here, so these features are crucial in order to keep them engaged. So, that’s why we’ve written this post – to showcase some of the most innovative ways to complement your core game and keep your players engaged. We look...

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. We’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...

If you’ve read our helpful guide to launching mobile games in China, you’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, we’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 money… 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...

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 we’ve developed more than 25 mobile-first HTML5 games, working with big brands like Spil Games, DOCOMO and Nickelodeon. Personally, I believe in HTML5’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. It’s pretty obvious that if you’re going to succeed in today’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 can’t not...

Editor’s note – this is an interview from 2017. Since then, we’ve had a couple more interviews and talks with Voodoo. You can find them here:  How To Create “Hyper-Snackable” Casual Games – 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 name’s Hugo and I’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...

Editor’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...

Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, GameAnalytics turned 5 years old. What better way to commemorate this landmark than by interviewing our senior frontend developer and SDK team lead, Nikolaj Pedersen. Nikolaj has been with us from the beginning and his work has been essential in the development of the tool that you know and use today. ? Q. Nikolaj, you’re GA’s longest standing employee. How did it all begin? The idea behind GameAnalytics originally came from a Danish game company (now called Cape Copenhagen). Back in 2010, they created an internal analytics tool and met with our founder, Morten Wulff. Morten had previously founded a tracking company called TraceWorks and together they discussed the idea of building an analytics tool available for all game developers. However, Cape Copenhagen decided not to pursue analytics and instead chose to focus 100%...