Keith Andrew

Andy Sum began making games as little more than a hobby more than a decade and a half ago. Sum, who has been one of the leading forces behind two of the biggest mobile hits of the last two years – Crossy Road and relatively new kid on the block Shooty Skies – spent years developing titles for his own entertainment and didn’t actually release his first game commercially until 2009. “My first release was called Faerie Solitaire for the guys at Big Fish Games,” opened Sum, who sat down to talk to us at GameAnalytics about his career to date. “You could say it wasn’t the type of game I’d play myself, but it’s done well. You can still play it today, actually.” Faerie Solitaire didn’t actually fire the starting pistol on his career, however, with Sum – who...

In this topsy turvy industry, there’s one thing we can all be sure of: change is coming. Since the App Store first rolled out in 2008, change is pretty much all the games industry has known, though the new kids on the block don’t always end up staying around too long. One month, all the games press is talking about is Ouya, then suddenly we’re back on to Smart TVs and then…well, we don’t really need to explain what happened to both of those formats, but safe to say they’re no-one’s priority now. The question remains, however, as to just what’s coming next. When 2016 bursts into life in just a few months, what will rule the roost for the following twelve months? What new services will be kingmakers, and what new products will developers need to target in the...

It stands to reason that, long before we decided to reveal Runway to the world, we’d already begun the process of picking out partners to work with and – in the case of Kingdom Clicker from Black Bears Games – set in motion our plan of action for giving an indie game the boost it needs to take off. You don’t need us to tell you that, pre Kingdom Clicker, the actual business of publishing a game was new to us here at GameAnalytics. What gave us confidence, however, was our base in analytics. Ever since we entered the mobile analytics scene, we’ve been sure that our grasp on game data was the best in the business, and given that our offer to indies is focused on opening up soft launches to them and trawling over the data they deliver...

In one of the largest supermarket outlets in the whole of the UK, just down the road from where your humble blogger lives, sits a kitchen. Built in plain sight, this bizarre little pantry feels a somewhat curious companion to the seemingly endless run of aisles selling all the goods you’d expect a supermarket to sell. Resembling something of a greenhouse – with windows looking out to the rest of the store so those inside can view all and sundry in the midst of their weekly shopping – said kitchen is actually an especially important facet of this supermarket chain’s national operations. The customers may not know it, but in this kitchen, unreleased dishes – radical new ready meals, cakes, soups, drinks, or indeed any foodstuff you can think of – are put through their paces. This is called ‘Consumer...

Welcome to the magical world of mobile, where the clever boys and girls at the world’s most creative, ingenious studios have fathomed a way to make millions of dollars from games they don’t even charge a penny for consumers to download. The industry has been revolutionised, all of its problems have been solved, and Apple’s gated community ensures every developer gets an equal share of the ever-expanding pie. Or perhaps not. It’s been especially easy for the mobile press to get wrapped up in the huge successes the industry has fostered since the App Store first launched in 2008, with the rise of free-to-play a couple of years later ensuring companies few people had heard of quickly become household names. That’s been the irony that’s not been lost on many of the developers attempting to earn a living on iOS....

There was a telling moment in the UK games development scene recently. A couple of years ago, the British Government lifted the lid on Games Tax Relief – a system designed to allow developers to claim back some game production costs, providing the game in question was identified as “culturally British”. After the initial rush of enthusiasm and jubilation, developers then – in a typically British manner – started to get suspicious. Was this a cynical ploy to get more bright red post boxes, Beefeaters and British bulldogs in games? How could anyone deem whether a game was culturally British or not? How would you go about claiming? Would the amount of money you’d be able to access be worth all the perceived effort it would take to get it? Was it all just a big trick? Of course, as...

Marketing is a dirty word within the walls of many independent developers. Even for those who acknowledge it’s something they should be doing, it’s still often a task tackled right at the last minute – a reluctant last tick on a checklist. As with any job handled in a half hearted manner, however, it often doesn’t deliver the results developers are expecting. Or, indeed, any results at all. Much of this is down to the fact that, even amongst industry veterans, marketing is a misunderstood art. So often deduced to be little more than “promotion” (even by some who actually work in the field), marketing is actually something successful firms working in any field being to take on before their product even exists. What sticks in the mind for me is a lecture I was party to when studying at...