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Hundreds of articles for game developers
Insights and thought leadership about the gaming industry on the GameAnalytics blog.
#Guest posts
Marvel Snap, Marvel Contest, CoD Mobile: What makes them a mass market hit?
What does the stellar mass market success of games like Marvel Snap, Marvel Contest of Champions and CoD Mobile share in common? No, it’s not just that they are all popular IP/Franchises. Find out in this guest post from Om Tandon – industry specialist, game consultant and UX Director.
#Commentary
Translating games: tips and best practices
Want to reach entirely new audiences and increase player engagement globally? Then let people play your game in their native language, but don’t fall into the pitfall of bad translation. Here are some examples and best practices for translating a mobile game.
#Commentary
Meet with us at GDC 2023!
Heading to San Fran once again for the industry's premier gaming event? Well then, great news! Our team will be at the conference to discuss the latest at GameAnalytics. If you’re interested in finding out more about the latest GameAnalytics platform developments, then book a chat with us today.
#Commentary
2023 will be the year of Hybrid Monetization
Many game studios have relied solely on a single strategy – typically advertising – to make their money. But as times change, we’ve seen a shift in the market. Hybrid monetization might not be new, but it’s now more than ever becoming an essential tactic for game studios. So what’s caused this trend? And how will it affect the industry throughout 2023?
#Product updates
GameAnalytics V3 now live!
We’re excited to announce the release of GameAnalytics V3, our latest solution designed to make analytics easier, faster and more powerful for game creators looking to turn data into insights! V3 is now the default experience, so simply login today to check it out! Or, if you want to learn more about these improvements and see the full product release notes, read on.
#Interviews
Among Us VR dev talks about how to create immersive worlds
VR is all about immersion. It’s about allowing players to lose themselves in more than just a game, but a new world. You have to build VR experiences the right way to make this happen. This goal is always top-of-mind for Schell Games. In this interview, we spoke to Schell Games’ Vice President of Product, Charlie Amis, to learn their story. “For VR, you want to make the player feel like they’re actually in the world you’ve created. This isn’t as true or a high priority in PC and console games. If people start to lose that sense of presence and immersion, then a lot of the reason they put the headset on is hurt. They want to go to another world or be someone new. So you need to help them feel like they’re really there and really that...
#Product updates
Deploy your own analytics platform with Private Instance
Heads up, it’s now possible to deploy a version of our analytics platform into your own setup and systems with a Private Instance. Having a private deployment of GameAnalytics is an ideal solution for any studio and publisher looking to become more independent and gain greater control over their own tools and data. In this update, we’ll explain what a Private Instance is, why we’ve rolled out this service, and how you can get started. Why we created Private Instance We’re seeing a shift in the industry. More large-scale studios and publishers are bringing tools and systems in-house, with the goal of managing their own data pipelines for custom reporting, along with improving data compliance and security. That’s why we’ve released Private Instance. With your own private deployment, you’ll now be able to use all the GameAnalytics features, but on...
#Guest posts
Top 10 Hyper-casual Game Ad Networks in 2022 (Q4)
Editor’s note: This article was written and published by Tenjin. You can find their original version here. New year, new insights into the most innovative segment of the mobile gaming market: hyper-casual games! The much awaited “Hyper-Casual Benchmark Report” for Q4 2022 is here to provide you with up-to-date data on key performance indicators, user behavior, and trends in the hyper-casual gaming industry. This benchmark report consists of anonymized data collected by Tenjin and GameAnalytics for hyper-casual games in the date range of 01.10.2022 – 31.12.2022. So let’s dive in and explore what this report has to offer! Here’s a summary of the topics we cover: Ad Spend % by platform Median CPI by platform Top 10 countries & ad networks by ad spend on Android and iOS Median CPI for the top 10 countries & ad networks by ad spend on...
#Product updates
GameAnalytics achieves SOC2 Type II & ISO27001 information security standards
GameAnalytics is proud to announce that it has achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance in accordance with American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) standards for Service Organizations also known as SSAE 18. Achieving this top security standard demonstrates that GameAnalytics pursues enterprise-level security for partners and customers’ data, safely processed within the GameAnalytics systems. GameAnalytics is also delighted to be officially certified for ISO/IEC 27001:2013 (ISO 27001)! This stands for an internationally recognized standard that ensures that our services and products meet the best practice for an information security management system. Using this collection of standards will help our organization manage the security of assets such as game insights, personal data, financial information, intellectual property, employee details and any information entrusted to us by third parties. We are committed to following the highest quality and consistent security management system,...
#Interviews
How to build successful VR games as a solo developer
Building video games has never been a simple task. You can have a brilliant idea for a game, but without the right skills, tools and resources, it can be near-impossible to tackle by yourself. Especially if we consider something as complicated and new as virtual reality. Not that this stopped Sergio Hidalgo. Being a one-man studio, Sergio managed to produce, release, and publish two successful VR titles. His first title, Dreadhalls, sold up to 250,000 units worldwide, and hit over 60,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch. (For comparison, Team Fortress 2’s highest was around 80,000.) While Cosmodread has had approximately 25,000 players on Steam alone. So to get his advice and learn his secrets, we sat down to hear his story and journey as a solo-game developer. Here’s what he had to say. 1. You don’t have to have it all...
#Commentary
The top 22 mobile games of 2022
It’s been a busy year. Mergers and acquisitions left, right, and centre. New ownership of Twitter. More progress with NFTs and Web3. Even tighter regulations with the app stores. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But one thing that hasn’t changed is new hit games entering the market. And boy, we’ve been spoiled for choice over the last 12 months. So to end the year on a high, we rounded up our top 22 games to hit the charts this year. So grab your phone and get comfy. Here are the top games we loved playing this year. If you want some inspiration for games to binge over the holiday period, look no further. 22. Spinner Merge by Sunday.GG Think of this as a hyper-casual Beyblade game with a merge mechanic mixed in the middle. What we liked...
#Interviews
Splitting Point: how Field Trip Z got 45M players on Roblox this year
We recently spoke with Janzen Madsen, founder at Splitting Point Studios, to get his perspective on how to develop a hit on Roblox. Splitting Point has created multiple experiences, including Field Trip Z which this year alone saw more than 45M unique players. Janzen is intimately familiar with what makes a Roblox experience a success. Roblox is an absolutely massive platform, with over 32 million experiences and 52 million active users. But making a game there is unlike making a game anywhere else. It’s much faster paced, the audience is much younger, and it’s much more tricky to design. The typical principles you might expect are quite different. 1. Don’t make it like a mobile game “Often, developers coming from the mobile gaming industry will assume that they can replicate their success by rebuilding their games on Roblox. This just...
#Interviews
Fruit Ninja dev talks porting to VR
Obsessed with making games that people will remember for a lifetime, Halfbrick decided to convert their hit title, Fruit Ninja, into a VR game. It was a natural evolution – people apparently really enjoy slicing fruit and swinging swords. After that success, they created Fruit Ninja VR 2 – adding more features and exploration to the game. “Making a game for VR is very, very different,” said Liam Potter, one of the lead gameplay programmers on Fruit Ninja VR 2. “There are a lot of things you need to take into account that you just don’t for console or mobile.” With that in mind, let’s dive into those challenges and see what Liam advises. Show players the play space early In a VR experience, it’s incredibly difficult to make sure that players are looking where you want. Gamers notoriously fail...