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9 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Everything You Need to Know About Social Media Marketing Memes

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by Tiahn Wetzler, Senior Content Marketing Editor at Adjust. You can check out the original here. Social media memes are a smart way to engage your audience, create stronger brand recognition and acquire new followers. As a form of native social media content, they can create a positive brand image through humor and relatability. However, there are several pitfalls to avoid and essential practices marketers need to follow to successfully leverage the format’s popularity with younger audiences. This guide breaks down everything you need to know about social media marketing memes and how to incorporate memes into your social media strategy. Where to begin: What is a meme? The term ‘meme’ was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. This was defined as a behavioral or stylistic trend...
6 min read
#Guides

6 Tips for Running a Game Jam: a Guide from AudioMob

Editor’s Note: AudioMob, an advertising platform dedicated to non-interrupting audio ads, recently ran their first (of many) game jams. Here’s what they learned from the experience. As 2020 came to a close, we ran a game jam that encouraged highly creative development teams to explore integrating a new audio ad format into mobile games. The jam was an amazing experience for us, one in which we learned a lot. Hosting certainly took a significant investment of effort and time. But it was worth it, bringing us and something we’d recommend any game tech, service, or publishing company consider doing. With that in mind, we wanted to share what we learned, in case you were curious about what happens behind the scenes (or were thinking of running one yourself!). Running a game jam was hugely rewarding, of course. We got to...
9 min read
#Ads & Monetization

The Metrics That Make for a Great Match 3 Game – 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 – one of which is ‘match 3 puzzle’. So now that we can see this classic, much-loved sub-genre in all its multi-metric magnificence, let’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...
Licensed IP blog cover part 2
8 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Part 2: How to Land a Licensed IP for Your Mobile Game

If you had a chance to read part 1 of our licensed IP series, you should be pretty familiar with the basics when it comes to licensed IPs (if you’re not, we recommend navigating back to part 1 before reading on). With the fundamentals of IP law out of the way, we can start reaching out to IP holders. It’s actually pretty straightforward, though you should probably make sure you’ve got a lawyer to check over any contracts. So, what do you need to do first? Find the right fit Before you rush off and start hitting up every huge franchise for a chance to use their IP, you’ll want to make sure you’re the right fit. There are three questions to ask yourself: Do my mechanics work with this IP? If you’re making a racing game, will it really...
Joy pac post cover
11 min read
#Data & Analytics

iOS14 and IDFA Changes: What It Means for Mobile Developers

We recently held a webinar to discuss the changes we can expect from iOS14 and rule changes to IDFA that are due in early 2021. It was an interesting, lively discussion with GameAnalytics and Tenjin, answering some of the developers’ and publishers’ most pressing questions. We’ve had some time to reflect on all the topics we discussed. Here are our takeaways: So what is IDFA? IDFA stands for ‘identifier for advertisers. It allows advertisers to follow users through the experience – from seeing the ad in another app and then actually ending up in your app. Apple first introduced it and it’s exclusive to iOS Devices. But there’s a similar system on Android. Users do have the option to disable IDFA, but it’s always on by default. And what’s changing? From some point in early 2021, the default for IDFA...
Licensed IP blog cover
10 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Part 1: The Pros and Cons of Using a licensed IP

There are a lot of reasons to use a licensed IP. You could have made a game and now want to reskin and update it to reach a new audience, like Reigns: Game of Thrones or the new Angry Birds: Star Wars. You might be making a music game and need the rights to use a few songs, like Guitar Hero. Or perhaps you just want to include a single character in your brawler, like Super Smash Bros. Whenever you’re using another creator’s content, you’ll need permission. A license. But what are the pros and cons of doing that? Does it really help? The short answer is: maybe. But it’s a lot of work. We can’t get into all the nitty-gritty here, but we can cover the basics and give you a few tips to make sure you don’t fall...
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) We’ve launched GameIntel, a new and improved mobile intelligence offering which from today will be the new home for Benchmarks+. There’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 we’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...
8 min read
#Data & Analytics

Why Painted Door Tests are a Secret Weapon in Game Development

Have you ever launched a new feature that you were confident would succeed and be game-changing? Not only did your gut tell you it was a good idea, but you were able to back it up with user research? Then, when you finally launched, you found the new feature made very little difference. Perhaps users didn’t notice it, or they just didn’t care about it in actual game play. All the time, money, and resources you put into it could have been spent elsewhere. This has happened to me countless times, and it’s why we at Solitaired now take a data-driven approach towards understanding what new features we should work on. A $1M mistake I learned the hard way that both my instinct and consumer research could be wrong. Before getting into the gaming space, I had run an educational...
1 hour read
#Data & Analytics

Making Casual Games in a COVID19 World – Post Webinar

If you’ve missed our webinar, have a question for the speakers, or want to find the videos or links to the resources that our speakers mentioned, you’re in the right place. If you fancy the TL:DR version, head to our blog here. Below you can find the webinar recordings and links to related resources and if you have any questions for the speakers or any feedback on our next webinars, use the form to the right and we will get your query to the right people. Here are the recordings: 2020 Gaming KPIs in Review – GameAnalytics GameAnalytics Ioana Hreninciuc, CEO at GameAnalytics, presents insights on key metrics, including retention, ARPDAU, Session Length, CPI, and more. Watch the recording    Quarantined World: Reaching the At-Home Mobile Gamer Adjust Stephanie Pilon, Global Director of Product & Field Marketing at Adjust, explains...
New Benchmarks subgenres
3 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates

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

If you’ve been keeping up with the latest Benchmarks+ buzz, then you’ll know that we recently added a huge batch of sub-genres into our tool just a few weeks ago. Now, following popular demand, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve included more shooter genres to this growing roster: ‘snipers’ and ‘tactical shooters’ (and we’re not stopping there). More details on this below 👇 A few of our users also asked for insights on Southeast Asia, which we’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 you’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...
Storytelling in Blockbuster games cover
13 min read
#Game Design

Storytelling in Blockbuster Casual Games: The Effect of Data and UX-Driven Trends

Editor’s note: This article is written in collaboration by Om Tandon of UXreviewer and Lisa Brunette, founder & owner of Brunette Games, a narrative design and storytelling powerhouse working with development teams at publishers and studios such as Jam City, Redemption Games, Uken Games, etc., on blockbuster top-100 grossing casual games: Sweet Escapes, Lily’s Garden, Matchington Mansion, & many others. You can find the original article on LinkedIn. But without further ado, let’s get started: How is modern-day storytelling in casual games evolving? What data & UX-driven trends are emerging in the narrative of blockbuster casual games? Let’s find out. Size of the Pie: Casual Puzzle Games Source: Deconstructor of Fun Casual games are the second-largest genre on mobile after strategy games. They generated a revenue of a whopping $8.1Bn in 2019, the lion’s share of which was raked in by the Match 3...
6 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Why AdOps and LTV are Essential to Your Softlaunch

The term ‘live ops’ is an industry-standard. Most large and mid-sized studios and publishers have a department that remotely configure their games, whether that’s localization, in-game events like flash sales, or daily bonuses. So what is ad ops? And where does it fit in? Well, before we can explain that, we need to explain Lifetime Value (LTV). Optimize your LTV at softlaunch In games that rely on ads to make money, it’s usually the user acquisition and monetization teams who are fighting to increase LTV. They’ll make the Cost Per Install (CPI) 1 cent cheaper or get the player to watch one more teeny tiny ad. All to creep up their profit, cent by cent. But developers almost always optimize their ads after they launch their game – it’s already live and getting thousands of downloads a day. Leaving it...
Hipster Whale
#Case study

How the devs behind Crossy Road and Shooty Skies became mobile masters

Never spend too long creating a game “For Crossy Road, we made it in 12 weeks, but we actually set out to make it in six,” says Sum. “That all meant that, if it didn’t go well, we hadn’t wasted all that much time. You just don’t know what’s going to happen on mobile. If you take six months to make a game, everything might have changed by the time it comes out.” Finding a team that gels “Every member of the team has their own skills that complement each other,” Sum is keen to note. “Matt Ditton handles a lot of the business side, but he’s a technical programmer too. Whereas Ben is really technically awesome and led the development of Shooty Skies.” Even though they now have a bigger team, Sum said his goal was to create “something...