Resources > All

Insights and tips about the games industry

Subscribe for gaming insights, industry reports and product updates delivered straight to your inbox.

12 min read
#Game Design

How to Crack the Match 3 Code? – Part 1

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Om Tandon, Founder/Games Consultant at UX Reviewer.com. You can find the original version of this post here. Since the early days of app store gaming, Match 3 games have been consistently one of the most popular top-grossing casual games category (Candy Crush Saga launched in 2012 being a classic example genre’s long reign). Reasons for this genre’s mass popularity with players have traditionally included: Simplified core loop with low barrier to entry for new players and first-time gamers Game mechanics leveraging mobile-first, intuitive touch gestures on smart devices like tap, swipe which even children can figure out (literally) Relatively less player effort & user friction via low strategy puzzle core loop. Short gameplay sessions with low time commitment making these games effortlessly easy to pick and drop on the go. You can successfully play a session in a...
8 min read
#Game Design

So you want to make an RPG game? Here’s what you should know

The RPG genre has changed dramatically over the past few years. Going from pen and paper to tabletops, from desktop to mobile, the genre barely looks the same as it did all those years ago. Despite this, there are a few elements that hold true in them all. And in this post, my goal is to highlight what those elements are, how they work, and what you need to remember when making a hit RPG game. There are four main sections you can check out, so feel free to skip to something in specific: Audience Get your pacing right Smaller experiences Customization Let’s get started. So, who the hell plays RPG games? As you’ll probably know, audiences don’t just slip into one neat demographic. There are a ton of reasons why someone would play your game. If you look at...
13 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Personalizing Offers for In-App Monetization – Lessons from Crazy Panda

At Crazy Panda we publish loads of different types of titles – like World Poker Club (the biggest poker game in the Commonwealth of Independent States), Stellar Age (a mid-core mobile MMO strategy game) and Household (a social networks-based farm game). These games might look pretty different, but they all have one thing in common – in-app purchases monetization, and personalized offers. In fact, at Crazy Panda, personalized offers are between 50% and 80% of our revenue, depending on the product. So we’ve spent a lot of time making sure we get these right. And we’d like to pass on a bit of what we’ve learned to you. We think you can use this for most, if not all, games with in-app monetization. Before we begin Let’s start by nailing down a few technical terms which you may or may...
3 min read
#Game Design

How Voodoo Diversified and Lowered Game Product KPIs

Editors Notes: This article was originally published on LinkedIn by Youssef Gasmi, Communications Manager at Voodoo.  Measurability of value has become a key factor in game publishing, a set of metrics that define what games get made, and which concepts are invested in. Successfully understanding the core strengths and the impact a game will have before it is released is a vital part of the development process in mobile games. This is becoming more important due to the highly competitive nature of the market in 2020. As result, what were once seen as hard and fast rules, namely 55% D1, 22% D7 retention and CPIs below $0.25 are now considered short-sighted. At Voodoo, we have become the leading publisher behind Hyper-Casual games, and we have used a robust testing methodology to establish a game’s retention, and cost per install values,...
7 min read
#Data & Analytics

How to find Hyper-Casual Success with Rapid Testing and Development

Editors note: This blog was written by hyper-casual specialists, JoyPac. JoyPac specializes in publishing hit hyper-casual games across the globe, and today they have agreed to share their insights into testing and developing hyper-casual games.  On Wednesday, May 13th, we’ll be hosting a JoyPac webinar all about making successful hyper-casual games using rapid testing and development. This blog is your preview for the topics we’ll be discussing and some of the advice we’ll be giving. The hyper-casual mobile genre is evolving Hyper-casual mobile games use very simple gameplay and a business model based on in-game advertising. The genre emerged as a sort of backlash or nostalgic revival a couple of years ago. But even though it’s a fairly new genre, it’s already starting to shift. This evolution seems to be branching off into two sub-genres: Ultra-casual games—pushing the simplicity of...
8 min read
#Data & Analytics

Mobile playtime increases by 62%, with IAP up by around 30% in Q1

As millions of people work from home or are on furlough, they’ve needed something to pass the time: streaming TV shows, learning instruments and, of course, playing games. At least, that’s the assumption. We dug into our data to find that playtime has soared and people are spending more, but each genre is affected differently. We’ve analyzed our data in two ways 1. Global network analysis Our first approach was to look at the overall data across our network. Over 75,000 developers use GameAnalytics to analyze how gamers are playing. That’s about 40,000 active mobile games, all in all, including 40 of the top 100 most downloaded games on the app stores. By combining all this data, we can see how more than a third of the world’s mobile players are behaving. Specifically, we analyzed playtime and how much people...
Rovio GameCamp Presentation
10 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Customizing Rewarded Ads using Machine Learning – Lessons from Rovio

A couple of months ago, we had the pleasure of attending Google’s GameCamp, which was filled to the brim with gamedev content delivered from the best and brightest in mobile gaming. While there, Elif Büyükcan, the Business Intelligence Director at Rovio Entertainment, shared with us how they’ve been using rewarded ads in their games. We’re here to report on their story, and what you can learn from them. Elif’s main message was this:  “Getting your monetization model right is incredibly important. It takes a lot of time, thought and testing. You need to be constantly measuring, learning and adapting. This makes machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) your best friends.” And today, we’ll go through everything we learned from their talk (specifically about machine learning), including: The process Rovio use to hone their monetization models, a case study of...
11 min read
#Game Design

5 Things to Consider When Designing Hyper-Casual Games

Editors note: This blog was written by hyper-casual specialists, JoyPac, and is based on their recent webinar: Design Strategies for Hyper-Casual Game Development. JoyPac specializes in publishing hit hyper-casual games across the globe, and today they have agreed to share their top tips and strategies. To develop a successful hyper-casual game at hyper-fast speed, you need to have a clear production process that focuses on game design. A lot of developers jump into creating hyper-casual games without proper planning and without proper testing. This often leaves them with little idea of how much appeal their game will have, and with a lot of hard work going to waste. We (JoyPac) recently hosted a webinar on this exact subject, along with Umami Games and SuperPlus Games. Based on that webinar, we’ve put together five major things to consider before you set...
6 min read
#Game Design

A Beginner’s Dilemma: To Start With Casual Games or Mid-Core Games?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on LevelUp by Joakim Achrén, the Founder and CEO of Elite Game Developers, a Helsinki-based company that helps gaming entrepreneurs in starting their first games company.  One of the earliest and most important decisions founders face when starting a games company is the level of complexity of their first game: should it be casual or mid-core? As an angel investor, every week I get to take a look at pitches from founders and I see them struggling with the same problems over and over again. So, how does one decide where to start and which approach will bring the most successful long-term? Here’s what I’ve learned through my experiences creating a games company and going through countless pitches since. The economics of mobile game ventures After hearing the pitch for a game, I...
6 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates

Introducing Organizations: Empowering New Functionality in 2020

We’ve been a bit quiet these past few months in regards to major product updates, but for good reason. Alongside new features and capabilities coming in 2020, we’re also updating how you’ll manage your accounts in our tool, with our new concept: Organizations. We’re launching the first version of this feature within a few days. Here’s everything you need to know. So, what is an ‘Organization’? In short, an Organization will be the heart of your GameAnalytics account. It will be a central place for managing your company, containing all your games and users (even multiple studios), and will function as a trusted environment for collaboration between your users. How our account management currently works At the moment, our account management is user-focused. This has worked for smaller companies and studios (those who deal with just a handful of users...
11 min read
#Game Mechanics

Nine Tips when adding Social Elements to your Mobile Game

It seems like forever since the lockdown has been put in place. And with so many people stuck indoors missing their friends and families, it appears that they’ve turned to multiplayer games to connect with others. If you follow this blog, then you know that I not only love playing mobile games, but also finding out what makes them brilliant. And considering what’s happening in the world right now, I thought it would be useful for developers to learn a thing or two from a couple of the best multiplayer games out there. Let’s begin. 1. Too Many Cooks Developer: Finifugu & Friends Launch date: April 2nd, 2020 Price: Free, with in-app purchases Available on: iOS & Android I have been following Too Many Cooks for a long time now. I absolutely love this genre, and in my opinion, there...
7 min read
#Game Design

Four Benefits of Hyper-Casual Games for the Gaming Industry

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on LevelUp by Joakim Achrén, the Founder and CEO of Elite Game Developers (a Helsinki-based company that helps gaming entrepreneurs in starting their first games company). You can find the original version of the post here.  No, this is not an article about how the hyper-casual market has peaked. This isn’t an article about how poorly hyper-casual games generate value for advertisers who buy ad inventory. And this isn’t an article about how crowded the market of hyper-casual games already is and how big studios are cloning and fast-following all the successful hyper-casual incarnations. No, this is an article about why hyper-casual has positively impacted the gaming industry and why its approach to development should be emulated by other genres. 1. Fast shipping speeds up the learning curve This past fall, I’ve been...
9 min read
#Strategies

Five Key Lessons from Playing Five Hybrid Mobile Games

Thousands (if not millions) of people have been working from home this month, and in return, gaming has boomed. And with the now announced lockdown in the UK and other countries, we’ll likely see a higher increase in downloads, session length, and session counts. I’ve been working from home for my entire life, and games have been there for me. It seems they’re helping everyone else in the same way now, too. This month, I have specifically taken a look at hybrid games (games that smash together two different genres to make one great game). And if you pay any attention to the mobile gaming industry, then you’ll know that this is a trend that has been getting more traction over the years. So, as usual, I’ve picked out my five favorite games in this genre, and deconstructed them to...