Insights and tips about the games industry

A lot has been going on here at GameAnalytics. We’re working on new features, products, rebranding and more. And now, we’ve made some new feature releases, a couple of which you’ve likely already heard about. But for those of you who haven’t, let’s get you up to speed with the latest changes to our platform and family of SDKs. To fill you in, we’ve listed out what we’ve improved within the GameAnalytics tool – whether big or small. I’ve kept this quite snappy and to the point, so if you have any questions or feel like we’ve missed something, feel free to get in touch. We’ll get back to you right away. So, let’s get to it. Remote Configs You can now apply Remote Configs to specific groups of players. Players can be filtered by three categories: Country, Build and...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

During this year, our tech teams have been working hard on updating our tool to bring some significant improvements to GameAnalytics, such as A/B Testing and Benchmarks+. As our platform increases in popularity and usage (we now have over 70,000 developers using our tool), a key focus of ours continues to be improving the performance for all of our users. To do this, we’ll be making some changes to our data retention policy, querying capabilities, and event ingestion rules (for legacy SDKs), in mid-April 2020. Here’s an overview of what we’re changing and how this affects you. Data retention policy One of the most important changes we’ve made is our data retention policy. As always, you can query Historical Data for the last 13 months across all of our features (except for exporting your data, you can do this for...

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...

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...

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Adam Stevens, Chief Product Officer at Luna Labs. You can read the original version of the second of this two-part series here. TL;DR Over the past two years, hypercasual studios found their way to make playable ads drive significant results. In doing so, they propelled this format to the main stage. However, the methods they found to be successful for this format cannot simply be “replicated” in other game genres — these studios must now find their own paths for success. And as playable ads evolve, studios need to also overcome some additional challenges, for the format to continue its growth and significance in the ecosystem. Creatives didn’t suddenly become important — for many years, the quality of the creatives you produce as well as your ability to analyse results and improve...