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8 min read
#Data & Analytics

Three ways to reduce the costs of your HTTP(S) API on AWS

Here at GameAnalytics, we receive, store and process game events from 1.2 billion monthly players in nearly 90,000 games. These events all pass through a system we call the data collection API, which forwards the events to other internal systems so that we eventually end up with statistics and graphs on a dashboard, displaying user activity, game revenue, and more. The data collection API is fairly simple in principle: games send events to us as JSON objects through HTTP POST requests, and we send a short response and take the event from there. Clients either use one of our SDKs or invoke our REST API directly. We get approximately five billion requests per day, each typically containing two or three events for a total of a few kilobytes. The response is a simple HTTP 200 “OK” response with a small...
Screen grab of Wanna Survive
8 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Five Exciting Indie Games Released in November

Despite November being a slower month for new releases, I’ve had my hands full with exciting new games to try out! And despite Apple Arcade launching new titles every month, I’ve turned my attention away from the new service, and back to what you indie developers have been publishing. So as always, I’ve cherry-picked five brilliant games I played last month, and shared exactly why these games caught my eye, and what developers, like you, can learn from them. Let’s get started. 1. Figment Developer: Bedtime Digital Games Launch date: November 28th, 2019 Price: First Chapter is free, then it’s $4.99 to unlock the full game. Available on: iOS, Steam, Switch, Playstation The developers at Bedtime Digital Games have created yet another magical title, again looking like something out of a children’s dreams. This action/adventure game follows the story of...
Ivan at Making Hit Idle Games
6 min read
#Data & Analytics

Hyper-Casual vs Idle: The Latest Trends in Mobile Games   

Back in October, we held our second Making Hit Casual Games event, this time focusing on idle games. As usual, we invited the best minds within this particular genre, and was joined by idle experts Homa Games and Kolibri Games. If you would like to see what expert advice they shared, you can find a copy of their decks and recordings here. But for this post, we’ll be digging into our very own session ‘The Latest Trends for Idle Games”, while seeing how idle particularly compares to the hyper-casual genre. Here’s a copy of the recording, if you’d prefer to watch instead. A bit about our data We featured a heck of a lot of insights in this talk, with aggregated data from over 1.2 billion monthly players, across 80K games from Q3 2018 through to Q2 2019. For this...
3 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates

New GameAnalytics User Interface

We’re excited to share a few updates and the latest changes to the GameAnalytics platform. Not only is the brand new version of Remote Configs now available in our tool, but we’ve also released A/B Testing, which you can apply to early access to here. (And for more information on these features, check out our last post here). That being said, this isn’t the biggest update we want to talk about. Alongside creating new features, we’ve also been working on updating the User Interface (UI) for our platform. We haven’t rolled this out for the entire tool, yet, but instead, we’ve applied these new designs to both Remote Configs and A/B Testing to give you a taste of what’s to come. Our new designs will make the tool a heck of a lot easier to navigate, but we appreciate that...
11 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Launching Mobile Games in China (Tips from JoyPac)

China is already the biggest mobile game market in the world. Over the past few years this market has undergone astonishing growth yet, even so, the sheer potential of this market remains untapped by the majority of Western games developers. With this being said, more studios and publishers need to update their strategy to take this market into account and avoid overlooking a potential goldmine. Be aware, however, that publishing in China comes with a range of challenges unique to the market. To make things easier, many developers and publishers opt to work with local partners (like JoyPac), to help overcome certain pitfalls and gain access to this powerful economy effectively. In the past, working with Chinese-based companies has been a bit of a headache. There are many reasons for this, including cultural and language barriers, as well the more...
Chinese-archero
6 min read
#Data & Analytics

Customizing Your Game for the Chinese Audience

Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Arttu Anttonen, Game Analyst. Aside from turning Chinese games inside out, Arttu has a solid understanding of what works and what doesn’t in the mobile game market in the East. Everyone working with mobile games in the West already knows Archero. The successful shoot-em-up style ARPG-esque roguelike-ish action game, where players clear sequences of short levels of enemies with their archer hero while avoiding getting shot themselves. And, since many Western game developers struggle with the age-old dilemma of how to make their game more appealing to the Chinese audience, you could be asking yourself: “What would Chinese Archero look like?” Baozou Daxia has been grossing steadily since launch (source: GameRefinery service). Well, a textbook example of how to do it emerged in early September, although made by a Chinese developer, Dream of...
15 min read
#Data & Analytics

Mobile Gaming Industry Analysis for H1 2019

100k titles. 1.2 billion+ MAU. A whole heck of a lot of data. Let's look at the state of the mobile games industry.
10 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

How to Position Your Game to Influencers (Part Two)

In the first part of our guide, we shared a few key tips game developers can use when reaching out to influencers. So, if you’re working on your pitch, or still figuring out which one is best for you, then we recommend you to head to part 1 before reading this one.  For part two of our series, we’re going to give you the lowdown on how to build a (manageable) timeline for your influencer marketing campaigns, no matter what your company’s size or budget is. And just like any other strategy or timeline, this isn’t a “one size fits all” plan. Rather, you can use this as a simple framework to follow when building your own strategy. This is what we will cover: How to estimate how much time you’ll need Pre-campaign planning Production/creative process If you’re beta-testing Post...
0 min read
#Game Design

Making a Hit Idle Game – Eight Lessons from Kolibri Games

In October, we held our second Making Hit Casual Games event, focusing on idle games (aka ‘clicker’ games). We wanted to know what made Kolibri Games’ Idle Miner Tycoon so successful. So we invited Kolibri’s Director of Business Development, Nate Barker, to tell our audience what lessons they learned from making their debut hit – and how they put them to use in developing their next big game, Idle Factory Tycoon. If you couldn’t be there in person, here’s Nate to fill you in on all the idle games wisdom you missed: So what is an idle game? There are lots of different ways to answer this question. But here’s our answer: An idle game is a spreadsheet with an interface. It’s not a very fun-sounding description, but it’s accurate. The mathematics behind idle games are mostly similar. You start...
7 min read
#Game Design

Bam, Splat, Kapow: How to use Sound Effects to bring your Mobile Game to Life

It goes without saying that to make your mobile game successful you’ve got to have great visuals. They don’t necessarily need to be super sophisticated or complicated – but they’ve got to look good. So once you’ve sorted out your gorgeous gameplay, you might be tempted to sit back and relax. But there’s something else you shouldn’t forget – the sound. We’ve already talked about the importance of getting music right (and how to use it as a core mechanic). So in this post, we turn our attention to sound effects, and how simply adding these can make a real difference to gameplay. Are sound effects really that important? Yes. Sound effects are crucial for adding atmosphere and building emotion. If your player is walking through a scary, damp cave, for example, some dripping water sounds or distant footsteps can...
6 min read
#Game Design

Making Hit Idle Games Event – Homa Games, Kolibri & GameAnalytics

It’s been a couple of months since our first event back in June, but the Arcade R(E)volution is back, and this time we focused on the idle genre. Accompanied by publishing giants, Homa Games, and Idle experts, Kolibri, we presented an evening full of insights, stats, stories, advice, and lessons. All on how to create hit idle games. If you made it that evening, brilliant! Thanks so much for coming. And if you sadly missed it, no worries. We recorded the entire evening, saved the decks, and put together some key takeaways. So you can get the low-down on what’s happening in the idle world, all of which you can find below. But before you dig in, we just wanted to share some information with you about the Arcade R(E)volution, and when you can expect to find the next one…...
22 min read
#Game Deconstructions

What we learned: Idle Miner Tycoon and Idle Factory Tycoon – Kolibri

Having created one of the most popular idle games on the market, Idle Miner Tycoon, Kolibri shared with us their latest game, and how they built on what they learned from their first title to create their next big hit, Idle Factory Tycoon. And if you fancy watching the other talks from our event, you can check them out here: The Latest Trends for Idle Games – GameAnalytics The Story of Idle World – Homa Games Hyper-Casual vs Idle: The Latest Trends in Mobile Games
18 min read
#Game Deconstructions

The Story of Idle World – Homa Games

Idle publishing experts, Homa Games, agreed to shine a light on one of their biggest hit games, Idle World (reaching over 4 million downloads worldwide), as well as what it takes for an Idle game to get published in today’s market. Psst… If you’re craving some more insights about idle games, check out Homa’s latest article: Arcade Idle: 5 Tips for Testing Creatives, their games spotlight on Tiny Cars, as well as their takeaways from their Arcade Idle Game Jam. And if you fancy watching the other talks from our event, you can check them out here: What we learned: Idle Miner Tycoon and Idle Factory Tycoon – Kolibri The Latest Trends for Idle Games – GameAnalytics Hyper-Casual vs Idle: The Latest Trends in Mobile Games