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Softgames
#Case study

How SOFTGAMES uses GameAnalytics to win big with FB messenger games

A new opportunity When they were invited by Facebook to become one of only 15 launch partners on Instant Games, SOFTGAMES immediately understood the massive opportunity. Since then it became the mission of the world’s largest HTML5 games provider to enhance the overall Messenger games experience… and in this pursuit, they’ve now released a string of hit titles, including Cookie Crush, Solitaire Story, and Bubble Shooter HD. One cornerstone of their ongoing success is the focus on high-quality games that they tailor precisely to the features available on certain platforms, such as leaderboards or progress syncing on FB Messenger. For this successful studio, measuring, understanding, and balancing progression flows with a considered focus of these platform-specific features is the key to driving and accelerating growth. They supplement this by listening to their community and quickly actioning the feedback, constantly optimizing...
7 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Claws of Furry – Rezzed 2018 Interview With Terahard

So first, what’s the story behind Claws of Furry? I created Terahard Studios about 5 to 6 years ago, and about a year ago we started making a prototype for a platformer. We were playing around with a few different concepts, but the idea of cats being ninjas stuck straight away and was one of the first concepts we tried and we loved it. We changed the shape of it a few times to make it more interesting – and the version we’ve shown here is the version that stuck with us – and the more we played the game and the more we were making it, while still playing it every day, we tried to make it more extreme. We had a lot of little different fun mechanics added in that almost compliment each other; you can fight quickly,...
7 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Native Ads In Mobile Games – Everything You Need to Know

If you’re a game developer, chances are that you’re running some native ads. Or if not, you’re probably at least thinking about it, because properly done native ads can be incredibly successful and lucrative. However, there are a lot of reasons they are the next big thing in mobile advertising, so let’s dig into how you can best execute native advertising in your game(s). Let’s start by defining what a native ad actually is. Generally, a native ad is considered any type of digital ad that echoes or follows the form and function of the platform on which it appears. And in most cases, the value of a native is the fact that properly deployed, they don’t feel like ads at all. Which is why they can be so successful if they are carefully executed, tracked, and measured – and...
3 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates

The Command Center – Turning Analytics into Action

Editor’s note: If you’re reading this, then we highly recommend that you also check out our latest updates to the tool here. It has tons of information about the new features, as well as the most recent changes to the GameAnalytics platform. New features, you say? Currently we are quite busy with introducing a modern data processing backend, free-to-use for all of you fine GameAnalytics users. Even so, we found the time to add some powerful new toys for you to play with. We are introducing a new features called Command Center. Essentially, it will allow you to control your game from within GameAnalytics. All of this in real-time, without having to update a single line of code on the App stores! How it works + documentation The command center provides a specific way of triggering these changes: Command Center (Configs)....
4 min read
#Data & Analytics

A Behavioural Analysis of Chinese Mobile Gamers

If you’ve read our helpful guide to launching mobile games in China, you’ll know that there are a number of stylistic and cultural differences between the kinds of games that Chinese and Western gamers choose to play. But how about the differences in when and how they play the games themselves? With that in mind, we’ve picked out five insights that we think will help Western game developers better understand and appeal to audiences in the East. 1. Fewer Chinese gamers spend money… Just as in the West, Chinese mobile gamers mostly play titles that are free to download, but which monetize through IAP or advertising. When we compared the proportion of free-to-play gamers that converted to paying players, Chinese players were around 20% less likely to convert than players in the rest of the world. However, the big swings...
10 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Kenshi – Rezzed 2018 Interview

Editor’s note: The yearly Rezzed event run by Eurogamer.net is a great way for indie developers to showcase their games. One title we got to look at was Kenshi, an open-world RPG with a map that reaches over 870km² and a new danger seemingly lurking around every corner. After initally getting absolutely wiped out within minutes of starting, we discovered that this isn’t like most titles around. Kenshi requires strategy, wits, and leadership skills. How did you become a game developer and end up working on Kenshi? I started about ten years ago, self taught, and just decided to start making it from scratch. The first version of the game was made completely single-handedly. It looked a lot rougher due to this – it was a lot smaller and less complete. I got it alpha-funded. So, before Steam Greenlight I started releasing and selling it...
10 min read
#Guides

The Ultimate Guide to Social Sharing for Games with GIFs

Back in 2012 when we released the first Fun Run game, we had little idea that the series would pass 100m downloads over the next few years. We came to realise that it’s possible to reach the masses by word-of-mouth, with players sharing Fun Run with other people they thought would also enjoy it. This led to us founding Megacool, to help other games to grow organically through improved content sharing. From that moment on, we’ve immersed ourselves in the world of GIFs and developed some best practices that we hope will help you make GIFs an essential part of your marketing strategy. Let’s start by taking a quick look at why you should choose GIFs over video or images. GIFs + Games = Greatness First, let’s be clear that a GIF is a great format to show what your...
5 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates

About Druid: Our New Backend Technology

By now, many of you will be aware of the fact that GameAnalytics is about to undergo a major technical overhaul. For the past 18 months, myself and a small team of engineers have been rebuilding (and also migrating), our existing infrastructure to an innovative new solution. That solution is called Druid, and it’s essentially a high performance data store. In this post, my aim is to give more of a technical overview of the new systems and solutions that we’re putting in place. I hope this helps to give all users of our service more context about the change, why it was necessary, and the benefits it will bring. For more information about the upcoming changes, you can check out this Beta announcement post. What is Druid? Druid is an open source data store designed for real-time exploratory analytics...
Fast Lane by Space Ape Games
14 min read
#Ads & Monetization

How Space Ape Games Saw 4x Growth with Smart Monetization

Editor’s note: this post was originally published by Nicolas Boulay on the Space Ape Games Tech blog. Nic has 10 years experience in mobile UA and ad-monetisation. He previously worked at Gameloft and Badoo and joined Space Ape in the early days of 2012.  About Fast Lane Fastlane has reached 16M installs, approaching $30M run rate, and is on an explosive growth trajectory 10 months after launch Fastlane is an evolved arcade shooter game available for free on iOS and Android phones From $5,000/d to $45,000/d from ads in 4 months: what are the lessons learnt from our holistic iterations and partnership with Unity Ads We are setting a new benchmark for ads at $0.13 ad arpdau in the US Our Ad LTV – lifetime value – is now based on true ad performance to gain accuracy We multiplied our User...
8 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Generating Word-Of-Mouth Buzz For Your Game

What do we do when we experience something amazing, profound, funny, emotional or just plain weird? We talk about it. We want to share that experience with our friends, so that they can jump right in and see for themselves. This, of course, is word-of-mouth – and it’s one of the most powerful marketing tools out there. Whether you’re making mobile games or selling underpants, the dream scenario is that whoever engages with your product loves it so much that they have to tell their friends all about it. Think about how often you’ve received a personal recommendation for an app, or a book, or a restaurant – and how often you then actually acted on that recommendation. Contrast that with seeing an advert for that same product, and how likely you’d be to act upon whatever call-to-action the ad...
14 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Disco Elysium – Rezzed 2018 Interview

The yearly Rezzed event run by Eurogamer.net is an absolutely fantastic way for indie developers to display their games and get them noticed. One such title on display this year was Disco Elysium, an amazingly inventive and constantly hilarious open-world RPG where you play as a policeman and seemingly every choice you make can change how the game is played. I spoke to Robert Kurvitz, lead writer and designer of Disco Elysium, about creating a world with so many choices, the consequences of doing so, and the ability to wear cool hats. Disco Elysium is an absolutely incredible game, where did you get the idea from initially? We were at a really dark moment in our lives, there were a lot of people who were, I was personally at a dark moment in my life. So, my executive producer came...
8 min read
#ASO

SEO And ASO Optimization For Game Developers

If anything can be said to be ‘old school’ or ‘traditional’ when it comes to digital, it would be classic search marketing. That’s the case for nearly any product you want people to discover online, whether it’s a t-shirt, a gadget, or a mobile game or app. All of these can be searched for online, and are easier to find when good SEO has been applied. Search marketing is about a lot more than just using the right keywords; you have to understand the philosophy and thought process behind creating your game’s app store listing and website in order to properly optimize it. Here’s how to get started. Search Listings = Pull Versus Push One of the first things you should remember and one of the main arguments for the effectiveness of search engine optimization (or app store search optimization...
25 min read
#Strategies

The Future Of Idle Games – Fluffy Fairy Games Interview

Ahead of the release of Idle Factory Tycoon, I spoke to Nate Barker, Director of Business Development at Fluffy Fairy Games, about the history of the studio, what makes the genre of Idle Games so appealing, and the company’s future aspirations of becoming the Supercell of the genre. Can you tell us about your journey to Fluffy Fairy Games? How did you end up working there? I was at Casual Connect in Berlin in February 2017 working for a live-ops company in the social good space. During a Happy Hour, I happened to sit down with a few folks from Fluffy Fairy Games, not realizing who they were. The next day, I had made the terrible choice of a morning appointment (always a bad decision during a conference), and it happened to be with the same two people who I...