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9 min read
#Ads & Monetization

9 Metrics You Should Prioritise For Maximum Revenue

With any analytics dashboard, you’re going to get a lot of information, possibly more than you know what to do with. While all of it is valuable in its own way, you’re probably not going to be parsing every detail of each metric or stat on a daily basis, so you need to be aware of the stats that you should prioritise in order to maximise your game’s revenue – and maintain your own sanity! There are some metrics that you should know by heart, but for some they could prove to be a bit much to take a deep dive into on a daily basis. So without further adieu, these are the metrics you should prioritise if, like most game developers, you want to boost your game’s earning and revenue potential. 1 – Daily Active Users/DAU For your game...
9 min read
#Ads & Monetization

How Blockchain Could Redefine The Gaming Industry

To say that the gaming industry is large has become an understatement. For some perspective, the forecast for the number of cars sold worldwide in 2017 is 79.6 million, which brings the current estimate for the total number of cars on the road up to around 1.5 billion. Compare that with the current estimate for the total number of people who play video games: 2.2 billion. According to Newzoo’s latest Global Games Market Report, the global games market will have generated $108.9 billion of revenue in 2017. This is a 7.8% increase from the previous year, and is expected to rise to $128.5 billion in 2020. As we move into 2018, gaming is becoming less comparable with that of the film industry, and more with that of professional sports. However, regardless of size, bourgeoning industries come with obstacles, and gaming...
14 min read
#Data & Analytics

How To Build Killer Dashboards In Game Analytics

Think about how many times you visit your analytics dashboard on any given day. Then, think about how many times you send and reference analytics. You’re probably not only spending many hours in your analytics in any given week, but you’re possibly also relying on those dashboards and the reports they generate for key insights into your audience, and potentially even investor or C-Suite buy-in. After all, telling a story with your analytics reports is invaluable! Therefore, the creation and curation of those dashboards is incredibly important. In fact, making the choice about what to feature and highlight on each dashboard should be one of the most well-thought-out decision processes that you can engage in as a game developer. After all, analytics are at the heart of your game’s success itself, so they should be crafted carefully in order to...
18 min read
#Live Ops

Going Multi-National: A Follow-Up Interview with FRVR

Editor’s Note: After our previous interview with FRVR back in 2017, we want to catch back up with founder Chris Benjaminsen to see how the company has grown, what changes have applied to the structure of his company, and what his plans were for FRVR in 2018 and beyond.  So, what have you been up to since we last spoke to you? [Laughs] That’s a big question – quite a lot! The company is very different from where it was last time – my memory is not perfect, and I can’t pinpoint where we were then. However, to give you an update, we are nine people now. The 9th person just joined the company, we do around 2 million DAU daily, and about 30 million monthly, which I think is not too far off from where we were last time....
11 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Part 2: Are Casual Games Maturing? Lessons from Playrix!

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles looking at casual and mid-core games. The first, which looks at Angry Birds 2 and features a Q&A from developers Rovio can be found here.  The first part of this analytical series focused on Rovio Entertainment and how they successfully evolved and matured their multi-million dollar Angry Birds franchise. In the second part of this article series, we put a spotlight on top 10 grossing casual games developer Playrix, who are trying hard to innovate and experiment with casual games, challenging the established norms of this genre, and finding profound success! Playrix is known for a string of successful top 10 grossing hits like Homescapes, Gardenscape and Fishdom in the highly competitive Match 3 genre, which is often dominated by the likes of King, Jam City & Peak Games. Source: Think Gaming (20/01/2018) “But unlike its peers, Playrix is not relying solely on eye candy graphics,...
8 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Microtransactions In Games: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Microtransactions (or MTXs for short) are small purchases players make to unlock further gameplay, gain extra lives, change a character’s appearance, or speed up the gaming process in simulation games like The Tribez. The microtransaction business model has a strong right to exist on mobile; in a world where a Match-3 game costs up to $200,000 to develop and promote, even when they are often distributed for free, game studios are bound to find ways to make money from their hard work somehow. At the moment, over 90% of all mobile games use the freemium model; the apps are free to play (F2P) and incorporate various in-app purchases (IAPs). Although only 1.9% of players actually spend money on in-game content, they bring up to 90% of the total mobile game market revenue, which hit $46.1 billion in 2017. Last year...
1 min read
#Data & Analytics

Mobile Gaming Industry Analysis for 2017

Travel back in time and see what KPIs the top genres were hitting, in this 2017 industry overview.
13 min read
#Data & Analytics

How to Plan and Track Events in Mobile Games

At one stage in your career you’ve begun to care about data. You decide that you want to know what your players are doing, so you start tracking gameplay events. You track everything. With a flurry of code your app is sending tracking events for every card combination, move, spell effect and battle stat! Pat yourself on the back, you have created terabytes of garbage. “Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.” Clifford Stoll, Physicist Data collected without reason is just data. To be able to make informed decisions you need context, and only by understanding your player’s intentions will you start to be informed. There are a lot of similarities between mobile games and therefore there are some very standard metrics you might look at. We’ve created a simple tracking plan that you...
9 min read
#Data & Analytics

The Best Kept Analytics Secrets Of The Most Popular Games: Great Artists Steal

There’s an infamous quote that’s been ascribed to a variety of artists and creative minds over the years, including Pablo Picasso, but Steve Jobs may have been the most famous to use it when, while discussing the Macintosh, he said that “great artists steal”. However, the phrase applies to much more than just the iconic machines; it can also be used when discussing painting, composing, writing, and – naturally – creating amazing games. That’s probably obvious when it comes to the creative side of developing a game, but being able to recognize greatness, and not necessarily stealing – but adapting it for your own purposes – is valuable when it comes to the analytics side. Learning From The Greatest It should hardly be surprising that the best games tend to have great analytics – and smart analytical minds behind them...
18 min read
#Data & Analytics

Are Casual Games Maturing? Lessons from Angry Birds 2

This article was co-Authored with Michael Katkoff and originally published by Om Tandon here. Casual Games Casual games is a relatively new genre that was arguably kicked off by PopCap when Bejeweled launched on browsers in 2001. The true growth of the genre was enabled by Facebook and driven by Zynga’s FarmVille and other Ville-style games. The third and largely ongoing growth started in 2012, when King took its popular Facebook game Candy Crush Saga to mobile. Today, when we talk about casual games, we tend to mean games with relatively simple gameplay, substantial active user base and somewhat limited monetization potential compared to more advanced games. In short, casual games are generally targeted at people who may not traditionally consider themselves as gamers. Casual games like Angry Birds, Candy Crush Saga, and Temple Run are typically distinguished by simple rules, reduced demand...
5 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Top 10 Games to Keep you Merry & Cosy Over the Holiday Season

Christmas trees, decorations, presents, food, holidays, time off, drinks, family, friends. Stop. Start again. The holiday season is at the door and all the magic (and stress) captures everyone for 2 weeks. It’s also a time when you can find an opportunity to do things that you do much less the rest of the year; playing games is one! 2017 has been a great year for GameAnalytics, team growth, product improvements, and many new amazing games that have used our tool and reached some record numbers. The list is pretty long, and it wasn’t an easy choice, but here’s a list of our top 10 favourite games that we’ve enjoyed playing over the past year (and even longer for some!). I hope it helps with the Xmas dinner hangover… 10. Idle Miner Tycoon Developed by Fluffy Fairy Games OK. Christmas...
8 min read
#Data & Analytics

How To Determine Your Game’s Player LTV

It’s pretty easy to figure out how much a given player has spent on your game during the course of a set period of time. However, it’s much more complicated to figure out that player’s actual value to your community (and your bottom line). After all, you had to spend a certain amount to get that player to your game to begin with – marketing and promotions aren’t free! That’s where calculating player lifetime value or LTV comes in. The most basic definition of LTV is that player lifetime value equals the amount of revenue earned from an individual player throughout their lifetime – or the profit they will generate for you from their first moment playing your game until the last. We’ve talked about calculating player lifetime value before, and the standard simple equation holds true – the return...
11 min read
#Game Design

How to Make a Successful Indie Game

The games market is absolutely booming and will top $108 billion this year, growing at a CAGR of 19%. Mobile games remain its most lucrative segment and now account for 42% (or $46.1 billion) of the total revenue generated by app publishers. Want to grab a share of the pie? How to create an indie game: step-by-step guide to success Market research It all starts with an idea – and your idea has to be validated. Here’s what you should do: Study the App Store and Google Play download/top grossing game charts to see what game genres tend to perform better in terms of revenue and user engagement. As of October, 2017, the upper regions of the US top-performing iOS app charts are occupied by popular Match 3 games like Candy Crush, Puzzledom and Homescapes, the omnipresent Minecraft and occasional...