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11 min read
#Data & Analytics

Game Analytics From A Game Designer’s Perspective

As game designers, we tend to perceive our activity as a mix of art and science. After all, game design is deeply linked to psychology, as well as design! The design part is pretty straightforward and well-documented. There is plenty of reading on the topic, starting with Jesse Schell’s famous textbook.   It is different with game analytics.   The domain is still young. 10 to 15 years ago, we lacked both the processing power and the connectivity to track player behaviors. But today, it is different! Game analytics offer an exciting array of new possibilities for everyone in game studios! Game analytics can change the face of game development. They are helpful from alpha testing to QA, community management to monetization. Where we had to guess before, we designers can now make decisions based on real data! This is...
Pong
4 min read
#Data & Analytics

Games and Analytics: A look through time

The fear of losing the fun of your game when you start implementing analytics is ever present. But taking a look at the classics from which most developers get their inspiration, will reveal seamless ways of integrating game design and analytics. One of the problems when you start looking at data for your game is that you might get lost in it. Usually, a game developer starts designing a game based on that single spark of inspiration. A radical ambition of creating a fun and memorable experience for players. All too often, the use of analytics and data gets added as an afterthought. A necessary caveat to make informed decisions, not really to make the game better, but to make the game better at putting butter on your bread. To many game creators, therefore, the use of analytics seems alien...
3 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

A new approach to marketing mobile games

Mobile gaming is a fiercely competitive, fast changing field. Developers are under constant pressure to make games better. Meanwhile, advertising costs are climbing, as industry leaders like King Digital (maker of ‘Candy Crush’) buy up much of the available ad inventory via Facebook and Twitter. Start-up ‘Seriously’ is taking a more creative marketing approach. Founded by two executives who previously worked at Rovio (maker of ‘Angry Birds’), the company successfully launched its first game ‘Best Fiends,’ on iOS in October. To get the word out about the game’s latest update on iOS (and its launch on Google Play), Seriously is teaming up with YouTube mega-star, PewDiePie. Here’s our Q&A with Co-Founder/CEO Andrew Stalbow: How would you describe Seriously’s strategy? We’ve seen an enormous audience shift, from traditional media to mobile devices (tablets, phones, etc). We believe the next generation of...
13 min read
#Data & Analytics

Data Visualization in Games

Data visualization augments cognition. Data visualization provides new insights; data visualization teaches the reader. Games, at their core, are all about learning: spatial, temporal, motor, and sometimes even intellectual. You learn how to play within a game’s rule-set, and to improve you learn. Once you completely master a game to the core, it ceases to be fun. Once you stop learning, or if you’re unable to learn, you play games for reasons other than fun. Data visualization provides a way to aide in the learning process; to keep games fun. If the game is no longer fun, data visualization can also be used to provide other motivators to play. Types of Data Visualizations in Games The purpose of data visualizations in games can vary. Some visualizations, like a health bar, exist to show you a character’s status. Others, like a...
6 min read
#Live Ops

Create your Push Notification Strategy

Earlier, I covered why it’s important to send good push notifications to your users and how to do it. Now you know how to craft valuable messages for gamers, it’s time to take a step forward and learn about how important the underlying notification strategy really is. Maybe you’re wondering: Why bother with push notifications? The answer is threefold. Having a push messaging strategy helps: to make the game experience more fun, to add another element to the game analysis, and to help you monetize your game Anyone can implement a winning strategy for push messaging. It just takes knowledge of your business and time to experience. Following, I’ll lead you along a ten step journey that will empower your video game communication strategy. 1- Design for Mobile from the Start Mobile design is a changing environment, constantly adapting new...
6 min read
#Live Ops

Best Practices for Push Notifications in Mobile Games

Editor’s note: this is a guest post from David Xicota, former Co-Founder of Gamedonia, and current Studio Director of GSN Games. You can reach him on Twitter @davidxicota So, What’s the Right Way to Send Push Notifications? Sending messages via push has become a business standard in mobile games. “Hey! Your pets miss you.” To which I reply: “I don’t really care, don’t distract me with this messages again!” *push notifications=switched off* This kind of messaging can be annoying most of the time, but it doesn’t have to be like this. There are proper ways to send the kind of messages players are craving for. Now, do you know how to do it the right way? It’s way easier than you probably think. The techniques I’ll share are based on common sense. Ultimately, what you have to be able to...
34 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

How Kim Kardashian: Hollywood Made the A-List

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the phenomenon that is Glu Mobile’s Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (iOS / Android). Even if you haven’t played the game yourself, you’ve almost certainly entered its orbit. It inspired intellectual criticism that foreshadowed GamerGate! It generated discussion about the value of intellectual property in an industry increasingly sensitive to cost-effective user acquisition! It’s one of the biggest game releases of the year by any measure! It’s a franchise! We’re not here to talk about any of that. We’re here to dissect Kim Kardashian (the game, not the person!) and understand its performance. Given all the hype, you’d be forgiven for assuming the game does something magical to retain and monetize users. In fact, there is a lot of magic here, but it’s not the kind...
7 min read
#Game Design

Quit the Grind: Other Ways to “Level”

In many RPGs you reach a point when battles are neither novel nor challenging, when you’re just going through the motions for gold or experienceーalso known as grinding. It can kill any momentum the game had going, and it turns play into work. The problem is that grinding is hard to avoid in the standard RPG formula where each battle pushes you closer to the big “level up.” You’re inherently rewarded for grinding, and sometimes forced to by sudden jumps in difficulty. Many classic RPGs have explored alternatives here, tooーlet’s see how they handled “leveling up.” LIMITED NUMBER OF ENEMIES This is the most simple solution- you can’t grind if there aren’t any more enemies! This is used by many Strategy RPGs (Fire Emblem, Front Mission, etc.) that they are divided into stages with a set numbers of enemies. This...
19 min read
#Game Deconstructions

If Vainglory Doesn’t Make it, No One Will

In short: Vainglory is without a doubt the best MOBA that has been made for touch screen devices. It’s a giant fish in a very small pond that is the MOBA category on touchscreen devices. If the pond grows into an ocean, it’s only because of this game. Super Evil Megacorp’s (SEM) Vainglory is easily the most hyped mobile game of 2014 – and for a very good reason. Vainglory delivers a true multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) with unseen graphics and a game engine that can run this piece of art at a massive worldwide scale on touchscreens. Vainglory is MOBA on mobile, not MOBA for mobile. It stays true to the genre with a large enough map, multi-dimensional champions, complex item strategies and long game sessions. In fact, the only casual part about this game is that it’s...
clash-of-clans-monetization
7 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Soft Touches on Clash of Clans Monetization

I’ve met a lot of fellow free-to-play-game developers recently and talking about games always eventually turns to monetization. Talking about monetization inevitably turns to the big successes in the market, including Clash of Clans. I love Clash’s monetization design, as it’s very simple to understand from the player’s perspective. It doesn’t enforce payment at any point and it’s extremely clever in some of the subtle details that I think are driving the urge to spend money. Here are a few of the details I can’t remember reading about and which people sometimes don’t think are as obvious as I thought they were: First purchase value proposition Every single player I’ve talked to, purchases an additional builder as the first purchase. Builders are a massively constrained resource in the game and vital for the game pacing once you’ve built the first...
4 min read
#Ads & Monetization

PvP Could Increase Your Game Revenue by 510%

The key to success and drawing revenue for any game is to be fun to play. Shocking huh? I’m sure you had already figured that out on your own. What you might not be entirely aware of is the importance engagement has over game revenue, and a simple way to improve it. A recent study by Kongregate reveals compelling data that shows that having a player vs player mode is a really powerful engagement tactic. Nothing beats human interaction when it comes to keep the players coming back for more. And more gameplay equals more chances of cashing in. Let’s break down the numbers of the study. I think you’ll be blown away! The more the merrier When players like the game and are engaged, they are closer to paying because they find value in doing so. We’re shown that...
1 min read
#Data & Analytics

The science behind mobile game addiction

A great infographic on why players keep coming back for more...
8 min read
#Data & Analytics

Predictive analytics set to become more valuable in light of rising CPIs

Say you produce and market mobile apps for iPhones. You have 1 million active users in the US. Now what are these users economically worth to you? Let’s do a little thought experiment: Say you were to sell them all at market cost-per-install (CPI) to other mobile developers. In January 2012 that would have yielded 1.3 million USD – very roughly speaking and abstracting from transaction cost and economies of scale. The same thought experiment would have generated around 2 million USD in December 2012. And by now, it would generate a staggering 3.4 million USD for you [1]. That’s quite a change, isn’t it? The industry is consolidating. A few main players generate big revenues and spend big on user acquisition. The market is crowded with pretty good apps, marginalizing viral and organic growth. For developers with thin capital...