Located within the Copenhagen branch of GameAnalytics is our GameHub, where anyone can come and use the space in order to develop and grow their games. One such group of developers are frecle, who are about to release Youropa, a title ten years in the making. We caught up with them before the launch of the long-coming game… What is Youropa? When Youropa is torn apart by a mysterious force, you must use your unique wall walking ability to navigate a strange fragmented city, restore it to former glory and learn who you really are. Youropa is a gravity defying platform puzzle adventure about breaking rules, being upside down and thinking outside the box. The game comes with a full single player campaign, character, level and map designer. It’s out on Steam in Spring 2018. [bctt tweet=”There’s nothing you can’t...

After 2 years at Shoryuken and attendance at countless fighting game tournaments, I spoke to Fighting Game Community expert Keegan Spindler about the difficulties of adapting the genre to mobile, the fine line microtransactions have to take to make competition viable, and his tips on how being open with the community can help it grow around you.  Can you give us a little background on your role and what it is you do now? I was the Features Editor for Shoryuken. About 12 months ago we looked at our numbers and realised that by staying as a news network, we weren’t keeping up with things like social media. So my job role evolved as we realised the need to create higher quality, bespoke long-form work around fighting games and the community. I’ve stepped down a bit as I’m about to...

In November 2017, EA released Star Wars Battlefront II, developed by DICE studio. The company was met with extreme criticism after it seemed to have not learned from its mistakes with its season pass approach in the first instalment. Famously, EA’s response to that criticism led to the most downvoted comment in Reddit’s history. The reason EA’s response garnered so much negative attention was that it ignored the growing discontent over its use of loot boxes, an increasingly common monetisation strategy in the gaming industry. Though the strategy has been around for over a decade, the success of Blizzard’s Overwatch was a pivotal moment for the loot box model, vastly increasing its visibility and popularity. It has only been in the past few years that the public dialogue has broadened to include parallels to gambling, and whether or not there...

Ric Cowley has been working at SteelMedia for nearly 3 years, and has recently been promoted to the role of Editor at PocketGamer.co.uk. We spoke to him about the biggest trends in mobile games, what he enjoys as a consumer, how to get your games noticed by the press, and the overwhelming prevalence of games like Clash Royale. Ric, tell us, how did you get into mobile games? I initially started out at PocketGamer.co.uk as an intern for three months, then I was hired as a freelancer for PocketGamer.biz, and then when a job came up after 2 months of doing that, I was hired as a full-time staff writer, and then have worked my way up from there to the role of Deputy Editor of PocketGamer.biz. Now I’m the Editor of PocketGamer.co.uk! What would you say is one of...

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...

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...

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...

Retention is the most important metric for a free-to-play mobile game’s long-term business outlook. If you want to understand the link between a player’s lifetime value (how much money they ever spend in the game) and how long they continue to play your game, Emily Greer gave a GDC talk in 2013 absolutely packed with web data. This post will expand on that talk by highlighting some game systems in Kongregate’s mobile publishing portfolio that we’ve seen successfully drive long-term player retention. It will also highlight the core motivations created by each game and discuss how that system ties into that motivation. An excellent resource on the subject is Quantic Foundry’s 2017 GDC talk on the anatomy of player motivations. AdVenture Capitalist offers a simple promise that any fan of idle games can appreciate: click more, get more powerful. Quantic Foundry’s talk highlighted idle...

It’s no secret that creating a stellar game from scratch is no easy feat – it’s comparable to climbing Mt. Everest, in fact. Remember the movie Grandma’s Boy where the main character, Alex, was basically producing his own game with triple-AAA level graphics and gameplay for the Xbox console? And when J.P. was shown a preview of the game, commenting “I like what you did with the bump-mapping”? It doesn’t work that way! Though the movie itself was hilarious, the idea of creating a jaw-dropping 3D game, for a console no less, entirely by yourself in your spare time, is a pipe dream. Sorry for bursting anyone’s bubble, that’s really not my intention – I just want any would-be game developer to fully comprehend the hurdles of game development, especially if you’re going it alone. So for this article, I’ve...

A note from Ryan: If you’re reading this chances are you’re a part of a larger iOS or design community I’ve been quietly learning from for quite some time. I owe you a great deal and I think it’s my turn to start giving back and sharing more. Here is the first of a few drafts I’ve been holding onto far too long. I added sharing mechanics to Blackbox as an afterthought—but I’ve been designing for sharing since day one. To this day, these design decisions and mechanics keep Blackbox growing and reduce the need for marketing. Below is a breakdown of how sharing in Blackbox works from a mechanical level, as well as some of the design considerations I made along the way. Many of these observations may appear to apply only to games, but I firmly believe they hold merit...

Editor’s note: We wanted to give you the heads up that our Ads Dashboard is now live! Make the most of your in-game ads by seeing your data in our new dashboard. Improve your ads performance by answering the big questions. Advertising is part of nearly every mobile experience, and whether or not you personally approve of it, it’s becoming standard for most mobile games. After all, it’s a billion-dollar industry. And if you’re going to do it, you should do it well. Ads should be well-placed, high quality, and in just the right amounts in order to make sure your users and your finances are both pleased. Let’s start by going through some general categories of games along with the types of ads commonly used in mobile games, and then we’ll cover the guidelines or thought process that should...

When you get started with social networks, it’s tough. Nobody follows you. Nobody reads you. Nobody knows you! How do other game developers get those thousands of followers? 2 years ago, no one knew me either. I was terrible at communication, and I didn’t like it. Back then, I had failed a company, largely due to a lack of online presence. And today? Not only do I enjoy the exchanges with the community every day: I learned to communicate the hard way and it paid off. With a niche concept in game design education, I’ve got 30,000 YouTube subscribers, gain around 50 more every day, and companies who come to me with job offers. Thanks to them all, I’m fully independent. When it comes to getting visibility, there’s no short answer. No definitive formula to drive the people’s interest. It’s...