We’re a little but late with this one (my fault, sorry), but we’ve got some more free __game codes to giveaway this week. You may remember Nick reporting on developer Righteous Hammer and their intent to continue support of Solitairica, a fun card-game with an RPG twist. You can read our review of it here.
We’ve got iOS and Android codes to giveaway for the __game in advance of the new update due in February which introduces a new mini-boss.
This will be a random draw, and to enter you only need to do the following:
Solitairica takes the classic ‘Solitaire’ card game and twists it into something unique. What other classic card games have you seen re-invented into something else and what was unique about it?
Post below in the comments. The answer doesn't have to be a mobile game; it can be from any medium but the core elements of the game being adapted have to be clearly identifiable in the design. If you can’t think of an existing game, feel free to make up something you would find interesting, adding in a quick sentence or two as to how it would work.
The competition will close and the winners will be contacted on Monday 6th February. Make sure you keep an eye on the forums – all winners will be messaged via PM. Any questions, you know where we are!
Welcome this week's edition of News by Numbers, where we highlight some of the can't-miss mobile gaming news each and every week.
Rome Total War: version 1.5.2
Feral has made some nice quality-of-life updates to Rome: Total War on the iPad. In campaign mode if you tap and hold the map icon you'll be greeted with a bunch of extra detail on units, ships, and settlements. When you get into battle, you can zoom out even further to better check on all of your units. Also, purple markers will now glow at your fingertips to confirm you are in the unit rotation and positioning mode, helpful to avoid any accidental orders.
Core: 3rd party app discovery
Game discovery is not exactly easy on either the App Store or Google Play Store. Both companies highlight specific games and have lists of top sellers, but beyond that you're largely on your own. A new app called Core intends to make it easier for gamers to discover apps they want and developers to showcase their work. Now, I have no idea whether Core will be any good, a lot depends on the degree to which a user can customize what kind of games they want to see. The app is in its infancy, but if it eventually lets me filter and sort premium games in certain genres it could be great. If it just shows me different freemium garbage than the official stores…I'll pass.
realMyst and Riven: $6.99
realMyst, a 3D recreation of the classic Mac puzzle game, was originally released in 2000 and made it to Steam and iOS in 2012. Now, finally, it is out on Android as well. The realMyst sequel Riven, will also be coming soon. Both games are $6.99.
iOS: version 10.3 review and rating changes
Apple's upcoming iOS 10.3 update will make a couple changes to how App Store reviews work. First, developers will be able to ask players to rate and review their games without directing them to the App Store thanks to a new API that will permit the rating screen to be shown within the app itself. The best part of this is that there will be a hard limit to how often a developer can ask for a review/rating from a player. If the player refuses to do so three times they cannot be asked again for a full year, while those who do review the app can never be asked again. Users will also be able to turn off all rate/review notifications within iOS. That last is my very favorite part.
A second change in 10.3 will allow developers to respond directly to reviews on their app store page in a public reply, similar to what Android devs can do today. This provides an opportunity to address critical issues being called out in top comments.
1775 Rebellion: 1781
More HexWar news this week…1775: Rebellion is to get a new "Southern Theatre" scenario. It plays out in 1781 where…
"The British have taken control of Savannah and Charles Town, scattering the American Continental in the area army. The rest of the American forces chase the native americans out of the Tennessee area (western NC). A large force of British regulars and Hessian units, commanded by Cornwallis sweep through Virginia waiting on commands to take York (Yorktown). Marquis de Lafayette and his French soldiers are aiding the Americans gather force in Virginia to try to pin down the British and wait for the French fleets to arrive to contest the seas."
The map will focus in on the colonies south of New York: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. There's currently no ETA but we'll keep you posted.
Command and Colors: 12 person studio
GMT Games announced that a couple of their Commands and Colors board games would be coming to PC, Mac, and iPad in 2017. Both Ancients and Napoleonics are in development through HexWar—who recently brought 1775 Rebellion to mobile. HexWar is a 12-person studio and these are big projects so they have partnered with Lordz Games Studio on the games' interface and graphics. The PC/Mac launch for Commands & Colors: Ancients is lined up for the summer and the base __game for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics for the end of 2017 with an iPad release following a couple months later. Their intent is to eventually get to Android and iPhone. Here's hoping they take the time to get online multiplayer right!
Magic Duels: 126 new cards
The Aether Revolt expansion set recently made its way to Magic Duels adding 126 new cards and bringing the total number of earnable cards to over a thousand. There's also a new campaign following the Aether revolt that features that goody-two-shoes Gatewatch gang, six new card sleeves, and ten new personas to play as, including certain Planeswalkers. Can I play as Fblthp yet?
Epic Card Game: $50,000 goal
White Wizard Games, the makers of Star Realms, has launched a Kickstarter for Epic Card Game. Epic is a fantasy-themed strategy card __game and is—once funded—making its way from the tabletop to digital. Like Magic: The Gathering, Epic has a bunch of formats including sealed deck, Dark Draft, preconstructed, and full constructed. Unlike Magic you'll be able to own every card for one low price. The app will also feature single-player campaign missions. If you're interested, and I'm sure many of you are, you can find out more and back Epic here. All backers will get Alpha access starting next month, so if you're excited to get into the app and playing, that's the way to go.
Banner Saga 3: $200,000 Kickstarter goal
The Banner Saga games are top-of-the-line RPGs with story-driven campaigns where the choices you make matter, and haunt you. The turn-based combat is also top notch and fits well into the storyline. Also: Vikings are cool. Banner Saga 2 earned four stars from Tof and was our runner up for RPG game-of-the-year. A Kickstarter to fund Banner Saga 3, the final installment in the series, has kicked off and Stoic Studio is looking for $200K to get it done through their Kickstarter campaign. Get in there if you want some more Banner Saga.
Digital CCGs: $1.2B in 2017
Digital CCGs are predicted to rake in $1.4B worldwide in 2017 according to gaming metrics firm SuperData Research (and via this article at Pocket Gamer Biz). They also estimate that 7.6% of US players buy IAPs for these games. Hearthstone should earn the most this year—not a bold prediction—after generating an estimated $395M in 2016. More surprising, to me anyway, is that Shadowverse made $100M despite a launch midway through the year. I'll be curious to see how Duelyst, Faeria, and Elder Scrolls: Legends fair in the market when they hit mobile.
The App Store: 500,000 developers
In a recent talk Anders Lykke, Head of Sales & Developer Relations at Priori Data, discussed current mobile-game market trends and what they mean for independent developers. The industry is huge and growing, which is clear from all the trend data over the last several years. The problem is that of the half-million companies on the App Store the top 100 earn 60% of the overall revenue. Mr. Lykke suggests that the problem for indies isn't necessarily getting high store rankings—though that seems to remain a problem from where I sit—but that they don't stay in those high ranks for long. Most new games (90%) drop out of the top-200 grossing chart after their first week.
That's it for this edition of News by Numbers. If you've got a news item worth sharing send it my way on Twitter @MrVigabool and it may show up in a future edition.
Crowdfunding platform Fig has raised a series A funding round of $7.84 million to help it grow and accommodate more campaigns.
Funding was led by Spark Capital and Greycroft, as well as other investors including Resolute Ventures, NextView Ventures and Draft Ventures.
Fig's platform was founded in 2015. It allows developers to crowdfund their games with either rewards-based campaigns or by selling shares in their __game and paying funders back when their __game begins to generate revenue.
Big funders
"Fans on our platform have already demonstrated that they're willing to invest over 20 times more money per person for equity over rewards," said Fig CEO Justin Bailey.
"Looking forward, we're exploring the possibility of amplifying the impact of fans even further by inviting institutional investors who have already expressed interest in our unique model to provide matching funds across our platform."
Welcome to PocketGamer.biz's Top 50 developer list for 2016.
Now in its seventh year, it continues to demonstrate just how global and dynamic the mobile __game industry is.
Of course, just like app store top grossing charts, at the top there's less movement.
It's become increasingly clear that in the west, the developers who - through a combination of luck and expertise - released a successful F2P __game in 2012 and 2013 have been the biggest winners of the western mobile games explosion.
It's now much harder to repeat that level of success with new games, although that's exactly what the best companies have done and will continue to do.
Global vision
Elsewhere in the world, the situation is different.
Funded by local success, the most profitable Japanese, Korean and Chinese developers are spending big - both in terms of localising their content and investing in western companies - to take their success global.
And, more generally, the 2016 list shows how quickly the situation can change for any mobile games company with less than $1 billion in sales.
A single hit game can spark, delivering $100 million of revenue in a year.
A single hit game can spark, delivering $100 million of revenue in a year, while failures are more expensive and less easy to predict than ever before.
Reducing risk, not upside
That's why many developers are doubling down on a single specialism.
For example, this year's list includes companies betting everything on wearables or mobile eSports, while many others are harnessing their operational expertise to external IP to breakthrough the marketing stalemale.
Yet even in such an environment, there are shining examples of teams - both experienced and not - who are only laser focused on their games, and getting their reward from a global audience of billions of players who are always on the look out for something new.
Behind the numbers
In terms of the methodology behind our list, many factors combine.
Certainly one of them is financial success. Players spending money is a good indication of a quality experience, and this - both headline turnover and profitability (of course, not always publicly available information) - is something that drives position rank, particularly at the top end of our list.
(But, please note, this is not a list of the top grossing mobile game companies. If you want an estimate of that, refer to App Annie's annual list.)
Instead, we are also interested in wider issues: is a company successfully operating in different global regions (or just one); across many - and/or different - platforms; running a single big title or experimenting with different genres and themes; and looking to expand?
We particularly love to reward ambitious startups who are attempting to innovate and shake up the entire market.
Soft power
We also take into account a company's soft power: how does it present itself to players and the industry at large?
And we love to reward ambitious startups who are attempting to innovate and shake up the entire market.
But, let's be clear. The lodestone running throughout our entire process is the quality of each developer's game(s).
For, not only is this list an attempt to gauge the top developers over the past 12 months, it's also the attempt to highlight those who will be making the headlines over the year.
And the quality of a company's mobile games is - in my opinion - the best (if not the only) measure of this.
Note: Our list was compiled during February 2016, with additional information added during March 2016
Four years ago, we launched our first annual rundown of the best mobile __game developers in the world, and this year's selection is more vibrant, exciting and global than ever.
But, of course, that's only to be expected given the industry itself is more vibrant, exciting and global that ever before.
As for the unveiling, we'll be kicking off the countdown tomorrow with numbers 50 to 41: presented thanks to our sponsors 'Math Behind the App Stores' data experts App Annie, and the largest Chinese mobile __game developer platform CocoaChina.
The countdown will continue daily, and include our special 10 To Watch list of the upcoming studios we think could be challenging for 2014's list.
The top 10 will be revealed at an exclusive event in San Francisco next Sunday evening prior to the start of GDC.
A who's who?
Of course, we're not going to reveal any of the winners yet, but we can divulge some information.
There are 19 new entries in the 2013 list, compared to 23 new entries in 2012, with four new entries appearing in the top 10.
And looking at geographical breakdown, the US is best represented with 17 entries, followed by Europe at 15 and Japan with seven.
Four are UK developers (the best represented European country), four from Korea, and three each from Russia and China.
This article was originally published on August 29th 2016. In light of the news that DeNA has closed its US subsidiary DeNA Global and ngmoco LLC, we have republished this article to provide an in-depth insight into the problems faced by companies like DeNA.
Five years ago, I was walking over the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne on my way to Gamescom when I received a phone call.
It was someone from Japanese mobile games platform GREE.
They were complaining about a story I had written about the company's recent quarterly financials.
Apparently, I had used an incorrect currency conversion between yen and dollars.
GREE announces its numbers in yen and I'd converted to dollars at the rate of the announcement day, not the rate at the end of the quarter.
My dollar revenue figure was, thus, too large.
'If you don't correct it, the percentage increase in sales you write next quarter won't be correct. It won't be big enough," I was told.
True story.
But that was then
The reason I recall this incident so strongly is nothing better demonstrates the crazy growth of the early 2010s.
The whole mobile games industry was growing double or triple digits, and with +30% margins Japanese platforms such as GREE and arch-rival DeNA (pronounced D-N-A) were some of the most profitable games companies in the world.
Apparently, they didn't care whether you got their revenue numbers correct, or not.
GREE and DeNA were prepared to spend big to get more growth.
But they certainly cared you got their growth numbers right.
And they were prepared to spend big to get more growth.
Between 2010 and 2012, DeNA announced a $400 million deal for US startup Ngmoco, GREE followed up with $100 million, $200 million and $170 million deals for OpenFeint (US), Funzio (US) and Pokelabo (Japan), respectively.
(In keeping with the times, Nexon bought Japanese mobile __game developer Gloops for $490 million in cash, but that's another cautionary tale.)
Fast forward half a decade and the mobile games industry has matured to single digit growth, and GREE and DeNA have long retreated from their plans of global domination.
Recent history is a downward spiral
The only numbers they care about are profits.
The quarter-on-quarter revenue percentages are all negative.
Licking their wounds in Tokyo, they are looking outside of games but within Japan for future growth.
DeNA now breaks down its financials into 'Sports' and 'Excluding Sports' categories.
Both have plans in healthcare and general online commerce, while DeNA is also doubling down on its baseball franchise, the perennially sixth-placed Yokohama DeNA BayStars.
Indeed, despite games being 68% of total revenues, it now breaks down its financials into Sports and Excluding Sports categories.
Heart of the matter
So what's this cautionary tale really about?
Fast-growing companies over-expanding, spending their cashflow imprudently, hiring badly and losing focus?
Yes, but the cautionary tale of GREE and DeNA is more.
It's about what happens when companies believe they are special; that they have cracked the market, when in actuality, they are riding the wave, not understanding how little they understand, and how quickly the market is changing.
At its heart, then, this is a cautionary tale about not understanding the fundamentals: about not understanding mobile games.
In the west, the fast-growing Chinese mobile games market is typically highlighted as the sector's biggest opportunity. Chinese developers and publishers know the hard reality of that situation, however.
Sure, there are hundreds of millions of potential mobile gamers, but there's also massive fragmentation across the ecosystem, ranging from handsets and app distribution, to promotion, billing, social networks, and even connectivity.
Another challenge arises from the legacy of China's online games sector. Financially, it's still the biggest part of the industry, with large publicly-owned publishers. Yet despite their size, many are struggling to make the transition to mobile games.
The result is smaller pure-play mobile __game developers are now highly valuable; something that's been reflected in some eye-watering prices during 12 months of overheated mergers and acquisition activity.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Chinese developers, however, is quality of their content. Because of its legacy, the market remains dominated by poor mobile versions of existing browser MMOGs. Yet the most innovative companies are looking to combine the best aspects of the past with more enjoyable – and more mobile-centric – gameplay mechanics, as well as better graphics and streamlined user experience.
And it's such developers who are highlighted in our second listing of the best Chinese mobile developers. Only 17 companies from last year's list survive; demonstrating how quickly the market is developing. We expect 2014 to be nothing if not more extreme.
German developer Goodgame Studios is set to lay off around 200 staff in its latest round of redundancies.
The struggling Hamburg outfit already let go of some 400 employees last year but now plans to continue cutting staff.
Tough times
An anonymous source speaking to Gamasutra revealed the latest round of cuts, which were announced by Goodgame MD Kai Wawrzinek in a studio-wide email.
Wawrzinek blamed the highly competitive nature of the free-to-play space, increasing marketing budgets and uncertainty of new successes as a key part of the decision.
“The market for free-to-play games is highly competitive and proves more and more challenging for all market players across the industry in Germany,” the e-mail states.
“The industry is fighting for market shares with rapidly increasing marketing budgets, the success of new games is increasingly difficult to predict. We are also affected by these developments. At the same time, our new developments have not yielded the desired success, yet.”
Founders Kai and Christian Wawrzinek will return to the positions of CEO and CSO moving forward. Current CEO Maximilian Schneider is expected to leave the company by the end of February.
According to Venturebeat, the company plans to invest millions in its HTML5 strategy, as well as refocus on its core brands such as Goodgame Empire, Empire: Four Kingdoms and Big Farm.
Update: Numerous reports in Germany claim that Goodgame aims to reduce the studio's headcount to around 350 staff. In 2016 the company employed as many as 1,200 people, meaning the string of layoffs could end with as many as 850 jobs lost once restructuring finishes.
Author Pepe Agell is the VP of business at Chartboost.
He leads business development, developer relations and support teams globally at Chartboost.
Additionally, Pepe translates feedback and interaction with the company's worldwide publishers to inform the technology development of the company's products - Cross-Promotion, Direct Deal Marketplace, __game Ad Network.
He holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the UPC Barcelona and the ETH Zurich.
Prior to Chartboost, he led product management and operations teams in both multinational (Hilti AG) and startups (3scale and Innovalley).
Pepe Agell is the VP of business at Chartboost.
This article is part of an ongoing partnership with Chartboost. You can read more of its advice in terms finding new players and monetising audience via its Playbook blog.
Based on popular vending machines in Japan called gashapon, which give out random prizes when you insert cash, virtual gacha is the top monetisation mechanic in Japanese mobile games today.
While the method has sparked controversy in Japan, implementing gacha effectively can help devs turn a profit.
According to Neil Young of N3twork, a gacha has the potential to drive individual mobile games to $10 billion in revenue.
Many popular mobile games in the US, including Angry Birds 2, Marvel: Contest of Champions and Clash Royale incorporate a gacha in the game.
But what is the key to running a successful gacha monetisation mechanic? Devs should focus on lottery value and player engagement.
Make a gacha work for all your players
In mobile games, a gacha typically takes the form of a machine, roulette wheel or other randomisation engine that allows players to spin and roll to win prizes after spending money. Players put currency into the gacha and, voila, something pops out in return.
A gacha should offer value to everyone - whether they've just downloaded or have been playing for months.
To make a gacha work effectively in a mobile game, devs need to create an in-game economy where the value of the items within the gacha make using it worthwhile, no matter what the user wins in the lottery.
"The tricky part for lotteries, or rather the economy they fuel, is making sure all reward types are attractive throughout the user journey," says Arto Huhta, monetisation expert at Flaregames.
“A strong gacha setup has lucky rolls that don't break the early game, and common rolls that never become obsolete. If your gacha peaks in perceived value after 10 rolls, you have a problem.”
A gacha should offer value to everyone who takes part - irrespective of whether they've just downloaded or have been playing constantly for months.
Generating value through rarity
But how can a gacha generate value throughout the user lifecycle? There are two ways to do so. The first is to offer rare prizes for anyone who plays the in-game lottery.
In a blog post, Adam Telfer (product lead at mobile __game company, Wooga) assessed the gacha in Kabam's fighting game Marvel: Contest of Champions.
Kabam's Marvel: Contest of Champions successfully used gacha mechanics to encourage increased player spending.
He explained why showing a player a rare prize that they can only win through a lottery is an excellent way to encourage spending.
"A player wanting a four star rare Cyclops [in Contest of Champions] is going to have to purchase many, many gacha packs [Contest of Champions' equivalent of buying a spin or a roll] before they get exactly what they want," wrote Telfer.
It might take time to win. Once a player has a rare prize, however, being able to use it or show it off to other players gives them serious bragging rights - making money feel well spent.
The value of fusion
But what happens if a player doesn't win something rare in the gacha? Devs can still generate value.
Putting special prizes aside during the holidays encourage players to come back to the game.
"Allowing players to fuse unwanted items with other in-game items helps reduce player frustration," says Harry Holmwood, co-founder of mobile game studio The Secret Police.
“Most Japanese games use gacha in combination with fusion, allowing you to make use of gacha items you don't necessarily want or need.”
For example, although Pokemon GO doesn't have an explicit in-game gacha, its egg-hatching mechanic is a form of lottery.
Players can purchase incubators to hatch eggs and receive a random Pokemon. If they don't hatch a rare Pokemon they want, however, the game still provides value through the gacha.
With common Pokemon like a Pidgey, players still receive a bundle of rare candies to help evolve it.
A good gacha will keep players coming back because, as Holmwood puts it, "[everything] they get from it is useful somehow, even if only to boost something else they already own".
Take advantage of in-game events
Devs can also drive interest in a gacha by offering special, one-off lotteries to coincide with in-game events, Holmwood says.
"Offering customers an increased chance of receiving a super rare item on a given day can really drive retention since players don't want to miss the chance [to win]."
Eggs in Pokemon GO act as a form of lottery, hatching into a random Pokemon.
One way to do this is to offer a rare gacha around particular in-game events.
For example, raid gacha in RPGs or MMOs offer the chance to win juicy prizes after players fight their way to the end of a long and difficult-to-conquer dungeon.
This gacha also encourages players to engage with the game's top content, giving the players great prizes while reminding them why they loved the game in the first place.
Seasonal gachas are also an option. Putting special prizes aside at Christmas, Thanksgiving or other holidays will certainly encourage players to come back to the game.
And if they unlock one-off content, such as exclusive Halloween-themed buildings in The Simpsons! Tapped Out, it makes them more likely to continue playing and spending within a game.
Author Pepe Agell is the VP of business at Chartboost.
He leads business development, developer relations and support teams globally at Chartboost.
Following three successful years of PocketGamer.biz's western-focused developer round up, we've turned our attention east.
So in association with Umeng and CocoaChina, welcome to the inaugural listing of the top Chinese mobile __game developers.
Given the incredible vibrancy of this industry, both in terms of the Chinese market and its impact internationally, it was a difficult task, but one we - and our trusted contacts and advisors - approached with enthusiasm.
After all, given its size and the rate of smartphone adoption, China is quickly becoming one of the key mobile gaming markets.
Of course, it's one that embraces western brands such as Rovio's Angry Birds and Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja, but local developers are also finding their own rhythm and success as they innovate away from well-worn concepts such as games set in the Three Kingdoms period, and the country's strong tradition in PC MMORPGs.
It's a vibrancy that's well reflected in our top 30 breakdown, which includes some globally-known corporations who are aggressively approaching the international mobile gaming market, down to small start ups, who are looking to push the conventions of gameplay mechanics.
In that respect, then, the Chinese mobile games market is much the same as the industry in many other countries; it's full of opportunity and changing all the time.
And these are the developers who are in the vanguard of that success.
Mobile games don’t simply have to use in-app purchases or a payment up-front price point, there are a multitude of ways to make money from your title.
There are ads, which vary in type from simple banners to videos and rewarded ads, and then there’s pay monthly subscriptions, which Apple and Google have both opened up to the __game space.
And then of course, there are the different design techniques that can be used to make these monetisation options more successful.
Below you’ll find articles to help you get to grips with the different types of monetisation available to you and the benefits of using them.
Let’s go whaling: A guide to monetisation through in-app purchases
Tribeflame CEO Torulf Jernström discusses the tricks of monetisation in free-to-play, taking a look at the various mechanics available to developers and the psychology behind their effectiveness.
You can also watch a video version of this article:
In-App Purchase Tutorial: Getting Started
Independent iOS developer Ed Sasena breaks down exactly what in-app purchases are, and how to to implement them into your app or game.
40 Secrets to Making Money with In-App Purchases
Riccardo D'Antoni analyses how to effectively implement in-app purchases that people will want to pay money for.
Serkan Toto: Primer for gacha overview
One very popular method of monetising is through gacha mechanics, a technique that is detailed here by Japan games industry expert and consultant Serkan Toto.
Tamalaki Owner Martine Spaans speaking at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2016 on the lessons learned from publishing games on mobile and how to best use ads in your game.
A game developer’s guide to mobile video ads
Chirag Leuva breaks down the different types of video ads, how marketers can use them effectively, and how developers can integrate them into their games.
Interstitial ads a major factor in digital advertising
DMACC Marketing & Management provide an introduction to the basics of interstitial ads and their impact on mobile apps.
Game developers: Best practices for banner ads
This documentation on Firebase discusses the best practices for integrating banner and interstitial ads into games using the Google Ads SDK.
The power of rewarded ads within your monetisation mix
Adam Salamon, Co-Founder and COO at Perk.com and Appsaholic, explains rewarded ads and how they could help you meet your monetisation goals while preserving, or even enhancing, your user experience.
Maximising ad revenue through the next generation of mobile advertising
At Pocket Gamer Connects Vancouver 2016, Magmic's Mohammad Agha discusses how advertisers are looking for innovative ways to engage mobile game players beyond watching an interstitial ad or video ad.
Why you should consider Rewarded Surveys for your game monetisation strategy
TapResearch's Michael Sprague on why rewarded surveys as a form of monetisation in mobile games is becoming more popular.
Billing better games: What App Store subscriptions mean for devs
SuperData offers an introduction to the subscription options open to developers and why this business model could work in games.
Making your mobile game a success part two: The premium option
Unity speaks to developers from behind games like Threes and Monument Valley to discuss how you can success with premium games.
Help us improve this course with new links or suggest a new course you'd like to see to mgu@pocketgamer.biz.
Image credit: Tap Tycoon
This was part of the MGU course Mobile Games University: Monetisation Design. For more articles in this course click here.
It's all well and good anticipating games at the start of a year, but in the fast-moving world of mobile games, new titles are announced weekly.
So, we've decided to start a rolling list of our most anticipated games, which we'll update as games are released and new titles pop up that catch our interest.
Looking forward
Note - some of these games will overlap with our Soft Launch list, which is good news, because it means we can get our hands on them sooner rather than later.
But instead of tracking their development, this list is more to keep you informed about the most interesting upcoming games that we feel deserve your attention.
NB: We're listing the games in alphabetic order, not order of anticipation.
Jon Hare is one of Europe's best known creative directors and __game designers with over 10 international number one games to his name and nearly 30 years of experience in the games industry.
Jon co-founded and managed the legendary 1980/90s development company Sensible Software, creating games such as Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder and Wizball to great critical acclaim and commercial success and has also worked in senior posts in two of the UK's biggest games developer/publishers Codemasters and Jagex.
Since 1999 Jon has been one of the top __game design and business development consultants in Europe working for many different publishing and development clients.
His own new company Tower Studios specializes in developing, publishing and licensing games on mobile and digital formats enjoying recent international success with the release of Speedball 2 Evolution and Word Explorer across numerous mobile and digital platforms.
Jon has also been a full BAFTA member for over 10 years, serving on the BAFTA Games Committee and is a regular Chairman of juries for BAFTA Games awards, as well as acting in a mentor capacity for both BAFTA and NESTA.
Great games aren't created in a vacuum.
Being successful in the games industry requires a strong understanding of the medium and the market, and playing lots of games is inevitably a part of this.
Given how crucial this can be for insight and inspiration, and just how passionate this industry is, it's about time more people started openly talking about the games they play.
So PocketGamer.biz will be regularly reaching out to key figures in the mobile games industry to ask them what game (other than their own) is currently keeping them busy after hours. You can view all entries here.
This time, it's industry stalwart, Sensible World of Soccer designer and Tower Studios CEO Jon Hare with his playing habits in the spotlight.
PocketGamer.biz: What mobile game (other than your own) are you currently playing the most?
Jon Hare: Currently, I am playing a game called Word Chums (by PeopleFun) the most.
It is a very mobile-friendly version of Scrabble that I find more playable than the current version of Scrabble on mobile or Words with Friends.
How long have you been playing it and do you see yourself continuing?
I have been playing it for about two months now and I see myself continuing for a while - I notice some of the top players I am playing against have notched up a ridiculous number of games already.
I have been playing Scrabble in various forms for the last 45 years or so and I don’t see myself getting tired of this one quickly.
What do you enjoy most about it?
I can play as many concurrent games as I want and providing I have a Wi-Fi signal I can play, otherwise I can play the AI bots - hard level, of course.
I am a pretty good Scrabble player - it is the game I hate losing at the most - so I try to maintain an 80% win rate minimum.
It also has a rating for the average number of points scored per word. So far I have played just over 1,000 words at an average of around 44 points per word, and as a competitive maniac I enjoy this kind of challenge to myself.
I also enjoy the rivalries you build up with fellow players over a series of games and the controls are very clear to understand, smooth and fast.
What does this game do that makes it especially unique and innovative?
As a game designer, it is teaching me how you can improve classic games for the mobile format.
As a game designer, it is teaching me how you can improve classic games for mobile.
Jon Hare
It has good social features, silly costumes to buy with coins and great game additions to the original Scrabble.
Firstly, any word you try out automatically lights up if it is legal. Secondly, it rates the word out of three stars before you play it, which helps you decide whether you should continue to hunt for better words.
Thirdly, it has added letter bombs that you can buy with your coins that get rid of bad letter racks such as EIEIOUU.
You need to use these very sparingly, on average one time every other game, in order not to run out before you can afford a refill.
I also like the way it tracks your individual match records against every player encouraging personal, friendly rivalries.
If you could change one thing about the game, what would it be?
I would allow the ability per game to key up the next word you intend to play when you are back online and to retain it so it can be played the moment you have signal.
Have you learned anything from this game that could impact your own work?
Yes, for sure - we are currently constructing the free-to-play loop for mobile versions of Sociable Soccer.
This game handles full-screen ads pretty well in a rewarding and unobtrusive way.
The in-game chat system during games, the personal rivalries, the money-per-move system, the matchmaking, the customisation of characters, the weekly rating versus your friends for words and games and the messaging to say it is your turn are all good.
On the other hand, the way it handles deals taking you out of the app entirely is not good and to be avoided.
But most of all, the lack of fear in modifying a classic game for the better by using the best of what the mobile phone has to offer is great.
More generally, how important is it for those in the industry to actively and regularly play other people's games?
Well, it is a double-edged sword. Currently I play Football Chairman as my offline game, Word Chums as my online game and Candy Crush as my de-stresser.
We have been able to analyse the good and bad bits of FIFA Mobile.
Jon Hare
Seeing as my phone is in my pocket most of the time, these can be very distracting during work hours. However, it helps me keep in touch with what else is going on.
For example, this week our whole team played FIFA Mobile.
We have been able to analyse the good bits and the bad bits of this game, the market leader in the football action sector on mobile - which is currently relatively uncompetitive and worth $320million a year to EA alone.
We would be happy with even a thin slice of this, and to access this part of our research must be in knowing our enemy... no offence to any friends currently working at EA!
Philip Hickey is a former professional basketball player turned award-winning marketeer. Currently, he is responsible for marketing and communications at Seriously.
From working with PewDiePie to partnering with a football club, Finnish studio Seriously has become known for its creative marketing efforts.
It's a strategy that has worked well too, paying dividends in terms of both downloads and revenues for its titles Best Fiends and Best Fiends Forever.
In 2016, Seriously ran a campaign called 'Don't Download Best Fiends', led by a video advertisement starring acress Kate Walsh.
It was later named a winner at the YouTube Ads of the Year.
As such, to discuss the making of the advert and Seriously's UA strategy more generally, PocketGamer.biz reached out to the firm's SVP Brand & Marketing Philip Hickey.
PocketGamer.biz: Tell us about the origins of the 'Don't Download Best Fiends' advert. When and how did the idea arise?
Philip Hickey: We created the 'Don’t Download Best Fiends' video as a love letter to our fans.
We receive countless letters, messages and posts from our fans about how much they are obsessed with playing the Best Fiends mobile game.
A lot of fans were posting in the Best Fiends community warning others to not download the __game because it’s fun and quite addictive.
'Don’t Download Best Fiends' combines the best of Hollywood talent, Kate Walsh from Grey’s Anatomy, with the best of YouTube talent, Rosanna Pansino and Joey Graceffa, to create a hilarious campaign poking fun at our fans’ obsession with playing Best Fiends.
When did production begin and how long was the process?
Production took a year. It started with finding the right writing partners (Jay Berry and Marc d’Avignon) and crafting a script we loved.
Once we had a script in hand, the next step was finding a production company to partner with (Radical Media) and a company that could edit and finish (PS260).
Next, it was finding a cast and negotiating with the stars of the video. All in all, it was a long and important process that a small company like us needed to get right every step of the way.
When it comes to casting famous faces, how important is it to strike the right balance? Did you always have Kate Walsh, Rosanna Pansino and Joey Graceffa in mind for the lead roles?
We wanted to reach different demographics as Best Fiends is for all ages - so we combined a traditional celebrity with leading YouTube talent.
We wanted to reach different demographics so we combined traditional celebrity with YouTube talent.
Philip Hickey
Rosanna Pansino and Joey Graceffa were already fans of Best Fiends so it was a natural fit.
Kate Walsh resonates well with our audience and is well known for her role on Grey’s Anatomy where she played a doctor, so she was a great fit for the role in 'Don’t Download Best Fiends'.
Any advice for other games companies looking to work with celebrity actors/personalities?
When working with influencers, it's important to ensure that they are a natural fit for your brand.
Influencers we have worked with are fans of Best Fiends and they resonate well with our audience. Influencer campaigns also work best when you allow them to have creative freedom.
We’ve also found influencers get excited when they are integrated into the game.
For example, as part of the 'Don’t Download Best Fiends' campaign, we released an in-game update which featured the World’s Biggest Mobile Treasure Hunt in Best Fiends, where Kate Walsh, Joey Graceffa, Rosanna Pansino and 12 more of the biggest YouTube stars such as Rachel Levin, Fine Brothers and VanossGaming each hid personal themed symbols in the __game for players to find.
Players that found all 15 symbols won a new character in the game.
How significant is it for Seriously for it to be featured as the 2016 YouTube ad of the year?
Winning the award is a huge honor for us and we couldn’t have done it without our fans.
Kate Walsh in 'Don't Download Best Fiends'
The video was produced entirely in-house without outside agency support, so it was a really great accomplishment to achieve.
This isn't the first time Seriously has worked with influencers in creative, unorthodox campaigns. How important is this for your overall strategy?
Influencer marketing is a huge part of our marketing strategy at Seriously.
We spend up to 90% of our marketing budget on influencer campaigns.
Philip Hickey
We spend up to 90% of our marketing budget on influencer campaigns and we’ve found a lot of success in working with influencers both in downloads and in building the Best Fiends brand.
How do you endeavour to ensure good ROI on these campaigns and otherwise minimise risk?
It's important to have clear objectives and track results back to your goals.
We created this video in conjunction with a massive, direct tie-in to the influencer treasure hunt campaign that helped drive ROI.
Since we’ve been doing a lot of influencer campaigns over the last few years, we’re constantly improving and able compare previous results to current results.
Can we expect Seriously's marketing to maintain the same creative focus in 2017?
Absolutely! At Seriously, we challenge ourselves to be as creative in our marketing campaigns as we are in our game design, story, characters and world in our Best Fiends games.
We have a lot of exciting campaigns planned for 2017. Stay tuned!
While a recent report by App Annie and NASSCOM showed that the Indian mobile games market is set to grow to $1.1 billion by 2020, it also highlighted that it's a market still dominated by Western games.
Candy Crush Saga, Subway Surfers and Temple Run 2 made up the top three games by download in India in Q2 2016, across both the App Store and Google Play.
However, an unfamiliar presence at number four - and the only Indian-developed __game inside the top ten - was Train Simulator 2016 by a developer called Timuz.
It's the only studio currently competing with major Western competitors for downloads on its home soil, but what is Timuz and how has it got here?
“We have been developing games for the past six years now,” says Timuz Managing Director Ahmed Mohammed when we catch up with him at the NASSCOM __game Developer Conference 2016.
“Initially we started with Flash games for web, mostly targeting smaller children for the first two years, then we slowly moved into the mobile industry.
“Now for almost four years we have been developing games for mobile.”
From match-3 to FPS
From humble beginnings of “only four people in a very small office,” Timuz is now nearly 100 people strong with offices in Pune, Bangalore and Malaysia in addition to its Hyderabad headquarters.
After a slow transitional year in which it only launched a single game on mobile, the team has since hit its stride with a hectic release schedule that's seen it launch more than 500 games and rack up 70 to 80 million downloads.
And the team is a diverse bunch, too.
“We're targeting the global audience as well as the Indian audience, and we develop games in all genres,” says Mohammed.
We're targeting the global audience as well as the Indian audience.
Ahmed Mohammed
That approach has resulted in a catalogue spanning casual match-3, first-person shooters and simulation titles to name but three.
Timuz's global approach is important too, with 40% to 50% of its users based in the US. Its native India is its second biggest market, playing host to 30% to 40% of its players.
Volume the key
The way Timuz ensures that it monetises all of these players - including India's notoriously low-spending mobile gamers - is through interstitial advertising.
While yet to adopt increasingly commonplace techniques like incentivised video ads, Mohammed still reports that 70% of the firm's revenue is generated from ad revenue.
Predictably, this figure is higher in India, where only 15% of revenue comes through in-app purchases - and “only around 1%” of players spend money.
However, for even 15% of revenues to come from in-app purchases in India is higher than the average.
Indian revenues are improving, but there is still work to be done
Mohammed says it's been able to make money in India “because we have a couple of games with lower in-app purchases of 10 Rupees”.
Worth $0.15, this new minimum IAP tier was introduced specifically for the Indian market by Google Play back in July 2015.
“We've found it to be good,” reflects Mohammed, explaining that it's led to more players spending little and often.
Slow progress
However, Mohammed still has concerns about how best to approach the domestic market.
Carrier billing is going to have a small impact, not major or huge.
Ahmed Mohammed
“IP-based games do good, but when you look at the revenue numbers, it will not justify the IP,” he considers.
He is, however, encouraged by the introduction of carrier billing, a system that Timuz is currently in the process of integrating.
“It's going to have a small impact,” he says. “Not major or huge… [but] any impact is good.”
On the right track
One game that has proven successful for Timuz in its homeland is the aforementioned Train Simulator 2016.
But what does it mean to be the fourth most downloaded mobile game in India for a quarter?
Mohammed tells us that the game was most successful in India, racking up eight million downloads there and four to five million in all other markets combined.
Train Simulator 2016 is the lone Indian-developed game
“We never thought it was going to be so big,” he reflects. “It was a small game, and then we started scaling it as we saw the production going on and the game quality going up.”
And while this is the most successful example, he adds that the firm has seen a similar enthusiasm for the simulation genre in India on other titles, highlighting a potentially lucrative niche.
An interesting sidenote is that Train Simulator 2016 flouts Indian best practises by weighing in at around 75MB - relatively large for a market where file size is often considered critical.
For Mohammed, it's about perspective. “There are many, many users [in India] who are on 3G or 4G connections with higher end devices,” he states.
“[File sizes] do matter, but not as much as people suggest.”
Not so casual
In contrast to the niche occupied by Train Simulator 2016, Timuz also appeals to a global, primarily female audience with its match-3 games.
The casual female audience are more loyal... they play for an hour or two.
Ahmed Mohammed
It's released around eight to 10 of these, and Mohammed reports that “they have been a huge success for us".
And interestingly, in contrast to many of the mobile games industry's accepted truths, these match-3 players are said to be playing and spending much more regularly than those of the more core games in Timuz's catalogue.
“The [casual] female audience are more loyal to the game,” he says. “They play the game for an hour or two, so the chance of having IAPs from that audience is much, much higher.”
The average playtime among Timuz's simulation games, contrastingly, is “around 12 to 14 minutes for an average session, and they don't engage with the game very much.”
However, given the differing audience breakdown of each, this might say more about the respective playing habits of the Indian and Western mobile audiences than how users are engaging with different genres.
Under the radar
Timuz may be yet to launch a truly massive hit, but it's nonetheless a company that's grown from four to around 100 employees.
Not only is this a relative rarity for an independent games studio in India, but Timuz has also done it without taking funding.
Already competing with global big hitters in India, it's also generating considerable revenue from the dominant US market - not to mention in multiple genres.
Whether the firm's strategy is a case of stretching itself too thin or a stroke of genius remains to be seen, but the point remains that Timuz has quietly become the biggest Indian game developer you've never heard of.
Japan-based mobile games publisher Gumi has partnered with non-profit organisation EUVR to bring its VR Strategic Initiative to European developers.
The EUVR works to help connect European VR developers with others in the community and provide additional resources to help them develop their games.
By partnering with Gumi, the EUVR members will be given better access to investment opportunities and incubation programs from Asia that would previously have been much harder to access.
Breaking new ground
"This past year has been tremendously successful for Gumi as we’ve broken new ground in the VR industry," said Hironao Kunimitsu, CEO of Gumi Inc.
"Our partnership with EUVR is the next step toward our vision of being a global leader in virtual reality and working closely with innovative developers in the European region."
Gumi has been investing in VR funds throughout 2016, including contributing to the $50 million Venture Reality Fund. However, it has also shuttered a number of its Western studios in April 2016.
Peter Fodor is the founder of AppAgent, a service for small and mid-sized mobile developers who are launching a __game or app but need help with marketing and user acquisition.
Deciding whether your newest mobile __game should adopt a freemium or premium business model is one of the most important decisions a developer can make.
It will not only define the way you generate revenue, but will also influence your choice of marketing channels and tactics.
To help you make the best decision for you and your app, we’ve summarised how you can reach your audience with both business models in a playful infographic (which you can see below).
If you’re considering which approach to take to market, it’s worth taking the time to understand the difference in marketing freemium and premium mobile games. So, let’s begin.
More fun with freemium?
It’s clear that free-to-play games offer a much wider range of marketing activities.
But why is that? It’s because marketing isn’t focusing only at making a great impression of the game “on the shelf”.
With a game-as-a-service model, the business relies on engagement and conversion to payers.
To illustrate this, it’s useful to use the famous AARRR conversion metric developed by Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups
You can see that we’ve adjusted this slightly to make it more relevant to the mobile space, but the principles are still the same.
At every step in the process mobile marketers are able to utilise various tools and tactics that will lead the user to the next stage. The aim is to ultimately reach a lifetime value that’s higher than acquisition cost.
Dark times for paid games
Earlier this year I hosted a panel discussion at game Developers Session 2016 where we covered the possibilities for the promotion and monetisation of paid games.
Compared to freemium models, it’s actually fairly difficult to attract a large audience to paid games, especially on Android.
It’s no secret to anyone in the industry that Google rarely supports paid games by featuring them.
It’s vital to think about the business model you want to follow as soon as possible in the development cycle.
Even on the App Store, where Apple supports lots of paid games, only 21% of all titles have a price tag. Of these 89% are priced at $3 or less, which is quite shocking to me.
The first paid game in the top grossing charts (to be accurate, it’s a paymium title combining upfront payment and in-app purchases) is NBA 2K17 by the publisher 2K. It is at number 182 in the charts.
That means that the top 181 highest revenue App Store games are all freemium!
Decide your path early on
As a business, it’s vital to think about the business model you want to follow as soon as possible in the development cycle.
Choosing between paid, free with ads or freemium defines not only the product, but by a large portion, your marketing strategy and your options for generating revenues.
Jan Ilavsky, Apple Design Award winner with the game Chameleon Run, recommends paid games to individuals, small teams and people who: “basically don’t care about money”. As a fulltime indie developer he makes enough of a living with paid games.
Chameleon Run developer Jan Ilavsky says he makes enough money as a fulltime indie in making premium games
If you have a small to mid-sized company paid games become much more tricky.
London-based studio Ustwo, the team behind a mega hit Monument Valley, invested $1.4 million into the development of the game.
It took the team 55 weeks to finish the original game and another 29 weeks for the DLC Forgotten Shores with eight core team members. With massive support from Apple, Google and Amazon revenues got close to $6 million in its first year, which is over 4x of the costs.
Within two years, the title had made $14.4 million.
But Marek Rabas, CEO of Madfinger Games, doesn’t consider Monument Valley as a success.
“The team went on a very risky path where a smaller support by platform owners could easily result in a big financial loss,” he said at the Game Developers Session in Prague.
Thanks its engaging game design and support from platform holders, Monument Valley has brought in more than million in revenue for developer Ustwo
My personal suggestion is to experiment with free games supported by ads, as these are still fresh and provide less intrusive ways to integrate rewarded videos in the core game loop.
It could be by doubling coins, offering an additional life after failing a level, or allowing a free spin of the lucky wheel for example.
As a developer you can reach a larger audience and build a good foundation for an upcoming title using cross-promotion. It’s also easier to make a viral hit with a free game supported by ads without the complexity of freemium economics.
Feel free to get inspired by our infographics and explore what works the best for you.
Paid games
Cross-promotion
Focus is on virality
Media and influencers
Keyword optimisation
Selling a branded version
Partnerships (such as Starbucks Pick of the Week)
Paid free promo
Social media & forums
Community building
Getting featured in the store
Video content creation
A/B testing of store assets
Referrals
Free games (F2P games / games as a service)
All from paid plus…
Paid search
Mobile install ads
Chart boosting
Reviews and let’s play by streamers
Onboarding optimisation
Using rewarded videos to upsell premium features
Balancing monetisation
Segmentation and personalisation
Dynamic difficulty and monetisation
Lifecycle optimisation
Retargeting
This was part of the MGU course Mobile Games University: Indie Marketing 101. For more articles in this course click here.
And so it begins... Another week, another year, at the coal face of PG.biz: the home of news and views on the business of app stores, smartphone platforms, developments in mobile __game making and assorted technology.
So let's start with some numbers from the turn of the year.
Clearly, the folk at Flurry don't take holidays, updating its blog on Boxing Day to inform us that 6.8 million new iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day.
It followed this up early in the New Year to let us know that the holiday season was first 'power week' with more than one billion apps downloaded - 1.2 billion in total. Of course, both figures are estimates from apps running Flurry's analytics package so shouldn't be viewed as 'official'.
From the horse's Tweetdeck
We got one side of that story, however, from Google's Andy Rubin who tweeted/Google+ed that 3.7 million Android devices were activated over Christmas weekend.
Another company bigging up its performance was Amazon, which didn't provide hard numbers, but said that the Kindle Fire had sold millions over holiday season as the #1 ranked item on Amazon.
Analysts reckon total sales for the $199 Android tablet could be as high as five million.
Rival retailer Barnes & Noble is doing well with its range of Nook e-readers and tablets. So well, in fact, that it's now considering spinning out what it hopes will be $1.5 billion business in FY12.
Doing less well in the tablet stakes is RIM, which is selling off its BlackBerry PlayBook tablets for $299 in North America during January.
Meanwhile, other tablets manufacturers are dealing with the situation by dropping their prices, with entry level devices starting from around $300. Acer's new 10-inch Icona A200 family starts from $330.
Another significant rumour is that Intel will be getting into the hardware business to better promote its new Medfield chip architecture.
It's expected to launch a smartphone running Android Ice Cream Sandwich at CES - something that will be launched in conjunction with carriers in Europe and India.
Millennial steps up
The year has also started well for companies looking to raise investment.
Polish publisher and social mobile gaming platform provider Tequila Mobile has announced it's closed a $1.7 million round, user acquisition tool Playerize secured $1 million in its first funding round, while UK augmented reality startup Blippar received seed funding from Qualcomm Ventures.
The big news, however, its that the largest independent mobile ad network Millennial Networks has filed its S-1 form with the SEC, prior to a potential listing on the Nasdaq.
This reveals the company had sales of $69 million for the nine months ending September and was marginally loss making. It valued itself at $305 million during its most recent stock options round.
Another interesting deal saw German mobile and online games and entertainment outfit Bob Mobile buys Dutch rival CLIQ in a deal worth $71 million. It also bought the remaining shares of Guerilla Mobile that it didn't own.
The combined company, which is floated on the Frankfurt exchange, expects sales of $120 million in FY12.
Prior to CES, there was also plenty of activity in the TV gaming space, with TransGaming buying Oberon's TV games division for $7 million, PlayJam hooking up with GameHouse, which will provide games for its Smart TV gaming platform, and Myriad partnering with AppCarousel to serve up Android app platform for internet-enabled TVs,
Samsung booms
And the numbers will continue to flow as we hit the three week financial reporting period, starting with Apple's Q4 figures on 24 January.
Prior to this, it seems as well as Apple, Samsung will be posting some impressive figures. It released its preliminary Q4 numbers this week, but didn't break out the contribution of Samsung Electronics from the overall total. However, analysts now expect the company to ship as many as 170 million smartphones in 2012.
Less good news for HTC, which although it posted unaudited FY11 sales of $15.4 billion, saw a heavy decline during Q4, thanks in part to competition from Samsung.
Of course, both vendors are heavy supporters of Google's Android OS. New figures reveal that Android 2.3x (Gingerbread) is now the dominant version of the OS, being on more than 50 percent of devices for the first time.
The company continues to invest in the platform, buying 217 more patents from IBM. Analyst outfit Distimo also notes that Android Marketplace now has 400,000 active apps, and looks likely to overtake the daily increase in new apps of Apple's App Store in early 2012.
Nokia back in the USA
The big OEM news of the week was the resurgence of rumours that Microsoft is looking to cherrypick Nokia's smartphone operations: something the company denies.
What is clear, however, is that Nokia's attempt to grow its presence in North America will kick off with the Lumia 900 (an uprated Lumia 800) with dual cameras, and LTE support. It will launch with AT&T and be backed with a $100 million ad campaign.
It's such initiatives that persuaded Credit Suisse to upgrade its guidance on Nokia stock, while metrics from StatCounter show that Symbian ended 2011 as the most popular mobile OS, thanks to its continued dominant in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
And ensuring it will continue to support those markets, it was revealed that back in November 2010, Nokia bought Norwegian turnkey OS outfit Smarterphone for an undisclosed sum. It provides a platform that gives $25 - $75 phones a more smartphone-like experience.
iPad price segmentation?
Apple rumours never end and 2012 started with rumblings about iPad. The current thinking from sources deep within Apple's supply chain is that iPad 3 will launch in March or April with a retina display, which will enable iPad 2 to drop in price to compete better with the $199 Kindle Fire.
More contentious is the rumour that a 'proper sequel' - iPad 4 - will launch in October.
What's not up for debate is the success of the device, which ABI underlined with the news that app downloads on iPad have topped 3 billion in 20 months.
Other Apple news saw it hiring Adobe VP Todd Teresi to head up its troubled iAd division, while iPhone 4S will launch in 22 new countries next week, including China.
Microsoft is looking to new markets as well, with developers now able to submit apps and games for sales in countries such as China, Indonesia and Malaysia, prior to the Windows Phone Marketplace switch on in those countries.
Tiny Tower's growth
But over three years into the app ecosystem, it's not just the big companies that are able to generate significant headlines.
Tiny US developer NimbleBit continues to impress with its Tiny Tower free-to-play __game now seeing more than 1 million daily active players, who are clocking up 10 million sessions a day.
Much larger, Korean publisher Gamevil's has done 13 million downloads across iOS and Android, while Epic revealed that its two Infinity Blade games have grossed more than $30 million on iOS.
And the biggest of all - downloads-wise - Rovio let us know that a massive 6.5 million Angry Birds' games were downloaded on Christmas Day; which using Flurry's figures, would be 2.7 percent of all iOS and Android downloads on the day.
The Finnish company is opening a new development studio too, in 150 km north of its Helsinki HQ in Tampere.
Bid up, tear down
Let's end, though, with two intriguing mini-trends.
The first follows the decision of developer Neal Schmidt to sell his iOS game Buckshot on eBay, gaining $16,000 in the process. This has encouraged others to follow suit with Simon Papineau making three of his games available.
The other demonstrates the lack of clear thinking from some of gaming's old guard as Nintendo told UK indie Icon Games to remove the download figures of its self-published WiiWare games from its blog.
The result of this - and other restrictions of Nintendo's current digital download platform - is the company is now focused on Sony platforms.
London-based mobile games developer Space Ape Games is hosting an Indie Dev Influencers Junket on January 30th.
The event is designed to bring together bigger indie mobile __game developers together with major YouTuber influencers for a chance to share their upcoming games to potentially millions of viewers.
Developers taking part include:
Armada Interactive
Flaregames
Gumbug
Koyoki
Kukouri Mobile Entertainment
Space Ape Games, and
Traplight
Getting to know you
The studios will be showing off their games to YouTubers with a combined audience of 22.9 million subscribers. Confirmed influencers attending include Kwebbelkop, who has 6.2 million subscribers, and Jelly, who has 5.7 million.
The Indie Dev Influencers Junket will take place in Space Ape Games' London office from 4pm on January 30th. Influencers or indie developers interested in joining can find out more on the event's Eventbrite page.
As part of Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2016, Philippe Desgranges and Nicolas Godement-Berline, CEO and COO of Mana Cube, gave a talk on how to delight your players with amazing customer service.
"It's not just answering tickets," said Godement-Berline, saying that it's also about speaking to players one-to-one on the phone, sending out surveys and keeping that interaction.
Be engaging
"We make the most engaging products in the world, but we don't really seem to pay much attention to our customers," he added, continuing on to say that in 2014 the only __game company considered to have strong customer service in the US was Activision.
In terms of best practices, Godement-Berline recommends responding quickly to emails, having everyone in the company work in customer service and being personal with the players.
You can see all our videos from Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2016 in this YouTube playlist.
Unity has brought in former Bungie Graphics lead Natalya Tatarchuk as its new Director of Global Graphics.
Tatarchuk will be responsible for advancements in the Unity __game engine’s rendering technology and graphics performance.
Graphics expert
At Bungie, Tatarchuk worked on games such as Destiny, Halo: ODST and Halo: Reach.
She was also previously s Graphics Software Architect and lead at the __game Computing Application Group at the AMD Graphics Products Group, and is a member of multiple industry and hardware advisory boards.
“We’re thrilled Natalya joined Unity, she brings a wealth of experience and technical expertise in graphics and rendering to the team,” said Unity VP of Engineering Brett Bibby.
“Her leadership will be key to implementing new and innovative graphics technologies that allow creators to bring both beautiful and successful games and experiences to market.”
Stockholm-based mobile __game studio MAG Interactive has pushed into iMessage development with its new title SmackChat.
The __game sees two players taking part in rounds of rock-paper-scissors. The winner of each round then gets to "talk smack" to their opponent.
Encouraging player interaction
"MAG Interactive strives to find new and unique ways to engage players and encourage player interaction, and iMessage is the perfect platform for a game like SmackChat," said Johan Persson, Vice President of Product at MAG Interactive.
"Featuring comical art style and funky sound effects, SmackChat is a super casual, fun game that encourages player banter and a healthy bit of good-natured trash talking."
MAG is best known for its social word games such as WordBrain, which surpassed 30 million downloads earlier in January 2017.
Ludicious 2017 is the Zurich __game Festival. It's held in Switzerland this week and is split in two parts: Business, on 26th and 27th January, and Family, on the 28th and 29th.
Naturally it's the business part that will be of interest to our professional readers. Ludicious Business consists of an evening of pitches - projects in the Ludicious Business Accelerator - plus a full conference day dedicated to the games industry. All attendees with a Conference Pass or a Business Day Pass will also have access to the MeetToMatch meeting platform.
There are 30 speakers and packed tracks of discussions. Of particular interest to indie developers considering how to fund their next project, Friday afternoon's Ludicious Business programme looks closely at Kickstarter and the games that come from it. It starts with An Introduction To Kickstarter by Michael Liebe, CEO and founder of Booster Space, Kickstarter consultant and head of International Games Week Berlin. Then there are three case studies (Niche – A Genetics Survival Game; Jupiter Hell; and Everspace). Finally Liebe will be joined by games designers Philomena Schwab and Michael Schade for a panel discussion.
There are also an Interactive Experiences track, a Game Technology track and a Game Design track. Those interested in VR and AR will find talks on Friday from the likes of Janina Woods and Marte Roel. And of course there's an exhibition space, featuring games from the Ludicious Business Accelerator and the nominees from the International Competition and Student Competition. Developers from all over the world entered 303 games for the competitions, an increase of 30% over previous years.
Meanwhile, Ludicious Family is a family-friendly, free public convention for families, young people and adults alike. It boasts interactive exhibitions, workshops, and lectures. As well as a chance to play games, the family programme also includes a track with topics such as how to code your very first game.
PocketGamer.biz is a media partner of the event. You can find out more by visiting the Ludicious website.
Lasse Seppänen is the CEO & Co-Founder of PlayRaven, a Helsinki-based studio specialized in fresh new strategy games for touch screens.
Lasse has worked in several development and executive roles since 1998 and is best known for his role as Remedy’s Executive Producer for the XBox 360 cult hit Alan Wake.
In a games industry career spanning 20 years so far, Lasse Seppanen reckons he's experienced three distinct waves of mobile gaming.
The first was at the turn of the millennium when he was working on WAP and text message games for very early handsets, pre-dating even the halcyon days of Java.
“Most people don't even remember what WAP means,” he laughs.
Seppanen identifies the second as occurring “around 2003 to 2005”, at which point he was Head of Studio at Sumea.
Here he worked alongside four of Supercell's five co-founders, developing games for early feature phones.
“Ilkka [Paananen] was my boss, who later founded Supercell as the CEO, and the three others were working for me in the studio,” he recalls.
“I know them very well and we share a lot of thinking and DNA. I'm really happy about their success.”
Pastures new
Sumea was subsequently acquired by mobile gaming's then-dominant company Digital Chocolate in 2004, rebranding as the US firm's Helsinki arm.
The following year, Seppanen left the company - and mobile gaming - to work on a secretive new Xbox 360 IP at Max Payne developer Remedy.
I realised that with F2P, strategy was the genre that would be big.
Lasse Seppanen
This turned out to be Alan Wake, a critically-acclaimed psychological thriller on which he was Executive Producer. Seppanen remained at the Espoo-based firm for six years.
The third wave of mobile gaming to which Seppanen refers is the modern era, which offered him the incentive to return to mobile and found PlayRaven in 2013.
“I always wanted to make strategy games,” he explains. “I realised that with the free-to-play model, strategy was really the genre that would be big.
“If you sell one box with one price tag, you don't want people to play it for 10 years.
“That's great for action adventures and shooters, but not great for strategy games. That's one of the reasons strategy never took off in the premium world.”
Unique vision
Some might argue that Seppanen's absence from the mobile games industry was badly timed.
Spending 2005-2013 in console meant that he missed the launch of the App Store and the early hits that came with it, such as Angry Birds and Clash of Clans, returning when the market was arguably already saturated.
Supercell set the formula before PlayRaven was established
But being a new mobile strategy developer in 2013, after Supercell had established an oft-imitated formula with Clash of Clans, gave PlayRaven something to stand in opposition to.
We don't do re-skins, or copies, or clones.
Lasse Seppanen
Seppanen has always been very clear that PlayRaven is only interested in developing “games that bring something fresh and new to the genre and to the platform”.
“We don't do re-skins or copies or clones,” he asserts. And indeed, the studio's three launched games to date - Spymaster, Robocide, and Winterstate - are all very different experiences.
Small teams, big ambition
From a five-person startup in 2013 to 22 employees at the time of writing, PlayRaven has grown steadily but not explosively.
“We haven't gone for hyper-growth,” says Seppanen.
“Think of us like a laboratory. If you're solving a very hard problem - and making a new IP is always a very hard problem - you just need a very limited amount of people who have the passion and experience.”
The core team on Robocide was a mere four people strong. Winterstate's team wasn't much bigger. And yet, PlayRaven still managed to launch the pair within a month of one another to relative success.
Everything in Finland is built with a less is more approach.
Lasse Seppanen
For Seppanen, this is evidence that you don't need a big team to make free-to-play work.
“Clash Royale was made by six or seven people - less than 10, for sure - so I think that's the best example that can be provided,” he enthuses.
Made in Finland
Compared to what he describes as the “brute force approach” of some of the bigger F2P developers, Seppanen goes on to praise the simplicity and elegance of Clash Royale's presentation and feature set.
“You only have the minimum of what you need,” he says.
“That is how Nordic design in general works. It's not just games, it's furniture and buildings - everything here is built with a less is more approach.”
The PlayRaven studio
It's an interesting point, especially given the unique togetherness of the Finnish games industry in which PlayRaven is deeply embedded.
I wouldn't say IGDA created the culture, but it's definitely been there to accelerate it.
Lasse Seppanen
Finland's connection with and dominance in mobile gaming is well-documented and Seppanen attributes it to a perfect storm of Nokia's Finnish roots, the dark winter nights, and the sharing culture that exists between __game developers there.
Seppanen has had a hand in the latter, helping to establish the IGDA in Finland in 2012 and acting as its lead coordinator for the first two years.
“I wouldn't say IGDA created the culture, but it's definitely been there to accelerate and enhance it,” he says.
No contest
Sharing projects early and gathering feedback from peers is a key part of the PlayRaven strategy, with regular meet-ups in the region and plenty of like-minded developers willing to take part.
“There's not much to lose by sharing,” Seppanen states. “We decided, even within the open Finnish culture, to be even more open.”
An IGDA Finland meet
He says the benefit of this approach is “maximum feedback at maximum speed” - a scenario that is much more helpful to PlayRaven than the long and isolating process of keeping its cards close to its chest.
We decided, even within the open Finnish culture, to be even more open.
Lasse Seppanen
This is the norm in Finland, with IGDA gatherings recently hitting a record 700 attendees - most of whom were industry professionals. However, it's not like this everywhere.
“In some places the IGDA chapters have unfortunately become relatively academic, so it's mostly students and the professionals might even avoid the meets,” explains Seppanen.
“That's very regrettable and we have the opposite situation.”
Feedback is key
This “maximum feedback at maximum speed” philosophy can be clearly seen in the firm's approach to soft-launching its latest project - a reimagining of 2014's Spymaster.
The game, which takes the original concept in a different direction, was soft-launched after only five months of development.
Prior to this, PlayRaven has never soft-launched earlier than a year into development. For Seppanen this new approach has been a revelation, leading to useful ideas that wouldn't have arisen otherwise.
We want both the metrics and the opinions of the players.
Lasse Seppanen
“We want both the metrics and the opinions of the players,” he says. “We're actively talking to them and hearing their ideas about the latest update, what went well, what went wrong and so on.”
As for the new Spymaster experience, those who played the original might not recognise it.
There's a new art style, an increased focus on social features and a new card-based design that emphasises the player's empowered position as the tactical force behind these individual agents.
The right team for the job
To a large extent, this is due to the fact that the new Spymaster is being developed by an almost entirely new-look team that features only one individual who was at the company before.
A sustained hiring drive that began in 2015 made it clear that PlayRaven was building a team for a spy game, ensuring that it attracted only those who were equipped and excited to take up the challenge.
And it's resulted in an eclectic and international bunch, including a British lead who relocated to Helsinki from China, a Russian backend programmer, an American client programmer who moved his family from San Francisco, a Canadian designer and only two Finns.
The PlayRaven team
He explains that for the first six months, he had to emphasise to the new international team members that showing their work to other companies is to be encouraged - and not in fact fraternising with the enemy or exposing it too early.
A long way to go
But although this new-look team has been quick to soft launch Spymaster, it has no intentions of rushing it to a full release.
It's currently toying with ideas internally, moving away from the traditional structure and presentation of mobile strategy games that we've come to expect.
One of these ideas is to move the emphasis away from the game's map and into the guild chat, making logging in feel like something more akin to a messaging app.
“You would see a bunch of missions in the chat stream,” envisions Seppanen.
“Make it a social stream where you can participate in stuff with others, rather than have this very archaic and maybe old-fashioned way of separating single player and multiplayer.”
PlayRaven Marketing Director Robin Squire sums it up pithily: “like Messenger with backstabbing.”
For a company that's consistently defined itself with creativity in arguably the most homogeneous sector in gaming, you certainly wouldn't bet against it pulling this off.
Last year saw a number of barriers reduced as India broke into the worldwide top five for mobile __game downloads.
Not only has this inevitably caught the attention of major players from overseas, it has enlivened the local industry - the growth of which has been demonstrated by NASSCOM __game Developer Conference 2016 and our own Indian Mavens group.
One example is Gamecubator Labs, an ambitious Hyderabad-based studio targeting both the global and domestic markets.
To learn more about its match-3 title My Food Truck, Indian industry trends and predictions for the growth of the local market, PocketGamer.biz reached out to Gamecubator Labs' Head of Operations Priyanka Barathwaj.
PocketGamer.biz: You launched My Food Truck in 2016. How do you reflect on the game's launch and its life so far?
Priyanka Barathwaj: The game has been featured by both the App Store and Google Play. So we couldn't have asked for a better launch!
The game is doing exceedingly well and has beaten our initial expectations in terms of game downloads and play time.
In the first phase, the game has been able to capture an average of 20 minutes session time from players which communicates the game potential.
How hard is it to break into the crowded match-3 genre with a new IP? What has been your approach to this?
Match-3 is a very tough genre. There already are very popular games from big publishers in this category.
Match-3 is a very tough genre... we are happy to have achieved a breakthrough.
Priyanka Barathwaj
Big giants like King, Rovio, Zynga continue to come up with major match-3 games but we are happy to have achieved a breakthrough and now stand a chance to compete with some of these well-established leaders.
We have had an exciting start with three consecutive successful match-3 game launches and going forward have plans for some major releases which we are confident will establish Gamecubator Labs among the top publishers.
Our approach to My Food Truck was to focus on simple differentiators and find a balance between the new features and game mechanics.
Trucks, food, travel, trivia and not to forget the selfies; to bring these bits together and have a theme that’s unique to match-3 is what we tried.
Sounds easy, but there were many challenges and we are happy to have succeeded. It was in the holiday collection and featured at number one position in the new and updated games section on Google Play.
Thanks to the stores' recognition, we now have a larger vision for this game.
As an Indian studio, what's your take on the Indian mobile games industry going into 2017? Are you seeing fast growth locally?
The Indian mobile gaming industry could be one of the major beneficiaries of the central governments push for digital payments.
This major push will lead to more smartphones, better connectivity, better infrastructure and openness to digital payments, all of which will immensely contribute to increasing not only gamers but also the percentage of paying gamers.
I believe with around one billion people under the age of 45, India has the potential to be one of the leading mobile gaming markets in the world in years to come.
It is already ranked among the top five in terms of downloads and though lagging in revenues, I feel there is a possibility to realise good revenues to match the global markets.
Are you excited by the increasing support for the games industry being offered by the Telangana government, including gaming and animation incubators? How long until we see these kinds of initiatives country-wide?
The Telangana government and especially its young leadership has been continuously making efforts to establish Hyderabad as a preferred gaming and IT capital of the country.
We are working towards building an ecosystem of mobile game developers, publishers and investors on the global stage.
Priyanka Barathwaj
These efforts have already yielded good results with some of the best names setting up their base here.
As for our contribution, we are working towards building an ecosystem of mobile game developers, publishers and investors who do good work on the global stage.
We will very soon be expanding to other states and as part of this expansion we will make a major announcement by this March, which I believe will give a big boost to the Indian gaming industry in 2017.
It seems that My Food Truck is primarily aimed at the global market, but are you taking any extra steps to target Indian users specifically? Roughly what percentage of your players are in India?
Our focus in the match-3 genre has always been to establish ourselves as a global player. My Food Truck is the third successful attempt by Gamecubator Labs in this direction.
Although emerging markets like India have definitely showcased interest, USA and Europe have been our top performing markets so far. India constitutes 20% of our player base.
India is a unique market and needs a very different approach. With the aim to achieve leadership status in this market by mid-2018, we have tested various genres through multiple investments and partnerships.
We have seen success in sports and match-3.
In 2017 we will be moving out of experimental phase and you will see some major, India-centric releases across three genres: action, card games and Bollywood - yes, in India that’s a separate genre!.
What do you see as the big mobile gaming trends going into 2017 - both for India, and the industry in general?
The adoption of smartphones in India is barely 20% and India is already number one in the number of app installs on Google Play.
Adoption of smartphones in India is barely 20% and it's already number one in the number of app installs on Google Play.
Priyanka Barathwaj
The Google and Apple app stores have been coping up quite well for the massive growth rate in users. I strongly believe that they will only look at penetrating more into the Indian market in the upcoming year.
Google Play gift cards, sub-dollar pricing and localising the store are a few interesting attempts over the last year which will help open new segments and widen the market base and revenue potential.
What's next for My Food Truck and Gamecubator Labs?
With the first phase of My Food Truck receiving a remarkable response from players across the globe, we are working on inclusion of more features and new content.
Our players can stay tuned for some exciting announcements in 2017, a tip off for now is that we have some active discussions underway for celebrity partnerships and brand associations.
In 2017, while we will continue growing our match-3 portfolio, we are hard at work on some new projects. We are gearing up to announce our entry into simulation, card game and Bollywood genres.
