When developing a mobile multiplayer game, there’s an added layer of complexity. It’s not just the technical challenge of connecting the players together, but every element of your game is affected – from the monetization to the gameplay itself.

With that in mind, we’ve brought together the tools and resources that’ll help you make your multiplayer game.

Which engine is best for multiplayer games?

Most engines feature multiplayer support in one way or another, whether it’s built-in or a plugin.

• Unity. Despite recent concerns, Unity is still the go-to choice for many mobile developers. Not only do they have guides on their website, they also have tons of the backend tools and features you’ll need to make your multiplayer game run smoothly.
• Defold. Completely free and open source. Defold is a very lightweight engine that’s perfect for mobile games. But it isn’t built for 3D games.
• Godot. Often considered the open-source alternative to Unity. It also has a very active community, building plugins for most of your needs. It’s a good engine for any genre.
• GameMaker. A great 2D engine that has multiplayer out of the box. While it costs for a commercial licence, it’s a flat fee or subscription rather than based on your earnings.
• Unreal. If you’re building a deep, 3D, competitive multiplayer game and want the best graphics, the only real choice is Unreal. But it’s overkill if you’re making a more casual game.

It’s always tricky picking an engine. You can easily end up in decision limbo, spending months researching each one. Luckily for you, GameAnalytics is compatible with most major engines and environments, making it easy for you to rely on data at any time.

What motivates people to play multiplayer games?

People play multiplayer games for very different reasons to a single-player game. It’s important to understand those motivations and how they affect your game’s design. Here are a couple of resources to bear in mind when designing.

• Understanding player motivations. There are eight main reasons why people play games. In this article, we dig into them and how they affect your game.
• Player motivation archetypes. Similarly, GameRefinery found that you can dig a little and split those motivations into twelve categories.

What tools do you need to make multiplayer games?

There are many tools you’ll need to integrate with your multiplayer game, if you want it to feel fair and satisfying to play. The four main areas to consider are:

1. Server hosting. Will you host your matches or host from the player’s machine? You’ll likely want to look at cloud providers, such as AWS Gaming or get a third-party to sort it out for you, like Gameye.
2. Matchmaking. It’s no fun joining a game with players who are far better than you. Instead, a matchmaker groups your players together based on their skill. You can also include other rules, such as their region. What matchmaker you choose largely depends on your engine.
3. Anti-cheat and DDoS protection. As soon as you open up your game to the general public, you could be a target of cyber attacks or just general cheating. Either way, make sure you have some way to protect the data you’re sending.
4. Backend systems. Most multiplayer games will need a database of users and other meta-features, such as achievement systems, leaderboards or economies. Services like LootLocker, Photon or Pragma make it easy to set these features up and keep them running.

How do you monetize multiplayer games?

Unlike casual games, advertising doesn’t particularly work with multiplayer. Adverts tend to interrupt the flow of a game, so you can’t show them during a match. Instead, developers need to focus on different models to monetize the game. There are three main approaches:

1. A one-off payment. Simple and easy. But it can leave you with a problem if you’re paying for ongoing services, such as servers. Make sure you have an exit strategy for how you’ll switch to a community-led game in the future.
2. Subscriptions and battle passes. These are often the most popular ways to monetize a multiplayer game. Offer new cosmetics and content and keep the game active.
3. In-app purchases and downloadable content. Offering packs that players can purchase to give them more in-game currency or cosmetic items works well.

However you decide to monetize, it’s important to find the right balance. Make sure you A/B test different prices and bundles to see which is most effective. If you need help, check out our A/B testing.

How do you manage your community?

One of the major incentives for multiplayer games is the social aspect. If you want to keep your game active and thriving, you need to build and engage with your community.

• Building a community on Discord. In this article, we walk through how to get started with your community.
• Three ways to engage your community. Once you’ve established your community, here are three ways to keep them happy and active.

What’s the best way to make a multiplayer game?

It all comes down to data. Your analytics is key to making sure that your multiplayer game is active and effective. You need to track how players behave inside the matches, how your servers are doing, how your monetization models are performing, and what’s going on in your community.

With so many different data sources, it can be challenging to bring it all together in a cohesive way. This is where DataSuite comes in. We can bring all your data into a single Data Warehouse, allowing you to query the data from all these different sources in one central location. Check out what DataSuite can do for you.

A robust backend infrastructure is the engine that powers all top-grossing mobile games. It enables engaging gameplay experiences and handles essential functions such as user authentication, multiplayer capabilities, LiveOps, leaderboards, cloud storage, and much more.

However, there are numerous mobile game backend providers (also called backend-as-a-service) in the market. By the end of this article, you’ll have an understanding of who they are, and how they differ from each other.

Should you build or buy your backend tech?

Most of the companies you see in the top-grossing gaming charts use bespoke backend technology that they’ve built in-house. This allows for customization and total control of the backend tech stack, but it requires hiring a team of engineers – a time-intensive and costly process.

The vast majority of game developers, however, do not have the time, human resources, or money to invest in building in-house backend tech.

Instead, they use external backend providers, which offer “plug-and-play” solutions that make the process far more affordable and efficient. In turn, this lets them focus on creating exceptional gameplay experiences.

So which mobile game backend providers are leading the way?

Leading backend providers for mobile games in 2024

Metaplay: the backend of choice for games with top-grossing ambitions

Metaplay’s backend is particularly suited to developers building a game with a long-term mindset, one that accounts for the evolving tech needs, innovation, and dynamism required to take a game from good to great. Metaplay offers tools to power feature-complete games from day one all the way through to hit status, such as:

• Game programming
• Backend engineering
• Product and LiveOps
• QA and customer support

Metaplay’s backend solution is suitable for a wide range of games built on Unity, from casual titles to real-time multiplayer experiences.

What sets Metaplay apart from other backend providers is the flexibility of the technology?

Alternative providers offer a limited set of functionalities, which are good enough to get you on par with your competitors. However, when the time comes to innovate, to add custom game features that are not supported by the limited off-the-shelf functionalities, problems emerge.

Specifically, in these cases, developers need to do a major code refactor or migrate their game to a different backend provider. At best, this is a necessary nuisance that drags on for a few months. At worst, it’s a disaster that eats years of development time.

Metaplay, by contrast, offers a tech upgrade path, ensuring game innovation is never stifled by technological limitations.

Their fully programmable stack is also server-authoritative and, as such, cheat-proof by default, which guarantees developers peace of mind as they scale. And because Metaplay ships as source code deployed into a game developer’s own cloud, when making games with Metaplay, a game studio never has to worry about vendor risk.

The Metaplay SDK includes a pre-built but fully customizable LiveOps and player management dashboard, which has everything ambitious game developers need to engage, retain, and monetize their players as their game grows.

Click here to learn more about Metaplay’s backend for mobile game developers.

Pricing

Pricing for Metaplay’s backend technology starts at €995 per month for managed development environments, opportunities to add production and staging environments as you globally launch your game.
Game studios can also choose from a variety of expert support packages tailored to their needs, as well as bespoke Private Cloud options for self-hosting at scale.

Beamable

Beamable provides tools for monetizing players (in-game stores, payment infrastructure, notifications), connecting players (leaderboards, chats, guilds or clans, multiplayer gameplay, tournaments), and optimizing the game experience (analytics into player behavior, A/B testing for new features, content management for deploying new content).

From a more technical angle, Beamable also provides admin tools for development, microservices that eliminate the need to build and operate a game server, and more.

They also offer both Unity and Unreal SDKs, allowing developers to add Beamable’s backend service to games built on either of the leading engines.

Pricing

Beamable’s subscription tiers begin at $10 per million API calls, also providing an indie tier for solo or small teams without revenue or funding. For large companies who expect over 200M API calls, Beamable offers special pricing.

Azure PlayFab

Azure PlayFab, owned by Microsoft (and formerly known only as ‘PlayFab’), provides a solid set of building blocks to launch a fully functional game and is one of the longest-running backend solutions, having launched in 2014.

On a high level, PlayFab’s offering can be divided into three pieces: multiplayer tools, LiveOps tools, and analytics.

PlayFab’s tools for multiplayer games include party networking and chat, cross-network identity and data, multiplayer servers for low-latency real-time gameplay, leaderboards and statistics, and matchmaking and groups (like guilds or clans).

PlayFab’s LiveOps tools include game economy infrastructure, player communication, automation to set up custom operations and react to events in real time, content management (like remote updates to game assets), and experiments (like running tests on player segments).

Finally, PlayFab’s real-time analytics let developers understand how their game is performing and how users are interacting with it. And in terms of data, PlayFab also ensures GDPR and COPPA compliance.

Pricing

PlayFab’s pricing has several tiers: a free tier for games with less than 100K users, a pay-as-you-go plan, a standard plan at $99/month, and a premium plan at $1,999/month.

Photon

Photon’s inclusion on this list could be seen as slightly contentious as, strictly speaking, it’s not exactly a backend (or at least not in the same sense as the other vendors on this list).

More so, Photon is a multiplayer engine that is particularly valuable for developers aiming to create highly scalable and real-time multiplayer experiences.

One of the standout features of Photon Engine is its low latency and reliable networking capabilities, which enable seamless real-time multiplayer interactions. This makes it an ideal choice for fast-paced multiplayer games, such as first-person shooters or sports simulations.

Photon also offers extensive matchmaking and lobby management functionality, allowing developers to create custom matchmaking algorithms and efficiently connect players. This feature is invaluable for games that rely on fair and balanced matchmaking, enhancing the overall player experience.

Another great aspect of Photon is its authoritative server support, enabling developers to enforce game rules and prevent cheating. This is crucial for competitive multiplayer games where maintaining a fair and level playing field is so important.

Note that Photon is not a complete backend provider – it focuses on multiplayer game infrastructure. Some developers, for instance, use Photon in tandem with other backend tools like Metaplay to cover all of their mobile game’s backend needs.

Pricing

Pricing for Photon is tiered according to concurrent users (CCU), with options available for indie developers and larger studios.

Heroic Labs

Heroic Labs is a composable product stack featuring an open-source game server, a LiveOps platform, a game development toolkit, and managed cloud services.

Nakama, Heroic Labs’ flagship tool, is a scalable and flexible backend server for multiplayer games. It provides essential features such as user authentication, real-time multiplayer functionality, social features, leaderboards, and server-side scripting.

Nakama is particularly valuable for developers looking to create large-scale multiplayer experiences across different platforms, as it offers high-performance networking and seamless synchronization.

In addition, Heroic Labs’ latest tool, Satori, provides a real-time data platform designed for building live, interactive, and immersive experiences. Satori enables developers to stream data in real time, facilitating dynamic gameplay, chat systems, and live events.

Satori is particularly useful in instances where real-time data updates and instant communication are essential, such as massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), live competitions, or other collaborative experiences.

Heroic Labs’ cloud tool is another handy feature, letting developers deploy dedicated Nakama and Satori clusters on a managed and private cloud.

Hiro, which is Heroic Labs’ game development kit (GDK), is a client-server library built on the Nakama game server with built-in game economy, social, and LiveOps features pre-made to be flexibly integrated into your game.

Pricing

Heroic Labs offers a flexible pricing model, including a free tier for indie developers, and custom plans for larger-scale games.

Choosing the Right Backend Provider for Your Mobile Game

When it comes to backend infrastructure for mobile games, partnering with an external provider rather than building your own technology offers numerous benefits. Aside from saving significant time and money, developers are able to maintain focus on the number one priority: building an engaging gameplay experience that keeps their players coming back for more.

Choosing the right backend provider is a big decision and requires a lot of research. Ideally, the backend service you go with from day one will remain your provider over the long run, as the cost of switching later is higher and will continue to rise as a game matures.

This article was designed to serve as an overview of the leading mobile game backend providers, but it is far from definitive. Use this as a starting point for conducting deeper research, and remember that your game is likely to evolve in ways you haven’t thought of yet – so ensure your backend provider gives you all the functionalities, scalability, and reliability to support your future tech needs.

You need to wear a lot of different hats when you’re making a game – especially if you’re doing it solo. One day, you’re a foley artist. Next, you’re a marketer. Even as a programmer or designer, it’s useful to understand how these elements come together, so you can make sure everything ties into your theme.

To help you along the way, we gathered all the free resources you can use to learn about the different areas of game development. Before you use the resources, we encourage you to make sure the assets are royalty-free.

Game design resources

Game design is all about the choices you make. The rules and mechanics that bring your idea to life. From small decisions, like whether to use coyote time in your platformer, to big decisions, like the main theme of the game.

1. Game Accessibility Guidelines. Every game designer should bookmark these guidelines. They go through the principles you should follow and give examples for each task. There’s even a checklist you can download.
2. Develop.Games. Thor Hall, the creator behind Heartbound and ex-Blizzard developer, has put together the Develop.Games site. It goes through both the development and the business side of creating games. A must-read for any would-be developer.
3. GameMaker’s Toolkit. This YouTube channel is an excellent series that deep dives into the most important elements of game design. You’ll find topics like creating puzzles, developing for a specific genre, and the psychology of the players themselves.

1. GDC Vault. The Game Developers Conference adds all the various talks and presentations from their events to their vault. These range from technical advice on how to develop specific ideas to wider trends and best practices.
2. The Level Design Book. This website covers everything about level design, starting from the theory to the actual tools you’ll need to get started. There’s even a section for specific assets and resources you can use.
3. Scroll back (the theory of cameras in side scrollers). This gigantic article could be a book all to itself. It covers everything you might want to know about how to use a camera in 2D games.
4. Pixel Architect. Dev diaries like these can be a useful way to see how to actually build your game. There are plenty to follow, but Pixel Architect is a particularly good start.
5. Design Doc. This channel answers the tricky, specific questions you might have about game design, focusing on the mechanics themselves. How do you stop people from hoarding items? Why add critical hits? What’s the point of fast travel?

1. The Architect of Games. While this channel seems to be about critiquing games with humour – it actually analyzes the actual game design decisions and explores the themes of the game in depth.
2. Brackeys. A huge channel of tutorials that also delves into the actual game design decisions behind that development. The only downside is that they shut down a few years ago, so some videos can be a little outdated.

Game development resources

At the heart of every game is the code itself. Even if you’re experienced with a programming language, you’re likely to bump into a few surprises when developing your game. Either way, there are tons of resources out there. And if you need an engine, consider the open-source Godot.

1. freeCodeCamp.org. If you want to learn to code, this is the channel to visit. They go deep into the practical and theory side and even have the full Harvard Computer Science University course as a 25-hour video. Yes, a Harvard University course – completely free.
2. Game Programming Patterns. Keeping your code clean and organised is a major challenge, so this free ebook teaches you the best practices.
3. Programming Patterns on Unity. Unity has released a similar guide around coding patterns and explaining how to use them inside Unity.
4. Ludum Dare. A twice-yearly game jam over a weekend. Not only is it inspiring, but it’s worth reading the posts from other developers as they delve into their process.
5. Introduction to Game Development with Unity. This Udemy tutorial is a perfect start for anyone looking to use Unity. You’ll see how to use cameras and objects, and understand the Unity interface.
6. GDQuest. If you want to get into Godot, then look no further than GDQuest. A huge treasure-trove of free tutorials that cover pretty much everything you need – even if you’re not going to use Godot.

1. Game Development Crash Course. Udemy also has a crash course about how to use the Solar2D game engine.
2. GitHub Student Developer Pack. Get your school enrolled, and you’ll be able to get access to real-world tools and practice using them. There’s a page about how to get your school involved.
3. Codeacademy game dev course. This four-hour introductory course will help you get the ball rolling and learn about game design and development.
4. LootLocker free guides. These step-by-step guides walk you through specific mechanics, particularly meta-mechanics like energy systems.

Game art free resources

Not all games need fantastic graphics to be a success. Vampire Survivors used assets that Luca Galante simply bought in a pack. There are also plenty of videos out there about how to draw pixel-art-style games. If you need a free tool, consider open-source tools like Gimp, Blender, or Krita.

1. Itch.io. There are thousands of free assets on itch.io, from character sprites to user-interface elements. Even if you only use them for inspiration, it’s a fantastic collection.
2. Kenney.nl. Not only can you get thousands of free 2D and 3D assets, there are loads of guides on how to edit them or create your own.
3. Blender Guru. If you’re looking to create slick 3D graphics, Blender Guru is the channel to follow. He offers guides and tutorials for beginners and advanced artists alike.

1. Polligon. Created by Blender Guru, you can find Blender textures, models and more in the free section.
2. CRTLpaint. This site has a bunch of free video series that teach you how to get into digital painting for yourself. From concept art to the principles of design. You can also follow their YouTube channel.
3. Proko. If you want to learn the basics of drawing, particularly characters, then this channel will help you get there.
4. 2DGameArtGuru. Learn all the most useful tools, such as Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. There are absolutely loads of tools here.

Music and sound-free resources

Your music can define the tone and atmosphere of your game. It’s vital to make your game come alive. These resources can help you produce that soundtrack, from composing your melody to putting it all together. If you need an open-source tool, check out Ardour, MuseScore (if you know sheet music), and Audacity.

1. Sonniss: Free archive. This is one of the biggest libraries of sound effects out there. Every year they give out free samples at GDC. This is the link to their 10GB archive of all those free sound effects.
2. Bensound. A huge collection of royalty-free music that you can filter and organise by mood.
3. Music Matters. If you’re completely new to music theory, this channel has tons of videos that will get you up to speed in no time.
4. Spitfire Audio. Not only does this channel talk you through music theory and crafting tracks from multiple instruments, but they also show the process behind actually composing a track from start to finish. They also have a free library of instrument samples called BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover.
5. Ryan Leach. Ryan creates videos about how to compose music for TV, film and games. He covers not only basic music theory, but how to easily turn that into an orchestral masterpiece.

Narrative game design resources

Storytelling and narrative design are quite different from writing a novel or script. You need to consider not only the character and plot, but what actions the player might take. It’s all about choices. If you need a tool to help you plan out your story’s flow, look into the open-source engine Twine.

1. Emily Short. This blog is a huge list of books and blogs that you should read if you want to learn about interactive narratives.
2. Screencraft: Write for video games. This article explores the various types of writing you might need to cover, from cut scenes to side quests.
3. Game Developer: Storytelling in games.This article is the first in a series that dives deep into what narrative design is and how to think about it.

Game marketing and monetization resources

Once you’ve developed your game, it’s time to start getting it out to the masses. Here are a few resources to help you get the word out.

1. Kickstarter: Tips for games. Unsurprisingly, Kickstarter has a section on their site about how to set up your project, entice people in, and get funded. A lot of the advice works well for your general marketing, too.
2. Helpshift’s marketing guide. Focused on mobile gaming, this ten-step guide walks you through what you need to do as well as in-depth case studies.

1. Game Marketing Genie. These guys have a great guide and overview about how to market your game, from understanding your competitors to using Steam.
2. AskGameDev. This channel has a specific playlist all about how to market your video game. There are 17 videos here that will surely help.
3. Steambase: If you want to research other games, Steambase is a really useful resource. It tracks Steam sales, so you can know when to best discount your own game.

How to keep track of gaming industry trends?

Not only is it important to market your game, but to keep an eye on trends in the industry. What’s working? What isn’t? Here are a few resources that can help you out.

1. GWI’s gaming playbook. This free report from GWI goes into the stats and figures that you need to know about the industry.
2. GameAnalytics. Our free tool can help you track and research your own game, but we can also give you insights into the industry.

When it comes to game and mobile app analytics, there are hundreds of metrics numbers to track. There are metrics like downloads, sessions, or DAUs on one end of the spectrum. These numbers are relatively straightforward and measure concrete actions. More complicated metrics include user churn or Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU). These are less intuitive to interpret and might raise more questions than answers.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all policy for game analytics, some useful metrics can help shed light on how you can improve your mobile game. To better understand how these metrics relate to each other and provide comprehensive insights into your game’s performance, we divide them into three main categories: engagement metrics, monetization metrics, and advertising metrics. Each category focuses on different aspects of player behavior, revenue generation, and marketing effectiveness, allowing you to optimize various avenues of your games.

Let’s dive into the first category.

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics refer to key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure how actively and deeply players interact with your game. These metrics provide insights into player behavior, preferences, and satisfaction levels, helping developers assess the efficiency of their game infrastructures, evaluate player engagement levels, and optimize their games to enhance players’ experiences to maximize their retention.

• DAU and MAU: The daily- and monthly active users ratio measures the percentage of monthly active users who engage with the game on a daily basis, providing insights into the game’s stickiness and popularity over time. A high DAU/MAU ratio indicates strong user retention and frequent engagement, while a low ratio may signal potential churn or disinterest among users.
• Retention: Retention tracks the number of players who continue to engage with the game over time, typically measured at various intervals such as day 1, day 7, and day 30. High retention rates mean players find your game compelling and will likely return. On the other hand, low retention rates suggest issues with gameplay, onboarding, or overall user experience.

Read more: Decoding players’ patterns with engagement tracing

• Playtime: Playtime refers to the total time players spend actively engaging with the game across all sessions. It provides insights into player engagement levels and the overall appeal of the game’s content and mechanics. Monitoring playtime can help developers identify popular game features, optimize gameplay experiences, and tailor content to meet player preferences.
• Session length: Session length measures the average duration of a single gaming session, indicating how long players typically play the game in one sitting. Longer session lengths suggest high player engagement and enjoyment, while shorter session lengths may indicate issues with pacing, content depth, or player frustration. Analyzing session length trends can help you fine-tune gameplay mechanics, level design, and progression systems to maximize player satisfaction and retention.
• Session count: Session count tracks the number of gaming sessions initiated by players within a defined timeframe, providing insights into player engagement frequency and habits. Higher session counts indicate strong player engagement and interest in the game, while lower session counts may signal waning interest or competing priorities. Understanding session count trends can help developers identify opportunities to enhance return visits, introduce new content, or enhance social features to keep players returning for more.
• Churn rate: Churn rate is when players stop engaging with the game over a specific period, indicating the number of players who churn or disengage. A high churn rate suggests issues with player retention and overall game satisfaction, while a low churn rate indicates strong player loyalty and satisfaction.

Read more: Retention Rate Secrets to Reduce User Churn

• Player count: Player count refers to the total number of players engaging with the game within a specified timeframe, providing insights into overall player interest and adoption.
• New users: New users represent players who have recently installed or started playing the game for the first time within a defined timeframe. Monitoring new user acquisition rates gives you insights into the game’s appeal to new audiences, the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and overall user acquisition trends.
• Installs ratio: The installs ratio compares the number of game installs to other relevant metrics, such as ad impressions or clicks, providing insights into user acquisition campaigns’ effectiveness and marketing channels’ effectiveness. A high install ratio indicates efficient user acquisition and conversion rates, while a low ratio may suggest inefficiencies or issues with campaign targeting, messaging, or creatives.

These metrics are crucial to developers who want to understand how the players engage with their games. But knowing how your games compare to the market is equally important. With data and insights from over 140,000 game studios and developers, GameAnalytics’ Benchmarks are a powerful ally for game developers. Further, our Store Intelligence provides insights into store rankings, including historical data. Both these tools are carefully packaged in a tool we call GameIntel, and their unlimited potential is a part of the Pro subscription.

The next category of metrics relates to a product or service’s financial performance, particularly in revenue generation.

Monetization metrics

Monetization metrics KPIs focus on assessing the effectiveness of in-game monetization strategies and measuring the revenue generated from player interactions. Some common monetization metrics that we offer in our analytics solutions include:

• Conversion rate: Conversion rate measures the percentage of players who take a desired action, such as making in-game purchases, subscribing to a premium service, or completing a specific level or task. A high conversion rate indicates effective monetization strategies and a players’ willingness to engage in these revenue-generating activities.
• ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): ARPU calculates the average revenue generated per user, providing insights into the overall monetization effectiveness of a game. By dividing total revenue by the total number of active users within a specified period, you can calculate the average value of each player and identify opportunities to increase revenue through targeted monetization efforts.
• ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User): ARPPU determines the average revenue generated per purchase user, excluding non-paying players from the calculation. It offers insights into the spending behavior and value of paying players, helping developers optimize pricing strategies, in-game offers, and monetization mechanics to maximize revenue from paying users.
• LTV (Lifetime Value): LTV estimates the total revenue generated by a player over their entire engagement with the game, including initial and recurring purchases. By forecasting the long-term value of players, you can prioritize user acquisition efforts, optimize retention strategies, and calculate the return on investment for marketing campaigns and user acquisition initiatives.
• IAP revenue (In-App Purchase Revenue): IAP revenue represents the total revenue generated from in-game purchases, including consumable items, virtual currency, expansion packs, and other digital goods.
• ILRD (IAP Lifetime Revenue per Download): ILRD measures the lifetime revenue generated per download from in-app purchases, indicating the revenue potential of each acquired user. These metrics allows you to understand the average revenue generated per user acquisition and evaluate the effectiveness of monetization strategies in converting downloads into revenue.

Advertising metrics

Advertising metrics evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising campaigns. In the context of game analytics, advertising metrics focus on assessing the performance of advertisements used to promote games and drive user acquisition. Some common advertising metrics include:

• CPC (Cost Per Click): CPC represents the average cost of each ad click, indicating the efficiency and effectiveness of ad campaigns in driving user engagement. Lower CPC values suggest more cost-effective advertising strategies and higher engagement rates among target audiences.
• CPI (Cost Per Install): CPI measures the average cost associated with acquiring a new user through an advertisement, providing insights into the efficiency and return on investment of user acquisition campaigns.
• CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): CPM calculates the cost per one thousand ad impressions, representing the cost advertisers pay for every thousand times their ad is displayed to users. It is a common pricing model used in online advertising, with higher CPM values indicating greater demand for ad inventory and potentially higher advertising revenue for publishers.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): CTR measures the percentage of users who click on an advertisement after viewing it, indicating the effectiveness of ad creatives, messaging, and placement in driving user engagement.
• Fraud Share: Fraud share represents the portion of ad clicks or impressions that are deemed fraudulent or invalid, often resulting from click bots, fraudulent traffic sources, or ad stacking techniques. Monitoring fraud share helps advertisers identify and mitigate fraudulent activities, protect advertising budgets, and ensure the accuracy and integrity of campaign performance data.

Both monetization and advertising data is available in our Benchmarks.

While there is no magic recipe for game analytics, the above metrics are standards that can help you get started in the world of analytics. The most important part of mobile game analytics is to get started and establish benchmarks for your own games. Once you understand how your users behave, you can measure things like the impact of a game update or changes to your user acquisition strategy.

If you like challenging yourself, we encourage you to explore advanced analytics concepts like segmentation, funnels, or custom events. GameAnalytics makes accessing this data easy and provides you with a set of actionable insights to help you optimize your games – no data scientist needed.

There’s a common misconception that cybercriminals only target big business. But small businesses are actually three times more likely to be a target than larger companies. From the hacker’s perspective, it’s easy pickings. Small businesses have less security and fewer safeguards in place to protect themselves.

But protecting yourself isn’t necessarily hard. Not if you’re aware of the techniques hackers use. So, with data breaches becoming increasingly common in the news, we thought we’d give a little advice about how to protect yourself.

How do hackers attack game developers?

It’s not just your game that hackers might target. They could target your business and infrastructure, too. That’s why it’s important to think about how your game, backend systems, and internal tools link all together – especially if you’re making a multiplayer game.

For example, if you’re a small developer, you might decide to host your multiplayer matches on your own servers. But if those are the same servers where you store your player database, filled with usernames and passwords, you’re making it easy to find that data.

Social engineering is the biggest threat

Research from CS Hub found that social engineering is the number one business threat. This is just a fancy way of saying that the easiest way to hack someone is to trick the people themselves – your players or your employees. In other words, if you want to break into a vault, it’s far easier to get the manager to open the door for you than to drill your way in.

Hackers will go to extreme lengths to trick you. It might be as simple as an email that looks like it’s from one of your tools. Or it might be complicated. For example, they might look at your CEO’s Facebook page, hack their daughter’s account, and send a message from her asking for information that could help them guess a password.

Eventually, they could end up being able to send emails directly from the CEO’s personal account. Would you question an email from your boss telling you to send you an access code? Probably not. But you should.

Exploiting your game

Hackers can either look at your game code directly, try to inject code, or just generate random inputs until they strike lucky. This is usually fine in a single-player game, where spawning in an item doesn’t matter. But in a multiplayer game, where there might be real-world value to those items – it can be a serious problem.

Admin commands are particularly juicy for hackers. If you’re running an MMO, those admins might have tools to block players, reset passwords, or see people’s real names. Having those commands could help them trick a player or even blackmail them.

Targeting your infrastructure

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is where a hacker will send thousands – if not millions – of commands at your servers in a hope to overload them and make them crash.

At the very least, it can be irritating. Your game falls down and you lose revenue. But hackers might also use it to blackmail you by holding your game hostage.

They could target your file storage, your databases, your employee’s laptops, your emails – everything around your game.

Protecting your game from hackers

Most security experts tout one rule: Zero trust. Approach everything with scepticism. Do that, and you’re far less likely to succumb to trickery.

Teach staff and players about social engineering

Education is key. If people know the techniques hackers might use, they often think twice before giving away valuable information. They question whether that email is legitimate or whether they should really be giving that code they were texted to the person on the other end of the phone.

Obviously, it’s far easier to teach your staff. But you want to educate players, too. If you have an in-game chat function, remind players that you’ll never ask them for their password. Or to never tell anybody the two-factor authentication code you just sent.

Source: The Sun / Epic Games

Check through another medium

Now that your people are familiar with the types of attack, they will hopefully avoid giving out sensitive information. But what if your CEO really does need that access code?

Simple. Check using another communication tool. Give them a ring or set up a video call. That way, you’ve got proof it’s actually them asking for the information.

Make sure every layer of encryption is strong

It’s all well and good to have super strong encryption on your player database. But it’s all for nothing if someone’s email is just “password123”. There’s a reason “the weakest link” is a common phrase.

Keep everything up to date

As tempting as it is to hit “remind me later” whenever you get a popup for an update, just update it. Whether it’s your operating system, your game engine, or some third-party plug-in you’re using. Make sure everything is up to date.

Test your game for exploits

Try breaking your own game. Think like a hacker and see if you can summon items, use admin commands or launch services. Generate random inputs and try to inject code into every text box you have.

You can even offer rewards to players if they find bugs. Sure, most of those might not have any serious ramifications. But some might.

Hide sensitive code from the client-side image

Put blockers in place to stop hackers from directly seeing the code that’s requesting information. And make sure the data itself is encrypted. For example, if you need to call on a player database to get their name, don’t call it directly from the player’s image. Otherwise, the hacker could find out what service you’re calling and even get the IP address of the database.

Instead, call the server-side image and get it to do the heavy lifting. It can then encrypt the specific data and send it back to the player. Even if they break the encryption, they don’t get access to the database itself.

Keep your data safe with DataSuite

If you’re collecting and storing analytics data from lots of different sources, you probably want a data warehouse. With DataSuite, we host and keep all that data secure on our servers. And we never share it with any third-parties, so you have total control over it. Read more about DataSuite and see if it’ll work for you.

Data is the key to success in the ever-evolving landscape of game development. Explore this guide to transform your data into insights using our turn-key data solutions.

What’s inside?

Our comprehensive guide explores cost-saving strategies and real-world applications for advanced use cases. Learn how to seamlessly integrate data sources, unlock detailed player insights with Player Warehouse, access real-time data with Raw Export, and ensure data privacy compliance.

Discord is rapidly becoming the gamer social media channel. It’s the go-to platform for developers wanting to build a community. And it’s no surprise – players already use it to chat with their friends while playing games. Discord is the perfect space to add more content and engage with people.

But what exactly should your Discord server look like? How do you build that community? How do you keep it vibrant and active? It all comes down to five steps.

Step 1: Get familiar with the types of channel

Okay, you’re raring to go. You’ve signed up, given your server a name, and maybe even uploaded an image to ensure it stands out. Now what?

Well, first of all, you can make two types of servers: a private server or a community server. You’re going to want the latter. This gives you some extra options regarding channel types (and a few other features we’ll explore later).

The five types of channels are:

1. Text. This is the default. It’s what you expect.
2. Voice. A virtual conference room. You can also stream video and use your camera. Good times.
3. Forum. Like a regular forum, people can post topics and keep it all together. These are particularly useful for FAQs and feature requests.
4. Announcement. These are where you can post updates, but people can also follow them to post on their own servers.
5. Stage. These are a special kind of voice channel for significant events, where you want a few speakers and a big audience. They’re best for those AMAs, fireside chats, or webinars.

The best Discord servers are the ones that use a good mix of these types.

Step 2: Organize your server

Now that you know the difference between the channel types, you must decide what channels you need. And how to organize them. There’s not only one right way to group them, but generally, you’ll want sections like support, internal, general chat, beta testing, announcements, and in-game advice.

Whatever your structure, there are a few specific channels you should include:

1. Welcome. A holding channel where newbies can say hello and get to know the community.
2. Rules and guidelines. Your second channel should typically have your community rules to ensure everyone is on the same page. Make sure you fill this out before you go live. If you need a starting point, we recommend checking out Discord’s rules. (You’ll need to follow these anyway.)
3. General chat. This is typically an off-topic channel for general chit-chat.
4. Play together. If your game is multiplayer, having a channel where people can find a squad and team up is useful. It is particularly useful for games with specific roles, like Overwatch or World of Warcraft – where you might be looking for a healer.
5. Announcements. You’ll want at least one channel where you can post updates about your game.
6. Support. You want a place where people can ask for help. You might want to split this into bug reports and general help or have separate channels for different aspects of your game – like game modes.
7. FAQ. This makes a good forum channel. You can have each FAQ as a separate post. The fact that the forum channels have in-build search and tags makes this much easier to use than a regular text channel. As part of your FAQ, consider whether you should include in-game tips and tricks or tutorials.
8. Feedback and feature requests. This is another channel which is best as a forum. You can let people post ideas and even tag them. Just make sure you keep an eye on the channel and incorporate the most popular changes (or explain why you’re not going to).
9. Beta testing. Getting your community involved in your beta testing is a great way to engage with your players. But you’ll want to have a private channel for those players so they can discuss their feedback with you.
10. A community update channel. This is where you’ll get Discord updates relevant to your admins and moderators. (You’ll need this once you’ve turned your server into a community server.)

Those are the main channels that you should definitely include. But it’s worth getting your team together and brainstorming other channels specific to your game. For example, do you have players in lots of regions? Maybe you need to separate those out?

Step 3: Set up your roles

Once you’ve decided on your channels and overall structure, it’s time to think about the roles you’ll have. This should be pretty simple – your typical admin, mods, and general – but you also have an opportunity to create a bit of friendly rivalry or prestige.

For example, if your game has factions – like the Horde and Alliance in World of Warcraft or the houses in Harry Potter – you might consider letting players pick a side. Maybe you even lock certain channels to certain factions so they can plot and scheme against their rivals.

Or maybe you want to uplift particular players. People who are part of your Patron or are content creators might get a special role with a few extra benefits. Maybe they get a special flair they can use or you add them to a monthly prize draw.

Step 4: Convert to a community server

With your basic server set up, it’s time to turn it into a community server. A community server gives you extra functionality (like being able to make those forum channels or getting data insights once you hit 500 members). And – when you’re big enough (10,000 members) – you can even get listed in the public discovery section in Discord.

You can turn your server into a community server by going into the server settings, heading down to community, and clicking on “Enable Community.”

As you go through the process, there are a few channels that Discord makes sure you have. You can either create new channels for these or pick from ones you’ve already created. It’ll also ask you to set default channels that people will see. For now, make sure you don’t hide your channels away.

Create a welcome screen

With your community server set up, it’s time to add a bit of onboarding. If you have a lot of channels and users, it can be a bit overwhelming for newbies. So Discord offers a welcome screen – you pick a few key channels based on common activities and send people straight to those.

This helps get people past that ‘choice paralysis’ that can happen if you just open a new server with a hundred different channels. Just write in your description, pick the top four activities that people might want to do and then link to the relevant channels.

Let people customize their experience

Discord also offers customization options for community servers. Most servers miss this nifty feature, but it’s a really useful way of making sure that people only see the channels they care about. (And join the right roles.)

It’s a simple questionnaire where the results decide which channels you see and the roles you join. It can be a great way to make sure that players in – say – Europe, get added to the Europe channel, rather than the USA channel. In fact, PUBG Mobile uses it really well.

In this example, it’s a pick-as-many-as-you-like situation. Players can choose everything if they want. But if they don’t click, they won’t see those channels. They’ll only be added to the ones they actually care about.

We also particularly like how inclusive PUBG made their server, going so far as to include pronoun preferences as a role.

This is a single-select option. Here, they’ve used it to decide which of these three roles a player wants assigned to them. But you could easily do the same with your game’s factions.

Don’t hide your channels

One mistake that people can make when setting up their server is having too many hidden channels. If you don’t make a channel default, people are unlikely to find it. That’s because most people won’t click the “channels” button at the top of the list and browse all the hidden ones to turn them on. They’ll just accept the status quo.

This is where the questionnaire can be really helpful. If you do find you have loads of channels, either make sure you set them as a default channel or that you’ve at least got a question in your onboarding steps about that channel.

Step 5: Keep engaged

Now you’ve got everything set up, it’s time to actually start building your community. The key here is to make sure you’ve regularly got an excuse to engage with your community. There are a few ways you can do that.

1. Run Q&As. Set up a Stage channel and host a fireside chat or something every week. Let players chat with your lead developer and answer questions.
2. Host in-game events. Set up a channel and set up a tournament. Do prize draws. Set a daily challenge. Depending on your game, there are plenty of ways to get people playing your game slightly differently.
3. Promote content creators and fan artwork. If you start getting YouTubers or Twitch streamers regularly creating content around your game, make sure you set up an announcement channel so people can follow their content. You could even give them special roles. Likewise, if you’re getting a lot of fan art, set up a separate channel to showcase it all.
4. Add bots for more fun. We won’t get into all the different bots that you can add to Discord. But there are loads to choose from, including games like Truth or Dare or dice-rolling tools. Maybe you could even set up a role-playing channel?
5. Hire a community manager. At this point, with all these activities. You’re going to need someone to be keeping an eye on everything. They’ll need to host these events, gather the feedback to send to the rest of your team, and generally field questions.

Stay in the loop

With that, hopefully, you’ll have a great bedrock on which your community can grow. If you’d like to keep up to date with our own news, sign up for our newsletter and make sure you never miss a blog.

This event design guide is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to make the most out of their data within GameAnalytics.

Data tracking is complex, requiring meticulous effort to ensure that downstream data is valuable. This guide introduces you to the concept of a ‘Tracking Plan’, a strategic document that helps bridge the gap between data collection and analysis.

What’s Inside?

1. Brainstorm Your Burning Questions: Identify key game-related questions to guide your data tracking.
2. Create Your Events: Learn to design trackable events for thorough data collection.
3. Define Your Dimensions and Attributes: Understand the role of dimensions and attributes in enriching your data.
4. Plug in Your Game: Integrate your game with the tracking plan to gather meaningful data.
5. Keep Updating Your Plan: Emphasizes the necessity of adapting your plan to remain valuable.

By following this guide, you will develop a comprehensive, adaptable data tracking plan that ensures robust, valuable data for precise analysis and better insights within GameAnalytics.

Learn how successful publishers evaluate hundreds of games per month, to find the next hit game.

What’s inside?

One of the questions we get most often at GameAnalytics is: “How does [super successful publisher] evaluate hundreds of games and find hit after hit? We want to do the same thing!”.

The short answer: in-house data tools, which is exactly what we go over in this report. What the best setup is, key techniques you can use, and how to get started.

The goal of marketing your mobile game? Drive awareness and increase installs. It sounds simple when you narrow it down to that. But there’s a world of tools and techniques you’ll need to research to get it done right.

The mobile games industry is a vast one, filled with thousands of games. And making yours stand out is just half the battle. So to give you a fighting chance, we’re rounded up the best articles and resources for you to get started.

Let’s dig in.

First off, understand your audience

Before you even consider sorting your marketing strategy, you need to know who you’re selling to. Sure, you made the game – so you should have an idea of who your audience is. But you’ll need to understand exactly what your players’ motivations are and why they’ll want to play your game.

Here’s what we recommend reading:

1. Research the eight most common player motivations

This article is an in-depth breakdown of the eight most common player motivations for mobile games. From competitive play to relaxation, Will Freeman explains what motivates players and how to adapt your game to entice different players.

Photo by Pandhuya Niking on Unsplash 

2. Read up on the Bartle Player Taxonomy

The Bartle Player Taxonomy looks at the psychology of players, and classifies them based on what actions they take while they play. It’s based on a paper written by Richard Bartle back in 1996. And it’s a great place to start when learning more about the motivations of your players.

Market your game during your soft launch

Soft launching your game not only helps you perfect your levels and squash bugs, it also helps build a loyal following and gets people chatting about your game before you even launch. Here’s what you can do:

1. Learn from the best

We analysed three real-life examples where developers successfully built a community before launching their game. It’s filled to the brim with useful insights and tips from some of the most popular developers, and should give you some inspiration for your own game.

2. Create a press kit for journalists

Contacting the press and asking journalists to review your game is always a good shout. They can raise awareness and get players searching for your game, which will boost your organic installs. But you don’t want to just send them a game key to play. You need to convince them to try it out first. So here’s how create the perfect press kit.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

3. Perfect your email marketing strategy

This is something you can do early on. Once you have a following, a great way to keep your loyal players keen is by sending regular updates on your progress. Ask their opinions, get them to vote for new features, or just send news as and when you have it. Here’s a breakdown of how to do it well.

4. Start shouting on social

Build relationships with your audience through social media. Answer their questions, share their art, keep them updated, and interact with them – regularly. Depending on your game, you can even create a fanbase.

Our friends at Adjust wrote a guide for social media marketing. And the experts at Megacool have some advice around gif sharing, too.

5. Get social media influencers to create some hype

Influencers are always looking for early access to new games. Their viewers love this type of content, and regular watch streams and reviews to find the next best game to try out. You can reach out and give influencers game keys and special discount promotions for their subscribers. The developers of Stumble Guys did this brilliantly. You could even argue that this played a big part in their success.

A lot of developers do this. The crew at Matchmade put together a couple of guides to help you stand out and find the right influencers to work with. Here’s part one of their series. And when you’re done, make sure to head on to part two.

Tidy up your game’s store page

Your App Store listing is like the front of your shop. And the last thing you want is someone walking past your window. So it needs to grab people’s attention. A bad icon, boring copy, or dull pictures can drive potential players away. Here’s how to avoid that:

1. Find your niche

The big publishers will always have an advantage over you. They have an ecosystem of players, years of experience, and an abundance of budget. So how do you compete? You can find a niche.

That’s what Platonic Games did. They found a gap in the market by researching keywords on the App Stores. And they built a unique community and following, which they actively engage with. Here’s how they did it.

2. Get advice from the best

We’ve spoken to a few different experts and publishers on how they perfect their app store listing. They all have valuable advice on how to do this right.

Games’ journalist, Jupiter Hadley, chatted to a few industry pros and rounded up her findings. And TapNation also shared their experience and top tips to reaching the top charts.

3. Sell your game with your words

The devil’s in the details. You’re competing with every other game listed on the stores. So you want to make sure you excite any new players with your words. Boring language can be such a turn off.

We asked professional copywriter and editor, Emma Wilkin, for her best tips on writing copy that sells. And she rounded up all of her advice for you. It’s definitely worth a read.

4. Perfect your creatives

The words are only half the work. Your images and trailers will show your players what your game is all about. You should never judge a book by its cover, but players will always judge your game by how it looks.

The first resource we have to help get your creatives in order is from Homa Games. They wrote a report on optimizing app store images. This is mainly for hyper-casual games, but a lot of the rules apply to other genres, too.

Another article to read is Nathan Lovato’s guide to game trailers. He covers the dos and don’ts to crafting brilliant game trailers, which you can use on your store page.

Nail your user acquisition

Lastly, you need to think about your user acquisition strategy. Which networks to work with, how to get the best ad creatives, and how to lower your cost-per-install (CPI). Here are the top articles we’ve done:

1. Read up on how in-game advertising works

Sounds silly. But perfecting your ad and user acquisition strategy is a beast of its own. Ideally, you’ll have a couple of experts in your team – reviewing campaigns, lowering your CPI, and increasing your player’s LTV.

To get you started, you’ll first want to get familiar with the industry terminology. We’ve also got a beginner’s guide to header bidding and ad mediation, which should cover the basics.

2. Get creative with your ad creatives

We’ve got a breakdown of the top ad creative strategies to help you get new players in your game. It breaks down all of the different ad types, when to use them, and shows real life examples from leading studios. We have a specific guide to perfecting playable ads, too.

3. Research the best ad networks

There are plenty of ad networks to choose from. Tenjin actually released a report on the top ad networks in 2022. They focus on hyper-casual, but it should give you an idea what to look for when picking your own.

Think we missed something?

Get in touch, and we’ll add it to the list. And if you enjoyed this article, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter (form below). We’ll keep you updated with the last industry news and guides.

We’ve been getting our research on, and looking into the metrics behind successful hyper-casual games. You can read our full findings here. But just in case you’re too busy for that, we’ve put together this post to give you the need-to-knows.

What’s the research about?

Using data from our network of games, we’ve broken down the top KPIs (key performance indicators – basically measurements of performance) that developers of hyper-casual games should be aiming for, by sub-genre. You can use these to benchmark your own games against some of the best games, and learn just whereabouts you sit within the industry.

But before we do, here’s an idea of how much data we’re handling in GameIntel.

Our network stats for Benchmarks+

• All-time integrated games: 140k+
• Games tagged with sub-genres: 150K+
• Cross-title monthly players: 2b+
• Average monthly sessions: 20b+

Network stats for Game Explorer

• Data from top ranked games featured: 321k+
• Game-specific contextual tags: 500+

In short, we have a mixture of aggregated data from our portfolio games that we collect from GameAnalytics, and data we scrape from the App Stores. For the latter, we’ve layered and combined this with our own aggregated data and tagged over 200k games with contextual points. There’s a lot more info around this here.

What are the hyper-casual sub-genres we’re looking at?

• Timing: These games are all about precision like timing jumps or hitting a ball. So it’s titles like Fun Race 3D, Crossy Road, Splashy!, and Color Switch.
• Traversal: This genre of games relies on players’ reflexes and getting them to swipe left or right, for example, dodge objects or run through a jungle. It includes games like Color Road!, Pixel Rush, and High Heels!.
• Physics: These usually involve an object (like a ball) either rising or falling through obstacles. Examples include Helix Jump, Stack Ball 3D, and Stack Fall.
• Shooting: Logic is your player’s best friend for these games. They often involve moving objects around the screen or aiming at a moving item. Think Stealth Master, Pocket Sniper!, and Knock’em All.

The results in numbers

Here’s a snapshot of the figures from the top 5% of best-performing games. You can find the exact numbers in the report.

Health metrics

• Day 1 retention looks at how many players come back after one day of playing a game. The winner in this category was timing at 44%. And the rest were around the 40% mark.
• Day 7 retention looks at how many come back after seven days. Here shooting had the edge at 17%. The rest were just below 15%.
• Playtime is the total time a user spends playing a game each day (combining all sessions). The shooting came out on top here as well at 45 minutes.

Monetization metrics

Timing was the winner when it came to monetization with an ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) of $42, ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user) of $0.15, and conversion rate (the percentage of users who made a purchase that day) of 0.94%. The other sub-genres results varied, but you can get the full rundown in the report.

Winning countries

The best day one retention came from France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, who tied on 49%.

Best day 7 retention had Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan at the top with 19%. And the best playtime was in Japan at 63 minutes. We also looked at some other countries inside, specifically the USA and China (although they didn’t quite make it to the top for the casual genre…).

Superstar 2020 games

We’ve gone into a lot more detail in the report. But for now, the top games in each genre in 2020 were:

• timing – Slap Kings from Lion Studios with a performance score of 43,420
• traversal – High Heels! by Zynga Inc. which scored 48,383 (you can read more about High Heels! in the full report)
• physics – Demolish! from Voodoo with 36,449
• shooting – Stealth Master by SayGames LLC with 39,732.

FYI – performance score is basically a score we give to each game based on many things, like their ranking, ratings, how long they were in the top charts, and how many countries they rank in to.

How to make a successful hyper-casual game

We’ve crunched those numbers and used them to develop three bits of advice to help you build a super-popular hyper-casual game.

1. Keep it short, simple, and satisfying

Short, so someone can play your game while standing in a queue. Simple, so anyone can start playing without any instructions. And satisfying, so you give them a reason to come back.

2. Make sure the gameplay is forgiving

Don’t make your game too tricky. Think about offering multiple lives or rewards – some games even make it impossible for players to lose. Remember that your players are looking for a quick, easy, and fun game to fill their time. Make it too harsh, and they might move on to something else.

3. Know when to cut your losses

Any hyper-casual game with a day 1 retention rate lower than 40% probably isn’t doing well. Depending on where you are in your development process, you can either run quick sprints to roll out more iterations, improve your stats, or go back to the drawing board. You’ll want to start with high-impact, low-effort tweaks for each sprint – otherwise, you might spend weeks working on a game that people just don’t want to play.

Want to know more?

If you want even more data, you can read the full report or try GameIntel – ranking data, market insights, and accurate performance estimations powered by GameAnalytics (it’s free to sign up). And if you fancy learning more about the industry, have a read through our Tower Defense report.

Making a game is one thing. An impressive, creative and wonderful thing. But a game really comes to life when it is released to players. Being played is a game’s reason to be – and the vital step in starting to generate revenues that let your studio grow, or allow you to begin work on your next title.

As such, getting the release of a game right is about as important as it gets. And in today’s connected era where titles so commonly exist as live, maintained entities, releasing is now about a lot more than making it available for sale.

With all that in mind, we’ve built up a checklist of all the things you need to consider before releasing your games. It’s a list that considers quality, performance, marketing, monetisation and more. Bear in mind that many of these elements take time and planning, so start to think about your release strategy long before wrapping up development happens.

1. Test Everything

Certainly, testing should be about ensuring they meet a certain quality bar – and you are very likely already carefully considering how to test your game’s fundamental performance and user experience. But testing doesn’t stop with squashing bugs. Consider that you can test how players feel the art style works as a compliment to the genre. It can be extremely helpful to test how the theme lands with players, or how subtly different themes connect with and engage your target audience.

It can be extremely helpful to ‘test’ your game against other success stories in the same genre of category by deconstructing those titles and seeing how they compare – so analyse their mechanical design, theming, monetization and release. You can even test your testing; feedback testing will let you understand why players have offered the insight they have. Testing is ultimately a mindset that can be applied to almost any element of your game.

2. Know Your Metrics – and Competitors

If you are to gauge the performance and impact of your game on release, you need a standard to compare it to. Before your release, analyse key performance indicators from a range of games that share the same genre, theme or even monetization model – these will let you understand what ‘success’ looks like. You should certainly check out our guide to hyper-casual metrics if you are working in that space – and it provides insight into the broad process as applied to any genre. Also consider your capacity and budget for promoting and servicing the game as part of that process.

Your studio and EA might have both made a football game, for example, but if they have scale and resources you don’t, a comparison of revenues and marketing strategy might not be meaningful. If you can find similar games by studios of a comparable size, they will offer far more relevant metrics. If those studios appear to be competitors, research how they have released and promoted a game. Our recently launched mobile intelligence platform GameIntel offers a remarkably impactful means to understand your metrics, rivals, the market around you, and much more besides.

3. Pick the Right Monetization Model

The golden rule of successfully matching monetization and gameplay is to build your chosen monetisation model into your game design from the start – perhaps at the earliest prototypes or documentation. Your monetization model’s depth of integration may be key to your success.

It may be wise to resist grand changes, but constantly consider how complementary the match is as you continue to develop your game, and keep an eye on evolutions and developments in monetization. If you’ve opted for an ad-based free-to-play model, for example, and later realise you want to integrate ads contextually into the game world rather than have video ads run, have that thoroughly implemented and tested before release day dawns.

4. Get Your Marketing in Place

You’ll want press or influencer coverage around the release date of your games (because both those groups tend to prefer covering recent and new releases) – meaning you’ll need to get marketing materials ready in advance. Screenshots, gameplay videos, dev blogs, gifs, video and banner ads, store page details and studio profile copy all works here. For a reliable example of what assets and content you need to offer press, influencers and others, we’ve penned a thorough guide to getting your ‘press kit’ right.

You can also build a schedule in advance for social media campaigns. Simply put, different audiences are attracted to different content, so get a broad range out there – video content, written content, social media and so on.

5. Backend Matters

If you have any kind of multiplayer, leaderboards or other online elements, you need a robust backend. You also want to have everything in place for complaints and bug reporting, and be sure that when the time for updates and additional content comes, your backend will be up to the job. The brave can try building their own, but it will likely be better to consider how to pick the right option from backends provided as services

Other Considerations

• If you are releasing in multiple countries, make sure you understand the legal requirements and app store processes for each nation.
• Create a plan for testing the game regularly when live. Monitor how the price of in-app purchase items are impacting sales, and how content updates succeed or fail.
• Test your tutorial with players that are not familiar with your game, and make sure it not only makes sense, but gets players to a point where they stay with your game after the handholding ends. With so many games for players to choose from, smooth onboarding can be make-or-break in terms of your success.
• Make your game as accessible as possible to as many players as possible. Supporting those with visual impairment or hearing limitations can bring in a sizable new audience. And games should be for everyone!
• Have in place a clear roadmap (a plan) for the months and years following release. When will you deliver updates, add content or even release the sequel?
• Make sure all the written copy in your game has been thoroughly edited and proofread for errors. Do that twice if you can. Try to avoid proofing and editing your own copy – a ‘second pair of eyes’ will almost always pick up stuff you won’t.
• Check your calendar. You may want to avoid releasing your game on the same day as any major title – even far from your own genre or platform – so as to not be overshadowed in terms of what gets attention. The same can be true of releasing amidst the news storm of E3 or GDC.

That covers the fundamentals, and you can find plenty more specific insight across our blog. If your release is far away, keep this list in mind so you can refer to it when needed.

And we’ll give GameIntel one more nod here. It can help with a range of the strategies listed above, and particularly with building metrics, understanding rival games, analysing mobile gaming trends and changing user preferences. It even offers tremendous power as an ideation tool. GameIntel is available via a range of generous payment plans, keeping it accessible and powerful for developers of every kind.