This article was originally published on the TapNation’s blog.

Mobile gaming has become a thriving industry, with a multitude of games vying for the attention of players. In this competitive landscape, mobile game publishers bridge the gap between game developers and their target audience. They are the ultimate pirates that will launch your games and scale them to new heights.

Mobile game publishers serve as a vital link in the gaming ecosystem. They offer assistance in various areas, such as financing, scaling, distribution, and monetization. Their expertise and resources can significantly impact a game’s success in the market, whether domestic or international.

Benefits of Working with a Publisher

Partnering with a mobile game publisher brings a multitude of benefits to developers. Publishers provide access to industry expertise and market knowledge, offering invaluable insights that can shape the trajectory of a game. Moreover, their vast network of industry contacts facilitates effective promotion and marketing, increasing the visibility of the game among the target audience. Additionally, publishers offer resources for quality assurance, user acquisition, and localization, enabling developers to navigate these crucial aspects with ease. Furthermore, publishers provide technical support, helping developers overcome complex development challenges and ensuring the smooth performance of their games.

1. Game Development

The development phase of a game is where publishers play a pivotal role. They assist developers in refining game concepts and identifying market opportunities, leveraging their experience and market insights to enhance the game’s potential for success. Throughout the development process, publishers provide ongoing support and feedback, acting as a guiding hand to ensure that the game meets industry standards and resonates with the target audience. Moreover, publishers offer assistance with localization for international markets, enabling games to cater to a global audience. Additionally, their technical support can help overcome any development challenges to ensure the game functions hassle-free.

2. Monetization Strategies

Effective monetization is essential for the success of a mobile game, and publishers come in very handy in this aspect. They assist developers in choosing the right monetization model, whether it’s freemium, ad-supported, or others, based on the game’s unique characteristics and target audience. Furthermore, publishers help optimize IAP (in-app purchase) pricing and placement, maximizing the game’s revenue potential. Integrating ad networks and implementing rewarded video ads are also part of the strategies publishers employ to enhance the game’s monetization. Moreover, publishers explore partnerships, licensing deals, and IP exploitation to further bolster the game’s financial prospects.

3. Marketing & Promotion

Marketing and promotion are vital components of a game’s success, and publishers excel in this area. They create captivating trailers and gameplay videos that entice potential players, along with designing eye-catching app store assets such as icons, creatives, screenshots, and banners to make the game stand out. Moreover, publishers leverage social media platforms to generate buzz and excitement around the game, engaging with the gaming community to build anticipation. Additionally, they can also forge influencer partnerships for sponsored content promotion, leveraging the reach and influence of popular gaming personalities. Furthermore, publishers organize press events and participate in gaming conventions to garner media coverage and increase the game’s visibility.

Tips on How to Approach a Mobile Game Publisher

When seeking to partner with a mobile game publisher, developers should conduct thorough research to identify publishers aligned with their game’s genre and target audience. It’s essential to prepare a compelling pitch that highlights the USP’s (unique selling point) of the game. This helps to effectively convey its value proposition. If feasible, developers should develop a playable prototype to provide publishers with a tangible experience of the game. Networking and attending industry events are also valuable, as they allow developers to build relationships with potential publishing partners. Lastly, outlining a comprehensive business plan encompassing the development timeline and revenue projections is crucial for presenting a clear vision of the game’s potential.

Conclusion

In conclusion, mobile game publishers are key to making your game successful. Their range of services, expertise, industry connections, and support throughout the development process contribute significantly to a game’s potential to be a hit amongst players. By partnering with a mobile game publisher, developers can make use of these resources and capabilities to monetize and market their games. They also aid in increasing their visibility, appeal, and ultimately, their success in the competitive mobile gaming market.

TapNation is one such mobile gaming publisher that has released 100+ games and generated more than 1 billion downloads! Our ambition is to lead the way in a high-growth market that helps developers take their games to the next level.

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Statista forecasts that the global mobile game market will produce revenues of US $98.74 billion in 2024, with anticipated growth in subsequent years. The growing revenue signifies more competition and higher stakes than ever before. That’s why it’s important to allocate your marketing budget effectively. Selecting the adequate mobile measurement partner (MMP) can help you invest every dollar wisely with powerful data-driven insights to optimize your return on investment (ROI).

In this post, we’ll explore why choosing the right MMP is crucial for your game’s growth and how to select the best MMP to maximize your success. Airbridge is here to guide you through this process.

Why you should use an MMP

In today’s fast-evolving mobile marketing landscape, relying solely on a handful of advertising platforms is no longer sufficient. A diverse game market demands an all-encompassing strategy to identify the most effective ones among a wide range of channels within a limited timeframe.

MMPs simplify this process by integrating multiple advertising networks through a single Software Development Kit (SDK). This integration allows for centralized management of all ad campaigns, eases monitoring of various publishers, and facilitates quick marketing performance analysis through an MMP dashboard.

Moreover, MMPs act as fair intermediaries between advertisers and publishers, providing transparent and verifiable data that reflects the true value of each marketing channel. Such impartiality is necessary for accurate measurement and optimization of ad spend.

Considering the challenges and resources required to implement MMPs, it is pivotal to make an informed choice. The MMP checklist provided below will help you select the MMP that best aligns with your company’s needs.

Checklist: Evaluating an MMP for games

1. Unified cross-platform user journey tracking

The shift towards cross-platform gaming has significantly accelerated in the industry. ‘Cross-platform’ gaming enables players to seamlessly switch between various devices, such as PCs, gaming consoles, and mobile devices. This flexibility greatly enhances the appeal of your game, allowing players to enjoy their favorite titles anytime, anywhere. An MMP that offers extensive tracking capabilities is essential for understanding user engagement across all platforms, providing a holistic view of player interactions.

When choosing an MMP, it’s critical to ensure it can effectively track performance across all the platforms your game is available on, including iOS, Android, and the Web. Airbridge distinguishes itself in this area by providing cross-platform marketing measurement tools for mobile, web, and PC, facilitating a comprehensive insight into your game’s growth trajectory.

Airbridge’s integration of both Web SDK and App SDK enables the collection of data across different platforms, streamlining the process of monitoring app and web attribution performance through a unified Airbridge ID. This capability is invaluable for marketers looking to accurately measure the success of their games and understand the user experience at every touchpoint.

2. Convenient and complete data pipeline with raw data

MMPs play a pivotal role in tracking user interactions and conversions, a foundational aspect of successful mobile advertising campaigns. One key feature of an effective MMP is the ability to not only collect but also provide easy access to raw data through the MMP dashboard. This raw data is invaluable for advertisers seeking to conduct in-depth analyses or integrate this information with their existing databases for a thorough view of their marketing efforts. It’s crucial to partner with an MMP like Airbridge that offers flexible, user-friendly options for exporting this raw data, ensuring marketers can leverage their insights to the fullest extent.

Furthermore, in the competitive realm of mobile gaming, retargeting campaigns based on precise audience segmentation can significantly boost engagement rates. Effective segmentation allows marketers to categorize users based on specific actions or traits, facilitating the delivery of highly relevant ads. Airbridge enhances this process by enabling marketers to seamlessly create cohorts and execute targeted campaigns that resonate with users’ behaviors and preferences, thereby increasing the likelihood of desired actions. This strategic approach not only optimizes ad spend but also elevates the overall user experience.

Airbridge’s complete data pipeline and robust segmentation capabilities provide a solid foundation for advertisers aiming to maximize their impact. By offering convenient access to raw data and sophisticated audience segmentation tools, Airbridge empowers marketers to unlock new levels of precision and effectiveness in their campaigns.

3. Optimizing marketing through metric monitoring

Game marketers have the opportunity to significantly refine their user acquisition and retention efforts by harnessing the power of data-driven insights available through MMPs. It’s essential to partner with an MMP that not only gathers comprehensive data but also presents detailed analytics and reports tailored for campaign optimization.

Immediate access to critical metrics via the MMP’s dashboard can greatly streamline the evaluation of marketing performance, offering a considerable advantage in time efficiency. Airbridge distinguishes itself by providing calculated metrics directly on its dashboard, including Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Install (CPI), and notably, Predictive Lifetime Value (pLTV). These metrics are pivotal for understanding different facets of marketing effectiveness, from immediate campaign costs to long-term revenue forecasts.

Ensuring your MMP provides a full suite of metrics is crucial for a well-rounded analysis of your marketing activities. A broad spectrum of metrics allows for an integrated assessment, empowering marketers to pinpoint areas of success and opportunities for optimization.

4. Fraud prevention

Ad fraud still represents a major challenge in mobile marketing, costing advertisers billions of dollars annually. As mobile ad spending continues to rise, the urgency of addressing ad fraud intensifies.

It is vital for MMPs to possess robust capabilities to combat ad fraud effectively. Airbridge stands out by proactively identifying and mitigating fraudulent activities, including sophisticated schemes like click injection and spamming, through real-time detection and the generation of detailed fraud analysis reports. On the Airbridge dashboard, marketers have the flexibility to establish specific fraud validation rules, adjust the prevention levels for each rule, and determine how to handle fraudulent conversions and engagements. These features allow for the creation of detailed reports and the customization of fraud prevention measures, empowering marketers to accurately assess the performance of their publishers, ensuring that only legitimate conversions are rewarded, and uncovering true growth opportunities.

5. Privacy policies

In today’s digital marketing ecosystem, adhering to a myriad of data protection laws and navigating platform-specific privacy policies is paramount. The landscape is dominated by stringent regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the U.S., and the emerging Digital Markets Act (DMA). These regulations set the foundation for user data protection, requiring businesses to handle personal information with the highest degree of transparency and security. Moreover, platform-specific policies, such as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature and Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, introduce additional layers of compliance, particularly around user tracking and ad targeting.

In this complex environment, selecting an MMP that not only keeps pace with but also anticipates changes in privacy regulation is critical. Airbridge stands out by offering cutting-edge tracking and attribution solutions that fully comply with the latest privacy laws and platform regulations. For instance, Airbridge’s approach to data collection and processing is designed to respect user consent preferences, a core tenet of GDPR and CCPA. Additionally, Airbridge’s technology is prepared to adapt to the evolving requirements of platform-specific policies ensuring that marketers can continue to reach their audience effectively without compromising on privacy.

If you’re in search of the best MMP that meets all five checklist points mentioned above, the team of marketing experts at Airbridge is ready to assist you, elevate your game marketing strategy and enhance performance.

As games move more towards a hybrid-casual model, the potential for new avenues of revenue opens up. As your retention rises, so too do the opportunities. Let’s look at six ways you can increase your profits.

1. Incorporate native advertising

Native advertising is where adverts are embedded in the very fabric of the game. They’re far less intrusive than traditional advertising, allowing you to place ads in your game that don’t disrupt how the gameplay flows. They feel natural; in places where players would expect to see them in the real world.

For example, a native advert might be on an in-game billboard, the banners alongside race tracks, superimposed over the field of a tennis match, posters on the wall, or holograms in the street.

These adverts can either be static sponsored content or dynamic ad space that brands can purchase in real time. The key is that you don’t pause the game to show the ad.

2. Add audio adverts to your game

Did you know, 73% of mobile players have their volume at or above 10%? It might not be loud, but it’s enough to catch people’s attention. This makes them a useful addition to your monetization strategy.

They also have similar benefits to native advertising. Audio adverts are far less disruptive than traditional methods: they play in the background, allowing the gameplay to continue unhindered.

Due to the nature of audio, it’s a relatively simple approach to insert into your game. Pause the music, play the ad, and return to normal once it’s finished. They are also suitable for rewarded ads, allowing players to gain power-ups or in-game currency far quicker than needing to watch a video. Which makes them an effective method to increase your advertising revenue without hurting your retention.

3. Make IP deals with brands

Partner up with a brand to offer in-game cosmetics or extra content using their brand assets. These could be characters, items, or even entire levels. Not only does this give you additional content to keep your game active, but it can also bring in new fans.

Another method is to wrap your game entirely in the brand’s IP. For example, you could approach a brand with your match-3 game and use the same mechanics and gameplay loop, while using their characters and universe.

4. Sell merchandise using your own brand

Once your hybrid-casual game has a following and community, it’s inevitable that certain characters or phrases will become popular. These are perfect for turning into merchandise. T-shirts, mugs, plushies – these can all feature your game’s art. Manufacturers like Alibaba make this even easier. You can buy products and have your own logo and designs printed on them.

You can even create unlockable content for your players, which they only gain access to by achieving certain milestones in your game. For example, every achievement in your game could have its own baseball cap. Players would need to unlock the achievement before they could purchase the cap in real life.

This gives your achievements more value and encourages players to seek out the hardest ones for the prestige of owning the real-world item.

5. Encourage fan-made content

Reach out to your community and run competitions to have their creations enter the game, such as levels, items, or cosmetics. This fan-created content can keep your game active and fresh while also giving you an opportunity to engage with your community.

Ideally, you would also offer an incentive to the creators, such as a cut of the purchase price. This makes it worth the player’s time and makes it far more likely you’ll get quality submissions. It also encourages the player to spread the word about their creations, which could bring even more players to your game.

6. Port your game to another platform

Expanding onto PC or console can help you open your game up to a new market, extends your game’s life, increases your return on investment, and leads to longer session lengths.

It’s a useful way of making the most out of your most successful games. You can read more about the process in our article on porting.

Data is key to any new approach

Whatever route you choose, make sure you keep track of which avenues are successful and bring in the most revenue. You want to make sure that you’re spending your time efficiently. The most effective way to do that is to bring data in from multiple sources and study the trends together. That’s where DataSuite comes in – it allows you to create your own player warehouse and track trends across platforms and different data sources.

Out of all the many mobile industry benchmarks, it’s important to keep player retention rates top of mind. Retention allows marketers to understand when, and perhaps why, a user leaves their game — which gives you the ability to slow the rate down and keep your users around.

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of mobile game retention rates and some of the secrets game marketing pros deploy to reduce churn, as well as look at how you can learn from your retention metrics.

What’s The Point of Retention Rate?

Retention rates are a key indicator of game growth and its health. Not only does a game with better retention likely mean players enjoy using it, but good retention also means it can generate revenue quickly. In the meantime, low retention means rapid user churn, lower user reviews, and a lessened likelihood of conversion.

Retention rates are a useful tool for understanding why users disengage from games. Combined with a cohort analysis, retention rates can help marketers pinpoint if there’s an area in your game that causes churn. These are all key reasons why marketers keep an eye on retention along with other key metrics.

What Is a Good Retention Rate?

By what criteria should we compare whether retention is good or bad? Though you might have internal benchmarks for this, GameAnalytics provides industry comparison as a part of their Pro offering.

In the player retention report from 2019, GameAnalytics found out that the top-performing titles have a retention rate of 40% for Day 1, 15% for Day 7, and 6.5% for Day 28. Be mindful that these rates are for the best games — some genres have retention as low as 1.5% by Day 28. And this is by no means a rare occurrence.

It’s also worth noting that benchmarks for retention change depending on your game or app category. Generally, travel apps have vastly different use cases versus a music app, for instance. As such, benchmark retention with a degree of caution.

Should Marketers Focus on Retention?

For most marketers, keeping an eye on retention is vital. But how high of a priority should it be for you? Amongst user acquisition, in-app conversion, and monetization metrics, retention might not be a marketer’s primary issue, especially if you try to apply paid user acquisition as a remedy.

After all, most churn is likely to occur when a user finds they no longer desire to play the game. Players might churn through forgetting, boredom, or (in small part) frustration from a lack of fulfillment of their needs.

As such, marketers need to identify not just where users churn, but why. In such cases where:

• The game is enjoyable, but users haven’t gotten past the tutorial.
• New functions are released.
• Offers for in-game purchases go live.

Paid re-engagement campaigns to boost retention are a great tool. However, if players are switching off because of boredom or lack of ongoing features, you may want to turn to organic methods that require more cross-collaboration within your company, such as making good use of loyalty programs that provide differentiated benefits to VIP players, or elements that grant levels and badges when certain goals are achieved.

With these tools, you can increase long-term interest by allowing players to reenter the game independently without continuous paid marketing actions, reducing the cost as well.

Going Organic to Find Retention Boosts

There’s more in a marketer’s toolbox than you might realize. In addition to advertising, it is important to expand the inflow of organic users through owned channels.

The retention of users who install organically is often higher than that of users who come through paid media. As such, channels like SEO, ASO, and other owned channel management need to be given some attention.

SEO, for example, is often viewed solely as an acquisition strategy. But if you make it a priority to study retention and learn about your long-term users, you might find the keywords that lapsed users may be searching for outside of your app, if they’re looking for an alternative. By creating content that targets such keywords you might be able to get users back by helping them discover features they may have missed.

Collaborate, Communicate, Convert

The real secret to improving retention is that your marketing organization, which is placed at the forefront of dealing with players, needs to play a key role in digesting external feedback from them and effectively conveying that feedback to product teams. This relationship can result in better retention, allowing the metrics related to your success to flourish.

In the process, a marketer’s communication and collaboration skills become core competencies. Understanding different points of view and communicating well is fundamental, especially as marketing and product teams move closer together. None of this happens automatically, and it requires a lot of skill. But ultimately, it is possible to make vast improvements to retention rates by working cross-functionally to get things done.

Partnering up with a social media influencer can bring in hordes of new players. There are thousands of influencers out there who rack up billions of hours of consumers’ time (a recent YouGov survey showed us that Q3 2019, the number of hours of live gaming content watched has more than doubled, from 3.8 billion hours to 9.0 billion in Q2 2021). GWI’s latest report estimates that 84% of gamers use YouTube for gaming content and news.

And with new laws around privacy and advertising affecting UA campaigns, now might be a good time to look at alternative ways to get exposure for your titles and bring new players to your game. But which influencers should you work with? And how do you find them? Here’s what we know.

Figure out your objectives

Depending on your budget and preference, there are a few ways to find the right partner. The first is to buddy up with an agency that works with influencers. This can be a much easier and simpler process than doing it yourself, but it comes with setbacks. Or, you can go about it yourself. This can be a longer and more tedious process, but it can reap more results (and save a cent or two in finders fees).

Before we dive into the how, when, and why, you’ll need to get a few things in order:

• Perfect your pitch: This should be short, simple, and sweet. You’ll want to include a catchy and descriptive title, a short description of your game, and any trailers and imagery. You don’t need to oversell here – let your work speak for itself. You can even use AI to lend a hand here. Just make sure to personalize it and use the suggestion as a guide (rather than just copy and paste).

• Define your audience: There are thousands of influencers, all covering different genres and games. Define who your target audience is (age, gender, likes), and you’ll have an easier job of vetting who you should work with.
• Figure out your budget: This’ll help you decide how many influencers you can work with, how long you want your campaigns to run, and whether or not you can afford to work with an agency.

Using an agency to find influencers

If you’re short on time, pairing up with an agency could be a good way to go. They can save you a lot of hassle and cut out a lot of the legwork.

Five agencies to consider:

• Matchmade: They specialize in YouTube and Instagram, and cater for all gaming platforms.
• Game Influencer: They can can help secure Let’s Play videos, integrated ads into their content, product placement, and pre-rolls.
• Disobey: They have over 15K creators connected on their Twitter, and work with studios like SEGA, Raw Fury, and NVIDIA.
• Pocket Whale: These guys specialize on YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and Snapchat.
• The Handbook: This tool acts much more like a directory which you can sign up to. It costs around £70p/mo, and has a long list of influencers you can reach out to.

What can an agency help with?

• Cut out a lot of the admin. If you’re doing it yourself, you need to be organized. So that’s research, spreadsheets, and time you could better spend on your game.
• They’re the experts. They can help you find the right partner, perfect your pitch, even advise on when is best to reach out to an influencer (so you avoid conflicting with other game launches and events, to increase your chance of being accepted).
• They have a foot in the door. It’s not a complete cold outreach. They work with these influencers every day and have built a relationship with them, so you’ll likely get much better and faster results than doing it yourself.
• They can scale with your game and budget. These agencies can work with and scale with your success. They can tap into their network of influencers to create campaigns of different sizes and scopes, depending on your needs and budget, which they can adapt over time easily.
• They can help optimize your ROI. Influencer agencies have tools and dashboard to track campaign performance, and can make adjustments to optimize your return on investment (ROI). A good agency should also be sharing insights and their recommendations to increase performance (from creatives, pitches, through to picking the right partner).

What are the drawbacks of using an agency?

• They might not focus on your niche. There are plenty of genres and sub-genres (especially within mobile gaming). If you’re building a puzzle idle mobile game with a ‘dog plumbers in space’ theme, well that’s a very specific game you have there. And some of these agencies might not have contacts that specialize in that area.
• They might not have the influencer you want. There are thousands of influencers out there. If you have a specific influencer in mind, they might not be connected with any agency – they could be handling their sponsorships and partnerships themselves. So you could lose out on the perfect match. Take The Frustrated Gamer for example. When looking on their YouTube channel, they direct any business enquiries to their personal email. And although they might also be working with some agencies, they could easily be a missed opportunity. Or the agency might be charging you for something you could find yourself.

• It costs money. Depending on what the agency’s model is, it could cost you a pretty penny working with one. Some usually charge a flat rate for every video, where others can take a commission on top of your results.
• No guarantee of getting sponsored. The influencer still needs to accept the job. And there’s no guarantee that they will. So you could be paying with no actual outcome (depending on their model).
• Lack of control. When working with an agency, you might have less control over which influencers you end up picking, the creative direction of your campaign, and the timing and scheduling of content. You could also have to give up some control over your overall messaging, which might not be ideal.
• Room for error. They say don’t shoot the messenger. But in this scenario, if your agency partner miscommunicates something about your game, gets the pitch wrong, or even isn’t as convincing as you would be when reaching out, well it can affect your campaigns, or even chances of getting picked.

How to search for influencers yourself

Finding influencers for your games isn’t necessarily rocket science. It just takes some time, patience, and a good pitch. When looking, you want to make sure you reach out to as many as possible, with different ranges of popularity and niches. The more popular they are, the harder they’ll be to convince (and the more they’ll probably cost). So have a large, focused list of who to target. Here are a few things you can do:

Cast a wide net

It’s tempting to go for the best influencers out there. Afterall, why wouldn’t you want PewDiePie raving about your game? But micro-influencers (smaller, and sometimes are more specialized) can be just as effective, and even have higher engagement rates. Take Retromation – he has around 200k subscribers and specializes in rogue-like games. But he regularly gets over 25% of his subscribers watching his videos. Meanwhile, a star like PewDiePie has over 100 million subs, but only around 5% watch regularly. (And most of his content isn’t actually gaming.)

Also, the more popular an influencer is, the more competition you’ll be fighting against to grab their attention. So reaching out to a range of influencers will give you the best chance of landing a few partners to work with.

Search for similar games

Use key terms like “gameplay”, “review”, “let’s play” or “guides” while searching for your competitor’s games on social channels. If you find any gamers making content around those similar titles, chances are they’ll like and cover yours, too.

Look at your direct competitors

You can see who your competitors or similar studios have partnered up with by heading to their social media accounts, saving you from starting your search from scratch.

Check that they’re the real deal

You want to make sure whoever you partner up with has real followers and high engagement rates. Influencer marketing tools like HypeAuditor and BuzzSumo can help you do a background check, and find out what their engagement is like.

Keep an organized list

Your outreach should reach triple digits. So you’ll need an organized excel spreadsheet (or any other organizational tool), to keep track of who you’ve contacted, what the status is, how large that influencer is, and what you’ve secured.

Plan ahead and give yourself time

Whatever route you go down, make sure you give yourself plenty of planning time. Ideally, you’ll want to reach out to agencies or influencers a few weeks before you launch your game. That way, you should have perfected your creatives and game, and give yourself enough time to reach out and schedule your game into a creator’s calendar.

With any transaction, there’s an exchange of goods and services. It used to be black and white in gaming – you pay money upfront, and you have that game. Done and dusted.

But it’s not quite that simple anymore. With more types of games, devices, and models entering the market, that exchange of goods is becoming a blur. Today’s big topic is people complaining about the price of games for what they’re getting. But why is that? Are studios becoming too greedy? Or are business models evolving so quickly that players can’t keep up with the trends? And what can you do to keep your games equitable and your audience happy?

Games have always been expensive

The first console to hit the stores was the Magnavox Odyssey. It was $99. That equates to just under $700 in today’s market, and it came with twelve games. Seems fairly pricey. But you can see their reasoning for something that was a completely new piece of technology.

Let’s fast forward to the 90s. The PlayStation 1 was released in 1994 and cost around $299. Today that would equate to over $700. Once again, publishers could charge that much because it was new technology with mind-blowing graphics.

Back then, there was no downloadable content, campaigns, battle passes, liveops. There was only one transaction. And it was clear what you were getting. Yes, you can argue that even that’s expensive. But it was transparent; then the price can’t be an issue, right? Players have been spending hundreds of dollars on their games for years. And with inflation, games aren’t that expensive compared to a few decades ago(at least, games that are one-off payments).

Gaming is much more complicated now

The gaming world has evolved. Let’s break it down:

• We have different device types: Mobile, PC, console, VR, Switch, and more.
• We have more sub-genres and game types: We can find all types of different genres in the stores. Take role-playing games as an example; we have ARPG, MMORPG, Strategy RPG, Tactical RPGs, and a range of hybrid genres.
• We have different audiences and preferences: We only thought of a gamer as a teenager on the PlayStation. But with the increase of genres and technology, almost anyone could be considered a gamer.
• Games are now a service: Not many studios end development when they launch their game now. Many, if not most, pump time and resources into regular new content to keep their players engaged. And that needs to be funded.

All of this meant we needed new monetization models. It didn’t make sense to always pay upfront for a game. There had to be a different exchange. Free-to-play games gave birth to the ads monetization model 10 to 15 years ago, and players accepted that exchange (to an extent – too many ads and the exchange starts to feel unfair).

“Each customer is an individual, not a generalized demographic.” – Peggy Ann Salz.

Options are a good thing. We don’t deny that, especially in today’s market. What we’re talking about is a fair exchange. Are developers losing sight of that? Are they focusing more on money than the experience?

What do we consider to be a ‘fair exchange’?

You can argue that a fair exchange comes down to the individual. Their taste and preferences, their income, and how much they value art. A $70 game for a ten-hour campaign could be expensive to most gamers – but to the lifelong fan, it could be nothing.

But there’s definitely a benchmark in the industry. When paying that much for a premium game, you can expect the campaign to be at least 30 hours or so, with some extra side quests. If your game is any less than that, it could be considered a rip-off. The key here is setting expectations. What is the other value you’re offering? And does your player know that?

There are three primary areas to consider:

• Gameplay Length
• Overall price
• Quality (this could be the graphics, story, mechanics, etc).

You want to try and hit two out of three. AAA games have a longer overall playtime and are higher in quality. But they’re not cheap. That seems fair. “Okay, I’m getting a really cool game with lots of gameplay and mechanics and graphics. I don’t mind spending more money on this.” There’s a value to the exchange. The same applies to casual games. They’re lower quality with simple gameplay, have loads of replayability, and are either free (or with ads) or very cheap (around a couple of dollars).

There’s a problem in our industry

Whether we call it corporate greed or just a lack of critical thinking, we’re seeing more developers push the boundaries for pricing, and underdelivering in gameplay. Let’s have a look at some examples and ask ourselves: “Does this feel like a fair exchange?” 

Overwatch 2 locks content behind battle passes

There was a lot of hype over the last few years for Overwatch 2. We were promised story-led campaigns, skill trees, customizable character abilities, and more. When they released the title, they made it free-to-play, with battle pass options (similar to games like Fortnite and PUBG). In theory, this all sounds good. But we found three issues:

1. They shut down Overwatch 1

Players could no longer play the original game, which was a paid title. Sure, they got Overwatch 2 for free, but so did other players who didn’t have the previous game. It’s easy for those legacy players to feel shortchanged.

Rather than rewarding their loyal players, they instead punished new players to Overwatch 2. For completely new players who don’t pay, they have to play to unlock certain characters – even ones from the original game. From what we can see from this interview, a new player has to go through 150 matches to unlock Echo from Overwatch 1.

2. They’ve locked new characters behind their battle pass

In Overwatch 2, you can unlock characters in one of two ways: pay for the battle pass or grind to unlock them. The latest character unlocks after reaching level 55 (around 60 hours of gameplay). Yes, players who couldn’t afford to pay could get the character. But Blizzard sure didn’t make it easy for them, putting those people at a disadvantage. And their players weren’t happy about this.

3. They didn’t deliver on what they promised

Unfortunately, a lot of the content and features they promised weren’t in the game during launch. Aside from new characters, maps, and a cleaner user interface, there wasn’t much difference between the two games. Which frustrated a lot of players.

Is this a fair exchange? No. From what we can see, the approach they’ve taken has annoyed their players into spending their money or pushed them away entirely.

Diablo IV charges one-off payment and offers battle passes

When we heard that Blizzard decided to release Diablo IV as a full AAA game, but with a battle pass option on top, we definitely raised an eyebrow. Usually, games are either free with battle passes or have a one-off payment but no battle passes (as we can see with Overwatch 2 and similar games).

Diablo IV, recently released on all major platforms and goes for around $70. And they have just released their first battle pass. From what we can see, it has three tiers:

• Free to play: With 27 tier rewards and 20 smoldering ashes.
• Premium: With 63 tier rewards (costs around $10 a month), an armour set and two mounts.
• Accelerated: Same as premium, but also provides 20-tier skips and a special cosmetic item.

Is this a fair exchange? We reckon so. They haven’t locked the free players from anything too important. But we’ll know more when we see more of their reviews.

And if they release content for the paid players as well, then it could work. For example, if they release new classes or core mechanics to everyone, but leave purely cosmetic stuff to the subscribers – that could be fair.

Cyberpunk launched with too many problems

We’ve heard this story all too often now. When CD ProjekT Red launched Cyberpunk 2077, it was a bit of a disaster. The amount of bugs and broken promises inside the title was laughable.

But what was the real problem here? Aside from launching far too early, the biggest problem was the price. If you’re charging someone for a premium game, you’d expect a premium experience.

Is this a fair exchange? No. Maybe if they released it as early access to iron out bugs, postponed the launch until the issues were fixed, or reduced the price, then it would have been fairer. But players around the world were rightfully annoyed and felt ripped off.

Grand Theft Auto: Definitive Edition costing $60

When Rockstar Games announced that they would be remaking their classic trilogy, players were thrilled. Unfortunately, when they released the remake (Definitive Edition), we saw a lot of backlash online. The titles were marred with poor graphics and bugs.

Since the launch, the studio has released a lot of updates and fixes. But the biggest issue we can see is that they just didn’t meet players’ expectations and charged a high amount for a quick facelift (ranging from $59.99 to $69.99, depending on the console).

Was this a fair exchange? No. Players were left disappointed with the poor graphics and overall price. So much so, a player remastered San Andreas themselves, quoting “Rockstar didn’t do a very good job.”

If Rockstar had set more realistic expectations, delivered what they promised, or even lowered the price, then the exchange would have been much fairer.

How can you keep your game fair?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It really does depend on what feels fair for your players and your studio. But to give you some direction, you can follow these rules as a guide:

1. Don’t lock important content behind passes

You want to make sure there’s value in your battle passes, otherwise why would someone buy it? But don’t screw over any of your other players. As we can see with Overwatch, it can create a negative experience for a large chunk of your audience, which can harm your studio in the long run. Instead, think up creative ways to reward your paying customers. Collectables, skins, and emotes are a good place to start.

2. Don’t release half-baked games at full price

We’re used to seeing the odd bug here and there. But if your game has some serious performance issues, then don’t launch it. The creators behind Baldur’s Gate 3 actually handled this quite gracefully. They perfected the first part of their game, released it as early access, and kept their community informed about the full release. It was a great way to create hype for their game, while also gathering crucial feedback, and keeping their audience happy.

3. Set realistic expectations

Too much hype for your game can be your downfall. Cyberpunk’s marketing campaign was so good, players were excited for years. Only to be disappointed when the game was released with only half of the promised features. As for Grand Theft Auto, if they were a bit more honest or open with what they were creating, perhaps players wouldn’t have reacted so negatively.

4. Be transparent with what you’re charging

With more complex models, it’s easy for players to get lost or confused. Nintendo is under fire at the moment and has been accused of using “dark patterns” to encourage players to spend money without them realizing it. So make sure your players know what they’re doing and buying. Diablo Immortal is also currently feeling the heat for their microtransactions. Their community were left shocked and frustrated with the game’s legendary gem upgrades and how unclear the game’s monetization model has been. Someone did the math and reported that it can cost up to $110,000 to fully upgrade a character in Diablo Immortal, all due to their new gem system. If that’s the case, it doesn’t feel particularly worth it.

5. Don’t punish your players

If Blizzard changed their approach to rewarding existing and new players, then Overwatch 2 could be a much more positive and enjoyable experience. Let’s look at rewarded ads: you watch a video to earn more coins or another life. But you can take it a step further. Homa Games have actually made item upgrades unlockable in their game Aqualand by watching ads. Suddenly making those ads a lot more desirable and fair.

Similarly, Tennis Clash actually uses ads to mitigate losses and amplify wins. If a player loses a match, they can watch an ad to recoup their lost coins. But if they win a match, they can watch an ad to double their winnings.

Test to see what works

We’ve shown a lot of AAA and premium game examples, and we appreciate that mobile games can be more complicated when combining so many monetization techniques. So data is crucial for understanding and perfecting your models. Maybe you can charge $1.99 for your game and still show ads. Or perhaps you can rely solely on subscriptions and charge $20 a month. Without testing the waters, looking at your data, and listening to your players, it can be tricky to figure out what your game is worth and what will make for a fair exchange.

If you want to get more out of your game’s data, sign up to our tool today (for free!).

In the ever-evolving landscape of mobile gaming, advertising has become a crucial revenue stream for developers while also providing players with engaging content and rewarding experiences. Mobile game ad formats have come a long way, offering a variety of options for both developers and advertisers to reach their target audiences effectively.

In this article, we’ll explore five popular mobile game ad formats that have gained traction in recent years and that will help you reach the top!

Interstitial Ads

Interstitial ads are full-screen advertisements that appear at natural breaks in gameplay, such as between levels or when transitioning from one screen to another. These ads are typically displayed for a few seconds and can include images, videos, or interactive elements. Interstitial ads are known for their high visibility and effectiveness in capturing players’ attention.

Key Features:

• Full-screen ads.
• Appear during natural breaks in gameplay.
• Highly effective at grabbing players’ attention.
• Suitable for various ad content types, including videos and interactive experiences.

Benefits:

• High visibility and engagement.
• Excellent for promoting other mobile games or products.
• Can be used to increase ad revenue without disrupting gameplay flow.

Rewarded Video Ads

Rewarded video ads offer an exceptional win-win scenario for both players and developers. In this ad format, players willingly opt to watch a brief video advertisement in exchange for valuable in-game rewards. What sets rewarded video ads apart is their remarkable feature of a 100% viewing rate. Players must watch the entire ad to unlock their coveted rewards, making this format exceptionally valuable.

Key Features:

• Players willingly choose to watch ads for in-game rewards.
• Typically, these ads are short, spanning 15 to 30 seconds.
• Encourage extended playtime and enhance player retention.
• Highly effective for driving user actions, such as app installs or purchases.

Benefits:

• Provides a positive user experience as players receive tangible rewards.
• Achieves a 100% viewing rate, ensuring advertisers’ content is seen in full.
• Highly engaging, with industry-leading conversion rates.
• Particularly appealing to advertisers seeking guaranteed viewership and conversions.

Rewarded video ads shine in the mobile advertising landscape due to their inherent value proposition – a guaranteed viewing rate. This characteristic sets them apart from other ad formats like interstitials, making them a powerful choice for developers and advertisers alike.

Playable Ads

Playable ads take interactivity to the next level. Instead of passively watching a video or image, players get to experience a mini-version of the advertised game before deciding to download it. These ads are highly engaging and can give players a taste of the gameplay, mechanics, and overall experience, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Key Features:

• Interactive ad format where players can sample the game.
• Provides a preview of the gameplay.
• Engaging and immersive.
• Effective for showcasing the unique features of a game.

Benefits:

• Increased user engagement and conversion rates.
• Higher-quality installs as users have a better understanding of the game.
• Appeals to gamers looking for new experiences.

Banner Ads

Banner video ads, one of the earliest mobile ad formats, are compact advertisements that can appear at different locations on the screen, such as the top or bottom, depending on the game’s design. Notably, the size and placement of these banners can vary significantly based on the specific requirements of each game. Additionally, some advertising networks offer adaptive banners that adjust in real-time to fit the game’s layout seamlessly.

Key Features:

• Compact and non-intrusive ads that occupy a portion of the screen.
• Continuous visibility during gameplay.
• Banner size and placement flexibility to suit diverse game layouts.
• Availability of adaptive banners that dynamically adjust to the game’s design.

Benefits:

• Non-disruptive to gameplay, allowing for uninterrupted user experiences.
• Adaptability to different game layouts, ensuring a harmonious appearance.
• Versatile and easy to implement, catering to various ad sizes and positions.
• Adaptive banner options offer real-time optimization for improved engagement.

Banner video ads, with their adaptability and varying sizes, accommodate the unique characteristics of each game, making them a versatile choice for developers and advertisers aiming to strike the right balance between monetization and user experience.

Native Ads

Native ads seamlessly blend into the game’s user interface, mimicking the look and feel of the game itself. These ads are often integrated into menus, loading screens, or other non-intrusive elements. Native ads aim to provide a more organic and less disruptive advertising experience. When done right, they can enhance the overall immersion of the game and contribute to player retention.

Key Features:

• Ads that harmonize with the game’s aesthetics.
• Often integrated into game menus, loading screens, or story elements.
• Designed to feel like a natural part of the game.
• Can include sponsored content, product placements, or in-game events.

Benefits:

• Enhances player immersion and retention.
• Provides a less intrusive advertising experience.
• Effective for promoting products or services in a contextually relevant way.

Audio Ads (Immersive Sound Advertising)

Audio ads represent a unique and immersive form of advertising within mobile games. Instead of relying solely on visuals, audio ads harness the power of sound to engage players. These ads typically play in the background while the game is running, offering a non-intrusive yet highly effective way to convey brand messages or promote products to players.

Key Features:

• Auditory advertising experience.
• Non-disruptive to gameplay.
• Suitable for conveying brand messages and promotions.

Benefits:

• Diversifies ad formats and engages players through sound.
• Allows for creative storytelling and branding opportunities.
• Enhances the overall gaming experience without interrupting gameplay.

In-Game Ads (Billboard)

In-game ads, specifically billboard ads, take advantage of virtual billboards or advertising spaces within the game environment. These billboards showcase brand messages, imagery, or video content in a contextually relevant manner. By integrating these ads into the game’s world, developers can create a more realistic and immersive experience for players.

Key Features:

• Integration of brand messages or content within the game environment.
• Contextually relevant placement of ads within the game’s world.
• Realistic and immersive advertising experience.
• Opportunity for dynamic ad updates and changes.

Benefits:

• Creates a more immersive and engaging game world.
• Offers a contextually relevant advertising experience.
• Allows for dynamic ad updates, keeping the game environment fresh.
• Provides opportunities for long-term partnerships with brands.

Direct Brand Deal Ads Integration

Direct brand deal ads integration involves collaborating directly with brands for in-game advertising. Developers integrate brand content, products, or promotions seamlessly into their games. These deals often result in unique, contextually relevant ad experiences tailored to the game’s theme. However, we take a comprehensive approach by combining all these ad formats – including audio, in-game, and rewarded video ads, among others – with specialized integrations to create immersive and contextually relevant ad experiences.

Key Features:

• Collaboration with brands for in-game advertising.
• Integration of brand content or promotions.
• Contextually relevant ad experiences.
• Tailored to the game’s theme and audience.

Benefits:

• Enables customized and unique ad experiences.
• Allows developers to monetize their games while enhancing player engagement.
• Offers opportunities for long-term partnerships with brands.

Conclusion: A Dynamic Era of Mobile Game Advertising

The world of mobile game advertising has evolved into a dynamic landscape that offers diverse opportunities for developers, advertisers, and players. From high-impact interstitials to the immersive soundscapes of audio ads, the guaranteed engagement of rewarded video ads, and seamless integrations of native ads, each format brings unique strengths to the table. Direct brand deals and in-game ads (billboard) further enrich the experience, fostering partnerships and creating immersive game worlds.

As the mobile gaming industry continues to expand, these ad formats contribute to a thriving ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of a delicate balance between monetization and user satisfaction while promising continued innovation and engaging experiences for all stakeholders.

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This article was originally published on Tap Nation.

Everyone wants hype around their game. Get the players excited and let the word spread naturally. But sometimes, building hype can backfire. When developers overpromise and don’t deliver, it can damage their relationship with their audience.

In this article, we explore what problems can arise if you overhype your game. And our top tips for building hype safely.

Good games can struggle with bad hype

Even with the best game in the world, if it doesn’t meet the hype, you will have a bad time. Take Cyberpunk 2077, objectively a fun RPG.

Unfortunately, Cyberpunk didn’t meet the expectations the developers set. They’d promised a world where every single NPC would have their own schedule and live out their lives. This was nowhere near the level of complexity the game ended up offering. Instead, the NPCs were just like any other open-world game. Similarly, other promised feature had to be dropped due to design restrictions.

Bugs and overhype aside, Cyberpunk wasn’t a bad game. It currently has 7/10 on Metacritic from the players, and it has won plenty of awards. But in context, its reputation was severely tarnished because they arguably released too early and without everything they’d promised. Had they been more upfront – saying that they were releasing a beta first or that they’d release certain mechanics and features later – they might not have received the same backlash.

It’s possible to recover

Just because a game gets off to a bad start, doesn’t mean that it can’t become a beloved game. No Man’s Sky is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon.

No Man’s Sky failed to deliver on many of the promises it made. In fact, The Internet Historian talked about this on his channel. He even created a handy table of all the features they promised, whether it was available at launch, and whether they eventually released it. Ringed planets, crash freighters to explore, factions with different attributes – all of these were promised, but missing at launch.

Now, the developers have listened to their players. They’ve released update after update, rolling out these mechanics over time. The game has evolved significantly, with the developers even releasing features they’d never promised in the first place.

By staying active, taking on feedback and engaging with their community, Hello Games has really turned No Man’s Sky around. They’ve rebuilt their reputation, and the ratings show the change. When it launched, it was getting mainly 4 or 5 out of 10 from users on metacritic. Now, it’s getting 9s and 10s, with phrases like “this game finally delivers on the original hype”, “the game runs really well now” and “deserves a second chance.”

Sadly, many people are unaware of the changes that Hello Games has made. So its reputation is still sullied by its lacklustre launch. Had they been a bit more clear and upfront at the start, No Man’s Sky would likely be a household name.

How do you avoid overpromises?

We’ve looked at the damage that you can cause by overpromising, but what should developers do? Clearly, building hype is still a useful tool.

1. Be clear about your roadmap or give regular updates

If you’re upfront about what features you’re going to release and in what order, you’ll make it much easier for your players to digest any setbacks or dropped features. (Or if things are taking longer than you expected.)

That doesn’t mean that you have to release every surprise and reveal all your plans. But explaining what’s on your list and what’s going to be available at launch, and what’s coming later down the line, means that players don’t get disappointed.

Larian Games, the creator of the Baldur’s Gate series, actually opted against having a roadmap for their title. It seems like the third instalment in the series is a lot more complicated than they expected. And although they give regular updates on their Steam and social channels, they opt to avoid promising specific dates – most likely to avoid disappointment.

2. Set expectations, then exceed them

It’s better to set realistic expectations and then release with more features than you promised than the other way around. In both cases, the game is exactly the same. But the perception of that game is completely different based on the expectations that you set.

So hold back some surprises and let them discover them when the game actually comes out. It’s better to surprise than disappoint.

3. Be honest about your limitations

It’s tempting to over-egg new mechanics or features in your game and go ham on the marketing. But if it’s a truly innovative idea, it’s very likely you’re going to have bugs or it won’t live up to the hype.

When releasing new features, let the gameplay speak for itself. Don’t try to ‘sell’ it. Show it in action and give the facts straight. Don’t push the ideas hard. If it’s really that good, you won’t need to say anything at all.

On the flip side, be honest with what people can’t do. If you’re making an open world, make a developer diary and have someone ask the challenging questions. “Will I be able to speak to every NPC?” “No, but we’ve added dialogue options for hundreds of characters that you’ll meet randomly. But no, not everyone.”

4. Don’t make promises you can’t keep

Deadlines, features, downloadable content, your pricing model. Whatever you’re talking about, only talk about it once you’re sure that it’s final.

This is particularly important for aspects of your game that might have bigger business considerations. Maybe you fun the game through a battle pass or maybe you have it be a one-time purchase. It’s much better to say that you haven’t decided yet, but you’re considering X or Y, than doing a complete U-Turn.

5. Admit mistakes early

If you do need to change your mind or limit the scope of your game, tell your players as early as possible. Apologize, explain your reasons, and tell people how you might compensate them for it. Maybe that’s offering a refund for preorders or that you’ll be releasing a different feature instead.

However you break the news, make sure you’re honest and upfront with your players. Otherwise, you’ll lose their trust and their loyalty.

Stay in the loop

If you find advice like this helpful and want to see more of it, then make sure that you sign up to our newsletter. And if you want to see the impact of your design decisions, try out our free analytics tool.

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.

Editors note: This article was written by Teemu Haila, Co-Founder & CPO at Metaplay. You can read their original version here.

How to avoid the critical mistakes studios make when launching games.

For such a sophisticated industry, it’s ironic that the single biggest mistake I see young gaming studios make is so simple: failing to plan ahead.

Instead of building or choosing a backend tool that offers functionalities needed by games with hundreds of millions of users, they choose one that ticks the boxes for the feature specs and technological infrastructure required in the initial stages of the game’s life only.

Then the game begins to scale and the studio realizes that their backend tech doesn’t support their future roadmap – the one that will catapult them into the top grossing charts. And they’re left with a set of major obstacles.

Below, I explain how launching a game with a short-term mindset – even though that is often encouraged in this industry – can be detrimental to its long-term success and cause avoidable headaches further down the line.

Short-term decisions, long-term implications

The pressure to ship a new game quickly is felt by all studios in 2023. In the game’s first stage, the team needs to build an MVP, soft launch, run data analysis to see if there’s a product-market fit, then deepen the game’s core loop and features. All in the space of around 6-12 months, depending on their budget.

The issue with this pressure is that it tends to cloud a studio’s long-term vision.

The three stages of a F2P game

To understand the problems brought on by short-term decision making for a game’s backend, let’s unpack the lifecycle of a successful F2P title.

From zero to one

In the first phase, concept validation is the name of the game. The team’s development focuses on the next year’s needs at best, choosing basic functionalities.

This typically means games are developed in editor rather than making slower device builds; offline gameplay will be prioritized while multiplayer action will be faked; game design will consist of pre-made features; and anything ‘extra’ will be avoided.

From a technical standpoint, this means launching a basic prototype is fairly straightforward. It involves building the game logic, connecting this to game analytics and game services (like in-app purchases), and building a database. Experienced developers can put this together using off-the-shelf tools in just 4 months.

At this stage, it ticks the boxes. However, if all goes well – the game concept has been validated and VC funding has poured in – the game moves into a new stage of existence. Let’s call it the scale-up phase.

The scale-up phase

Now the tech requirements are very different, needing to support a game with millions of players. New functions to build include cheat-proof logic, scalability to enable millions of players without crashing, multiple deployments of the game running for different departments in the studio, and DevOps to facilitate live environments.

That’s just the tech – on the game design and product side, they have to build out customer support functions, LiveOps tools, feature documentation, localization for different audiences, over-the-air (OTA) updates, and of course ensure all features are on par with the rest of the top 100 grossing games to stay competitive.

While to some extent, this is possible using the default backend solutions typically chosen from day one (although things get messy and scrappy pretty quickly), the major headaches arrive when the game enters the next phase.

The unicorn phase

For the few games that break into the hundreds of millions (or even billions) of players league, the tech and design requirements become even more demanding.

Legal compliance, security against hacks, tech documentation, integrating in-house analytics, and general maintenance are just a few of the requirements.

On the design side, meanwhile, if in the scaleup phase the goal was feature parity with the other top grossing games, the priority in the unicorn phase is feature innovation.

But how is this all related to the short-term thinking I called out at the start?

The impact of shipping a game without a tech upgrade path

When the time comes to truly scale and innovate, to become the next Supercell or Moon Active, the ramifications of shipping a game without a tech upgrade path are far-reaching. For instance:

1. Your game design becomes limited by available tech features

When the need to stand out from competition arises, game designers may come up with great ideas for new social features or LiveOps functions. However, due to the tech limitations brought on by a sub-par tech backend, the product team will struggle to execute and most likely push back on the concepts. This stifles growth and innovation.

2. Your tech stack diverges into inflexible micro services

At a certain point, it’s impossible to continue building on top of the existing tech stack. This often leads to the creation of a web of microservices, which causes confusion and inefficiency among development teams.

As a result, it can be almost impossible to troubleshoot bugs in the game, which can lead to increased downtime, and ultimately decreased revenue.

3. Your team spends increasing amount of time maintaining legacy systems

Existing, outdated systems drain resources as games seek to innovate. For example, LiveOps specialists might want to create a new leaderboard or guild feature, but the backend technology doesn’t offer the capability to do so.

As a result, time-consuming new systems must be built to sit alongside the old ones, creating a messy tech stack and sub-optimal operations in development teams.

These are just a few potential symptoms of choosing a backend solution tailored for the short-term when launching a game.

Tips for shipping without regret

So what aspects of a top-grossing free-to-play game does a developer need to lay the foundations for from the start?

• Game configs (over-the-air game updates, AB-testing, Google Sheets),
• Cheat-proof game logic (command pattern, mirrored execution),
• Customer support tools (in-game mails, dashboards, accounts, permissions),
• Legal compliance (GDPR, backups, security)
• LiveOps tools to keep the game exciting and maximize player retention and LTV.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not arguing games need to actually build out all of these functionalities from day one. That would take years.

My point is that they need to at least prepare for them by ensuring the tech capabilities are there as and when they’re needed.

Failing to lay these foundations from the start creates the need to carry out a major refactor of the backend code when it’s time to grow from the mid-level tier to the top 100 grossing hits.

And code refactors take significant time and investment at a time when real high impact work – such as building out and optimizing innovative new social features in your game – should be the priority.

Metaplay: The backend solution of choice for ambitious games

Metaplay is the only backend suite offering aspiring gaming unicorns the tools needed to ship and grow a top grossing game.

With our tools, there are no regrets further down the line or obstacles to your tech upgrade roadmap. From day 1 all the way through to unicorn status, we enable developers to make feature complete games, with tools for:

• Game programming
• Backend engineering
• Product and live ops
• Player support and QA

Don’t take my word for it – here’s what Arttu Aalto, Co-founder of Playsome had to say:

“The key benefit in addition to reliability, support and featureset has been access to source code and full customisability. There are no limitations to what we can implement and operate”.

“All your base are belong to us.” Funny as it is, it’s a pretty janky translation. Thankfully for Zero Wing, the bad translation didn’t affect it too much – it was one of the top-rated games in 1989 and even had a rerelease on Steam in 2022. But other brands haven’t been so lucky.

When Toyota released the MR2 in France and Belgium, they had to quickly rebrand the car. If you pronounce the letters, it sounds like merde (m-er-deux) – or s**t in French. Not a good look.

This famous translation fail is from Zero Wing, released on Sega Genesis in 1989. 

But those are translation errors. Sometimes, it’s a cultural mistake. Even simple hand gestures can cause controversy. Did you know that the okay gesture is used like the middle finger in Brazil? We’re sure that’s tripped up some tourists.

So if you’re looking to translate your mobile game into another language, we’ve got a few best practices to follow. Practices that’ll help make sure your game doesn’t end up going viral for the wrong reasons.

Translation and localization are different

Strictly speaking, we’ll be talking about localization. Not translation. There are actually three types of translation to consider:

• Translation. This is where you translate a sentence word for word. It’s usually best for instruction manuals or in the medical field, where it’s important nothing changes.
• Localization. This is where you translate the spirit of the piece. Most of the sentences will keep their meaning, but your references and idioms will change to match what people would actually say.
• Transcreation. This is where the translator essentially rewrites everything. You work with them from the very beginning and they write their version alongside the original.

This isn’t the only slip up Aero Fighters 2 faced. We also had “I never thought I’d be frying over a jungle”, and “I am a Punk Rocker, and I fight for justice” for someone who just did not look like a punk rocker…

In gaming, we don’t really want to translate. That way be dragons. Instead, we want to localize our games, so that any cultural references or phrases make sense to our players.

Now we’ve got that cleared up, what are the best practices for localizing your mobile game?

Get advice on the languages early

Localization isn’t just about the words. Colors, symbols, references – these all play their part. So you’ll want to choose exactly which languages you’re considering translating into as early as possible. And then you’ll want to find locals – or professional translators – of that culture.

While there are tools like Trados, Smartcat and Phrase – automation will only get you so far. And it will only deal with the words.

Ask for a cultural report

Tell your translator which languages you’re hoping to release in and ask them to send you a list of points to consider. For example, they might tell you that black is considered unlucky in Japan. So if you’ve got a luck-based mechanic, you’re going to want to change up your palette.

This report should contain cultural dos and don’ts, as well as language and topics that are considered taboo or could have strange connotations. In China, for example, they don’t allow red blood in their games. Instead, developers have to make it green. And it looks like China might be asking developers to remove any form of blood at all.

Once you have that report, you can use that information to make more informed decisions as you design your game.

Put together a lore bible

We’ve spoken about lore bibles before – and they’re vital for making sure that you keep your narrative consistent throughout your game. But they’re even more important for your translators. Particularly if you’re translating into multiple languages – you’ll want to have all your translators working from the same hymn sheet.

In your lore bible, list out why you’ve made certain decisions. For example, why did you name your characters that way? Is it a made-up word that needs recreating in their language? What about your mechanics?

This is particularly important when it comes to dialogue. You’ll want to note down the intent and subtext behind the lines, so your translator can decide whether to change it to suit the culture.

Let the translators play the game

Context really matters when translating a piece of writing. But if it’s too early to let them play it for themselves, make a short video walking through everything.

Make sure you can easily edit strings

Never hard-code your writing. Use variables instead. That way, you can code a simple script to print or export all those variables into a spreadsheet. This will make the translator’s job much easier.

Bandai Namco have a handsome portfolio of games under their belt. And usually without any flaws. But their ‘The Tales of…” games skipped a backflip in its development. 

It’s not just dialogue that needs translating. Think about your dates, currencies, item descriptions and hint text. Not only that, but what about the language around your game? Your App Store description, your logo, and your marketing materials. All of that is going to need translating, too.

Give your words room to grow

When programming your game, you also want to consider how different languages will actually look. Aside from making sure you can deal with different characters, you’ll also need to think about the layout. Some languages will take up far more space than others – take Cryllic script languages, like Russian, which on average use about 20% more keystrokes than English.

You don’t want to cut any words short – you don’t know what they might end up meaning. So imagine what would happen if the text became much longer.

Test out your translations

Before you go live, make sure you test it out with a few local people first. These will help you spot the differences that might’ve emerged during the translation process. For example, you might want to track whether people drop out of your tutorial more in French compared to English. Or maybe you want to see how many people use a mechanic after you’ve shown them a tooltip.

Whatever you want to track and keep an eye on, our free analytics tool can help you get the data you need. Try it out for yourself.

Building hyper-casual games is a great way to get into game development. With their short cycles and simple gameplay, crafting a hyper-casual title means you can learn important skills across game design and monetisation, which you’ll need for success in the mobile games industry.

But how do you get started building a hyper-casual game? What exactly goes into creating a hit in this genre? What KPIs should you track and what results should you be aiming for? There’s a lot you should know before getting started. So before you get tapping away and developing your next hit, make sure to read through these resources to master everything ‘hyper’.

1. Understanding hyper-casual

The hyper-casual genre is a unique one. It’s made up of short, satisfying, and simple gameplay, basic artwork, and relies heavily on ads to make money. So to kick things off, read the following articles to fully understand what this genre is all about.

• Here’s how to keep hyper-casual games short, satisfying, and simple
• This is Voodoo’s guide on how to create “Hyper-Snackable” games 
• A list of 14 of the best hyper-casual mechanics to use for your game
• How to make effective game art in hyper-casual games

2. How to get started

So, now you know a bit more about what hyper-casual is and how it works. The next step is getting ready to start crafting your game. At this stage, you’ll be brainstorming all kinds of ideas and setting up your tools.

• This is a nice round-up of the best tools to use for mobile game development
• A useful list of ideation tips for creating viral games
• Here are five techniques to supercharge your ideation
• A guide on how to hire the right team for your game
• Everything about GDPR and what you need to know (we recommend reading before you start collecting data)

3. Prototyping, testing and analytics

Hyper-casual games are all about prototyping and iterating your games to hit certain KPIs and targets. Testing is a crucial part of releasing successful hyper-casual games, and you need to understand your games’ KPIs and how to improve them.

• How to do fast prototyping and what you need to know
• Here are a bunch of early testing strategies
• This article is full of useful tips on rapid testing and development
• Our latest report on hyper-casual metrics and industry benchmarks
• How to visualize your games’ data (when and how to use graphs)

4. How to make money

No one works for free. Hyper-casual games notoriously rely on ads to make their money. But there’s a lot more to it than just showing random ads in your game. Have a read of these resources to understand the ins and outs of ad-based monetization.

• The basics to making money in hyper-casual games
• Making money from your ads in your hyper-casual games
• How to find the right ad network to work with
• How to calculate CPI, CPC, eCPM and more
• Top 10 Hyper-casual Game Ad Networks in 2022

5. Soft launching and publishing

Ideally, you should soft launch your game to help test, refine and fix any bugs before the real launch. And there’s a couple of routes you can take when you are ready to hit that publish button. Here are a few guides to give you an idea of how to tactically approach your soft launching process.

• Zeptolab put together this guide for soft launching your game
• These are five A/B tests to run during your soft launch
• Here’s a guide to help you decide whether to self-publish or use a publishing partner
• This is how Umami successfully self publishes hyper-casual games
• This is a guide to publishing your game in China (and what to expect)
• And this is how to find a publishing partner in China

6. Take the next step to hybrid-casual

It’s worth mentioning here that even though hyper-casual is still arguably the most popular genre in the industry, it is starting to hit a saturation point. It’s definitely an easy stepping stone for most developers. But with more games on the app stores, it’s getting harder to cover CPI costs and make a profit.

Image source: Bowmasters by Playgendary Limited

Hybrid-casual is starting to make some noise here. So it’s worth having a read-up on what this emerging fusion genre is, and how you can evolve your own hyper-casual game into something more.

• Homa Game’s breakdown and guide to hybrid games
• What is hybrid casual and how it can increase retention
• A list of systems and meta-features most used in hybrid-casual games

7. Top hyper-casual studios and publishers to follow

Whether you want to reach out to these guys to work with them or just to research their games and story for your inspiration. Here’s a list of some of the leading hyper-casual studios and publishers in the market today.

• Voodoo: They’ve hit over 6 billion downloads across the globe, and released titles like Helix Jump, Paper.io, Aquapark.io, and Crowd City.
• Homa Games: These guys have hit over 500 million downloads, and work with some of the top brands, including Kadka, Topchop games, and Funcell games.
• Lion Studios: Based in San Francisco, Lion Studios is owned by AppLovin, and has published chart toppers like Wordle, Match 3D, and Nail Salon 3D.
• Supersonic: With over ten years of experience publishing games, Supersonic is one of the largest and most established publishers. The’ve published titles like Bazooka Boy, Clone Ball, and Hide N’ Seek.
• Kwalee: They’re reaching almost 1 billion downloads, and they publish games across mobile, PC, and consoles. They also run Creative Wednesdays, a hybrid event where designers can brainstorm ideas and work on their prototypes.
• Amanotes: Experts in music, Amanotes focuses on musical hyper-casual games. Brilliant for anyone looking to specialise in sound.

Got something to add to our list?

Hopefully, this has been a good starting point for you on your hyper-casual journey. If you’ve seen any good guides out there that are worthy of our list, feel free to send them our way.