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12 min read
#Guides

A Guide To Soft-Launching Your Mobile Game

Every developer who thinks he doesn’t need to soft launch his game is, in my opinion, simply wrong. A successful soft launch is the best way to optimise your game for global launch. Soft-launching allows developers to collect data, identify bugs and receive early feedback from players. A soft launch will provide you with the opportunity to test your server infrastructure and ensure it will be able to handle the load of a global launch. For free-to-play games, and especially for those with in-app purchases, it is important to determine how well the game will do globally and if it has a good retention profile and monetisation mechanics. This will tell you if your game will be profitable and you should aim for global launch or simply kill it. If you plan on looking for a publisher for your game,...
11 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Are Loot Boxes The Future Of Mobile Game Monetization?

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

No Mobile Ad Blindness: Making Sure Users Actually Open Their Eyes And See Your Ads

Ads are a part of daily life for pretty much everyone, and in most cases, we’re probably all pretty good at tuning them out. Whether it’s a TV commercial, a billboard, a banner ad on a website, or a pre-roll message on a video or podcast, the various ads that we’re bombarded with probably barely register for most of us, eventually causing ad blindness. While ad blindness might be a good thing in your personal life (who wants to view advertising on purpose, really?), it’s definitely not a good thing for game developers who rely on clicks and perhaps affiliate marketing as well. With that in mind, how do you optimize your ads for actual productive views and engagements, while keeping mobile ad blindness to a minimum? What Is Mobile Ad Blindness? Let’s start with understanding what ad blindness actually...
10 min read
#Game Deconstructions

The 10 Best Digital Board Games For Your Mobile

In recent years board games have had a revival – the hobby is growing faster than ever and the diversity of the games on the market is truly extraordinary. Even though part of the appeal of the hobby is its physical and social format, digital board games soon followed its analog brothers and sisters, proving that good game mechanics can adapt to many formats. Whether you are struggling to get a group of people together to play, or just want to quickly try out a few strategies, or even simply avoid the ponderous rule book and learn the game in an interactive way, digital board games are here to oblige. You might have already been playing a game on your phone or iPad without even knowing that it was originally designed for the tabletop! Here are some of the best...
14 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Thoughts On Mobile Gaming – An Interview With PocketGamer

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

UX Insights: Golfclash’s Swing To Success!

Sport simulation games have been a massively popular genre in video games industry since the early 70’s. Many of you must have grown up playing franchises like NBA, FIFA, Ashes, Madden NFL, NFS, Football Manager, Tiger Woods – PGA and many more sports titles across PC and consoles. “Real world sports games imbibe natural qualities like competitive rulesets, challenging opponents, strategy, skills & mastery that video games & gamers already subscribe to. This makes them a natural fit for a digital makeover.” It’s no surprise that the top 10 – 50 grossing charts on mobile games also boast their share of sports simulation games. Source : ThinkGaming 2/03/2018 Mobile space is dominated by many sport titans which are either tactical or strategy based. There is a plethora of choices from basketball, cricket, football manager, golf and tennis to car racing. Heavyweights that dominate the top...
9 min read
#Ads & Monetization

9 Metrics You Should Prioritise For Maximum Revenue

With any analytics dashboard, you’re going to get a lot of information, possibly more than you know what to do with. While all of it is valuable in its own way, you’re probably not going to be parsing every detail of each metric or stat on a daily basis, so you need to be aware of the stats that you should prioritise in order to maximise your game’s revenue – and maintain your own sanity! There are some metrics that you should know by heart, but for some they could prove to be a bit much to take a deep dive into on a daily basis. So without further adieu, these are the metrics you should prioritise if, like most game developers, you want to boost your game’s earning and revenue potential. 1 – Daily Active Users/DAU For your game...
9 min read
#Ads & Monetization

How Blockchain Could Redefine The Gaming Industry

To say that the gaming industry is large has become an understatement. For some perspective, the forecast for the number of cars sold worldwide in 2017 is 79.6 million, which brings the current estimate for the total number of cars on the road up to around 1.5 billion. Compare that with the current estimate for the total number of people who play video games: 2.2 billion. According to Newzoo’s latest Global Games Market Report, the global games market will have generated $108.9 billion of revenue in 2017. This is a 7.8% increase from the previous year, and is expected to rise to $128.5 billion in 2020. As we move into 2018, gaming is becoming less comparable with that of the film industry, and more with that of professional sports. However, regardless of size, bourgeoning industries come with obstacles, and gaming...
14 min read
#Data & Analytics

How To Build Killer Dashboards In Game Analytics

Think about how many times you visit your analytics dashboard on any given day. Then, think about how many times you send and reference analytics. You’re probably not only spending many hours in your analytics in any given week, but you’re possibly also relying on those dashboards and the reports they generate for key insights into your audience, and potentially even investor or C-Suite buy-in. After all, telling a story with your analytics reports is invaluable! Therefore, the creation and curation of those dashboards is incredibly important. In fact, making the choice about what to feature and highlight on each dashboard should be one of the most well-thought-out decision processes that you can engage in as a game developer. After all, analytics are at the heart of your game’s success itself, so they should be crafted carefully in order to...
18 min read
#Live Ops

Going Multi-National: A Follow-Up Interview with FRVR

Editor’s Note: After our previous interview with FRVR back in 2017, we want to catch back up with founder Chris Benjaminsen to see how the company has grown, what changes have applied to the structure of his company, and what his plans were for FRVR in 2018 and beyond.  So, what have you been up to since we last spoke to you? [Laughs] That’s a big question – quite a lot! The company is very different from where it was last time – my memory is not perfect, and I can’t pinpoint where we were then. However, to give you an update, we are nine people now. The 9th person just joined the company, we do around 2 million DAU daily, and about 30 million monthly, which I think is not too far off from where we were last time....
11 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Part 2: Are Casual Games Maturing? Lessons from Playrix!

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles looking at casual and mid-core games. The first, which looks at Angry Birds 2 and features a Q&A from developers Rovio can be found here.  The first part of this analytical series focused on Rovio Entertainment and how they successfully evolved and matured their multi-million dollar Angry Birds franchise. In the second part of this article series, we put a spotlight on top 10 grossing casual games developer Playrix, who are trying hard to innovate and experiment with casual games, challenging the established norms of this genre, and finding profound success! Playrix is known for a string of successful top 10 grossing hits like Homescapes, Gardenscape and Fishdom in the highly competitive Match 3 genre, which is often dominated by the likes of King, Jam City & Peak Games. Source: Think Gaming (20/01/2018) “But unlike its peers, Playrix is not relying solely on eye candy graphics,...
8 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Microtransactions In Games: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Microtransactions (or MTXs for short) are small purchases players make to unlock further gameplay, gain extra lives, change a character’s appearance, or speed up the gaming process in simulation games like The Tribez. The microtransaction business model has a strong right to exist on mobile; in a world where a Match-3 game costs up to $200,000 to develop and promote, even when they are often distributed for free, game studios are bound to find ways to make money from their hard work somehow. At the moment, over 90% of all mobile games use the freemium model; the apps are free to play (F2P) and incorporate various in-app purchases (IAPs). Although only 1.9% of players actually spend money on in-game content, they bring up to 90% of the total mobile game market revenue, which hit $46.1 billion in 2017. Last year...
1 min read
#Data & Analytics

Mobile Gaming Industry Analysis for 2017

Travel back in time and see what KPIs the top genres were hitting, in this 2017 industry overview.