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Analytics Storytelling
15 min read
#Data & Analytics

How to Tell a Story with your Analytics Reports

Analytics reports or presentations are generally not the most exciting thing ever – after all, they are usually just a bunch of numbers and maybe a few graphs on a page. However, it’s all a matter of perception – data can be really interesting when it’s presented in a compelling fashion. And dare we say even exciting! What’s more, analytics reports and presentations are some of the most vital documents that you can produce for your business, so you definitely shouldn’t treat them like an afterthought. You just need to learn to make it tell a story – but that’s easier said than done. In fact, for many companies or brands figuring out how to tell that story might be the most complicated part. On the surface, analytics reports aren’t especially captivating. With rows and columns of data most often...
Mobile Game Trailer
14 min read
#Game Design

The 9 Do’s and Don’ts of Game Trailers

Editor’s note: as we discussed in Marketing Your Indie Game on a Zero-Dollar Budget and How To Create Immersive Game Intros,  your game’s trailer is one of your most powerful marketing assets. Whether it’s for your website’s visitors, who want to get a sense of how the game feels, or more importantly for the press, who will use it to decide whether they want to cover your game or not. This article will help you showcase your game in the best possible light.  Game trailer fundamentals Your game trailer shows what the game is, and it has the power to drive emotion and interest before people get a chance to try out your game. It provides you with an arsenal of visual and audio tools to turn viewers into players. The structure of your trailer will likely always be the same. It will: Start...
Businessman in a Game
8 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Launching a Mobile Game Business (Part 2)

Editor’s note: This is the second of a 2-part series by Anthony Hurtado, a veteran of the mobile publishing and advertising industry. In this series, Anthony gives sage advice for anyone looking to break into the sector and launch their own mobile game business. To view part 1 of this series, click here. Step 4: How To Get Users So, you have selected your genre, you have figured out how lucrative your newfound audience can be, and you are excited. Let’s build that game, right?! WRONG. You need to figure out how you will get users. In the early days of mobile games, it really was a “you build it and they will come”. This was supercharged by the bigger firms who would endlessly cross-promote, (and sometimes cut inner circle cross-promotional deals that just made the big guys, bigger). For those who didn’t just organically grow...
Creating a Game Business
14 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Launching a Mobile Game Business (Part 1)

Editor’s note: This is the first of a 2-part series by Anthony Hurtado, a veteran of the mobile publishing and advertising industry. In this series, Anthony gives sage advice for anyone looking to break into the sector and launch their own mobile game business. To view part 2 of this series, click here. Why these early consideration matter Since the launch of the App Store in 2008, mobile games have been the dominant force in the app industry. With millions of games in the app stores, and over a thousand more being added each year it would appear as if mobile games are a turn-key business; just design and build a game and then boom: success, fame, and fortune, right? The truth is that over 90% percent of those games become zombie games. They’re technically alive, but effectively dead. They have less than a thousand downloads...
UX Game Design
12 min read
#Strategies

5 Tips to Improve Your Game’s User Experience

What is UX Design? User experience – or UX – is often a domain we don’t know too much about as game developers. It isn’t big in games yet. However, it’s a common role in software development teams, and for a good reason. UX designers are an essential bridge between the engineers and the users. Their role is to make the program clearer, and as intuitive as possible. Games are applications as well. We want the user – the player – to be able to pick up the game by himself. To overcome challenges on his own. In other words, we want his experience – the user’s experience – to feel great and seamless. If the game designer adds features and mechanics to the game, the UX designer subtracts anything clunky, that adds noise, to make the game more enjoyable....
20 min read
#Data & Analytics

50+ KPIs to Measure Your Mobile Game or App

Editors note: we release bi-annual mobile gaming benchmarks report which pretty much includes all of the metrics mentioned below. Compare how your game is performing against up to 100,000 games in the industry here. What Are Mobile KPIs? So you’ve created an awesome mobile app. The design is perfectly intuitive and visually stunning. It works even better than you thought it would. In fact, you are starting to wonder how you ever lived without it. You’re even starting to see some measurable results based on industry standard key performance indicators. Naturally, you hope that your audience likes it as much as you do, or at least enough to generate some revenue! Figuring out your mobile app’s value and assessing your app’s performance starts with knowing which mobile KPIs (key performance indicators) and mobile app metrics are the ones that you should...
15 min read
#Guides

Marketing Your Indie Game On A Zero-Dollar Budget

Why Marketing Your Game is Essential Most indie games are not profitable. There are plenty of great games that come out all the time, and as you know, making great games is not enough to sell them. It’s true for all kinds of creations and products. You can rarely rely on what you make to grab attention. In the crowded game market, your first problem is to reach out to people. To prove them that your work is worth their time and attention. That is why you must communicate in smart and innovative ways. I insist: it is necessary. See, I’m a creator, just like you. I already built an indie game studio with a talented engineer, and we didn’t make it. And a fair part of that was due to my lack of interest for communication. Since then, I...
Match-3 Video Ad Retention
5 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Rewarded Video: Retention Impact in Match-3 Games

Editor’s note: the following article is a guest post from Yaniv Nizan, co-founder and CEO of Monetization Measurement Platform, Soomla. The original report is available to download here: video ads retention study in mobile games (PDF). The Purpose of this Study Rewarded video ads can have a positive or negative impact on retention – depending who you ask. This is an unbiased 3rd party study to answer this question for Match-3 games. Test Setup – Data Collection and User Selection to Groups This study aggregates data from 6 Match-3 mobile games. All the data in this test was collected by the SOOMLA TRACEBACK platform coming mainly from: Client side SDK installed in the tested games Ad-network reporting APIs – mainly used as a source of data validation The selection of users to groups was done differently in each test: Test 1 – refers...
Frontend Developer
13 min read
#Tool & Product

How We Built GameAnalytics (An Interview)

Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, GameAnalytics turned 5 years old. What better way to commemorate this landmark than by interviewing our senior frontend developer and SDK team lead, Nikolaj Pedersen. Nikolaj has been with us from the beginning and his work has been essential in the development of the tool that you know and use today. ? Q. Nikolaj, you’re GA’s longest standing employee. How did it all begin? The idea behind GameAnalytics originally came from a Danish game company (now called Cape Copenhagen). Back in 2010, they created an internal analytics tool and met with our founder, Morten Wulff. Morten had previously founded a tracking company called TraceWorks and together they discussed the idea of building an analytics tool available for all game developers. However, Cape Copenhagen decided not to pursue analytics and instead chose to focus 100%...
iMessage App Store Games
10 min read
#Game Design

iMessage Games: New Opportunities for 2017

It’s an exciting time when a platform or feature creates new opportunities with which you can make games. As a developer, being first to market can prove lucrative as there is much lower competition. However, this doesn’t come without risks; if the platform fails then your game and the investment you’ve made is wasted. The iMessage platform is simple to develop on and uses Xcode as the main tool to create projects. When compared to new technologies such as VR or AR (which both require much larger investments in learning and development), iMessage provides a less risky opportunity for new games. At Pocket Gamer Connects 2017 in London, I presented some of the data that we’ve been observing from the latest iMessage apps. I took the time to read up on the protocols and the implementation as well as downloading...
7 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Our Top 10 Mobile Games That You (Probably) Haven’t Already Played

Now that 2016 has officially (and mercifully) been declared over, we thought we’d kick off the New Year with something more uplifting: a look back at some of the best, but less conspicuous games from last year. [bctt tweet=”? The Top 10 Mobile Games That You (Probably) Haven’t Already Played #IndieGame #MobileGame” username=”GameAnalytics”] Many of these games released in the latter half of 2016. They’re true hidden gems and if you haven’t already played them, we’d highly recommend you check them out. Without further ado, let’s begin the countdown of our top 10 mobile games. 10.  Touchdown Hero Developed by Cherrypick Games ?  Download for iOS ?  Download for Android Score big, become a Touchdown Hero and recreate the Madden’s of yesteryear on your phone in this birds-eye infinite running retrogame. The movement is fluid (simply drag from left to...
11 min read
#Game Design

How To Make An iMessage Game (And Why)

What’s the deal with iMessage games? With iOS 10, developers are now creating games that are directly integrated with iMessage. This seamless, inherently social play style is viral by nature with built-in engagement and retention mechanics. If you’re not already building for the iMessage App Store, it’s a channel to watch. In this post we’re going to start by outlining the technical setup for such a game. We’ll then explore how you can make the most of this relative new kid on the block, with comments from some thought-leaders to help answer the question: what makes a great game for iMessage? Click here to skip the technical part. [bctt tweet=”iMessage Apps ✉? Create, Design & Release a Successful iMessage Game! #imessage #app #gamedev” username=”GameAnalytics”] How to create an iMessage game iMessage Apps allow users to engage with your content without having...
Funnels Reporting Illustration
9 min read
#Data & Analytics

A Deep Dive into Funnel Reporting for Games

Funnels are a way of visualizing and measuring how your players move through a sequence of events, or ‘steps’. A well-configured funnel gives insight into which of these steps lose the most players, whether your paths to conversion are optimized, and whether your players are progressing through your game as intended. The aim of this post is to give you all the insights you need to make the most of GameAnalytics funnels. We’re going to start with some background and cover the basic concepts, before ‘diving deep’ into some of the more advanced practices to help supercharge your setup, including how to create and track custom events. Plan your custom events with this free tool… We’ve also created a worksheet for you to use for inspiration when creating your custom event IDs. View it in Google Sheets here (click ‘file’ > ‘make a copy’...