Where did hyper-casual games come from and how will it evolve in the future? We talk to Christian Calderon, former Chief Revenue Officer at Ketchapp who was instrumental in helping create this genre and market. Christian has now also started a new game company called GameJam focused…
One of the most widely read industry blogs for the mobile free to play gaming industry is called Deconstructor of Fun. Miska Katkoff first started the blog as a hobby but has since steadily grown the blog over many years to now where routinely many of his…
Jam City is one of the largest and most successful mobile free-to-play game publishers in the world with a lot of hit titles such as Cookie Jam, Panda Pop the recently launched Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery. More recently they have made a couple of acquisitions such as…
Learn more about Mobile Games F2P Product Management from Victor Wang who is a PM on the hit F2P game Jurassic World Alive. Content Outline: 1:18 What Does a F2P Product Manager Do? 2:48 Day to Day Activities 6:08 PMs vs. Producers 8:57 KPI Analysis 10:50 Role…
The views expressed in this post are my own and do not represent the views of my employer. Even further, this post is just a fun thought experiment expressing a contrarian view to current popular opinion. Fortnite: The Cultural Phenomenon! Fortnite is a cultural phenomenon with over…
In June of 2016, little known Chinese publisher DroidHang Games (aka “DH Games”) launched Idle Heroes, an auto-battle RPG with very heavy Asian metagame design influence. Although seemingly unremarkable at first launch, the game has steadily grown its download and revenue. Today the game sits on an…
Overview This post focuses on three primary forms of F2P game design: gameplay, systems, and social. The console and PC world are currently dominated by a “units sold” business with emphasis on gameplay focused design. However, the F2P (free to play) business model requires additional forms of…
SEGA Networks (mobile operating division of SEGA) partnered with Sensor Tower this year to present the 2016 Mobile Gaming Trends Report. The report covers the overall and category-focused mobile gaming industry trends. You can access the full report contents for free from the website here: www.mobilegamingtrends.com. This post…
Some of the philosophies and lessons I’ve learned from my life experience don’t have scientific backing but I have come to absolutely believe in through real world experience. More specifically, building a successful team through determined optimism is one such lesson. The Power of Optimism The belief…
Context: Every mobile gaming company has their own system for describing different types of mobile games. In other words, a mobile gaming taxonomy or classification system. Unfortunately, no industry standard exists. Further, I’ve been very unhappy with the current taxonomies developed by the various research firms out…
Context: Mobile game pre-production teams often focus on the wrong activities. An early focus on playables in software or building a game’s core loop may be useful but not the best approach. Any team with limited resources should prioritize what’s most critical to maximizing the success of a game.…
Introduction Steve Jobs was famous for creating some of the most successful products ever built. He made significant, positive impacts on the the product teams and with product decisions. However, with many executives we find the opposite phenomenon happening where high level executives make poor decisions that…
Context: Huge pent-up demand exists for Blizzard IP based mobile games (e.g., Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo). We see strong market evidence of this demand in the countless number and success of infringing mobile games that operate without formal licensing with Activision Blizzard. Especially for fantasy gamers, the…
Context Before gameplay, mechanics, monetization, or any other key design consideration, a new video game design needs to consider the most important aspect of all: a good concept. Feature film screenwriter Terry Rossio (credits include Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Aladdin, and many others) developed the notion of a…
Mobile game design typically follows two primary schools of design philosophy: Iteration based design = Just get some core mechanics in and then keep iterating until you get something fun; some initial but not extensive design before development Planning based design = Think through all of the…
China’s mobile gaming market has been experiencing explosive growth and and is projected to soon overtake the US market by as early as next year in 2015. Independent research firm Niko Partners estimates China’s mobile game market to grow 93% to $2.9B in 2014 with compound annual…
I was recently asked about the best approach to come up with a +1 mobile game design and wanted to cover this topic. In my view, a very specific approach and process to maximize your chances for success should be considered. What is that approach? I call…
Context: Mobile game design by flows refers to the concept of mapping out the entire set of screens a user can tap through in a mobile game: the user flows. While many of the larger mobile game studios such as Zynga or GREE routinely design UI/UX by…
A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills. – Arthur Schopenhauer John Hopson introduced the concept of the compulsion loop applied to video games as early as 2001. Since then, compulsion loop mechanics continue to get integrated into video games…
Should your software product development team be agile? The answer I almost always hear (especially in Silicon Valley) seems to be “of course, yes”, but the right answer should be: “it depends.” These days there seems to be a bit of religion and marketing brainwash around development teams’…
Bear with me on this post. There will be some financial jargon and a bit of math but the conclusions drawn I believe will be worth your read (at least I hope so!). Let’s first start with some financial theory which will form the basis of the…