Garena Free Fire: Secrets to Success & Analyzing the Fall
The World's Most Downloaded Shooter Game Faces Major Headwinds This Year Garena Free Fire has become one of the most successful F2P mobile games of all time. Some highlights: Launched…
How Idle Heroes made $100M
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…
F2P Game Design: Gameplay vs. Systems vs. Social
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…
“Key Risks” Based Game Pre-production
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…
The “Strange Attractor” in Video Game Design
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…
Mobile Game Design: Iteration vs. Planning, MVP = Dangerous!
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;…
+1 Game Design: A Problem-centric Framework
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…
Mobile UI and Game Design: Screens vs. Flows
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.…
The Compulsion Loop in Game Design Explained
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…
Implications of “Alpha” and “Beta” in Mobile Gaming
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…
