The team at PlayHaven wastes dedicates several hours a week procrastinating with researching mobile games. This is the first of our weekly series, What We’re Playing, where we highlight a few awesome games that distract us from calling mom inspire us.
“McPixel is a retro, point-and-click imitation of everyone’s favorite rubberband-and-duck-tape-wielding hero, MacGruber. One of the goofiest, non-sensical, hilarious mobile games I’ve played.” – Ryan
“No, Mom. Casual Connect is not a conference for swingers.”
Those in the industry are likely familiar but to clarify (for Mom), Casual Connect is one of the leading conferences in the mobile, social, and casual gaming space. This distinction is especially important in the context of the title of this post.
I was fortunate to attend this year’s festivities with others from the PlayHaven team, but between the partying and networking, I only caught a few of the 130+ lectures. Thankfully, through the power of the internets, Casual Connect allowed me to catch up on most of what I missed.
Below I’ve broken down the top must watch lectures from the conference for those interested in learning more about the mobile gaming industry and understanding how to create a successful game.
Designing Core Loops Suleman Ali, Co-Founder and CEO, TinyCo
Suleman provides an overview on free-to-play game design, the importance of nailing the core loop, and insight into TinyCo’s design process.
Key takeaway: Half of in-app purchase (IAP) revenue from TinyCo’s titles come from instant finishes.
1 Million Downloads in a Month – How Indies Can Make It Happen Simon Newstead, CEO, Frenzoo
As an indie dev, how do you compete in a crowded, competitive mobile market? Simon shares his company’s strategy for breaking into the mobile gaming industry with their first title, Style Me Girl.
Key takeaway: Don’t overlook the power of organic word-of-mouth. Polish and high-end graphics encourage players to show their friends in the real-world.
This is a continuation from part one where we discussed techniques for maximizing player value. Now let’s crank it to 11…
7. Reduce Friction and Reward UGC
User generated content (UGC) is a great way to add new content for “free”; however, only a small percentage of players actually contribute. As with purchase flows, reducing the friction of creating and submitting content, will often increase UGC. How can you simplify the process? Is there a way to make UGC part of the primary gameplay? What happens when you reward players for submitting awesome content?
Remember Bob? His awesome game, Angry Hedgehogs, attracted a small but engaged user base of hedgehog-launching fans, yet he’s not maximizing his game’s potential value. In the last post we discussed LTV and the components of value. Talk is cheap, actually increasing value is the challenge.
Here are the first 6 of 11 techniques for increasing player value.
Bob is a game developer, creating his first mobile title, Angry Hedgehogs, aptly named after his love of the adorable (yet surprisingly ferocious) creatures. Armed with his laptop and creativity, Bob embarks on a quest to create the most successful game of all time.
After months of hard work, Bob publishes his game and anxiously monitors its performance. Success! His early fans can’t get enough of the cuddly hedgehogs. However, Bob’s leaving a lot on the table by not maximizing the LTV of his early fans.More after the jump »
We know you mobile game devs are swamped, preparing for the busiest time of the year but take a break and join us and Kontagent over some free drinks at the APPNATION III closing party.
The festivities start at 9pm, 12/1 at Mighty. Registration’s free so RSVP now before it fills up. Did we mention there are free drinks?
