Rhea Loucas’ Post

Almost everyone enjoys computer games, so why would you limit your potential audience? Sadly, many developers do this, sometimes even by mistake. They do this by failing to include accessibility options or diverse stories or including harmful stereotypes. Thankfully, Rovio has written a free guide for inclusive game development that's well worth having a look at. Don't limit your audience and success: https://bit.ly/3sWQqFE #Rovio #Diversity #Inclusion #GameDesign

Almost everyone enjoys computer games, so why would you limit your potential audience? Sadly, many developers do this, sometimes even by mistake. They do this by failing to include accessibility options or diverse stories or including harmful stereotypes. Thankfully, Rovio has written a free guide for inclusive game development that's well worth having a look at. Don't limit your audience and success: https://bit.ly/3sWQqFE #Rovio #Diversity #Inclusion #GameDesign

We do things a little differently at M13, and last night was no exception. To kick things off at our community reception, Natalie Kuhn of The Class led us in an exercise to get grounded in bodies and get out of the “networking” headspace—and make room to truly connect with and be inspired by each other. It was the perfect framing for Riot Games Co-founder Marc Merrill’s conversation with M13 Co-founder Carter Reum. “Two-year overnight successes don’t exist,” said Carter. “I want to talk about fifteen-year overnight successes like Riot.” “Going from being a bunch of no-name 25-year-olds to building a company that was actually relevant was, of course, very difficult,” said Marc. “But as gamers, [my co-founder] Brandon Beck and I felt we were being underserved by a lot of the publishers and developers at the time. Incumbents would focus on what their retail partners would need, not what players wanted.” (For example, he said, gamers didn’t really want yet another sequel to Guitar Hero.) Marc went on: “We truly believe that the thing that matters most is focus on a specific audience. And so at Riot, every single aspect of the experience was hyper-optimized to be tailored for a very specific niche. And it turns out in a globally connected world, if you hyper-serve a niche well, you can build a pretty big audience over time.” Part of truly serving your audience is making sure you serve your full audience: In gaming—which has a reputation for being a monoculture, but in actuality is a diverse, global space—this means making sure everyone feels safe playing. For more on Riot’s beginnings, challenges and successes, and culture, check out Marc’s “How I Built This” episode on NPR: https://lnkd.in/gBP-RBqp

This year we will see the full power of game design innovations 💡 as not only this leading pack but also all the other Hypercasual studios will be dynamically pivoting towards HybridCasual.

On a new year we recap the current status of the Hybrid-Casual race 🏇 on the current market. For the last 30 days we found 6 games that fit the cutoff of $1 Mil. IAP revenue a month without the ads counted 😁 (Sadness multiplier not counted) #1 🏆 is of course Survivor.io from Habby with $12,6 Mil. 🤑 #2 same company, Archero with $3 Mil. IAP a month 🏹 #3 Block Jam 3D form Voodoo gradually scaling up with $2,4 Mil. 🟦 #4 CrazyLabs's Alien Invasion holding steady with $2 Mil IAP a month 👽 #5 Voodoo's Mob Control continuing to rise with around $1,9 Mil #6 Live-ops propped up Habby's SSSnaker to cross $1 Mil. IAP a month 🐍 *(Last 30 days IAP only, no Ad revenue counted, numbers can be greatly misleading sometimes 😅 🤷♂️) Honorable mention - the big hits from SayGames My Perfect Hotel and Dreamdale declined from their peaks pushing them under $1 Mil. IAP a month, but there is a new dark horse aggressively scaling in their portfolio - Tower War, which we will cover next week in detail on the podcast 😎. This year we will see the full power of game design innovations 💡 as not only this leading pack but also all the other Hypercasual studios will be dynamically pivoting towards HybridCasual. We can't wait to see their racers 🏎 join this list. The metagame progressions will be the key this year🗝. Join us as we discuss all of this with 🦩 Matej awarding his Cpt. Hook Awards and Felix bringing some "crushing" news from Google. Did we miss any big Hybrid in the list? Let us know 😁 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/dmSj_by8 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/d_us689C 🗣 Join the discussion on our slack channel: https://lnkd.in/dXX6matv #gamedev #gamedevelopment #gameindustry #mobilegames #mobilegamedevelopment #useracquisition #gamedesign #gamedesigner #ads #creativeads #gamedevelopers #gameproduction #games #gameplay #hypercasual #hybridcasual

Travel Town by Magmatic Games Ltd already scaled past $600K 🤑 IAP a day with around 100K downloads a day and is currently the merge subgenre leader 🏆. We did a special deep dive on the whole Merge category, covering the history, the revenues and the mechanics of all these games 😎. Travel Town continues the evolution of Merge2 line, which was started by Metacore's Merge Mansion 🏡, where you need to manage your grid of merge tokens and renovate in the meta layer. As seen on the 3rd Image, the game already implemented the Sticker Album 📓 mechanic from Scopely's Monopoly GO, which fits their audience, by sending duplicate stickers through Facebook group to your friends. The secret sauce of the game is hidden in its balancing ➗, as all merge games are basically scaling excel sheets of generators that produce tokens based on energy ⚡ consumption and cooldowns. Travel Town makes sure that some of your extra tokens are always taken out of the grid, making the inventory tetris much more manageable. All of this is hidden and no drop rates are disclosed in any of the merge games. That's why its much more than meets the eye 👀, when you are trying to build a merge game 😅. The surprising discovery 🕵♂️ is that even though Travel Town is the biggest merge game currently, it is actually Microfun, who is the biggest merge company by market share. With 4 of their merge games (Gossip Harbor, Seaside Escape, Merge County, Merge Fables) making around $23 Mil. a month 🤑 together. A big shout-out goes to Laura Taranto, for joining us on this one, sharing some heavy knowledge of the genre. Thanks for coming on the pod 😊. Felix & 🦩 Matej also went deep on the Admon and UA fronts. Join us for this extremely packed episode! 😎 Data based on Sensor Tower, thanks for the support 🤗 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/emnfSTRc 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eKkU2ACq 🗣 Join the discussion in our slack channel: https://lnkd.in/eTGUVrEY #gamedev #gamedevelopment #gamedesign #gameindustry #mobilegames #mobilemarketing #mobileadvertising #userexperiencedesign #userexperience #gamedeveloper #games #gameart #ads #creative #casualgames #merge #puzzle

Magid's Matt Bertz will be leading a roundtable at the upcoming #DICEReykjavík conference. Bertz joins other industry leaders who will discuss ideas and trends around the theme 'The Long Game.' "Games as a Relationship – The Challenges and Expectations for Meeting Player Needs in Live Service Titles" Players have no shortage of live-service games to spend their time with, and the space will only get more crowded in the coming years. How do you attract, retain, and even re-attract players? Bertz and roundtable participants will examine the challenges facing publishers and developers in maintaining these long-term relationships with players, such as rising player expectations with content pipelines, empowering communities to extend engagement, how toxicity can damage growth, and how to combat the “fear of catching up” lapsed players face. #GamesAsARelationship #Games #GamesIndustry #DICE

Our monthly #gametech newsletter, Under The Hood, that explores what's behind today's top mobile games just went out to hundreds of subscribers. In October's edition: 1️⃣ New on the blog - Leagues: Fostering in-game communities to drive engagement, retention, and monetization. 2️⃣ Metaplay SDK news: We look ahead to Release 25 and the Metaplay SDK public rollout. 3️⃣ Quickfire Q&A: with Metaplay developers Nomi Lakkala and Pennina Miururi, architects of our latest social feature: Leagues 4️⃣ Masters of Gamedev: Art you didn't know you needed 5️⃣ A Short Story: The past, present, and future of #gameconfigs (and why you need advanced game config workflows) #gamedevelopment #UnderTheHood ——— Subscribe to the newsletter now by following the link in the comments 👇

Check this out -Powering Hello Kitty’s rise to the top flight of mobile: Hello Kitty Island Adventure is doing a lot of remarkable work to disprove a dated prejudice about kids games based on licensed brands. It may no longer be remotely fair or accurate, but some still default to assuming that such games are somehow less creatively credible, innovative, or technologically ambitious than equivalent works conceived for an older audience. Now, that might have been a slightly fairer presumption in the early 1990s, when the likes of kids’ movie tie-ins were too often rushed out quick and cheap. And we can almost certainly point to that era as the source of the lingering prejudice. Read more- and consider kaedim3d.com for AI that turns images into models in minutes #GamingCommunity #GameIndustryNews #Gamedev

Embrace the unsexy 🤓 It’s the 🔑 to FunCraft's success 🚀→ $15M in revenue and 7M+ installs💪 And I recently got to chat with mobilegamer.biz’s Neil Long to break down what that means for our team ➡️ 🔥We deliberately make “unsexy” games that other studios avoid (no MOBAs or shooters here!) 🔥We don’t directly compete against bigger studios and their strengths 🔥We’re not cluttering games with shiny features that don’t move the needle 🔥We let tests (300 and counting) and data inform our every move We believe in substance over sheen 💯 And that’s why our team loves Neil Young’s articles and industry takes. There’s no BS - just insights the mobile games industry can use 👍 He’s got a great voice and perspective on the industry’s biggest news and trends (👉 best take on Apple 🍏and their 30% fees). And I always get valuable takeaways from his profiles of other studios 🤔 So, check out Neil’s piece on FunCraft. I’ll add a link in the comments. And tell me if it offers any insights you can use 🙌