PreMortem.Games

DECEMBER 22, 2023

Solo dev Feryaz Beer’s debut Super Fantasy Kingdom “A weird mashup of genres” Jordan Mochi has been working on his debut game Conscript for 6 years under the name of Catchweight Studio. His first game, mobile RPG Soulvars , started out as a passion project. I feel like I was put on Earth to make this game”, he says.

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Development Dev Indy Game Developer 254

Game Refinery

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Following the high-level trend of hybridization across mobile , more and more casual games have started introducing competitive elements into their live event strategies. With that in mind, are mobile game studios missing out on an important opportunity here to boost engagement?

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Puzzle Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile 52

PreMortem.Games

JUNE 30, 2023

Founder and CEO Olivier Madiba is pursuing his dream of creating the biggest African game studio by building a Pan-African entertainment ecosystem which encapsulates games, comics, animation and even restaurants. Madiba humbly shared his studio’s struggles and how he was uncertain of its success. This is his story. She was right.

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Entertainment Build Games Animation 197

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 12, 2023

In February, Ilkka Paananen, the beloved CEO of Supercell, and arguably one of the faces on the Mount Rushmore of Mobile Games Executives, published his yearly blog post. All in all, Ilkka’s yearly blog is an inspirational and quite sincere vision of the top brass of a major mobile games company. It’s Team Fight Tactics for casuals.

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Mobile Mobile Engine Engineering 118

PreMortem.Games

JULY 17, 2023

The fact that you can tell who you’re up against because of how they fight, not how they look or what their name is. Over the years the team grew to an international and fully remote team of 9 developers that released Mordhau, the studio’s first title, in 2019. It was this idea that pushed everything else.

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Console First person PC Mesh 104

Big Games

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

Let’s explore the Top 10 Mobile Game Development without wasting your precious time! Developed by Bethesda Game Studios, it was initially met with mixed reviews during its early access phase but later garnered attention and commercial success. So, are you excited to take a look?

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Graphics Racing Entertainment Games 52

The Bottom Feeder

MARCH 5, 2024

Lots of studio closures. The enormous mobile side of the business has been churning out massive piles of product (and 80 ripoffs of every game that gets any traction) for years. There is just too much entertainment out there fighting for too little free time. They just like to play games. There have been lots of layoffs lately.

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Indy Writing Games Fighting 103

PreMortem.Games

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Then someone told me about a game developer in our community who had developed a fighting game based on their comic. Notably, she is an animator on the project Tom the Postgirl at Oopsie Daisies studio. I was working at a tech incubator in Zambia, surrounded by programmers, and it never crossed my mind that we could make our own games.

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Game Developer Game Development Development Games 141

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 4, 2023

We dive into decline of hypercasual games and hybridcasual, an attempt by mobile game developers to adapt to the new normal in the industry. The antithesis of hypercasual, but Shea said the results mean that a similar approach will now be deployed across all of Voodoo’s studios and games going forwards. Missed a previous newsletter?

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Mechanics Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Recently Apple decided to delay the privacy requirements of iOS 14 until ‘early next year ’ presumably after the mobile game industry uproar became too much. There aren’t many trillion dollar companies eager to fight for user privacy, after all. Mobile games is soundly not a growth industry anymore.

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Game Developer Game Development Development Mobile Gaming 52

Game Refinery

APRIL 6, 2023

With increased competition from IDFA regulation changes and new games consistently entering the market, two of the biggest challenges facing publishers and mobile game studios are acquiring new players (UA) and keeping those players in your game (player retention).

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Mechanics Puzzle Mobile Mobile 81

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 29, 2020

It all started with “ Dota Auto Chess ”, developed in January ’19 by Drodo Studio as a mod for Dota 2. And just like that, this new concept initially created for PC quickly became a new genre and expanded to mobile, as most of these games are also on mobile (or are going to be soon). What should be the path?

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Mobile Mobile Games Fighting 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 13, 2024

Post-lockdown, the demand for games dropped due to two key factors: Firstly, people are spending more time on outdoor activities and consuming more media on platforms like social media and streaming services, affecting gaming engagement, especially on mobile devices. Fighting against the AI revolution is not the answer.

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AI Games AAA Media 59

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

To discuss the first court rulings from the perspective of a mobile game publisher I sat down with non-other than the powerful Eric Seufert from Mobile Dev Memo and the extremely knowledgeable Chris Hewish , President of Xsolla. Below you’ll find our conversation on YouTube and podcast. Consider it an appetizer to the content.

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Dev Mobile Mobile Build 52

Game Refinery

OCTOBER 26, 2023

The ever-changing nature of the mobile market means that new monetization mechanics are constantly emerging and evolving. Battle passes have crept into almost every mobile game genre imaginable, with our platform showing that 66% of mobile games in the top 20% have incorporated the feature.

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Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile Co-op 82

Moonmana

APRIL 7, 2023

Both Unity and Unreal are popular choices among giant game development studios as well as indie developers. Some say Unreal is better just because it’s a common choice for AAA studios. Unity is considered the best solution for mobile game development. Unity is the best option for indie developers and mobile game projects.

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Engine Engineering Game Engine Asset 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 19, 2021

Role-Playing Games on Mobile The RPG market is a high risk, high reward genre walled by a robust entry barrier. A studio working on an RPG has to focus on depth over core gameplay, have incredibly robust live operation capabilities, and nearly impeccable production processes that keep the content fresh for the players.

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Cross platform Mobile Mobile Platformer 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

In looking at recent innovations, a few key takeaways: Platform Expansion: We saw 1 new platform emerge but it was a huge one that now eclipses the other platforms: mobile Genre Expansion: We continue to see genre expansion and as before likely powered by technology enablement (e.g., So you have to have some studio capacity.

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Esports Technology Games Platformer 52

Deconstructor of Fun

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

AAA game franchises are in the middle of a renaissance on mobile. Several of the industry’s top IPs have received high-fidelity ports that have been successful in bringing core franchise players to the mobile format. It was only a matter of time before Call of Duty would find its feet on mobile. So is COD Mobile dead?

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Mobile Mobile FPS Console 52

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Even as creatives in other entertainment industries continue to fight to make fair wages, a new front has opened in gaming as developers figure out what to do about Unity’s new fee structure. But to smaller studios, the updated fee structure is a financial threat. Moreover, game production is changing rapidly.

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Engine Engineering Game Engine Platformer 115

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 8, 2020

Somewhere in the middle of this journey, another Friendly Game studio shared the early results of the new game they had recently launched. Considering the overly competitive mobile user acquisition market, increasing LTV over time is vital not only to succeed but to survive. This can be seen in how the installs affect revenue.

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Data Build Mobile Mobile 59

Game Errors

APRIL 26, 2023

Urban locations Now, the battles are not limited by forests, mountains, and villages – for the first time in the Far Cry series, we’ll fight in the big city of Esperance, the capital of Yara. The developers are working closely with AMD, which new gaming technologies are very pleased with the studio from Toronto.

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Ray Tracing Open World Cinematics PC 52

Game Refinery

AUGUST 17, 2022

Therefore, to correct this terrible misuse of the term, we will look at what “roguelike” or “roguelite” or even “Rogue” actually mean, as well as diving into some concrete examples of how roguelike elements and mechanics have been used in mobile games in China lately. source: Wikipedia).

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Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile Mechanics 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 20, 2020

This makes RPGs the third largest genre on mobile after Strategy ($5.4Bn) and Puzzle ($4.5Bn) games. For example, entering Fighting games is nearly suicidal effort. Fighting games install trends are spiky as is the revenue rate. To summarise it, failing to make and scale a high-quality RPG will likely doom a studio.

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Puzzle Fighting Studios Art 52

Mircosoft Game Dev

AUGUST 10, 2017

This is where 99.99% of indie developers and studios make their main and most fatal mistake. Publicity for a mobile game is out of the question, it's too expensive. You can get a publisher, but most mobile publishers are scammers. True mobile publishers will ask you this question: "What are you KPIs?"

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Prototyping Alpha Asset Point and Click 52

PreMortem.Games

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

I left gamedev entirely for five years, because I was burned out from working on yet another F2P mobile casino game or whatever soulless product would feed my family.” The indie community is amazingly helpful, but you will have to fight by yourself with every single element in your own game – and that takes time! That’s terrible!

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Dev Playtesting Art Games 156

Deconstructor of Fun

DECEMBER 5, 2021

If you’re interested in growing your business on mobile and beyond, look no further. Xsolla has dedicated tools that will help you create your own online commerce platform, improve your performance marketing and discoverability, and expand your game business on mobile and PC. This post is sponsored by Xsolla.

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Console Mobile Mobile PC 59

Deconstructor of Fun

JUNE 13, 2021

Written by Ethan Levy , who is always looking for worthy, free-to-play mobile games for the N3TWORK Scale Platform. So, setting their sites on a subscription-based offering on mobile does sound like a more approachable business that Netflix would consider. These games could be a console, pc, or mobile.

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Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile Games 52

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 25, 2023

In Conversation: Riot SVP & League Studio Head Andrei van Roon The Consolidation of Blockchain Gaming The entire world is preparing for a possible economic downturn, and companies are trying to find ways to minimize the negative impact. Listen to one of our podcasts from this week, we’ve got: ? Deconstructor of Fun Podcast ?

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Games Polygon Studios Cross platform 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 31, 2022

An essential data platform for all mobile gaming studios. Well, one of the biggest trends in mid-core games is growing your business on mobile and beyond. The biggest sub-genre on mobile in terms of revenue is 4X Games, which also had a good year. This prediction is written by Michail Katkoff and Buğrahan Göker.

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Cross platform Platformer Puzzle Mobile 52

Mircosoft Game Dev

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

The illustration picture for this article is a screenshot of Object Wars , an upcoming multiplayer third person shooter in a cute, homey environment where everyday objects fight it off in battle royale or team deathmatch. The game is developed by Vedg Studio / NoirosL and was recently ported to Godot 4.0 Wishlist it on Steam!

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Beta Dev Render Alpha 91

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 17, 2020

Here are the three things you need to know about ironSource: #1: They’re developing the most robust, data-driven growth engine for mobile games. #2: In fact, Arcade games alone make up for ~45% of 2019’s total download volume across all mobile gaming genres. This analysis is also brought to you by ironSource.

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Mechanics Platformer Studios Data 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

GoPractice is also highly recommended by some of the top mobile games companies, which is how I originally got connected with Oleg. Here’s how I view data-driven culture In my opinion, most teams working on mobile games don’t fully use the potential of data. Neither gameplay, nor controls were adapted to a mobile devices.

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Data Build Games Mobile 52

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 8, 2019

Beyond study and instrumentation, there is instinct.” - Annorax* Creating a new F2P mobile game is riskier than it’s ever been. The majority of F2P mobile publishers are prioritizing the improvement of live operations processes for existing products over the creation of new products to generate more reliable revenue and to control costs.

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Fantasy Mechanics Concepts Mobile 52

Game Refinery

OCTOBER 11, 2022

Tower of Fantasy is a new MMORPG developed by Hotta Studio and published by Perfect World and Level Infinite. As a typical MMORPG feature, players can also challenge others for an open-world fight. So, does it live up to the promise? This makes interacting with players much easier. Tower of Fantasy: PvP mode Apex League.

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Fantasy Co-op Open World Feature 52

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 2, 2022

Mobile games market predictions in 2022 Michail Katkoff, Savage Game Studios, and Deconstructor of Fun. Mobile gaming megatrends Eric Seufert, Mobile Dev Memo. Mobile ad spending worldwide is going up and shifting faster than ever from traditional channels like TV, OOO into digital.

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Mobile Mobile Balance Mobile Gaming 52

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 25, 2022

The card-battling RPG genre was one of the first in mobile games that enjoyed success at scale and popularity around the world. By embracing and encouraging gamers’ motivation to collect and to cultivate, the card battling genre has become a proven formula for mobile companies and studios to maximize their revenue.

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Baking Simulation Build Animation 52