Game Refinery

OCTOBER 5, 2023

Video games have come a long way since they were first conceptualized in the 1950s, with expansive open worlds that can fit right in your pocket, but you don’t need to go back 70 years to see what games looked like back then. Paid membership also removes in-game ads for a more seamless experience. So, what’s to blame?

Mobile 52

Mobile Mobile Esports Games 52

Designer Notes

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

I gave a talk on games and meaning at GDC 2023, which is now available on YouTube: However, I fully scripted the talk ahead of time, so I decided it would be worth taking the time to post the slides online, in three parts to have mercy on your browser. So, here are the standings before the final game between Barbados and Grenada.

Mechanics 75

Mechanics Game Design Game Designer Build 75

Game Designing

APRIL 16, 2022

When the Nintendo GameBoy was first released in 1989, it was a revolution in personal gaming. Other handheld game systems came out around the same time, including Sega Game Gear, NEC TurboExpress, and the Atari Lynx. Fortunately, the DS was backward-compatible, meaning it could play GBA games just fine. That’s okay.

Games 52

Games Fantasy Fighting Graphics 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JULY 10, 2022

This post is written by our friends, the fantastic Game Bakery substack team. However, the gameplay in Dislyte is nothing new, adopting Lilith’s best practices for CCG-RPG games with validated gameplay, solid meta-features, and gacha-based monetization. The game is, in a way, a follow-up to the widely successful AFK Arena.

Art 52

Art Media Feature Content 52

Sirlin

SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

It’s generally good in a competitive game when there’s a lot of interaction. If you want to cast any spells, you need a hero in play to cast them—and your heroes can be attacked. In combat, you’re able to attack anything with hit points: any unit, hero, or building. Heroes Heroes are the stars of your army.

Build 52

Build Mechanics Games Development 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 13, 2021

Our 2021 predictions have been sponsored by Facebook Gaming. Facebook Gaming helps developers and publishers to build, grow, and monetize their games. While Hypercasual games account for less than 1% of the total IAP revenue of all Casual games, it drove well over half of all downloads for the category during 2019.

Mechanics 52

Mechanics Puzzle Advertising Studios 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Since then, I’ve read Lloyd’s article “ Subscriptions: The new weapon in the game monetization arsenal ” half a dozen times and turned from a doubter of subscriptions into a believer. He has been in the video game industry since 1993, where he has worked at both start-ups and huge entertainment companies.

Games 52

Games Content Entertainment Retail 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JUNE 3, 2020

This article is the last and, the most important piece of the “scaling” puzzle focusing on the nothing less than the game that is being promoted and the teams that are promoting it. Hoping that your game is going to become a cultural phenomenon is a super long shot and often requires access to a top IP that can be very expensive.

Games 52

Games Mobile Mobile Art 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 29, 2020

Some of the best ideas in the gaming industry were inspired by other games and sometimes even created within other games. In our taxanomy, Auto-Chess games don’t yet have their own bubble. The Very Brief History of Auto Chess Games. Please take the numbers with a giant grain of salt.

Mobile 52

Mobile Mobile Games Fighting 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 23, 2023

Fastforward to September of 2022 and the game, Marvel Snap, is finally out globally after a considerable amount of time in soft launch. What I mean by that it is easy to pick up and play, which for a card game is no small feat. Most importantly, the game was and is performing! What’s the best way to describe Marvel Snap?

Tile 95

Tile Mechanics Feature Mobile 95

Deconstructor of Fun

OCTOBER 27, 2020

And while those two titles dominate the top charts, Playrix road to the top started a long time ago with a non-assuming little game know as Township. The game was launched in 2011 as a freemium social game first as Google+ (!) Strong iPad monetization indicates that this is a game played at home by a more mature audience.

Co-op 52

Co-op Puzzle Games Mechanics 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

This analysis is written by Taras Koshelev (Lead Game Designer at My.Games Venture Capital) who focused on game mechanics and loops and Michail Katkoff (Founder of Savage Game Studios) who covered the market and marketability. But as we all know with Playrix, their super power is not making the most outstanding games.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Tile Mechanics Build 52

The Liquid Fire

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

Overview Having a hero with skill “values” gets us a long way to our goals. In this game, we don’t simply ask if your skill is a certain level, but add some randomness. We will make the final system that puts a hero’s skills to the test to see if they can really do what they set out to accomplish.

Asset 40

Asset Scripting Mechanics Racing 40

Deconstructor of Fun

MARCH 14, 2023

Last week in Istanbul, Google and Deconstructor of Fun brought together a thousand-strong group of high-level mobile game execs to talk about the future of the business. You can find edited highlights of each talk below, and videos of each session – just hit play to start watching. Shooters got creamed”, too, he said – down 33%.

Games 59

Games Cross platform Mobile Mobile 59

SOVEREIGN MOON

OCTOBER 12, 2020

SOVEREIGN MOON PRESENTS… 10 Best Sci-Fi Games To Play in 2020 for FREE. In this post, we’ve rounded up the 10 best sci-fi games you can play for free in 2020. If science fiction is what you’re looking for, we have your covered with the ultimate list of the best free games in the genre. . Planet Calypso.

Co-op 52

Co-op Games First person Code 52

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

This is a holiday shopper’s guide to all things Board Games. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Hobby Board Games. Tasty Humans is a 30-60 minute, tile-laying, pattern-building game for 1-4 players. Description from Board Game Geek.

Tile 130

Tile Point and Click Games Art 130

Deconstructor of Fun

DECEMBER 11, 2020

This guest post is written by Gordon Rowe , an experienced product leader that has spent 10 years building and operating free to play games on mobile, web, and consoles. I’m hooked on this game. from Gram Games, and Evermerge from Big Fish/Neskin Games. It’s 2:02 pm on a Friday and I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Mechanics 52

Mechanics Balance Build Data 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 17, 2022

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. Clash Mini is one of the three Clash games Supercell announced in April of 2021. As expected from Supercell, Clash Quest is a polished game.

Content 52

Content Mechanics Point and Click Mobile 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

The game has not achieved the business objectives set by Supercell and the game will shut down. In games, like in real life, we often have more to learn from misses than successes. The game was first available in the Nordics, followed by a quick rollout to the Philippines, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Mechanics Content Dev 52

Sirlin

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

In case you missed the first two: #1 Codex Design: Cards and Gold As Resources #2 Codex Design: Heroes and Tech Buildings. In offline (tabletop) games, it also means turns go smoothly: without the fits and starts of the opponent constantly interrupting you. This is the 3rd in a series of design articles about Codex.

Build 52

Build Mechanics Feature Fighting 52

Designer Notes

MARCH 31, 2023

Here are the games that I’ve worked on. Spoiler alert: Civilization 3 and 4 are going to come up a lot in the presentation… I also do a podcast where I interview game designers about why they make games, so check it out if you have time for 4-hour interviews. So, why should I go back to make a historical, tile-based 4X game?

Tile 98

Tile Point and Click AI Mechanics 98

Keith Burgun

JANUARY 27, 2023

This might have some very light spoilers, but… honestly, one of my main criticisms is that there isn’t much to spoil in this game, at least not in the 27 or so hours that I played. But the rest of the game that I saw, was not like this intro at all. It seems like maybe the problem here is how long the game is.

Writing 52

Writing Fantasy Fighting Cutscenes 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JULY 23, 2020

I believe that the deprecation of the IDFA will catalyze a period of accelerated consolidation in the mobile gaming space via M&A. Smaller, single-game mobile gaming studios will see their growth trajectory obstructed completely and suddenly. The valuations of these companies will drop rapidly.

Mobile Gaming 52

Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile Co-op 52

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 this second post we discuss Arcade games, which we see as a genre in the Casual category. The State of Arcade Games While the Arcade genre only accounts for 7.5%

Mechanics 52

Mechanics Platformer Studios Data 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 15, 2022

This post is written by the fantastic Game Bakery substack team of Chase, Zixuan, Haiyin, Caitou, Fish, Amy, Chow, Jing, Wanzi and edited by Caitou, Rob. When we talk about MMO, many may relegate this game category to “old-school” or “niche.” Amazon Games has finally made its name after the tough launch of New World.

Cutscenes 52

Cutscenes Art Content Mechanics 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 14, 2020

We originally created a taxonomy together with Game Refinery dividing the games market into four different categories: Casual, Mid-Core, Casino and Sports. We pulled the data of top 1000 games from last three years from the one and only App Annie and aligned the data with the categories, genres and sub-genres.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Games Tile Mobile 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MARCH 22, 2021

Early this year the Turkish mobile startup Dream Games has raised $50 million in new funding ($57.5M total funding), despite having only soft-launched its first game, Royal Match. Dream Games was founded by two of Peak’s former Product Directors. Thus a full breakdown of the newly released game is warranted. It made $5.1

Puzzle 69

Puzzle Mobile Mobile Mechanics 69