20 trends in the mobile gaming industry

Original author: Jon Jordan
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According to the results of the GDC conference, the chief editor of the pocketgamer.biz British site dedicated to the mobile games industry shared his view of what is happening in the global mobile industry and what will happen to it in the future. The material is very large, but so interesting that we are sure that you will read it to the end.

1. Money is not the main thing



Now many developers are testing their games without monetization. They release beta versions, polish gameplay and carefully watch how users behave. Moreover, they pay special attention to the training mode (as we already wrote in our blog, the training mode in the game is extremely important for the success of the game).

In their opinion, if a project shows good metrics, if they play it, it’s not difficult to implement monetization, and therefore earn money on it. By the way, the reasonableness of this approach was proved by NimbleBit (the authors of Tiny Tower) and Imangi (the creators of Temple Run), releasing free, but extremely profitable projects.

2. Long-term investments



Free-2-Play-projects are present on the mobile market for two years. So many already understand that such games should be developed with a view to more than one year: they do not start decently to earn money right away.

For clarity, a couple of wonderful examples: one of the highest grossing games of 2011 in the USA was Tap Zoo (Pocket Gems), which was released in September 2010; the peak earnings at Diner Dash (PlayFirst), released in March 2009, came only in January 2012.

From this we conclude: LTV - Lifetime Value of the player (the total amount that the player spends on a particular game for the entire time of its existence) becomes an increasingly important indicator.

3. Gold Rush



Gambling (poker, casino, roulette) may well blow up the mobile market in the 2012th year.

At least, the leading market players are sure of this and are buying up developers who are versed in such fun: Playtika, responsible for the development of Slotomania, bought Caesars for the 2011 final; Big Fish Games acquired Self Aware Games, famous for Card Ace Casino; giant Zynga recently announced its intention to partner with Wynn Resorts, a company making money at a real casino.

Why is everyone so eager for this still free market?

Everything is simple - the matter is money. An average gambler can earn up to $ 150. As for the LTV player in mobile farms, there it fluctuates around $ 20. Did you feel the difference?

4. Apple problems



The iTunes App Store is the most promising market. Especially for those who want to make big money. True, in recent years, developers are increasingly criticizing Cupertinians. The fact is that the guys from Apple are too slow: they take a very long time to solve problems that require quick, immediate intervention.

Examples?

Please: the Yabloko people did not respond to bots for a long time; at the moment they are slow in matters relating to the protection of rights. As for their Game Center, they still complain about it because of modest functionality.

5. Is the new iPad a blow to the industry?



A hit - yes, but, funny enough, it’s precisely on the iOS segment. Due to the new device, there is no longer a place for outsiders in this market, and there is a place for fragmentation.

So, in order. Developers of the Epic level (as well as Fishlabs, MadFinger, NaturalMotion, Revo Solutions and many others) will easily master the new tablet features. But for smaller companies that do not have such budgets and, therefore, opportunities, a new device with a Retina screen is not a step forward, it is a new chain: it did not optimize the application - textures stretched four times - poor graphics - low sales.

Let's move on: many new games on old iPads will not work (some will no longer go on the first generation of gadgets or go, but with huge brakes). And this, in fact, is fragmentation. Although not the same as in the case of Android, but still ...

Total: the appearance of a powerful gadget may well remove small developers from the market.

6. Cross-advertising



Everyone is dreaming of attracting users to their projects. The question is how this can be done without a lot of cost.

The answer in the title is through cross-advertising.

Many developers and publishers have been using it for a long time, promoting new products or simply less popular games in their successful projects. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that the number of cross-advertising networks is growing rapidly.

7. Analytical boom



Along with the number of cross-advertising networks, the number of companies engaged in research, evaluation and market analytics is growing. Already there are a lot of them, however, in the first place, Flurry Analytics, App Annie and Distimo always remember. Perhaps in the near future one more asterisk will rise among the analytical companies - and this is wonderful, because there can be a lot of information about applications and stories.

8. The sleeping leader



Now they often talk about the confrontation of the platforms. Developers argue who wins - iOS or Android, maybe someone else? Share their thoughts on the future of BlackBerry (foggy), Microsoft (controversial) and Amazon (promising). But, in fact, the influence of all these companies on the market is much less than is commonly believed, more precisely than what they can really have.

For example, only 20% of Bejeweled Blitz iOS players use Facebook Connect to compare their scores with friends. And this is despite the fact that the game is social.

The thing is that so far none of the major players have decided for themselves whether the games are their priority vector of development or not. And until this happens, the giants will remain asleep, and the real struggle for leadership will be a matter of an unpredictable future.

9. Platform



The key word of the March GDC is the platform.

Her definition is this: an application network with an integrated service.

It is, so to speak, very general. But the problem is that recently there are more and more of them. Each more or less large publisher tries to open its own network (in which, as mentioned above, he is happy to engage in cross-advertising).

For example, GREE and DeNA did this. But this is a drop in the bucket, because there is a Game Center on iOS, RIM Scoreloop, as well as a sea of ​​Chinese platforms, among which Papaya plays a big role. In addition, let's not forget about The9, which launched Game Zone and iDreamSky, which launched Skynet. In general, the list can be continued for a long time, because I still remember Zynga with its Platform and Sulake with Habbo Hotel.

Ideally, the best platform takes all the offers, but that's ideal. In fact, it turns out that any avid mobile player is registered on at least six platforms.

Which ones? Well, it depends on his gender, age, geographic location and the type of games he likes.

And this is only the user side of the business.

Indeed, at a time when publishers are trying to keep the user on their own gaming networks, companies like Tapjoy, Fiksu and GetJar are creating common trading platforms covering several different platforms at once.

Do not forget that application stores are also platforms.

So it turns out that the mobile application industry is a kind of pyramid formed from various platforms that form platforms among themselves, which, in turn, form large platform formations. In other words, our industry is not a pair of large companies competing among themselves, but a huge number of networks dependent on each other.

10. Everything is simple



With the release of more and more powerful gadgets, games are becoming more complicated, more complex. And more and more money is being spent on their marketing. On the other hand, games like Tiny Wings and Temple Run show that you don’t always have to complicate things. Sometimes it works just a good and intelligently implemented idea.

Judging by the latest GDC, many understand this.

11. And again about the platforms



As we mentioned above: a rare publisher does not create its own platform. And this, in principle, is not so bad. Especially for a developer who is clearly interested in having as many markets for his products as possible.

The problem is that each platform has its own rules for placement and promotion. So the lion's part of the time and effort is not devoted directly to development, but to an attempt to sell the application immediately in a huge number of markets.

For this, in turn, the developer has to step on the rake more than once or twice. Given that they are different on each platform, the developer often can only regret it.

12. Dragon and bear



In the global mobile market, Russian and Chinese companies are increasing their presence. And ours, mainly, are guided by the markets of North America and Europe.

13. They believe in BlackBerry



Despite the numerous problems of the Canadian "blackberry" company, recently other developers have high hopes for it.

On the sidelines of GDC 2012, many have been actively discussing the platform. By the way, without any irony.

Moreover, there were those who claimed that in 2012 they would raise more money with BlackBerry than with Android. And you know, such optimism has sources: the company compensates a small number of users with high prices for its applications.

In addition, it became known that at the moment with the BlackBerry App World for its entire existence, downloaded applications more than 2 billion times.

So the company can still manage to conquer the market.

14. Hot year?



Last year was the heyday of studios that were engaged in not just mobile, but mobile-social games. Storm8, TinyCo, Pocket Gems, Funzio and CrowdStar made themselves known. And almost every one of them was heavily invested by outside investors.

True, not everything and not everyone was so happy. Some of the offices went down.

There were several reasons for this.

Firstly, companies spent money too quickly, and the cost of attracting users also grew very quickly.

Secondly, these companies flooded the market with clones.

Thirdly, many simply did not have enough experience.

In addition, the market situation was greatly heated by the arrival of social monsters such as Zynga, GREE and DeNA. Because of this, competition between companies has increased significantly. This, in turn, increased the cost of specialists, and, as a result, the cost of the development itself.

15. This will not happen again



This time, the console workers kept silent at GDC 2012: they kept the announcements up to E3. So all attention was directed to the mobile industry. Next year, the situation will change radically. Everyone will begin to discuss new consoles and super-graphics.

16. Mobile engines



Console engine companies are entering the mobile market. Moreover, they regard it as one of the main ones.

For example, developers from Geomerics are now preparing to release a demo of their Enlighten technology (used in Battlefield 3) for release on iOS as a separate application. Epic released something similar a year and a half ago, demonstrating the capabilities of the mobile version of Unreal Engine.

Another example: the company Crytek recently released its first mobile game developed on its own popular engine (Crysis 2 was developed on it).

17. UDID is in question



Apple’s refusal to use UDIDs is still one of the main events of 2012. Moreover, it is still not entirely clear whether the company is going to abandon the identifier or not.

Details about the possible reasons for the introduction of UDID and that it will not be introduced yet can be read on the links.

18. This crazy, crazy, crazy world



More recently, the word “insanity” - in the context of “insanely profitable” - could only be used by Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio.

However, the mobile industry is growing at a tremendous pace, and this word - along with the related "hyper growth" - is now being mentioned more and more often: many players - even especially large ones like Zynga - say they expect a doubling of profits this year.

19. How to think about the world locally?



It's simple here. Now games need to be published in at least eight languages, and preferably in ten. So do most players.

What are these languages?
Five major European plus Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Polish and Russian.

20. A little bit about attracting users



How to attract users is what all developers are thinking about right now. Hourly, racking their brains, looking for inspiration. After all, the days have passed when the user, without particularly straining, could find a good application in the App Store during a simple surf: now there are too many things.

As far as ficheration is concerned, you should not rely on it: no one will ever guarantee that Apple will be promoting your project. And this, as marketers say, is the only thing you can be 100% sure of.

For this reason, all developers and publishers are engaged in attracting users in a different way. Namely, they spend money so that as many of their people as possible can see their project out of the corner of their eyes. True, they use different tools for this. Someone FreeAppADay, some standard mobile ads, and some bots.

Thus, the market for small independent developments turns into an arena of struggle between large companies that have the means to attract attention. So it is quite possible that very soon the small and independent will either have to rely on the features, or go under the banner of large companies. In any other case, their chances of survival will tend to zero.

Read this and other materials on the development and promotion of applications on mobile platforms on our portalhttp://app2top.ru

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