Games to Avoid: Mechanics That Might not work

Games to Avoid: Mechanics That Might not work 📉🚫 While some game mechanics can initially attract downloads 📥, we've observed several titles that have failed to scale 📉, making them risky for studios to pursue 🚫. Here are a few examples of a specific game mechanic that we think failed to scale because of CPI and retention issues1) Cut and Match by Roman Palamarciuc ✂️❌2) Rope Jam by Funcell Games 🪢🚫3) Rope Jam by Quok Games 🪢🚫Additionally, Rescue Triple by 4S Games and Cut Match Jam by RedLine Games 🔥are two recent titles that should wait for a couple of weeks more to see if they fail or iterate on it ⏱️🔄. If you are a new studio thinking of this idea just wait and observe we have seen 15+ games failing with this mechanic unless you have a strong […]

Vamsi Penmetsa July 11

Journal

20 Metrics All Game Devs Should Hold Close

20 metrics all game devs should hold close. (there are more, but I’ll keep it simple)First, remember 3 core pillars:1. New Players ↳ How you acquire your audience.2. Active Players ↳ How you retain your audience.3. Paying Players ↳ How you monetize your audience.Second, there’s no one-size-fits-all set ofmetrics, but here's the truth:20% of your game’s metrics drive80% of your game’s performance.Here are the 20 most important metrics:📊 Acquisition Metrics• New Daily or Monthly Active Users• CPA (Cost Per Install/Login/Battle)• Fraud Share: Invalid ad metrics• New Players Retention Rate• New Players Churn Rate• K-Factor: Viral growth📊 Retention Metrics• Daily/Monthly Active Users• 1, 7, 30 Day Retention• Session Length• Session Count• Churn Rate• Lifetime📊 Monetization metrics• LTV: Revenue over player Lifetime• ARPPU: Revenue Per Paying User• Daily/Monthly Paying Users• Average Transaction Value• ARPU: Revenue per User• Number of Transactions• Payer Retention• […]

Sergei Vasiuk July 11

Journal

You can make Millions at a price point of $0

You can make Millions at a price point of $0. Want to run a freemium model in your game?TRACK THESE 12 AREAS:• Revenue• Structure• Frequency• Conversion• Payer Ratio• Subscription• Paying Users• First Payment• Currency Flow• Advertisement• Payer Retention• Currency BalanceIt helps you address questions like:• How much are my users willing to spend?• What % of users see value in spending?• How can I increase payer retention?Complex variations may include metrics by item type, payment methods or stores.I hope this helps!Please repost! ♻️ Appreciate it.Anything you'd add or take away?Thank you for reposting. ❤️

Sergei Vasiuk July 10

Journal

What connects Game and States Economies?

What connects Game and States Economies? Game economies frame monetization as governance does for business:• Player Trading• Purchase Limits• Dynamic Pricing• Reward Distribution• Virtual Assets Balance• Virtual Resource Funding• Virtual Currency Inflation ControlA Game Design defines ↳ the ecosystem where a game can exist.LiveOps operates↳ this system in the most optimal way. E.G.: LiveOps tracks trades and modifies currency value to stop inflation.Wish to play & learn economy at school 🔥Imagine students learning economics through managing virtual game economies. This approach could revolutionize education, making learning • practical, • engaging, • and fun.

Sergei Vasiuk July 10

Journal

How to explain the 80/20 rule so even a kid can understand?

Hey gamers, how would you explain the 80/20 rule so even a kid can understand? What is 80/20 Rule or Pareto Principle? 80% of effects come from just 20% of causes.Let's break it down using a game - Mario 🍄8️⃣0️⃣% of obstacles can be overcome by perfecting jumping skills.8️⃣0️⃣% of enemies are overcome by mastering 20% of tough levels.8️⃣0️⃣% of time savings come from 20% of speedrun techniques.What's your 80/20 rule in your favorite game?

Sergei Vasiuk July 9

Journal

Things no one tells you about being a leader:

Things no one tells you about being a leader: The weight of building your team.It hit me like a boss fight unprepared:• I’m responsible for this person’s journey.• They need this job to level up in life.• It helps sustain their life.That’s a heavy load to carry.And it changed my perception forever.When I recruited my first 5 devs, our performance tanked."The team isn’t hitting the high scores like it used to," I thought.But then I noticed some power-ups. I:• Had more bandwidth to strategize.• Completed tasks that were way overdue.• Was no longer grinding on day-to-day taskAnd I realized no game dev manager should view hiring or firing as a casual choice.Team members aren’t just NPCs to throw into the fight.And “your playstyle” isn’t the only one.You can’t play solo every raid.You need to trust your team to play their […]

Sergei Vasiuk July 9

Journal

Money Flow: Game Publishers to the Studio Employees

My last meme before I'm AFK for 5 days. Enjoy, my budding revolutionaries 👾

Willem Delventhal July 8

Journal

Wood Nuts & Bolts Puzzle: Challenging & Demanding Match Puzzle Game

📈🚀 Wood Nuts by Abi Games Studio Hits $500K/Day in Overall Revenue! $450k/day is ad revenue! 🚀📈 3️⃣ Three things drive this success; Clever ad placements, challenging gameplay, and a massive userbase of 4.5 million DAU.💡 Key to Wood Nuts' revenue model is interstitial ads, appearing after every level. With an average session length of 20 minutes, users encounter about 6 interstitial ads per session. The key here is that inter-ads are shown also when a user fails a level. As this is a hard game users will see a lot of interstitial ads. 🔥 Wood Nuts challenging gameplay that requires users to stay focused at all times to pass levels. Users can unlock 3 different sets of boosters and one more position slot by watching RV ads. That means that users can watch up to 4 RV ads per […]

Felix Braberg July 8

Journal

Squad Busters: Why 50% Daily Revenue Drop Doesn’t Bust New Formula

What do we have a month after the release of Squad Busters? Well, the numbers are down, public sentiment isn’t in favor of the game and I play the game less than I thought I would.But why am I still optimistic about it?To answer this, we teamed up with brilliant game analyst Alexandra Dedyukhina and conducted a thorough deconstruction of the game and its performance over the first month. In short, our optimism comes from 2 key points: 1. The game stands unique in Supercell’s portfolio. Despite potential audience cannibalization due to the cross-IP setting, Squad Busters does stand out.2. Most of the issues causing player drop-off are fixable. With time, research, and consistent updates, the overall experience can be significantly improved.3. We saw the masters of LiveOps at work. Remember how Supercell turned Brawl Stars from an all-time low […]

Andrei Zubov July 8

Journal

Streak Mechanics: Boosting Game Monetization

📱 In the evolving landscape of mobile gaming, streak mechanics have emerged as a powerful monetization strategy. By encouraging players to maintain winning streaks 🏆, games not only boost engagement but also drive in-app purchases 💰. Screw Jam doesnot use too much live ops and events as we see in dream games royal match and all instead they found a way to do with lesser events which are more engaging A standout example is Screw Jam 🔩 by Quok Games and Rollic, which uses three key elements to keep players engaged and spending:1) Streak Mechanics 🔄: Compelling players to maintain winning streaks, encouraging them to buy power-ups to continue their progress. This could be one of the best ways to increase engagement and monetization which is evident from the screw jam IAP revenue generated2) Game Pass 🎟️: Offering exclusive rewards […]

Vamsi Penmetsa July 8

Journal

Agile gets a bad rap in game development.

Agile gets a bad rap in game development. It never had much of a chance for one overriding reason:Game production phase gates.In the early 2000s, the wider software development world abandoned traditional SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) with its set phases spanning a long time.However, game production phases (GDLC), often spanning years for AAA, continue to look awfully similar to SDLC.SDLC:Analysis -> Design -> Development -> Testing -> Deployment -> MaintenanceGDLC:Planning -> Pre-Production -> Production -> Alpha -> Beta -> Launch -> Post ProductionThe vast majority of planning & design continues to happen up-front, with the vast majority of testing happening at the end. You might be running sprints during production, but over-ruling phase gates thwart them.You’re trying to be agile in a waterfall wrapper.Adding pre-defined production milestone deliverables to the equation makes the situation even worse. By holding on […]

Jon Leslie July 8

Journal

2024: Endings And New Beginnings

I had a transformative experience in 2023 ✨ I am ready to finally share a life-changing experience I had during a three-week trip to Colombia at the end of 2023. For full disclosure, I meant to release this post much earlier, but it stayed in my drafts since January as I couldn’t finalize it. I needed time to process what happened, what I was going through, and where I am going now. A lot happened in my personal world in the first six months of 2024. I want to share the retrospective journey of what led me to discontinue Kylan, the game studio I kicked off in Vietnam in November 2023 with two co-founders (more to come in the podcast in August), and soon after what led me to start another business in April: Olivya. I am excited to share […]

Sophie Vo July 8

Journal

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