admonetization

Game Matchmaker cheat sheet with components that can be used for MM design! ⚖🎮 Use it to find a personalized approach that suits your game! 🌟Some explanations:— Couple of parts are simplified for the sake of brevity— Several parts from PvP block can be used in PvE, but with lesser impact— Analytics present here only as a reminder to not forget about it. And also because it will be difficult to fit it on one page.— Some terms may not be very clearly defined (I tried to do my best here)📚In terms of genres, there are some differences:— For premium games it is important to be ready for big number of people. And with bunch of MM systems from the start.— For f2p and GaaS games it may be scaled through game live ops after the release, if the audience […]

People often ask me about angel investors in the games industry. I can usually name a dozen folks, mostly previous founders or executives in the field. However, these individuals are constantly bombarded with inbound deals and often aren't consistently active in angel investing. While some might be full-time investors, the truth is that the games industry lacks well-known, dedicated angel investors. In this post, I want to share a strategy for new game founders who lack a broad network but have something compelling for potential investors. I call it "creating your own angel investors." Searching for angel investors on social media or LinkedIn won't yield many results because people rarely advertise this role. Yet, many industry professionals are open to angel investing if given the opportunity. From 2020 to 2023, I ran an angel syndicate with over 200 game industry […]

While we may be living in a time of crisis for the gaming industry, there are still a lot of cool games that have been released or are coming out. On different platforms and markets, both indie and AAA, even MMORPG has a lot of stuff! 😎 🎉 This year looks truly special for the MMORPG genre. There are:— Expansion for the World of Warcraft— Expansion for the Final Fantasy XIV Online (with boosted graphics)— Updates in Destiny and TESO— Guild Wars 3 development confirmed— Pax Dei, Blue Protocol, Throne and Liberty planned for release this yearPersonally I want to check up FFXIV. Already played for 100 hours, but it is clearly not enough. 🤗

🤔Question: Do you need the same Android and iOS game ad experience? 🤔 📡 Let's take a look at Match Factory by Peak Games. It’s currently generating $13.7m/month in IAPs ($165m/year wow!). Unlike its largest competitor Triple Match 3D by Boombox Games Inc, Match Factory has no in-game ads. Is this a mistake? Let’s take a look…. 🔎 🤕 Ads hurt retention - this is something game developers have been told for years... But I’d argue that in the Casual Puzzle genera, it's not true. Looking at the retention data in Sensor Tower Triple Match 3D (with ads!) has better retention throughout the whole player life cycle (D7 retention is 23% vs 17%). Looks like having ads in Triple Match doesn’t prohibit amazing retention numbers. ⁉ ❓ All users need the same game experience - why? Match Factory’s DAU split is 57% […]

👨‍🚀 On May 5th Helldivers 2 announced that it had sold 12 million units 🚀 , making it the fastest-selling video game on PlayStation of all time, beating out mega titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty. It’s estimated that Helldivers 2 revenues are about $480 million since its release on the 8th of February. 🤔 Earlier this year I had an in-person discussion with Eric Kress who argued that one of the main issues with the current PC & Console market was the need for more supply of games that gamers want to play. The meteoric rise of Helldivers 2 seems to in part prove this hypothesis to be somewhat true. After reaching 450,000 concurrent players on Steam two & a half gamers decided to do a review of the gameplay and overall economy to figure out what made […]

Master the types of in-game customization with a single cheat sheet!🎀✨Use it to find a way to implement more meaningful customization in your own game.It’s almost universal and can be used for lots of game genres (with some creative adaptation). The best fit should be for RPGs, Shooters, Multiplayer games, and Character-oriented projects with heroes, vehicles, weapons, tools, and other stuff that can be collected and used in that way.Remember, customization can be used:— As basic content, available for everyone— As a content reward— As a status reward, for example in ranked or challenging quests— In monetization features📊Based on that, always check what you aim for improving gameplay and game systems, setting goals and working with retention, and developing diverse monetization that makes more sense overall. 🎯Don’t overinvest in a single direction or specific part of it to avoid a […]

🔩 Screw Jam 🔩 Hits $250K Daily revenue! 40% or about $2.5/month of that is ad revenue. Let’s take a look at how Quok Games and Rollic did it. 🔥 🔥 🕗 Banner and Interstitial ads have a nasty habit of reducing retention in any game. Screw Jam starts displaying these ad units after level 15, at each level at about 2 min that’s almost 30 min into the game time. Displaying Banner and Inters after such a long time helps explain why D1 retention is 52% and D2 is 41%.🤔 Rewarded videos take almost a back seat in ScrewJam - the only two rewarded ad placements that appear are 1 level for an RV ad when you’re out of life and two spins per day on the lucky wheel. RV make up about 40% of the overall ad revenue as […]

Supercell launched Brawl Stars globally in December 2018. Now, finally, more than five and a half years later, a new game is coming out - Squad Busters. The news alone has attracted tremendous attention and buzz in the mobile video game industry. And for a good reason. Over the past 11 years, Supercell has generated over 19 billion USD thanks to its loyal p(l)ayer base. The question is: Could they have made more? We believe so, and that’s why we decided to chip in on numerous analyses of the already available Squad Busters games - but from a totally different perspective. Supercell is about to repeat itself as it did several times in the past and is about to miss out on a huge revenue opportunity that ads could present for this game. We do not doubt that the team […]

💡 Have you ever considered the power of engaging your audience before a big launch? 🎮 Wuthering Waves 🎮 will be released globally on the 22nd of May and is set to be a corker of a game. however, the developer KURO Games has a fantastic pre-release site where you can gain echoes (in-game characters) by signing up and completing tasks! It's a beautiful way of building and engaging with your fan base before launch. 🕹 User acquisition can be run to the website, where the user would sign up to create an account that carries over to the mobile when the game is globally launched. 💥 This is a nice example of creating a running start for a global launch! hashtag#gaming hashtag#mobilemarketing

I was recently asked about the indie PC game publishing space and why no Voodoo-like company exists in the PC gaming ecosystem. It's a great question, and I wanted to spend some time thinking about it. A note for those unfamiliar with Voodoo: Voodoo is a French company that popularized the rapid development and testing of hyper-casual mobile games in the late 2010s. They developed games ready to ship in just a few weeks, then relied on early KPIs to determine if they were engaging the audience and generating a return on ad spend. If the results were positive, they'd continue development and invest more in user acquisition. So why doesn't this rapid development model exist in PC gaming? There are several factors, but the key one is the current distribution method for PC games. Steam dominates the PC gaming […]

A kind of anniversary: 10 years ago I decided to start working on f2p games. 🏆🎮It was a difficult decision that I weighed for six months. F2P's reputation was worse than it is now, mostly it was represented by browser and mobile casual games. I wondered: is there a way for such games to be as fun and engaging as retail titles for PC? With those thoughts I applied to RJ Games and got work at "UnderControl" - browser tactical RTS in modern setting. And never regretted this decision. After all: I've always dreamed of working with RTS, the genre on PC was mostly non-existent, Clash royale was't released yet.At RJ from the one side the team was struggling with soft-launch that gone wrong: project was on the brink of closure when I joined (or it felt this way). Game […]

👋 Let’s look at the top 2 Merge Games Ad Monetization strategies. Right now the undisputed leaders in the Merge Category are Magmatic Games Ltd’s Travel Town ($620k/day IAP) and Mircofun’s Gossip Harbour ($350k/day IAP). 💰 Travel Town according to Sensor Tower boasts a DAU of 1.5m and is mediated on Google AdMob. The current Rewarded ad placements are Energey replenishments when you run out of energy capped at 4x per day and after level 10 pop to unlock bubbles on the merge board. About 40% of users should interact with these placements roughly bringing the IMP/DAU to 3.2 meaning a daily ad revenue of around $100k or 15% of overall revenue (Estimate!).💹 Gossip Harbour’s DAU is slightly lower at 500k users and is mediated on AppLovin and has a heavier focus on ad revenue. Currently, there are 4 Rewarded […]