Personal 2022 Retrospective

These are the final hours of 2022 and I didn’t want to let the year end without writing a short retrospective about what the year meant to me. No gaming insights here. This is a piece more personal than the regular ones so feel free to skip it — you’ve been warned! The Best Joining King has been amazing!I can safely say that starting to work at King has been one of the best professional decisions I’ve ever taken — I only regret not doing it sooner!It wasn’t an obvious decision, though.Because before joining King I was concerned it would mean a step back in my career. In the sense that I would go to work on a much bigger game than anything I had touched before (Candy Crush Saga), but in a role that had less responsibility and possibly […]

Javier Barnes December 30

Journal

App Open Ads and More

Recently, there has been a lot of chatter in the industry about app open ads. I also couldn’t help but notice a decent amount of confusion when it comes to this particular ad format. This has partially been caused by Applovin’s recent announcement that they have enabled mediation for app open ads on their MAX mediation. Per their documentation, app open ads have been available since mid-September, and for the time being, it remains an invite-only feature. For this reason, I thought it would be worthwhile to share my experience and insights and hopefully shed some light on this topic. This short post will try to cover all the main characteristics of the app open ads, including the following aspects: What are app open ads Key attributes What does user experience look like What does the performance look like Are […]

Božo Janković November 14

Journal

Battle Passes Deconstruction

In case you haven’t noticed, Deconstructor of Fun just published a deep analysis on Battle Passes written by yours truly. It tackles the design decisions and balance on each component, and presents some ideas on why they work and where they will go next. You can check out the full article on the DoF blog: [LINK]And the article came together with an exclusive podcast episode: [LINK] An Introduction to Passes Battle Passes were first introduced in Valve’s Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 and later popularized by Fortnite (which still today holds one of the most advanced and constantly improving designs). But they’ve long since stopped being exclusive to mid-core, cosmetic-driven games and nowadays are present in a constantly growing amount of genres and games. The fact that Battle Passes have been successful with audiences so alien to each other like MOBAs and Match-3 Puzzle fans shows how versatile its design can be. Passes […]

Javier Barnes June 7

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