Some game Business and Design links worth mentioning from the past few days. (These are usually sent to a small number of friends over email, but I thought of starting to share it here).
Apple kicked appGratis out of the App Store
Seems Apple’s cracking down the big “free app a day” apps and any app with charts of apps (including game reviews). Apple insists on being the only discovery channel on the platform and have absolute control. This comes after appGratis finished raising a round of $13M+ in January… Ouch. Read it here.
Clash of Clans – $1.4M a day, Puzzles & Dragons – $2.5M (in Japan)
Supercell is now reported of doing $1.4M of daily rev off Clash of Clans (before Apple’s 30% cut), but GungHo Ent. is doing $2.5M a day(!) from Puzzles and Dragons. Almost all of it in Japan, as P&D isn’t popular at all in the US (place 53 in top grossing, place 1 in Japan). GungHo is now valued at $4.5 Billion (Zynga is $2.8 Billion, in comparison). If you want to read about the game design of the game, Michail Katkoff wrote a brilliant article analysing the game design.
Social Casino Revenue Numbers – Infographic
Superdata published a very interesting infographic on Social Slots games. Check it here.
Video: Candy Crush Saga uses luck in the right places
Gamasutra published a very interesting lecture from GDC 2013, where King.com’s Tommy Palm explains about the making and design of Candy Crush Saga. It’s a video + Slides, as most GDC Vault videos are.
Facebook changes for developers
Facebook is changing the Multi-Friends Selector dialog, and thus all developers need to remove the Select All and Pre-Select options from their invite dialog. Here’s the text from FB:
“End of last week we announced a platform policy update to our Multi Friend Selector Dialog (MFS) as part of our July 2013 Breaking Changes. Per Facebook Platform Policy IV.6, apps may not offer a “Select All” option or “Pre-Select” multiple recipients on the MFS dialog. This policy is part of the 90-day breaking change that will go into effect on July 10, 2013.
–> https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2013/04/03/platform-updates–operation-developer-love/We’re looking to drastically improve the Requests channel to lower-sends but maintain/increase accepts.”
Twitter just became a distribution and re-engagement channel for all mobile apps
Twitter announced three new types of cards to display information about apps, products, and photo galleries, but it also added a couple of key features that will make Twitter a natural distribution platform for mobile apps. Developers will be able to add links at the bottom of their Twitter cards to get people to download their app directly from a mobile app store or deep link into their apps for those who already have them. These new features are designed to drive app installs and deep linking into mobile apps.
Read Erick Schonfeld’s Twitter Just Became Every Mobile App’s Best Friend.
Apple’s App Store vs Google Play – Comparison presentation
The store on Android comes on top in discovery opportunities, despite having more apps per category than iOS.
http://www.slideshare.net/searchmanseo/app-store-seo-google-play-android-vs-apple-app-store
Zynga opened their Real-Money games in the UK
Zynga opened their Real-Money games in the UK on April 3rd, on bwin.party’s platform.
Thriving in an App Store World
Michael Jurewitz published a video of his lecture on how to price apps in the App Store. It’s based on his really good 5-parts series on app pricing, which you could read in his blog.
