2015
Company
Documents about 2015
Walking Simulators: The Digitisation of an Aesthetic Practice
Walking simulators such as Year Walk, Gone Home, and Dear Esther digitise an older aesthetic practice: walking as a means of exploration, discovery, and meaning-making in the Romantic tradition.
- The report argues that walking simulators such as Dear Esther, Gone Home, and Year Walk continue a Romantic tradition of walking as aesthetic and spiritual practice, making digital walking a legitimate extension of that tradition.
- The central claim is that movement through space, whether physical or virtual, generates meaning, and the contested label "walking simulator" may still be an apt description of these works.
- Environmental storytelling embeds narrative in landscape and architecture rather than delivering it through cutscenes, so players uncover story through observation and movement.
2016 Predictions for Mobile Gaming
Mobile gaming analyst Eric Seufert's end-of-2015 outlook argues that 2016 will be shaped by three trends from the prior year: app marketplace saturation making downloads harder to win, a resulting emphasis on cross promotion as a defensive tool for retaining users, and video advertising making light, viral "gimmick" apps…
- The increasing reliance on video advertising will obscure traditional 'Top Grossing' chart rankings, as apps with lower chart positions may generate more revenue than higher-ranked peers through superior ad monetization.
- Non-gaming apps, such as streaming and lifestyle services like Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube, are increasingly likely to displace games from the Top 5 Grossing positions in Western markets.
- Established 'perennial' top-grossing titles like Candy Crush Saga, Game of War, and Clash of Clans face a high risk of permanently exiting the Top 10 as their own developers cannibalize their user bases with 'spiritual successor' sequels.
Sensor Tower Gains Richer App Update Timeline and Faster-Than-Ever Store Intelligence
Sensor Tower's December 2015 product announcement outlines recent enhancements to its enterprise-level App Intelligence and Store Intelligence platforms, with the stated aim of improving both utility and performance.
- Sensor Tower expanded its App Intelligence platform to track 14 new update types for iOS apps and 6 new update types for Android apps.
- The App Update Timeline now provides granular tracking of metadata changes, including specific insights into Top In-App Purchases and Related Apps for iOS.
- Store Intelligence performance has been upgraded to significantly increase loading speeds for large datasets and long date ranges.
The Gamer Motivation Model
Quantic Foundry's December 2015 post introduces reference materials designed to make its Gamer Motivation Model easier to understand and share.
- Quantic Foundry’s Gamer Motivation Model identifies 12 distinct, statistically clustered motivations for gaming, derived from data collected from over 140,000 global participants.
- The model organizes motivations into columns where items in the same column exhibit higher statistical correlation, providing a structured framework for understanding player behavior beyond simple feature lists.
- The research methodology emphasizes identifying a parsimonious, underlying structure of player psychology rather than merely cataloging large, non-hierarchical lists of game features.
iOS Gaming Leaders: November 2015
Ketchapp's endless-style arcade game Twist emerged as the surprise leader of November 2015 iOS gaming charts, topping both U.S. and worldwide downloads.
- Ketchapp’s game 'Twist' became the most downloaded iOS game globally and in the U.S. in November 2015, significantly outperforming new releases from major publishers like King and Machine Zone.
- Machine Zone’s 'Game of War' maintained the top position for global and U.S. revenue, while Supercell’s 'Clash of Clans' experienced negative month-over-month revenue growth for the second consecutive time.
- The top 10 revenue-generating games showed a stagnant trend, with half of the titles experiencing month-over-month revenue declines and no new entries appearing on the top 10 lists.
Huge Demand for UK Games Fund
The UK Games Fund's launch round drew more than 100 applications from the UK games development community in under a month, a response that far exceeded organizers' expectations.
- The UK Games Fund received over 100 applications during its launch round, indicating significant demand from the domestic games development sector.
- CEO Paul Durrant noted that the volume of applications exceeded initial expectations, confirming high levels of creative activity across the UK.
- Successful applicants for the launch round were scheduled to be notified during the week of December 21, 2015.
App Streaming and Premium Apps
Google's November 2015 rollout of app streaming in mobile search lets users enter an app without downloading it, using a streamed instance served from a virtual machine.
- Google introduced app streaming in November 2015, allowing users to access app content directly from mobile search results via a virtual machine without needing to download the application.
- App streaming eliminates the download process, which is currently the primary point of friction in the mobile freemium product acquisition funnel.
- By removing the time and effort required to download and evaluate apps, streaming lowers the switching costs between competing freemium products.
Facts and Figures about the Games Industry in Poland
Poland is positioned as an emerging anchor of Eastern European games development, according to a November 2015 summary published by the Flemish Games Association (FLEGA) of an MCV international fact file on the country's industry.
- Poland's games industry generated €262.66 million in revenue in 2014, more than double that of its closest Eastern European competitor, Romania, which recorded €114.89 million.
- The Polish games industry is ranked as the 23rd largest in the world according to market tracker Newzoo.
- 60% of Polish internet users play games, with 35% playing on PC, 28% on smartphones or tablets, and 10% on consoles.
The “Chicken and Egg” Problem with Mobile User Acquisition
Mobile app developers face a structural "chicken and egg" problem in staffing user acquisition at launch, according to this 2015 analysis by Eric Seufert. The argument rests on two obstacles.
- Mobile app developers face a significant cashflow gap because marketing costs are paid upfront, while LTV revenue is realized over long time horizons ranging from 180 to 720 days.
- The mobile ecosystem rewards concentrated, high-volume marketing campaigns at launch, making the timing of user acquisition efforts critical to achieving competitive awareness.
- Developers face a staffing dilemma: hiring user acquisition managers too early wastes capital on idle staff, while waiting until after a successful soft launch creates a recruitment bottleneck that can delay a global release.
iOS Gaming Leaders: October 2015
Sensor Tower's inaugural monthly ranking of top iOS games for October 2015 uses estimates from its Store Intelligence platform to chart leaders by downloads, revenue, and growth, comparing the U.S. market with worldwide results.
- Game of War overtook Clash of Clans as the top-grossing iOS game worldwide in October 2015, driven by an 8% month-over-month revenue increase while Clash of Clans saw a 1% decline.
- Smashy Road: Wanted became the most downloaded iOS game in the U.S. for October 2015, gaining nearly four million downloads over the previous month.
- Electronic Arts' Need for Speed outperformed Smashy Road: Wanted internationally by approximately 1.5 million downloads, despite losing the top spot in the U.S. market.
Unpacking the $5.9BN King Acquisition Price
Activision Blizzard's $5.9BN acquisition of King Digital, announced in November 2015, is the largest ever for a mobile game developer, and the analysis here argues the price is justified despite a 20% premium on King's enterprise value.
- Activision Blizzard acquired King Digital for $5.9 billion, representing a 20% premium on King's enterprise value and 8x its projected 2016 EBITDA.
- Activision Blizzard funded $3.6 billion of the purchase price using offshore cash, allowing the company to avoid US repatriation taxes on the transaction.
- The acquisition provides Activision Blizzard with access to King’s 330 million monthly unique users, 60% of whom are female, offering a strategic demographic expansion.
Estimating Install Uplift from Featuring and Chart Placement
Mobile developers planning a launch often build models that assume specific install uplift from App Store or Google Play featuring and from reaching visible Top Downloaded chart positions such as rank 10 or 6.
- Estimating install uplift from featuring or chart placement based on historical data is unreliable because app launches are subject to uncontrollable exogenous factors like seasonality and competitive launch windows.
- App store ranking inflation creates a disconnect where the number of installs required to reach a top chart position is rising, while the actual install volume generated by that visibility is likely declining.
- Featuring and chart placements function as untargeted ad impressions, meaning their conversion efficacy is highly dependent on the specific appeal of the app rather than the placement itself.