Line
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Documents about Line
Gaming & Esports Executives Line Up to Speak at Saudi-Backed New Global Sport Conference
The New Global Sport Conference, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, serves as a high-level networking and strategic forum for the international gaming and esports sectors.
- Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport and the Saudi Esports Federation are hosting the New Global Sport Conference in Riyadh to facilitate high-level bilateral meetings between international gaming executives and Saudi government-backed entities.
- The event serves as a strategic platform for potential business deals between Western esports/gaming companies and Saudi-owned organizations like Savvy Games Group and ESL FACEIT Group.
- Key industry leaders scheduled to speak include executives from Sony, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, Sega of America, Krafton India, NCSOFT, and Moonton Games.
Hypercasual Market Analysis 2022
The hyper-casual mobile gaming market underwent a significant transformation in 2022, characterized by intensified competition and a shift away from the high-volume, prototype-heavy development strategies of previous years.
- The mobile games market is predicted to fall by over 6% by the end of 2022, increasing competition and user acquisition difficulty.
- The strategy of rapidly producing many raw prototypes is no longer effective; even major publishers are now more selective, and less than 15% of the top 300 installed games in 2022 were released that year.
- Puzzle games, particularly Draw Line Puzzle and Logic Puzzles, showed a sharp increase in installs since early fall 2022, with a new subgenre, Power Level Puzzle, also emerging.
Valve VP of Marketing Doug Lombardi Leaves Company After 22 Years
Doug Lombardi, the long-standing vice president of marketing at Valve, departed the company in February 2022 after a 22-year tenure.
- Doug Lombardi, Valve’s longtime VP of Marketing, departed the company in February 2022 after a 22-year tenure.
- Kaci Aitchison, who joined Valve full-time in 2019 after hosting various Dota 2 events, has succeeded Lombardi as the primary press contact.
- Valve is transitioning the Steam 'Discounts and Events' section from a manually curated calendar to an algorithmic, personalized feed, with a full rollout planned for early 2027.
Line Goes Down
The gaming industry’s early attempts to integrate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into player economies have faced significant consumer resistance, characterized by a disconnect between corporate strategy and player sentiment.
- Ubisoft executive Nicolas Pouard defended the company's NFT strategy by claiming player backlash stems from a lack of understanding regarding the benefits of digital secondary markets.
- Critics of NFT integration in gaming have become increasingly informed and vocal, rejecting the industry's narrative that resistance is merely due to a lack of technical comprehension.
- Ubisoft discontinued its battle royale title Hyper Scape, highlighting the risks of publishers adopting industry trends without aligning with audience expectations.
Three Reasons Why Playco is Worth $1 Billion
Playco achieved a $1 billion valuation following a $100 million Series A funding round in September 2020.
- Playco achieved a $1 billion valuation at the Series A stage by focusing on 'instant games' that run across platforms without requiring traditional app store downloads.
- The company’s strategy relies on a proprietary HTML5 game engine acquired from Game Closure, which enables a 'write-once-run-anywhere' development process for messaging apps and browsers.
- Playco has secured strategic partnerships with major global platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, Line, Rakuten, and Viber to distribute its instant gaming content.
Steam Survey: Do Wishlists and Sales Line Up Meaningfully?
This analysis examines the correlation between Steam wishlists and initial sales performance for premium PC games.
- The median first-week unit sales for premium PC games typically equal 20% of total launch wishlists, though actual performance varies wildly from 1.5% to over 100%.
- Organic daily wishlist additions—those occurring without marketing or events—are a more reliable predictor of success than total wishlist counts.
- No game with fewer than 10 organic daily wishlists sold more than 3,000 units in its opening week, while maintaining over 50 organic daily wishlists correlates with more consistent, higher-tier sales.
Tales From Discoverability Land: Vol. 1
This analysis explores the mechanics of game discoverability and sales estimation, focusing on how players interact with digital storefronts and how developers can interpret performance metrics.
- Steam discoverability is primarily driven by genre familiarity, as players actively seek titles that mirror established, popular gameplay rather than relying on store-wide charts.
- Using Steam review counts to estimate total sales is unreliable due to high variance, with observed ratios ranging from 33 to 62 sales per review.
- Organic reach for independent developers on mobile platforms has significantly diminished, making paid user acquisition a prohibitive necessity for smaller studios.
Gamescom 2018: Square Enix Line-up
Square Enix utilized Gamescom 2018 to showcase a significant portfolio of upcoming titles, emphasizing its strong presence in the German market.
- Square Enix showcased a major 2018 release portfolio at Gamescom 2018, utilizing a 1,500-square-meter booth in Hall 9.1.
- The exhibition featured over 200 individual playstations to provide hands-on demonstrations for attendees.
- The primary lineup included high-profile titles such as Kingdom Hearts III, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Dragon Quest XI, Just Cause 4, Final Fantasy XIV, and the premiere of Life is Strange 2.