Time
Company
Documents about Time
Playrix Annual Revenue to Surpass $1 Billion for First Time in 2019
The mobile game publisher Playrix is projected to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue from in-app purchases for the first time in 2019.
- Playrix is projected to surpass $1 billion in annual mobile revenue from in-app purchases for the first time in 2019.
- The company's core revenue is driven by four titles—Homescapes, Gardenscapes, Township, and Fishdom—each generating over $10 million monthly.
- Gardenscapes and Homescapes have achieved lifetime revenue milestones of $1.4 billion and $1 billion, respectively.
No Time, No Budget, No Problem: Finishing The First Tree
Solo game development requires a disciplined, high-impact strategy to overcome the inherent constraints of limited time and budget.
- David Wehle developed 'The First Tree' over 18 months while working a full-time job and raising two children, completing the project with approximately 1,000 hours of work and a $10,000 budget.
- The game generated $150,000 in revenue during its first year on Steam, demonstrating that a low-budget, hobbyist project can achieve commercial success through focused, high-impact strategies.
- To save roughly 600 hours of development time, Wehle utilized licensed, publicly available assets and prototypes, revising them to add a unique creative twist rather than building every element from scratch.
Paid Game Revenue Falls to All-Time Low on the App Store: Is Apple Arcade Having an Impact?
The premium mobile gaming market on the Apple App Store has experienced a sustained, long-term decline, reaching an all-time low in revenue share by late 2019.
- As of September 30, 2019, revenue from paid games on the iOS App Store fell to an all-time low of 1.8% of total game revenue.
- Annual premium game revenue has experienced a steady decline from $641.9 million (5.4% of total revenue) in 2015 to $337.3 million year-to-date as of September 2019.
- The volume of new premium game releases has dropped significantly, falling from 39,705 releases in 2014 (26.1% of all new games) to 3,255 in 2019 (7.3% of new launches).
Changing the Time Between Shots for the Sniper Rifle from 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds for Halo 3
Game balance is fundamentally defined by a game’s long-term stability and player engagement rather than a rigid, scientific process.
- The Halo 3 sniper rifle fire rate was adjusted from 0.5 to 0.7 seconds between shots to prevent it from functioning as a 'newbie hammer' in close-quarters combat.
- Designers should avoid making incremental changes; instead, they should implement drastic adjustments to verify if a mechanic is truly broken before fine-tuning.
- Balance is a state of the game rather than a process, and designers must guard against internalizing the game so deeply that their perception diverges from the actual player experience.
Shoot for the Sky: The Ambitious HDR Time-Lapse Skies of Forza Horizon 3
The development of Forza Horizon 3 marked a significant shift in open-world environmental rendering by replacing traditional procedural sky simulations with high-fidelity, HDR time-lapse photography captured on location in Australia.
- Forza Horizon 3 replaced procedural sky simulations with 25 distinct HDR time-lapse sequences captured on location in Australia to achieve superior lighting realism and physical accuracy.
- The development team engineered a custom three-camera rig to record 24-hour sequences, resulting in 1.2 terabytes of raw data per shoot.
- To optimize performance, the team used motion vectors to interpolate between two-minute capture intervals, reducing the final data footprint from over a terabyte to under 2 gigabytes.
Apple Arcade: First Time User Experience
The launch of Apple Arcade represents a strategic shift in mobile gaming, introducing a subscription-based model that eliminates in-app purchases, microtransactions, and advertisements.
- Apple Arcade operates on a $4.99 monthly subscription model that removes all in-app purchases, microtransactions, and advertisements across its library.
- The service launched with a curated catalog of 50 to 70 titles, featuring contributions from established developers such as Sega, Capcom, and Konami.
- Content is accessible across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV with cross-platform synchronization, though it relies on local app downloads rather than cloud streaming.
ONLINE MULTIPLAYER | A Game Dev Answers.
Developing competitive online multiplayer games presents significant technical and community-building challenges for independent developers.
- Implement robust networking solutions like Photon Unity Networking (PUN) early, prioritizing data efficiency by converting floats to integers and using serialization streams to minimize packet sizes.
- Transition from client-side networking to authoritative server models as a project scales to effectively mitigate cheating and ensure long-term game stability.
- Integrate Discord directly into the game UI with automated prompts that trigger during long matchmaking wait times to facilitate organized play and prevent refund requests.
How GameRefinery Helps Guide Decisions at Rovio
The primary purpose of this case study is to illustrate how mobile game developers utilize market intelligence platforms to inform product development and strategic decision-making.
- Rovio utilizes GameRefinery’s market data to inform product development decisions, such as validating the inclusion of gacha mechanics by confirming their high revenue impact in top-grossing titles.
- Product managers use the platform's Market Share tools to monitor competitor activity and identify viable categories for new projects within the mid-core segment, including 4X and RPG genres.
- The studio leverages visual analytics to determine optimal art styles for new games by benchmarking against the aesthetic choices of current top-grossing competitors.
How To Animate In Unity 3D
This tutorial provides a comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of animation within the Unity 3D engine, focusing on practical applications such as moving platforms, interactive bridges, and patrolling enemies.
- To prevent conflicts between animation data and physics components like Rigidbodies, animate a child object relative to an empty parent object rather than animating the parent directly.
- The Animator window manages state transitions using logic-driven parameters such as triggers, integers, and floats to control when specific animations occur.
- Animation curves should be adjusted to achieve precise linear movement for mechanical objects like platforms and elevators.
This Time It’s Different: Why the Obsession?
The gaming industry frequently experiences cycles of hype surrounding new technologies, often characterized by the belief that a specific innovation will fundamentally disrupt the market.
- The gaming industry remains in robust health, evidenced by a 5% increase in spending on network full games during the first half of 2019.
- Cloud gaming is not a new concept, as the industry has seen previous attempts like OnLive (which failed in 2015) and existing services like PlayStation Now and Nvidia’s GeForce NOW.
- Stadia’s business model faces significant hurdles because, unlike Netflix, it requires users to purchase games individually rather than providing a comprehensive library for a flat subscription fee.
Game Stores: You Need More Real-Time Charts
The primary thesis of this analysis is that digital game storefronts should adopt more agile, real-time charting mechanisms to improve game discoverability.
- Steam’s algorithm-driven, real-time charts effectively allow games to gain visibility based on sales velocity, contrasting with the editorial-heavy models of console storefronts.
- Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation rely on manual curation and traditional publisher relationships, which often prevents independent titles from breaking out organically.
- As of August 2019, console storefronts largely operate under a legacy retail-first model rather than the data-driven, engineer-led approach utilized by Steam.
AFK Arena Game Deconstruction | Game Design Analysis with Jeff Witt & Adam Telfer
AFK Arena represents a significant evolution in the mobile RPG landscape, successfully merging traditional collectible character mechanics with the low-friction accessibility of the idle genre.
- AFK Arena achieved 8.7 million downloads and $40 million in net revenue following its late 2018 launch by merging collectible RPG mechanics with idle game accessibility.
- The game utilizes a non-punitive progression system where every hero draw contributes to long-term growth, effectively eliminating the need for repetitive grinding.
- Designers implemented a stat-check approach across modes like the Arcane Labyrinth and Peaks of Time to incentivize the cultivation of deep, specialized rosters across six distinct factions.