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Rapport Annuel 2019 Entertainment
The 2019 annual report of the Canadian Entertainment Software Association (ALD) outlines the organization’s role as the principal advocate for Canada’s video-game sector, emphasizing a strategic focus on member-first principles, regulatory advocacy, and public perception.
- The Canadian video-game market remains robust, with a 2018 NPD Group survey identifying over 23 million regular gamers in Canada.
- The Entertainment Software Association (ALD) successfully engaged 25 federal legislators and major industry players including Ubisoft, Nintendo, EA, and Xbox during the 'Jeux vidéo sur la Colline' event.
- Lobbying efforts focused on securing tax-credit frameworks and innovation policies through direct dialogue with Minister Navdeep Bains and testimonies before parliamentary committees.
1 Year Indie Dev! (2018 Results)
This retrospective analysis evaluates the first year of a solo indie game development career, focusing on the symbiotic relationship between game production and content creation.
- Building a YouTube audience serves as a critical engine for indie development, directly facilitating game visibility, playtesting, and essential feedback loops for solo creators.
- Transitioning from daily low-quality content to a weekly high-production-value schedule increased average video views from 200–300 to 1,000.
- The developer’s YouTube channel grew from zero to 1,500 subscribers over the 2018 calendar year, demonstrating the effectiveness of consistent content creation.
Five Tips To Making A Viral Game
Achieving viral success in game development relies on five core principles designed to maximize player engagement and marketability.
- Prioritize 'stickiness' by pairing juxtaposed, high-concept ideas to create an instantly recognizable premise that captures immediate attention.
- Ensure high variability in gameplay so that no two playthroughs are identical, which is essential for maintaining the interest of streamers and their audiences.
- Focus on 'game feel' by utilizing exaggerated animations, screen shake, and high-quality sound design to provide tactile, immersive feedback between player input and on-screen action.
DON'T QUIT YOUR JOB FOR INDIE GAMES (5 Reasons)!
Transitioning to a full-time career in indie game development requires significant preparation and specific personal traits to ensure long-term viability.
- Establish a proven track record of completing projects before transitioning to full-time development, as successful game cycles often span several years.
- Maintain a stable day job while building a foundation to mitigate the financial volatility inherent in the indie game sector.
- Diversify revenue streams beyond initial game sales by actively exploring crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Patreon, educational content, and publisher partnerships.
Cosmic Top Secret: Do We Really Know Each Other?
The development of the autobiographical adventure game Cosmic Top Secret serves as a case study for integrating documentary storytelling with interactive game mechanics.
- Reality-based narratives can function as a primary design element, allowing developers to treat authentic historical facts with the same structural rigor as film or literature.
- Integrating real-world events into development—such as the creator’s father’s injury—can drive mechanical innovation, leading to unique features like the 'paper doll' aesthetic and paper-plane movement mechanics.
- The development of 'Cosmic Top Secret' utilized an interdependent, iterative process where narrative discoveries directly dictated changes to the game's mechanical systems.
3 People You MUST Know To Be Successful
Achieving professional success in the competitive indie game industry requires a strategic approach to networking and personal development.
- Accelerate professional growth by intentionally curating a network consisting of three specific archetypes: creatively successful mentors, functional adversaries, and energy-giving supporters.
- Engage with creatively successful mentors who have already achieved significant milestones to gain new perspectives and bypass the limitations of your immediate local environment.
- Maintain close proximity to adversaries who provide harsh criticism to build the emotional resilience and thick skin necessary for navigating public-facing community feedback.
Why Making Games is so RISKY! (+ Fixes)
Game development is characterized by high levels of risk, where the majority of projects fail to achieve commercial success.
- Game development failure is primarily driven by three factors: the inability to complete the project, ineffective marketing, and a lack of product quality or audience appeal.
- To ensure project completion, developers should prioritize a minimum viable product by scoping to core mechanics and avoiding the integration of complex, unfamiliar systems during production.
- Maintaining development momentum requires setting achievable goals that produce early, tangible results to sustain team motivation.
Promoting games the app stores won't
The mobile gaming industry is currently undergoing a significant shift as developers grapple with the extreme saturation and limited discoverability inherent in the dominant Apple and Google Play ecosystems.
- Mobile developers are shifting toward a fragmented distribution model to bypass the extreme saturation and limited discoverability inherent in the Apple and Google Play ecosystems.
- Studios are increasingly utilizing alternative channels, such as manufacturer-specific stores and niche platforms, to reach specific demographics like eSports enthusiasts and younger audiences.
- To mitigate platform dependency, developers are adopting proactive strategies including direct relationships with store operators, pre-installation models, and cloud gaming.
Telling your brand's narrative across mediums: A case study on Best Fiends
Seriously, a game development studio based in Los Angeles and Helsinki, utilizes a narrative-driven approach to brand building for its flagship title, Best Fiends.
- Seriously generated over $100 million in revenue for its flagship title, Best Fiends, by prioritizing long-term IP development over short-term monetization.
- The studio maintains a consistent brand narrative by hosting workshops that integrate Hollywood creative talent with game developers to ensure tonal alignment across all media.
- High-production-value animations have garnered over 15 million views, serving as a key driver for both player retention and efficient user acquisition.
Facebook marketing 101 - Boost your revenues with high-value users
The gaming industry faces significant challenges in user acquisition, as average day-seven retention rates hover between 10% and 12%, while day-30 retention drops to 4% to 5%.
- Gaming industry retention rates are low, with day-seven retention at 10%–12% and day-30 retention falling to 4%–5%.
- Value optimization with minimum ROAS bidding allows developers to automate ad delivery to meet specific revenue targets rather than focusing on simple click-based metrics.
- Playable ads improve engagement by offering a full-screen, interactive game demo within the newsfeed, allowing users to experience gameplay before downloading the app.
7 post-launch CRM strategies you need to know to maximise game revenues
Modern mobile game revenue is increasingly driven by long-term player retention rather than initial launch spikes.
- Long-term revenue is driven by mature player bases, with 70% of daily revenue in successful games generated by users who installed the app more than a month prior.
- Advanced player segmentation and personalized targeting drive a 47% revenue uplift, significantly outperforming the 10% uplift achieved by games using only basic targeting.
- Only 15% of developers currently utilize sophisticated, personalized player targeting, representing a major opportunity for competitive differentiation.
How to promote your games in the ever-changing Chinese market
The Chinese mobile gaming market represents a massive, high-growth landscape characterized by unique regulatory, cultural, and technical complexities.
- The Chinese mobile market is massive, reaching 788 million mobile users in 2018, with iOS users significantly outspending Android users in average in-app purchases despite Android holding an 87% market share.
- Navigating the Chinese Android ecosystem is complex, requiring distribution across third-party stores like Tencent's My Apps and 360, as well as mobile manufacturer stores such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo.
- Western App Store Optimization (ASO) tools are ineffective for the Chinese market; developers should partner with local experts to handle localization and secure the full certifications necessary to increase the chances of being featured.