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Game Changer: Empowering Others in the Games Industry
The games industry faces a critical need to address systemic issues regarding diversity, inclusion, and representation.
- The games industry workforce lacks demographic diversity, with 2019 data showing that approximately 70 percent of game developers identify as Caucasian.
- Women remain significantly underrepresented in both the general workforce and senior leadership roles within the gaming sector.
- Homogeneity in hiring practices contributes to a lack of diverse perspectives in game design and corporate culture, which risks perpetuating systemic biases.
Uncover Market Opportunities & Expand Your Product Portfolio by Understanding Gamer Preferences
The mobile gaming industry has evolved into a highly complex ecosystem, necessitating granular classification systems to navigate its diverse landscape.
- The mobile gaming sector is the industry's fastest-growing segment, with global consumer spending projected to exceed $100 billion in 2020.
- Market performance is bifurcated: hyper-casual games lead in volume with over 5 billion downloads in the first half of 2020, while core strategy and RPG titles capture the majority of consumer spending and time spent.
- Monetization strategies are shifting toward hybrid models that combine traditional advertising with advanced mechanics such as loot boxes and gacha systems.
UA in iOS 14: Tips for Success in a Post-IDFA World
The transition to Apple’s iOS 14 privacy framework represents a fundamental shift in mobile user acquisition (UA), necessitating a move away from individual-level tracking via the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) toward aggregated, privacy-centric measurement.
- The deprecation of IDFA necessitates a shift from individual-level tracking to aggregated, privacy-centric measurement via Apple’s SKAdNetwork (SKAN).
- SKAN limits conversion data to six bits, restricting marketers to a maximum of 64 distinct values that must be strategically encoded to track critical user milestones like revenue or tutorial completion.
- Because SKAN sends data directly to ad networks rather than MMPs, developers must implement robust internal data aggregation and standardization processes to maintain visibility.
Panel: How to use UA Funding Effectively
Effective user acquisition in the modern gaming landscape requires a departure from simple spending volume in favor of agility, fundamental optimization, and strategic alignment.
- Successful user acquisition now requires prioritizing core fundamentals like app store optimization, retention mechanics, and monetization strategies before scaling any advertising budgets.
- To counter the loss of granular user data due to privacy shifts, studios must transition to predictive lifetime value models, creative-led strategies, and media mix modeling.
- Developers can mitigate post-IDFA constraints by using Android performance data as a proxy and investing in unified SDKs to improve data synthesis.
The Game Developer's Guide to iOS 14: Expectations & Preparations
The introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework represents a significant shift in mobile privacy, moving permission management from the device level to the individual app level.
- Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework mandates that developers obtain explicit user consent to access the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), which is critical for user acquisition, retargeting, and ad monetization.
- Approximately 30% to 40% of users in major markets like the United States already have 'Limit Ad Tracking' enabled, meaning they will not receive the ATT prompt and will effectively opt out of IDFA tracking by default.
- Because the ATT prompt can only be displayed once per app, developers must strategically determine the optimal timing and placement to maximize consent rates while minimizing user churn.
Fireside Chat: Behind the Retargeting Success of Huuuge Games
Huuuge Games utilizes a data-driven retargeting strategy to address the high churn rates inherent in the mobile gaming industry, where approximately 90% of new players cease engagement within the first seven days.
- Huuuge Games combats a 90% first-week churn rate in mobile gaming by prioritizing the re-acquisition of lapsed users, which is more cost-effective than acquiring new players for high-LTV social casino titles.
- The company employs rigorous incrementality testing via internal uplift dashboards to distinguish between paid retargeting impact and organic user returns, ensuring marketing spend delivers genuine incremental value.
- To maximize reach beyond Facebook’s matching capabilities, the company utilizes demand-side platforms (DSPs) to engage the 30% to 35% of their user base not accessible through Facebook.
Introducing Gaming Services: Login, Sharing & Player Finder for Games
Facebook is introducing a new suite of gaming services designed to enhance player acquisition, retention, and social engagement through its ecosystem. The initiative focuses on three core pillars: watch, play, and share.
- Facebook is launching a suite of gaming services targeting its community of over 700 million monthly active users to improve player acquisition, retention, and social engagement.
- The revamped Facebook Login for Games allows players to maintain cross-platform progress while utilizing customizable identities like selectable avatars and player names.
- New sharing integrations enable users to post gaming content directly to Facebook and Instagram feeds, stories, and groups to foster organic growth.
Fireside Chat: Why you Should Listen to a Publisher About Game Design
This discussion explores the strategic value of partnering with a publisher during the game design process, specifically within the hyper-casual mobile sector.
- In the hyper-casual mobile market, early collaboration between developers and publishers is essential for optimizing game mechanics and level design through data-driven refinements.
- Publishers drive project success by analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs), specifically cost-per-install (CPI) and retention rates, to guide iterative design decisions.
- The core gameplay mechanic is the primary driver of success in hyper-casual titles, outweighing the importance of initial visual polish.
Lessons of Growing into a Large Studio - Three Ways Belka Crushed it to Grow from 30 to 300
Belka Games, a mobile game studio, outlines its growth strategy following a successful expansion from 30 to 300 employees over a three-year period.
- Belka Games scaled from 30 to 300 employees over three years by prioritizing a unified company culture, data-driven operations, and strategic partnerships.
- Successful live operations for hit titles like Clockmaker and Funky Bay require dedicated teams of 30 to 40 professionals per game to maintain a continuous content pipeline.
- Maintaining a flat organizational structure during rapid growth is essential to ensure open communication between junior staff and leadership, preserving core company culture.
How to Nail ASO with Apple Search Ads
Apple Search Ads (ASA) serve as a high-intent user acquisition channel that provides actionable data to refine organic App Store Optimization (ASO) strategies.
- Allocate 20% of your Apple Search Ads budget to a discovery campaign to identify new, high-performing keywords, while reserving the remaining 80% for established, high-conversion terms.
- Optimize keyword selection by targeting a balance of high search volume, high relevance, and low competitiveness, using tools like the SearchAdsHQ Chrome extension to view specific numeric popularity values.
- Maintain a clean campaign structure by adding high-performing search terms to exact-match ad groups while simultaneously adding those same terms as exact-match negatives in your discovery campaigns to prevent data overlap.
Panel: The K Factor - How Your Campaigns can also Improve Your Organic Growth
The K-factor, defined as the ratio of organic to paid user growth, serves as a complex and highly variable metric that defies universal application across the mobile gaming industry.
- The K-factor is a highly variable metric that cannot be reduced to a universal formula because organic uplift is heavily dependent on unpredictable factors like app store algorithms and influencer activity.
- Developers should prioritize optimizing app store listings, metadata, assets, and keywords over chasing a singular growth metric to maintain visibility in evolving store environments.
- Paid user acquisition acts as a catalyst for organic discovery, but the two channels are so inextricably linked that isolating the precise impact of marketing spend on organic performance is functionally difficult.
Superstar Session: Bringing New Life to Your Game; A Case Study
Revitalizing underperforming mobile games requires a rigorous, data-driven approach to App Store Optimization (ASO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO).
- Pivoting the art style and call-to-action language of 'Love and Dating Story' to match its actual demographic resulted in a 314% increase in Google Play installs and a 49% increase on iOS.
- Underperforming mobile games can be revitalized by treating store presence as a dynamic asset and using data-driven App Store Optimization (ASO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO).
- Long-term success requires aligning a game’s visual identity and metadata with the preferences of the actual player base rather than the assumed target audience.
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