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Can Supercell make mobile MOBAs successful with Clash Royale?
Supercell’s entry into the mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) space with the soft launch of Clash Royale represents a strategic effort to adapt complex, hardcore genres for a broader, casual mobile audience.
- Supercell is attempting to adapt the complex MOBA genre for casual mobile audiences by blending it with tower defense and card-based deck-building mechanics.
- The game leverages the established Clash of Clans intellectual property to lower the barrier to entry and increase player familiarity.
- The soft launch phase is being used to rigorously test player retention and monetization metrics, consistent with Supercell’s practice of canceling projects that fail to meet internal quality standards.
FTUE: Rush of Heroes
Rush of Heroes, a Western adaptation of the highly successful Chinese mobile title I AM MT, represents a strategic attempt to export established Asian free-to-play mechanics to global markets.
- Rush of Heroes is a Western adaptation of the Chinese mobile title I AM MT, which achieved over 70 million players between 2014 and 2015.
- The game utilizes a card-based battle system centered on character collection, shard-based upgrades, and gacha-style hero acquisition mechanics.
- Core gameplay is defined by high-density automation, featuring two-speed battle toggles, rage-mode triggers, and a progression loop gated by a standard energy system.
Optimising Light Side squads in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes
This analysis examines the strategic optimization of Light Side squads within the mobile game Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes.
- Success in Galaxy of Heroes relies on strategic synergy and character roles rather than raw power metrics or high-level stats.
- Squad composition must balance specific roles, utilizing tanks for damage mitigation via taunt mechanics and healers to sustain the team.
- Leader abilities are essential for providing passive squad-wide bonuses, such as increased defense or evasion, which fundamentally alter combat outcomes.
How to get the most soft currency in SW: Galaxy of Heroes
Managing soft currency, or credits, is a critical bottleneck for progression in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, particularly for players leveling up multiple characters.
- The primary method for resolving credit shortages is the liquidation of Mining Droids, which serve no functional purpose other than to be sold for soft currency.
- Players can generate nearly a million credits in a single transaction by navigating to the inventory sell menu to convert accumulated Mining Droids.
- Mining Droids are acquired consistently through participation in Cantina Battles and various event challenges.
The Fortress of Monemvasia as Playground for a Location Based Game
This paper reports an ongoing study of "If … in Monemvasia," a location-based multiplayer mobile game deployed at the medieval fortress town of Monemvasia in southeastern Greece.
- The location-based game "If … in Monemvasia" has been integrated into an Environmental Education Center's program since February 2016, and in its first three months was played 18 times by 343 secondary-level pupils, averaging 19 per session.
- Players form four teams of three to five and move through the medieval town to match seventeen role-playing missions, framed around Siege, Rebuilding, and Everyday Life, to landmarks revealed through GPS "hot zones" on Android tablets, earning points only for correct associations.
- The design treats historical concepts such as repeated invasions, multicultural architecture, limited space, and reliance on rainwater as lenses for observing the environment rather than facts to memorize, with the authors arguing that linking historical analysis to physical exploration fosters historical thinking.
A Playful Tinder-Like Interface for Search and Rescue
This paper presents aeroSee, a web-based micro-volunteering platform that uses drone-captured imagery to support search and rescue efforts for missing persons in rural environments.
- aeroSee is a web-based micro-volunteering platform that uses drone-captured imagery to support search and rescue for missing persons in rural environments, relying on volunteers to sort and tag photos at scale.
- The core proposition is that a playful, Tinder-inspired swiping interface can motivate volunteers to process large photo sets, grounded in the authors' co-design work and prior research on gamification and citizen science.
- An earlier alpha trial using a points-based leaderboard to encourage textual tagging produced no measurable gain in performance or tag quality, prompting a redesign that removed points, rewards and leaderboards in favour of interaction, story and community.
Playing the System: Comparing the Efficacy and Impact of Digital and Non-Digital Versions of a Collaborative Strategy Game
This study compares a non-digital board game version and a nearly identical iPad version of POX, a cooperative public health strategy game, to test whether such games can build systems thinking and shape attitudes toward vaccination among young people.
- The study tested POX, a cooperative public health strategy game, in non-digital and nearly identical iPad versions with 88 U.S. students aged 11 to 17 randomly assigned to a version or a no-game control.
- Players of the physical board game scored significantly higher than the digital group on the Department Store Task, a measure of systems thinking, and the authors present this as the first causal evidence that a game can improve systems thinking.
- Non-digital players allocated more resources toward vaccination and held more favorable views of vaccination than controls, while the digital version produced no such gains.
A Statistical Analysis of Player Improvement and Single-Player High Scores
Player learning in single-player games creates a tension for high-score systems: even when players steadily improve, the probability of setting a new personal or all-time high drops rapidly as play continues.
- Improvement in player skill is often too slow to offset the declining odds of beating past scores, so high-score rewards become progressively harder to earn as play continues.
- Under an i.i.d. baseline with no learning, the chance of beating the previous score is 1/2 and the chance of a new all-time high on game n is 1/n, so expected high scores follow the harmonic series (approximately ln(n) plus the Euler-Mascheroni constant).
- Real data from Canabalt (roughly linear skill improvement) and Drop7 Hardcore (power-law learning curve) closely track these no-learning predictions, with fitted correction factors of only about 1.01 to 1.11 attributable to learning, whose influence diminishes as games accumulate.
China Mobile Market Update: November 2016
The November 2016 China Mobile Market Update provides a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese mobile ecosystem, focusing on device market share, app store performance, and top-grossing applications for September 2016.
- Tencent and NetEase dominate the Chinese mobile gaming revenue landscape, with Tencent’s 'King of Glory' leading Android and NetEase’s 'Onmyoji' achieving top-grossing status on iOS shortly after its release.
- Apple remains the leading mobile brand in China with a 23.6% market share, while OPPO has displaced Samsung to become the fourth-largest manufacturer behind Huawei and Xiaomi.
- Tencent’s Myapp holds 24% coverage of the Android app store market, while Alibaba’s acquisition of Wandoujia has driven significant growth in that platform's user base.
Casual Games Sector Report 2016: How to Compete in the Crowded Marketplace
The 2016 Casual Games Sector Report provides a strategic analysis of the global mobile gaming landscape, focusing on how smaller studios can navigate a highly consolidated and competitive marketplace.
- The top 50 mobile developers capture approximately 80% of total app store revenue, highlighting a highly consolidated market dominated by a small group of publishers.
- Mobile gaming is the leading industry segment with $36.9 billion in 2016 revenue, representing a 21.3% year-over-year growth rate.
- The top 10 mobile publishers control 44% of iOS revenue and 42% of Google Play revenue, underscoring the difficulty for smaller studios to compete.
2016 Global Mobile Market Report: Q4 2016
The global mobile market is undergoing a period of rapid expansion, with consumer spending on applications projected to nearly double from $44.8 billion in 2016 to $80.6 billion by 2020.
- Global consumer spending on mobile applications is projected to grow from $44.8 billion in 2016 to $80.6 billion by 2020.
- China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest app market, characterized by a dominant Android presence and a reliance on third-party app stores.
- The Middle East and Africa are projected to experience a compound annual growth rate of 42.6% through 2020, while India is positioned to become the second-largest mobile market globally.
2016 Global Games Market Report: An Overview of Trends & Insights
The 2016 Global Games Market Report provides a comprehensive analysis of the international gaming landscape, offering revenue projections and trend forecasts for the 2015–2019 period.
- The global games market reached $99.6 billion in 2016, marking an 8.5% year-on-year growth rate.
- Mobile gaming is the primary industry driver, generating $36.9 billion in revenue and achieving a 21.3% year-on-year increase.
- The Asia-Pacific region is the dominant global market, accounting for 47% of total revenues with a 10.7% growth rate.