City building and management games are quite a popular genre, especially in mobile games. However when you take out all of the games that involve warfare, army and combat it ends up being quite a niche genre. The appeal is there for a lot of the players, evident by the success of games such as Cities: Skylines, SimCity or countless Tycoon games but for some reason developers tend to stick to the military strategy sub-genre and not explore alternatives. Up until Supercell came along with Everdale – a co-operative city building game that is player-vs-environemnt (PvE). The game was officially cancelled in October 2022, but recently Supercell announced they found a new home for the game with Metacore.
We are living in an era in the gaming industry where the number of active users you have is the first thing a lot of players, developers and investors check. A high player count is associated with a good game, and rightfully so – if so many people are playing it, the game must be doing something right. However, behind the scenes, very few people in the industry actually know why this is the case and more importantly how to calculate it correctly in the first place! In this post we are going to investigate Active Users metric; why it actually matters, how to measure it correctly, and a key concept to translate the number into useful insights.
Everybody wants to make a living from the things they love most, and I am pretty sure the audience of this website loves video games – just like I do. There numerous resources on how to actually develop a game, but the one thing that is not thought explicitly is how to make money from the great game you made. Developers, especially indie developers and small crews usually are stumped when it comes to monetizing their games. The purpose of this post is to explain different monetization systems, and break down how to approach monetization in games.
I have never seen such a meteoric rise to popularity as Autochess. Starting as a mod for the popular game DOTA 2, it quickly grabbed the attention of thousands, probably millions, of players. The gameplay is unique, the strategy and the economy are complex and rewarding, and it enjoyed the benefit of using all the popular characters that already exist in a very popular game.
Then it fell into obscurity as fast as it rose. As of this writing, the most popular game in the genre is Teamfight Tactics by Riot Games, and the biggest competitor, Underlords by Valve, is almost a meme. So, what happened?
It has been an eventful year for the world. Wars, protests, the start of an economic recession in many countries were seen; and even the good events are marred with controversy (I am looking at you, World Cup). The Data industry and talent pool are heavily impacted with many companies opting for big layoffs and trying to pivot to a leaner, more efficient structure. Still, every new year brings hope – new opportunities, inventions and connections await. In this post, I will give my predictions for the gaming industry in 2023, and some trends to look out for everybody interested in video games.
2022 has come to an end and there were many incredible, new apps and games this year along with sequels, expansions, seasonal updates,… In summary, there were a lot of new things that met the consumers in a myriad of different ways. In this post, we will explore a unique perspective on how to effectively deliver new products and features, a crucial aspect that can determine the success of your business.
Every professional out there requires well-designed and highest quality tools to do their job most efficiently – from cooking, sculpture or writing to our broad domain of coding. As we prepare for 2023, there are hundreds of tools that exist in the data industry and are actively used to some extent. Some are cutting-edge programming languages and some are legacy tools that have been around since the 1990s. We will go over the best tools for a data analyst or data scientist, and include recommendations, tips and learning resources – so you can start dipping your toes in data finally or find the next thing to focus on in your career in data.
For the past few weeks, the internet is going crazy with a new AI tool called ChatGPT. It is practically a chatbot, but one that has incredible reading comprehension and is trained on almost all the topics you can think of. You can ask it questions, and as long as there is any knowledge or even a thought on it on the internet, it will find it.
With such a powerful tool, a bunch of sectors now have to reassess their automation and job definitions. I do not expect a situation where anyone good in their job has anything to worry about. Instead, they have a lot to be hyped about – because this tool can speed up and optimize any workflow you can think of. In this post, we will go over some of the most impactful ways to use ChatGPT for data science and data analytics.
A user has many different facets that we as the product owner or analyst need to understand. In previous posts, we investigated some of these like retention; and this post is going to be on maybe the most important facet for financial success: the value of the users. To make things complicated, there are many different ways to define this “value”; and they don’t even have to involve money in some cases! However, for this post, I will focus on how to define and measure the monetary value of your users, and the two different but equally important methods to measure it: ARPU and LTV.
One of the biggest challenges around Data Science is how conceptual sometimes it gets. As it is in constant contact with statistics, it is very easy to fall into the theory and math behind models and skip over the practical applications. Add on top of it the fact that a lot of people outside (and many inside!) are not well-versed in the data area; and it becomes hard to come up with applications for all the models and approaches we learn.
Having a well-retaining product is the key to the longevity and success of every company. In the old days, retention was about buying the same physical product over and over; like newspapers, disposable razors, tissues, etc. In the digital landscape, the concept had to adapt and improve – it was no longer about selling something physical, but about grabbing the attention of users long enough to generate revenue. Keeping users engaged for a long time is the important part and how you generate the revenue is the only difference between digital companies. The most dominant strategy in the market is selling subscriptions; but it can also be showing ads, bringing out sequels, and selling in-product benefits.
There is a golden standard for what developers want their app or game to reach. It is for people to not be able to put down their product. Over the years there have been many such games and apps; some of them stood the test of time and are still thriving while others have filled their life cycle and are slowly forgotten. I will go over a key concept that measures and aims to understand this phenomenon: engagement.
For those who don’t know, Mr Brode is one of the core people behind Hearthstone. The game has been announced in May and after some tests and much hype, it was released on the 18th of October, 2022. I love playing and following card games and will review various aspects of the game from the perspective of an analyst and player.
Theme
The theme is Marvel comics, to nobody’s surprise. All of the favourite heroes and villains are battling to win various locations, I think. The focus is on heroes and not the narrative.
