Bedtime reading (04/23/2014)
Instead of "news for the day", we are trying a new format: links to three of the most interesting articles of recent days with our brief retelling or description.
iOS vs. Google Play Sales
Luke Schneider from Radiangames (CRUSH!, SideSwype, Bombcats) in his article on Gamasutra talked about whether the model of rapid development of small mobile games for different platforms works. You can also find out from his article how many downloads good paid games receive per quarter (Slydris, which received the Best of 2012 medal from Apple, sold 617 copies in the first three months of 2014). Sales schedules are attached. Overall, a very sobering article.
How to keep players playing — Long-term Retention
Mikkel Faurholm wrote a bit of a captain's article about what exactly it is necessary to hook players in free-2-play games. According to him, involving gamers in the game with a good story and a bright character is not the best approach. As soon as the player enters the gameplay, the story and the hero disappear/fade into the background, which means they no longer hold the user. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to visualize the goal. Mikkel cites Greg's farm from Hay Day as an example. The user sees what he can achieve in the game and lights up. The main message of the article is as follows: entice the player not with the plot, but with the gameplay.
http://www.appcrimes.com/2014/03/how-to-keep-players-playing-longterm.html
What Games Are: Worrying About Indie Games
A wonderful article by Tadhg Kelly about independent development appeared on TechCrunch. However, he looks at its future with sad skepticism, and all because the onset of the "Golden Age" of the gaming industry initiated several crises at once. The availability of development tools has led not only to the ease of creating masterpieces, but also to the ease of copying them. The indie movement itself has grown from an economic concept into a cultural one. Their aesthetics have become a style, lost their former energy. Moreover, indie can now be described as "strange retro games that appeal to the style of projects from previous years, which, to a greater extent, are of interest only to those who are in the subject."
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/20/worrying-about-indies
If you want to see any of these articles in full in Russian, write.
