Archive for September, 2010

1. Hungry Shark goes free, leaps to #1 free app, #3 paid app in the US

   September 30, 2010

   To tie in with US Shark Week, the company decided to test the freemium model. They offered the original full game for free, and gave players the chance to upgrade to a premium version (essentially more levels) for $0.99.

   The results were phenomenal.

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   Posted in: Featured, Sales

   Tagged with: free games, freegame, future games of london, how to make a successful game, how to publisher, hungry shark, iphone, promotion, publish a game, statistics

   1 Comment

2. PlaySpan finds that 64% of their customers buy virtual goods every month; 9% every day – Report

   September 29, 2010

   PlaySpan released its regular survey on spending on virtual goods a couple of months ago. I have only just got round to looking through and thinking about the results. It’s worth declaring the survey’s innate skew upfront. It was distributed to “a sample of 2,221 PlaySpan Marketplace, Facebook via Spare Change, and Ultimate Game Card [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Resources

   Tagged with: playspan, spending, virtual goods, virtual money

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3. Social proof – the Minecraft way to €120,000 of sales in a single day

   September 29, 2010

   Minecraft is going crazy. In the last 24 hours, there were 31,616 registrations, and 11,887 sales. That’s a staggering 37.5% conversion rate and, at €9.95 per copy, revenue of €118,275. In a single day. This page is an amazing demonstration of social proof in action. It shows you how many people are buying it, how [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Marketing

   Tagged with: minecraft, revenue, social proof

   1 Comment

4. Guest post: How we publish an online game

   September 28, 2010

   As part of the rebrand of GAMESbrief (coming soon), I’m actively looking for guest posts on interesting topics. This post by Phil Stuart, Creative Director of Preloaded, originally appeared on the Preloaded blog. Over the past few years we’ve learned a lot about how to design casual games that large numbers of people play and [...]

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   Posted in: Distribution, Featured, Guest Post

   Tagged with: kongregate, miniclip, phil stuart, portals, preloaded

   3 Comments

5. To those arguing about marketing vs creativity: Marketing IS creativity

   September 27, 2010

   On Friday, Stew Hogarth kicked off a debate on Twitter. It focused on whether product or marketing was more important, with Stew making an impassioned case that if you don’t have any money, the product is the ONLY tool that you have at your disposal. After a lengthy discussion with the likes of Brian Baglow, [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Marketing

   Tagged with: advertising, pr

   17 Comments

6. How to make me write about “Yet another farming game”

   September 24, 2010

   On Wednesday, I got a press release entitled “Hey look, a new farming game”. The initial paragraph read: “Dear Team at Games Brief, We know what you’re thinking, “Sweet baby Jesus in heaven, not another farming game!” But before you hit the delete button, hold up a second and let us share with you a [...]

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   Posted in: Marketing

   Tagged with: bumperfarmcrop, pr, social games

   No Comments

7. Brian Mitsoda has what he wishes for, if only he looked a little bit harder

   September 23, 2010

   Earlier this month, Tom Jubert put up a guest post: an interview with Brian Mitsoda, narrative designer on Vampire:the Masquerade – Bloodlines and alumnus of Black Isle, Obsidian and Troika. In it, Brian said: “I completely understand when projects with $50 million+ budgets play it safe, though it would be nice if there were more [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Lessons Learned, Opinion

   Tagged with: brian mitsoda, budgets, xbla

   9 Comments