Challenges Faced by Game Developers to Keep Their Game Alive

With the release of new games on a daily basis, it is becoming tougher for old mobile game developers to maintain the same number of users and a same place of success. As the new game arrives, game developers are notifying constant decrease in users. They can tackle these issues easily, but the below problems are making things difficult for them.

Financial Problems

Highly addictive games like Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, Temple Run and others who made a history in gaming world are struggling today to maintain the same number of users. In fact, they are losing their popularity due to which developers are suffering from financial crisis. On the other side, developers are forced to look for new ways to make their game ranking come up again.

Difficult to Hold Increasing Number of Users

The U.K. Company, Mind Candy revealed a decrease in its net profit of hit-game Moshi Monster – from $12.7 million in 2012 to $3.4 million in 2013. The company accepts that it failed to accommodate increasing number of users. It also ignored the importance of app localization by keeping its app limited to English users only.

Fickle Users

The whole mobile market is fickle. This is the market where daily you have to deal with users seeking for variety at cheap rates or free of cost. It’s hard to give users something that is free and at the same time, give them something convincing that make them pay for in-game assets.

Game developers are taking pressure from both sides, at one side they have to make a challenging, exciting and fun delivering game and at other side, game marketing to get the money out of the users’ pocket.

Even after applying these efforts, the fear of losing users continues as daily new games are being published by others. These intense competitions are forcing game development company to keep an eye on new avenues for further growth.

Diversify

Even the kings of mobile games are struggling with diversifying. I am talking about the owner of Angry Birds, Rovio Entertainment and maker of Candy Crush Saga, King Digital.

It was predicted that Ravio Entertainment will hit the high ranks of being the biggest mobile game market approximately by 2018. But the company failed to continue with the success ofAngry birds.

Same situation was faced by King Digital who failed to maintain the highest peak of game. This is because of lack of new releases. However, the company had claimed to release the new version in second half of the year. Let’s see whether it would get its market reputation back or not.

Rovio is also focusing on creating a new version of World of Warriors for China with Chinese language.

Concluding

It’s tough to earn fame in game development market, and it’s tougher to maintain the place of success once you achieved it. Whether you are new or old in game development world, you have to bring new varieties to your users frequently to keep them attach with your game for a long time.

What does it mean to make Games for Microsoft’s HoloLens?

It’s not a computer, no tablet, no ipad and not a smartphone; it’s an augmented reality device – HoloLens – a completely new experience for mobile game developers. This time you are not challenged to build an ecommerce or enterprise app, this time you are challenged to build an augmented reality game. This time you have to put all your focus, efforts and skills on windows game development or I can say windows 10 game development.

Hololens is not a touchscreen device, so you can’t build a touch-based game. Tilting is not there so you can’t build a tilting based game. Then what? How a game would be build for HoloLens?

How it works? What does it based on?

HoloLens work on three basic signals: voice, gesture and gaze. It is obvious that you have to build games working on these three signals. Let’s see how a game works like this.

Voice-based Game

During initial app days, Pocket Gems published a voice based game named All Talk. At that time, it was a unique game because it was not based on any touch, but on voice. In this game, Player A gives a clue to Player B and Player B has to recognize what Player A wants to say. For e.g. Player A says cane, his voice will be recorded and go to Player B. Player B is allowed to hear the voice for 30 seconds and he will guess the word and say something related to cane like Sugar.

This is the best example of building a voice-based game for HoloLens. Game developers can build a game similar to All Talk where group of HoloLens wearers can play online. There would be no need for voice recording as the game would be played in real-time.

Some more examples of voice-based games are: an online group can play Antakshri (an Indian song singing game), knowledge based question and answer game, truth or dare, etc.

Gesture-based Game

Minecraft is a best example to explain how great a gesture-based game could be. The below video will explain you in-depth.

You can see here a man is building a whole virtual world with extreme ease using various hand gestures. This can be a biggest boost to gaming world.

Minecraft is just a beginning, in terms of gesture, game developers can go as far as they want. Imagine a virtual gun fired with the help of gesture or a steering wheel of car driven with the help of gestures. And many possibilities are there when it comes to build an adventurous game. You can enhance it more by including voice. For e.g. it’s a game of fighting between soldiers. They can command each other with voice and fire guns with gestures.

Gaze-based Game

A gaze-based game should be an eye tracking game where you have to use your eyes to do the things. This could be like a puzzle game where you are using your eyes to find the hidden things and switch to next level. Can You Escape is a similar kind of Android game. Next example would be: you can use your eyes to control virtual characters or objects. For e.g. you can find where your enemies are and shoot them with your gun.

In Conclusion

If game developers combine all the three signals, they can end up with making a great game. They can make an adventurous game. For e.g. a fighting game between two countries. A player has to track enemies with his eyes, command others with his voice and fire the enemies with its gestures.

10 Reasons for Why Players Quit From Your Mobile Game

Why the heck players are leaving so easily in spite of my tough efforts? This is the common question amid mobile game developers who work hard to put their talent in front of users. All their courage goes down when they see low number of downloads with bad reviews and ratings. The things that hurt them (developers) the most are the users who have downloaded their gaming apps, but they are not playing it – you can call them one time user/players.

To come out of this complicated situation, you have to understand reasons of players’ distraction with your game. Those reasons will give you a way towards improvement and engagement in turn. Read more to learn more about them.

1. Long Intros

Your players are not ready to wait more to have a new experience with your game. Don’t ruin their excitement with your long intros. Your long intro will be enough to make them agree for removal of game or no more continuation with the game.

2. Too Long Game Sessions

Today’s game players are smarter than the previous ones. They need short guidance or direction to get started. Long game sessions will add to their boredom and insist them to discontinue the app.

3. Lacks of Testing

Bugs are the major reasons of why players stop playing your game. To prove this, you have a look on reviews of mobile games at play stores. Most of reviews are related to bugs and compatibility issues. Your game is working well in your mobile doesn’t mean that it works the same way in all smartphones.

4. Tutorials for Each Gaming Sessions

If you have placed tutorials for each gaming sessions, then make sure that they are the biggest barriers between your game app and your players. An experienced player doesn’t need tutorials at each session. In fact, players find it irritating to receive instructions at each level.

5. Your Game is too hard to get a Grip on

Candy Crush Saga, Subway Surfer, Temple Run, etc., all games are easy to understand and easy to play. When users first landed to these games, it took a minute for them to learn about the game and get addictive to it. Easy to learn games are the highly addictive games.

If your game is not the one that users can easily get a grip on, then it is the game that users can easily quit on. 

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6. Sudden Difficulty Levels

Candy Crush Saga brings minor difficult stages with its each level. If you suddenly put lots of difficulties at a time which players haven’t practised in previous levels, then they find it unfair and leave your game to find another better alternative.

7. Players V/s Game Challenge

Challenge is a key part of any mobile game. You must have included challenges in your game too. But challenge should a beatable one. Challenge must match with the players’ skills. If users believe that they can beat any challenge within the game, they find it more interesting to play. There is no meaning to include unbeatable challenge or the challenge that users can’t pass on.

8. External Rewards are more than Internal Rewards

You must have integrated rewards for your users spending their hours on your app. But overwhelming external rewards like points, weapons, upgrades, etc., can create a problem if internal rewards are lacking. Internal rewards includes sharp polishing, inspiring designs, regular updating designs, and many things are more important than external rewarding.

9. Your Game Demands for Big Investment to Become Enjoyable

Whether it’s a time or money, if your game needs any of these investments in large volume, then users stop continue with it as soon as they get bored of it. Mobile game is made to give enjoyment in exchange of minimum amount of time and money investment.

10. Scarcity of Resources

Free resources should be there for players to choose from. If you have enough resources, but they are not free, then they are not useful. Put some resources at free of charge and put cost on a few resources for your additional revenue.

These are the common reasons of gaming apps where users come for one time and never return again. If you are also going through the same situation, you should hunt through your game and throw the mistakes out from it.