Learning Diary for Game business and Digital Economy

 Tuomas Reijonen from Saimaa Stadium (Active Life Lab). This lecture felt very light on information, I'm not sure if I just didn't understand everything or what. I had very little notes written and as I watched the lecture again I couldn't pick anything more. So I've decided to try to find information of this online. So basically, Gym equipment merged with games to increase motivation and pleasantness to working out. Active Life Lab is a research and development unit for health and wellbeing.  Started checking about Active Life Lab Gym, online, from this video . It didn't really get too much to the subject of combining games to gym equipment. However, this  video had good points about focusing on your target audience, if they are elderly people or people with disabilities, it's important to remember the ease of access. Something as simple as the gym weights need to be considered, and light enough so the user won't injure themselves. I honestly feel like I mi...

Our lecturer was Janne Niittymäki from Goodlife, that makes health tech games. I haven't ever imagined myself working with health related games, but I do find the subject fascinating. I myself struggle with depression and anxiety, and video games help with that, but I do wonder if it is possible to make games made with psychotherapists and doctors, that could help with mental illness' struggle. I think at the end of this I will look into this, if there have been attempts and how successful they have been. Glider (image from Goodlife's website ) Goodlife started with a glider game made for Kinect use, meaning player uses their body to play. It was designed work people recovering from strokes They developed the game with physical therapists (or possibly just one, it wasn't clear). For games that are meant for people with disabilities, it is important to work with experts on the field. This gliding game was made so the player cannot fail at it, only succeed, as motivating ...

 Our lecturer was Erno Kiiski, Chief Game Analyst of Game Refinery, a company that focuses on mobile game analytics, predictive analytics and mobile game market data. This talk has made me feel so stupid. I am having a hard time concentrating on the subject, and I don't think it is the fault of the speaker, but mine. I think this is going to be a short lecture diary from me, as I don't know what to say about this subject. I am uncertain if I will add more to this. Me, being scared of this all From what I gathered from this is lesson is that there are companies like Game Refinery, that has a comprehensive market database, which helps creating a new mobile game or to improve your current mobile game. This data will help to market your game with targeted advertisement, you'll know who to give ads to. They have different data and different subgenres so it is easy to see what you competitors do in your genre and even what other people are doing in different genres. It is good to...

We had 2 lecturers today, started with Mikko Lehto, senior game/UI/UX designer for Nitro games. We are once again talking about F2P games, but this time it's concentration on game designers POV. Our second lecturer was Jussi Tähtinen, CEO and co-founder of Nitro Games, who talked about F2P business model on mobile. Here are some abbreviations I learned today: KPI - Key performance indicator DAU - Daily active user MAU - monthly active users D0 - First day of gameplay ("day 0") D1 retention - what % player return on day two D7 retention - what % players return on day 7 ARPDAU - Average revenue per daily active user CPI - cost per install LTV - Life time value I don't necessarily use the now on my writing but I want to have them for later usage, and so I can remember them better. It's important to remember your target audience, find out what is fun for them. This mean using data to find out what players find engaging. Looking at how long sessions the players have, h...

We had a lecture by Ivan Lugovoy, previous Xamk student who is currently working with mobile games as an artist. He focused his talk about the free to play (F2P) system in mobile gaming, and he mentioned how mobile gaming is interesting to the business point of view as it makes a lot of money.  Mobile games that want to use the F2P need to have mass appeal, but that usually makes them seem very generic, so it is hard to develop something that appeals to everyone, but is different enough to get the actual clients. Mobile games tend to cater more towards the casual gamer type, something people can just enjoy and doesn't need a huge learning curve. Core loop for the Clash of Clans by Supecell The game should have a good core, short term goals, so the player doesn't give up too soon and long term goals so the gamer comes back for more. Designing games should also remember the limitations of the system, like size of the screen and computing power.  Something very important to F2P g...

  We started with going through what we are going to learn in the game business and digital economy course. I am feeling slightly worried as this is not an area that I am interested in even as I know it is important in the field of game design. I have toyed with an idea of making my own simple game, and getting to a point where I could make simple, self-published games so this course will definitely be handy if I get there. Or it will give me and an idea whether I would like to work on it in reality. We went through different game types and how they make their revenue, for mobile and console and PC. There were things like, freemium, premium, free to play, DLC, one time purchase. This was just the starting lesson and some things went way over my head, and I am thinking of keeping this first learning diary short and sweet but focusing more on the future ones. Yes, I am definitely worried about this course.