Mobile games from artists POV

-

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 games is the data of the users. If the developers can find out that the player stops playing after a certain screen, like for example main menu, they can get the idea that their menu isn't working for the players. Simple things like how the game is presented on the store page can affect whether the player actually downloads the game, for example how the colors are different there might make the difference if they download the game. 

For the art style the game should be distinctive, but it should give the idea what the game is about. If the game looks bright and colorful and simple, people understand that the game is casual, without even opening the game. 

Candy crush saga, King


Having flexible art style is also very good for mobile gaming, as if using data you can see some character isn't used you could easily and quickly change the design. Flexibility in this meaning that making changes is easy, for example having Angry birds, these designs tend to have 4 to 5 colors, so if a character doesn't seem to be appealing for players, they could try changing colors. If that doesn't seem to be working, these simple shaped birds would be easy to re-shape to attempt that as well. This would mean you wouldn't necessarily need to redesign the whole character, and would easily be able to keep the base.

Angry Birds, Rovio

For designing characters there's also good to keep in mind the marketability of these characters, so you can potentially make more profit. If player gets fond of these characters they will likely want to purchase merchandise of them. 

And that's my take-away from this lecture. 




Kommentit

Lähetä kommentti

Tämän blogin suosituimmat tekstit

e-learning games and games in general

-
 Natasha Skult, CEO, MiTale, E-learning games Firstly, all people experience media differently, even in movies that are a linear experience, everything about us makes it a different experience. There's a reason someone might love a movie you thought was horribly made, or hating a movie that was a critical success. That was just an example for me to understand this better. So it's good to get feedback, as what you perceive as good may be not so pleasant to other people. Images stay in our mind longer than other mediums, so utilizing symbolisms and visual storytelling is great in games. E-learning E-learning is not about removing the teacher, but rather give them tools and making teaching easier. Working on learning games it should be collaborating with the teacher, so the game developers understand what is most effective and teachers can learn about games.  Premium generally works better than free to play for school games. Specially to school children, parents don't want kid...
Lue lisää

Own business

-
Today's lecturer was Natasha Skult Ceo & Creative of MiTale,  www.natashaskult.com "serious games" education For example JumpStart games , that have educational games for kids, or simulation learning for different occupations healthcare and wellbeing For example Goodlife big brands businesses What does it require to gamify a product? teamwork Having a good team will help with your product, people with varied skills and backgrounds. It's good to be on the same page, but your team shouldn't be just yes men.   expertise from various disciplines The process is about learning yourself that it's good to understand that you don't know everything. Having help from experts and professionals is a good thing and will help making your game. If you're going to teach math's to children, using the expertise of a math teacher will help with the teaching process. listening  Listening your team, listening the experts, listening the client, communication is the k...
Lue lisää