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Showing posts with label Google Play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google Play. Show all posts

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Developer tips for success with Player Analytics and Google Play games services

Posted by, Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play



Editor’s note: As part of our series featuring tips from developers, we spoke to some popular game developers to find out how they use Player Analytics and Google Play game services to find success on Google Play. - Ed.



Google Play games services, available in the Developer Console, allows you to add features such as achievements and leaderboards to your games. Google Play games services provides Player Analytics, a free games-specific analytics tool, in the Developer Console Game services tab. You can use the reports to understand how players are progressing, spending, and churning backed by a data-driven approach.





Bombsquad grows revenue by 140% per user with Player Analytics



Independent developer Eric Froemling, initially created the game Bombsquad as a hobby, but now relies on it as his livelihood. Last year, he switched the business model of the game from paid to free-to-play. By using Player Analytics, he was able to improve player retention and monetization in the game, achieving a 140% increase in the average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU).



Watch the video below to learn how Eric uses Player Analytics and the Developer Console to improve gamers’ experience, while increasing retention and monetization.













Tips from Auxbrain for success with Google Play games services



Kevin Pazirandeh, founder and CEO of games developer Auxbrain, creator of Zombie Highway, provides insight into how they use Google Play games services, and comments:



“While there are a few exceptions, I have not run into a better measure of engagement, and perhaps more importantly, a measure for change in engagement, than the retention table. For the uninitiated, a daily retention table gives you the % of players who return on the nth day after their first play. Comparing retention rates of two similar games can give you an immediate signal if you are doing something right or wrong.”



Kevin shares his top tips on how to best use the analytics tools in Google Play games services:



  1. You get Player Analytics for free - If you’ve implemented Google Play game services in your games, check out Player Analytics under Game services in the Developer Console, you’ll find you are getting analytics data already.


  2. Never assume change is for the better - Players may not view changes in your game as the improvement you had hoped they were. So when you make a change, have a strategy for measuring the result. Where you cannot find a way to measure the change’s impact with Player Analytics, consider not making it and prioritize those changes you can measure.


  3. Use achievements and events to track player progress - If you add achievements or events you can use the Player progression report or Event viewer to track player progress. You’ll quickly find out where players are struggling or churning, and can look for ways to help move players on.


  4. Use sign-in to get more data - The more data about player behavior you collect, the more meaningful the reports in Player Analytics become. The best way to increase the data collected is to get more players signed-in. Auto sign-in players, and provide a Play game services start point on the first screen (after any tutorial flow) for those that don’t sign-in first time.


  5. Track your player engagement with Retention tables - The Retention table report lets you see where players are turning away, over time. Compare retention before and after changes to understand their impact, or between similar games to see if different designs decisions are turning players away earlier or later.


Get started with Google Play Games Services or learn more about products and best practices that will help you grow your business on Google Play globally.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Android Developer Story: Peak Games generates majority of global revenue for popular game ‘Spades’ on Android

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team



Founded in 2010, Turkish mobile games developer Peak Games started developing games targeted to the local market and is now scaling globally. Their game ‘Spades Plus’ is growing in the US and the game generates over 70% of its mobile revenue from Android.



Watch Erdem İnan, Business Intelligence and Marketing Director, and İlkin Ulaş Balkanay, Head of Android Development, explain how Peak Games improved user engagement and increased installs with Google Play Store Listing experiments and app promotion right from within the Developer Console.







Find out more about how to use run tests on your Store Listing to increase your installs and how to promote your app or game with Universal App Campaigns from the Google Play Developer Console.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Learn top tips from Kongregate to achieve success with Store Listing Experiments

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play


Editor’s note: This is another post in our series featuring tips from developers finding success on Google Play. We recently spoke to games developer Kongregate, to find out how they use Store Listing Experiments successfully. - Ed.



With Store Listing Experiments in the Google Play Developer Console, you can conduct A/B tests on the content of your store listing pages. Test versions of the text and graphics to see which ones perform best, based on install data.



Kongregate increases installs by 45 percent with Store Listing Experiments



Founded in 2006 by brother and sister Jim and Emily Greer, Kongregate is a leading mobile games publisher specializing in free to play games. Kongregate used Store Listing Experiments to test new content for the Global Assault listing page on Google Play. By testing with different audience sizes, they found a new icon that drove 92 percent more installs, while variant screenshots achieved an impressive 14 percent improvement. By picking the icons, screenshots, and text descriptions that were the most sticky with users, Kongregate saw installs increase by 45 percent on the improved page.



Kongregate’s Mike Gordon, VP of Publishing; Peter Eykemans, Senior Producer; and Tammy Levy, Director of Product for Mobile Games, talk about how to successfully optimise mobile game listings with Store Listing Experiments.







Kongregate’s tips for success with Store Listing Experiments



Jeff Gurian, Sr. Director of Marketing at Kongregate also shares his do’s and don’ts on how to use experiments to convert more of your visitors, thereby increasing installs. Check them out below:
























Do’s Don’ts
Do start by testing your game’s icon. Icons can have the greatest impact (positive or negative) on installs — so test early! Don’t test too many variables at once. It makes it harder to determine what drove results. The more variables you test, the more installs (and time) you’ll need to identify a winner.
Do have a question or objective in mind when designing an experiment. For example, does artwork visualizing gameplay drive more installs than artwork that doesn’t? Don’t test artwork only. Also test screenshot ordering, videos, and text to find what combinations increase installs.
Do run experiments long enough to achieve statistical significance. How long it takes to get a result can vary due to changes in traffic sources, location of users, and other factors during testing. Don’t target too small an audience with your experiment variants. The more users you expose to your variants, the more data you collect, the faster you get results!
Do pay attention to the banner, which tells you if your experiment is still “in progress.” When it has collected enough data, the banner will clearly tell you which variant won or if it was a tie. Don’t interpret a test where the control attribute performs better than variants as a waste. You can still learn valuable lessons from what “didn’t work.” Iterate and try again!




Learn more about how Kongregate optimized their Play Store listing with Store Listing Experiments. Learn more about Google Play products and best practices to help you grow your business globally.



Monday, September 28, 2015

Support for 100MB APKs on Google Play

Posted by Kobi Glick, Google Play team



Smartphones are powerful devices that can support diverse tasks from graphically intensive games to helping people get work done from anywhere. We understand that developers are challenged with delivering a delightful user experience that maximizes the hardware of the device, while also ensuring that their users can download, install, and open the app as quickly as possible. It’s a tough balance to strike, especially when you’re targeting diverse global audiences.



To support the growing number of developers who are building richer apps and games on Google Play, we are increasing the APK file size limit to 100MB from 50MB. This means developers can publish APKs up to 100MB in size, and users will see a warning only when the app exceeds the 100MB quota and makes use of Expansion Files. The default update setting for users will continue to be to auto-updating apps over Wi-Fi only, enabling users to access higher quality apps and games while conserving their data usage.



Even though you can make your app bigger, it doesn’t always mean you should. Remember to keep in mind the following factors:


  • Mobile data connectivity: Users around the world have varying mobile data connectivity speeds. Particularly in developing countries, many people are coming online with connections slower than those of users in countries like the U.S. and Japan. Users on a slow connection are less likely to install an app or game that is going to take a long time to download.

  • Mobile data caps: Many mobile networks around the world give users a limited number of MB that they can download each month without incurring additional charges. Users are often wary of downloading large files for fear of exceeding their limits.

  • App performance: Mobile devices have limited RAM and storage space. The larger your app or game, the slower it may run, particularly on older devices.

  • Install time: People want to start using your app or game as quickly as possible after tapping the install button. Longer wait times increase the risk they’ll give up.


We hope that, in certain circumstances, this file size increase is useful and enables you to build higher quality apps and games that users love.



Friday, September 18, 2015

Telltale Games share their tips for success on Android TV

Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play



Editor’s note: This is another post in our series featuring tips from developers finding success on Google Play. This week, we’re sharing advice from Telltale Games on how to create a successful game on Android TV. -Ed.



With new Android hardware being released from the likes of Sony, Sharp, and Philips amongst others, Android TV and Google Play can help you bring your game to users right in their living rooms through a big screen experience.





The recent Marshmallow update for Android TV means makes it easier than ever to extend your new or existing games and apps for TV. It's important to understand how your game is presented in the user interface and how it can help users get to the content they want quickly.





Telltale Games is a US-founded game developer and publisher, based in San Francisco, California. They’re well known for the popular series ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Game of Thrones‘ which was created in partnership with HBO.




Zac Litton, VP of Technology at Telltale Games, shares his tips for creating and launching your games with Android TV.



Tips for launching successful games on Android TV



  1. Determine the Device for Android TV: Determine what device your game is running on by using the UiModeManager.getCurrentModeType() method. If the device is running in television mode, you can declare what to display as the launch point of the game on the Android TV itself (Configuration). Add the LEANBACK_LAUNCHER filter category to one of your intent-filters to identify your game as being enabled for TV. This is required for your game to be considered a TV app in Google Play.


  2. Touchscreen vs TV: TVs don’t have touch screens so make sure you set the touchscreen required flag to false in the manifest as touch is implicitly true by default on Android. This will help avoid your game getting filtered from the TV Play store right out of the gate. Also, check your permissions, as some imply hardware requirements which you may need to override explicitly.


  3. Use Hardware APIs: Use the package manager which has System Feature API to enable your game to reason about what capabilities it can and should expose. For example, whether to show the user touch screen controls or game controller controls. You can also make your app location aware using the location APIs available in Google Play services to add location awareness with automated location tracking, geofencing, and activity recognition.


  4. Use appropriate controllers: To reach the most users, your app should support a simplified input scheme that doesn’t require a directional pad (D-pad controller). The player needs to be able to use a D-Pad in all aspects of the game—not just controlling core gameplay, but also navigating menus and ads, therefore your Android TV game shouldn’t refer to a touch interface specifically. For example, an Android TV game should not tell a player to "Tap here to continue."


  5. Appear in the right place: Make sure you add an android:isGame attribute to the application element of the manifest and set it to true in order to enable the installed game to show up on the correct launcher row, games.


  6. Provide home screen banners: Provide a home screen banner for each localization supported, especially if you are an international developer. The banner (320 x 180) is the game launch point that appears on the TV home screen on the games row.


  7. Use a TV image for your Store Listing: Be sure you provide at least one TV screen shot on your Store Listing page. Then include a high res icon, feature graphic, promo graphic and TV banner.


  8. Improve visibility through ‘search’ and ‘recommendations’: Android TV uses the Android search interface to retrieve content data from installed apps and games, and deliver search results to the user. Implement a ContentProvider to show instant suggestions to the user, and a SearchManager to deep link your game’s content.


  9. Set appropriate pricing and distribution: Check “Distribute to Android TV” in the relevant section in the Developer Console. This will trigger a review by Google to ensure your game meets the minimum requirements for TV.


  10. Guide the user: Use a tutorial to guide the player into the game mechanics and provide an input reference to the user based on the input control they are using.



With the recently released Android TV codelab and online class from Udacity, you can learn how to convert your existing mobile game into Android TV in just four hours. Find out more about how to build games for Android TV and how you to publish them using familiar tools and processes in Google Play.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Android Developer Story: Domain increases installs by 44% with Material Design and Google Play services

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team



Australian developer Domain is part of a multi-platform property business, which provides search tools and information for buyers, sellers, renters, investors, and agents across Australia. The Domain Real Estate & Property app was voted a top five lifestyle app in Australia and now has three dedicated Android developers who work closely with their design and UX teams.



Product Manager, Henrique Marassi, and Android Developer, Gary Lo, explain how Domain successfully improved their user rating from 2.8 to 4.1 and increased monthly downloads by 44 percent by adopting Material Design and Play services to create a better user experience.







Learn more about how Domain found success on Google Play:


  • Material Design guidelines: How Material Design helps you create beautiful, engaging apps.

  • Google Play services: Learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it.

  • Find success on Google Play: Products and best practices to help your grow you business globally on Google Play.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Play Games Loot Drop for Developers

Posted by Ben Frenkel, Product Manager Google Play Games



Launched last March, Player Analytics is already becoming an important tool for many game developers, helping them to manage their games businesses and optimize in-game player behavior. Today we’re expanding Player Analytics with two new analytics reports that give you better visibility into time-based player activity and custom game events. We’re also introducing a new Player Stats API to let you tune your game experience for specific segments of players across the game lifecycle. Along with those, we’re rolling out a new version of our C++/iOS SDKs and Unity plug-in and giving you better tools to manage repeating Quests.



New useful reports for developers



We are launching two new reports later this week in the Play Games developer console: the Player Time Series Explorer and the Events Viewer. We’ve also made improvements to our player retention report.



Player Time Series Explorer



Ever wondered what your players are doing in the first few minutes of gameplay? What happens just before players spend or churn? The time-series explorer lets you understand what happens in these critical moments for your players.



For example, you carefully built out the first set of experiences in your game, but are surprised by how many players never get through even the first set of challenges. With the Player Time Series Explorer, you can now see which challenges are impeding player progress most, and make targeted improvements to decrease the rate of churn. Learn more.



Customize settings to explore player time series





Select from a list of preset questions





Find out what happens before your players spend for the first time



Select “What happens before first spend” to see what happens just before your players spend for the first time. Time series are aligned by first spend event so you can easily explore what happened just before and after first purchase.





Find out what happens before your players churn



Select “What happens before churn” to see what happens before your players stop playing. In the example below, all the churn events are right aligned to make it easier to compare player time series.





Hovering over events shows you additional details

You can see more details for all event types by holding your cursor over the event’s shape. In this example, you can see that “Player 03” spent $4.99 after earning six achievements. Hovering over the achievement shapes will show you which specific achievements were earned.





Events Viewer



Now you can create your own reports based on your custom Play Games’ events. You can select multiple events to display and bookmark the report for easy access. Learn more.



Here’s an example showing how a developer can compare the rates at which Players are entering contests, winning, and almost winning. This report would identify opportunities to improve the balance of its contest modes. You can then bookmark the settings so you can easily track improvements.





28x28 day retention grid



We added a 28-day-by-28-day retention grid to help you compare retention rates across a larger number of new user cohorts.





Tailor player experiences with the Player Stats API



Stats and reports give you insights into your what your players are doing, but wouldn’t it be nice to take action on those insights in your game? That’s what the Player Stats API is all about. The Player Stats API lets you tailor player experiences to specific segments of players across the game lifecycle. Player segments are based on player progression, spend, and engagement.



Here are some examples of what you can do with Player Stats API:



  • For highly engaged players that just aren’t spending, you can show them special bonuses that are aimed at recruiting others to play instead of spending

  • For your most prolific spenders, you can provide occasional free gifts and upgrades

  • For users that haven’t found their stride in your game, you can show them a video that directs them to community features, like clan attacks or alliances, that drive deeper engagement

  • For players that have been away from the game for a while, you can give them a welcome back message that acknowledges impressive accomplishments, and award a badge designed to encourage return play


The Player Stats API is launching in the next few weeks.



C++/iOS SDK and Unity Plug-in updates



iOS support for Play game services just got a lot better. This update includes improved CocoaPods support, which will make it easier to configure Play game services in Xcode. This also means you’ll have a much easier time building for iOS using the Unity plug-in as well.



The latest build of the C++/iOS SDKs is now built on the new Google Sign-In framework, which adds support for authentication via multiple Google apps, including Gmail and YouTube. More importantly, if a player does not have any applicable Google apps installed, the Sign-In framework will bring up a webview within the app for authentication. Opening up a webview inside the app, instead of switching to a separate browser instance, makes for a much better user experience, and addresses a top developer request. For more on the new Google Sign-in library on iOS, check out this video. Learn more.



Improved Quests



Quests are a great way of engaging your players with new goals, and with this update we have made managing Quests easier with the introduction of repeating Quests. You can create Quests that run weekly or monthly by checking the repeating quest box. This will make it easier for you to engage your players with regularly occurring challenges. Repeating Quests will be launching in the next few weeks.



If you have previously integrated Quests, you can easily convert them into repeating quests by following two easy steps.



1. Go to Quests section of developer console, and open up an existing Quest. Click the copy Quest button at the top of the page





2. Scroll down to the Schedule section of the Quest form, check the “Repeating quest” box, select between monthly and weekly quests under “Repeats”, and leave the “Ends:” field set to “Never”. After hitting save, you are done! From then on, the quest will run weekly or monthly until you decide to end it.





Google Play game services (GPGS) docs and SDK downloads



Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Games developer, Dots, share their Do’s and Don’ts for improving your visibility on Google Play


Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play


Editor’s note: A few weeks ago we shared some tips from game developer, Seriously, on how they’ve been using notifications successfully to drive ongoing engagement. This week, we’re sharing tips from Christian Calderon at US game developer, Dots, on how to successfully optimize your Play Store Listing. -Ed.









A well thought-out Google Play store listing can significantly improve the discoverability of your app or game and drive installations. With the recent launch of Store Listing Experiments on the Google Play Developer Console, you can now conduct A/B tests on the text and graphics of your store listing page and use the data to make more informed decisions.



Dots is a US-founded game developer which released the popular game, Dots, and its addictive sequel, TwoDots. Dots used its store listings to showcase its brands and improve conversions by letting players know what to expect.






Christian Calderon, Head of Marketing for Dots, shared his top tips with us on store listings and visibility on Google Play.






Do’s and Don’ts for optimizing store listings on Google Play
























Do’s
Don’ts
Do be creative and unique with the icon. Try to visually convince the user that your product is interesting and in alignment with what they are looking for.

Don’t spam keywords in your app title. Keep the title short, original and thoughtful and keep your brand in mind when representing your product offering.
Do remember to quickly respond to reviews and implement a scalable strategy to incorporate feedback into your product offering. App ratings are important social proof that your product is well liked.
Don’t overload the ‘short description’. Keep it concise. It should be used as a call-to-action to address your product’s core value proposition and invite the user to install the application. Remember to consider SEO best practices.

Do invest in a strong overall paid and organic acquisition strategy. More downloads will make your product seem more credible to users, increasing the likeliness that a user will install your app.
Don’t overuse text in your screenshots. They should create a visual narrative for what’s in your game and help users visualize your product offering, using localization where possible.
Do link your Google Play store listing to your website, social media accounts, press releases and any of your consumer-facing channels that may drive organic visibility to your target market. This can impact your search positioning.
Don’t have a negative, too short or confusing message in your “What’s New” copy. Let users know what updates, product changes or bug fixes have been implemented in new versions. Keep your copy buoyant, informative, concise and clear.
Do use Video Visualization to narrate the core value proposition. For TwoDots, our highest converting videos consist of gameplay, showcasing features and events within the game that let the player know exactly what to expect.
Don’t flood the user with information in the page description. Keep the body of the page description organized and concise and test different structural patterns that works best for you and your product!






Use Google Play Store Listing Experiments to increase your installs


As part of the 100 Days of Google Dev video series, Kobi Glick from the Google Play team explains how to test different graphics and text on your app or game’s Play Store listing to increase conversions using the new Store Listing Experiments feature in the Developer Console.










Find out more about using Store Listing Experiments to turn more of your visits into installs.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Get the Do’s and Don’ts for Notifications from Game Developer Seriously

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play



Editor’s note: We’ve been talking to developers to find out how they’ve been achieving success on Google Play. We recently spoke to Reko Ukko at Finnish mobile game developer, Seriously, to find out how to successfully use Notifications.






Notifications on Android let you send timely, relevant, and actionable information to your users' devices. When used correctly, notifications can increase the value of your app or game and drive ongoing engagement.




Seriously is a Finnish mobile game developer focused on creating entertaining games with quality user experiences. They use push notifications to drive engagement with their players, such as helping players progress to the next level when they’ve left the app after getting stuck.



Reko Ukko, VP of Game Design at Seriously, shared his tips with us on how to use notifications to increase the value of your game and drive ongoing engagement.



Do’s and don’ts for successful game notifications






























Do’s

Don’ts

Do let the user get familiar with your service and its benefits before asking for permission to send notifications.

Don’t treat your users as if they’re all the same - identify and group them so you can push notifications that are relevant to their actions within your app.

Do include actionable context. If it looks like a player is stuck on a level, send them a tip to encourage action.

Don’t spam push notifications or interrupt game play. Get an understanding of the right frequency for your audience to fit the game.

Do consider re-activation. If the player thoroughly completes a game loop and could be interested in playing again, think about using a notification. Look at timing this shortly after the player exits the game.

Don’t just target players at all hours of the day. Choose moments when players typically play games – early morning commutes, lunch breaks, the end of the work day, and in the evening before sleeping. Take time zones into account.

Do deep link from the notification to where the user expects to go to based on the message. For example. if the notification is about "do action X in the game now to win", link to where that action can take place.

Don’t forget to expire the notifications if they’re time-limited or associated with an event. You can also recycle the same notification ID to avoid stacking notifications for the user.

Do try to make an emotional connection with the player by reflecting the style, characters, and atmosphere of your game in the notification. If the player is emotionally connected to your game, they’ll appreciate your notifications and be more likely to engage.

Don’t leave notifications up to guess work. Experiment with A/B testing and iterate to compare how different notifications affect engagement and user behavior in your app. Go beyond measuring app opening metrics – identify and respond to user behavior.



Experiment with notifications yourself to understand what’s best for your players and your game. You can power your own notifications with Google Cloud Messaging, which is free, cross platform, reliable, and thoughtful about battery usage. Find out more about developing Notifications on Android.



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