Activision recently launched a revival of a 30-year-old IP with a paid iOS version of Pitfall. They have taken a Paymium approach, combining a 69p up-front purchase price with IAPs. The game has consistently been in the...

I'm delighted to announce a new feature on GAMESBrief: the GAMESbriefers. Every week, we all ask our august panel of 25 (and growing) luminaries a burning question in the world of free-to-play and paymium game design. Or...

I recently provided some analysis to the Guardian on the demise and rebirth of OnLive. They didn't use all of the comments, so I thought I would post them here. OnLive’s problem was that it failed to find...

You need to make players feel that they can “just pop in for a quick go”. Then you need to lock them in for much longer. As game designers have been doing with traditional games for years.

Clearly an indie developer needs a mobile strategy to survive or thrive. In my last article, I argued Facebook was dead to indie gamers and the new frontier is mobile games. We believe this so strongly at...

In an interview over at the Guardian, four games journalists gave their impressions of Gamescom. The full article is definitely worth reading, but this summary from Dan Griliopolous leaped out at me “The paid MMO is dead....

This is a critical consideration for any game being designed for a smartphone or tablet. If your free-to-play game is in the browser or on the console, it may be less crucial, but “short loops” remain key...