When designing F2P games, how do you decide how much “friction” to build into the game to drive monetisation without hurting retention, and who has done it well?

In 2012, both F2P and mobile gaming did amazingly well, until pretty well everyone would admit that they have their upsides and are here to stay. Legions of ex-console developers have dived into mobile. How much of a...

What do you think is the most important, influential or interesting game that was released in 2012, and why?

Is there a market for real-time, multiplayer, free-to-play games on mobile? Most successful f2p, multi-player mobile games these days are asynchronous. While this may sound better fit to the use case of a mobile phone (short sessions...

I’m toying with the idea of defining whales as “those players who represent 50% of your revenue”, meaning that you can quickly get a sense of how whale-dependent your business is. Is this a good idea and/or benchmark,...

A reader writes: “Right now I'm at pains to figure out what makes card battle games (Rage of Bahamut...) so successful and how they seem to disregard so many of our game development rules”. Can you help GAMESbrief’s...

Is energy over? Zynga uses energy as a monetisation method, and as a result, many players now see energy as a cynical money-grabbing ploy that typifies the cynical exploitation endemic in free-to-play games. Yet Boss Alien, the...