The making of Angry Birds Go, rebooting the App Store discovery system, and an Oxford professor calls out Supercell

Last week's top five stories

• 5 Free-to-play farce: Publishers pushing indies to implement pay-to-win tactics

  

  Mobile developers are facing an overwhelming amount of pressure to implement aggressive monetisation structures in their games.

  The news was broken last week when reports surfaced from various mobile studios, including Italian studio BloodyMonkey, who claimed that publishers simply weren't interested in anything other than a pay-to-win model.

  "We approached different publishers during the development, but all of them required some form of free-to-play mechanic (virtual currency, sell hints, ads...)," said, BloodyMonkey founder, Paolo Taje.

  "We decided to self-publish our game and stick with the initial design: no artificial gimmick, just one world free to try and all the rest of the game unlockable one time and forever."

  
  

• 4 From kart to finish: The making of Angry Birds Go

  

  When Rovio decided to deliver Angry Birds Go, it made a big judgement call by handing the keys to the kart races over to UK-based developer Exient.

  It was a big risk, but not one made lightly. Exient had convinced Rovio that it could handle the pressure of taking the firm's franchise in a new, free-to-play, direction, and in our latest 'Making of', PocketGamer.biz regular Kirk Mckeand found out how the team rose to the challenge.

  "There was an immense amount of research into other karting games to drill down into what was fun about the experience," recalled Exient's studio director, Graeme Monk.

  "As with most free-to-play games, there is a level of servicing the live product once it's been launched, which allows us to tailor the experience to what the players actually want, not what we as developers believe they want.

  "[For example] multiplayer was something we focused on from the very beginning, but was held back so we could gain feedback from the market as to what type of multiplayer was desired."

  
  

• 3 Vungle looks to triple staff in 2014; appoints Ville Heijari to head Europe

  

  With video advertising continuing to drive high value inventory in the mobile industry, video ad specialist Vungle is planning a big expansion.

  Following the recent launch of its new exchange to boost reach, the firm has hired Ville Heijari to oversee its European operations, while it also intents to increase its employee count by 300 percent.

  "We're excited about Ville joining the Vungle team," said Vungle CEO, Zain Jaffe.

  "His experience will be invaluable in accelerating our European operations on the heels of the launch of Vungle Exchange - our patent-pending technology and the first-ever exchange exclusively for in-app video ads."

  
  

• 2 Apple's IAP giveaways will reboot the entire app discovery system... and here's how

  

  Apple's decision to sanction the ability to give away in-app purchases using an iTunes promo code could completely reboot the app discovery system.

  While there's no indication as to how widespread IAP giveaways will be, with EA so far being the only company on the App Store using the service, PocketGamer.biz editor-at-large, Jon Jordan, believes that if it does catch on, it will surely be a game changer.

  "Taken to its logical conclusion, this move could be the start of an entirely new advertising system for Apple, which has been underperforming in this area thanks to the failure of iAd and the rise of Facebook and other social networks as the key drivers of app discovery," explained Jordan.

  "The rumours PocketGamer.biz is hearing confirm Real Racing 3 is just a tester for what will eventually be a widely available discovery and engagement boost to the whole iOS ecosystem."

  
  

• 1 Player to player economies: Why mobile needs to do it, and how Hay Day did it badly

  

  When Vili Lehdonvirta of the University of Oxford suggested that mobile extraordinaire Supercell had made a mistake within one of its games, it, understandably, caused quite a stir.

  During his talk at the F2P Summit in London, Lehdonvirta explained that developers should be looking to include a player to player economy in their games, before pointing to Supercell's Hay Day as an example of how not to implement the system.

  "In Hay Day, you have a road side shop where you can sell your produce to other players," said Lehdonvirta.

  "But what's happened is, because the UI doesn't facilitate exchanging goods for goods directly, unofficial trading forums have sprung up where people request goods, friend each other, and then use a strange signalling system.

  "This is how not to do it."