Dawn of Titans' D30 retention, tips to optimise soft launch, and Kabam cans MARVEL United

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• 5 Danger at every turn: the making of The Walking Dead: No Man's Land

  

  There's no arguing that The Walking Dead: No Man's Land had a successful launch. It managed to enter the top 100 grossing in most major markets, thanks to a well-timed launch and agreeable monetisation.

  But there's always more to the story than just a good launch, so we talked to executive producer Sulka Haro about the making of the game.

  Speaking about the reaction to the game, Haro said "The big gamble here was whether a sufficient number of people would take to our relatively heavy strategic approach. It seems like they do."

  

• 4 Is a 200 basis point increase for Dawn of Titans' 30-day retention significant?

  

  Zynga's Dawn of Titans may have been in soft launch since March 2015, but the company has announced that it's delaying the launch of the game into 2016.

  Its justifcation is that "given how strong the early monetization is for the game, we believe that a move of 200 basis points in day 30 retention has the potential to make the game a breakout hit."

  To make sense of it all, we asked our Monetizer Mavens if a 200 basis point increase is actually a significant metric or not.

  
  

• 3 How to avoid burning money during your game's soft launch

  

  The cost of launching a game and acquiring users is on the rise, even in smaller markets such as the Philippines, so it's become even more important to watch your budget when soft launching.

  To that end, Oliver Kern, Chief Mobilizer at mobile game marketing agency Mobilize, took some time to explain some of the ways you can avoid burning through too much money on your soft launch.

  Among the advice given is the suggestion that you always begin with your audience. "Don't be tempted to buy some cheap installs because random installs at any price are not a steal. They only tell you how random people will likely interact with your game," writes Kern.

  

• 2 Storm8's Ramine Darabiha on the challenges and opportunities of running 45 games-as-a-service

  

  Storm8 started 2015 on a high note, announcing that it had achieved over one billion downloads across its portfolio of games, and it's gone from strength to strength from there.

  To help keep up, Storm8 recently hired ex-Rovio and Halfbrick developer Ramine Darabiha to be its Lead Product Manager, so we took the time to ask what brought him to the role, amongst other things.

  "I believe that there is a lot to be learned from a studio that can run an entire network of products," said Darabiha.

  

  "The team has really mastered the art of games-as-a-service, and I'm really excited to help build on the success of our network."

• 1 Kabam makes a hard decision, canning MARVEL United during soft launch

  

  Kabam has been having something of a mixed bag of a year. While it's first MARVEL game, Contest of Champions, became its fastest game to earn $100 million in revenue, its other games haven't fared as well.

  Despite the draw of a big IP, Star Wars: Uprising failed to make a significant impact on the market, and Kabam has cancelled two games while in soft launch, most recently its other MARVEL title, MARVEL United.

  There's no official word on why the game has been canned before its global release, but it's most likely down to an inability to increase rentention and monetisation metrics, making a global launch unviable.