Katy Perry Pop flops, everything you need to know about retention, and how to get a job at Space Ape

The hottest articles of last week

• 5 Fresh ideas and missteps: the monetisation of BattleHand

  

  BattleHand has done a good job of attracting our attention here at PocketGamer.biz. It feels a lot like Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, Jon's favourite game ever, and it's made by some people who used to work on Fable, my favourite game ever.

  But when we handed it over to our resident In-App Purchase Inspector, Matt, he had a slightly more measured reaction to the game.

  Despite being generous with certain rewards and card packs early on, he found the energy system to be far too restrictive to really enjoy the game.

  So while he does like what they were going for, Matt says "some missteps prevent the experience from being as player-friendly as it could have been."

  
  

• 4 Katy Perry versus Kim Kardashian: a study in surprising extremes

  

  Poor Katy Perry. After the raging success of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, it looked like signing up for a game with Glu would be a guaranteed money maker for just about anyone.

  But as Jon points out in his Charticle, the recently released Katy Perry Pop has failed to capture the attention of the mobile gaming world.

  

  There's any number of theories as to why. Kim Kardashian is always in the news while Katy Perry isn't, the release of Perry's game was badly timed, or the mechanics were changed so much that it turned most players away.

  "But the bottomline would seem to be that just like the success of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, the scale of Katy Perry Pop's failure is a surprise and something of an enigma," as Jon puts it.

• 3 With a record $3M generated in December, Seriously reveals Best Fiends has hit $25M in lifetime sales

  

  Being charitable is a good thing in many ways. It's good for your soul, good for the community, and, if you advertise it right, it's good for getting your name out there.

  No one can attest to this better than Best Fiends developer Seriously, who's recent Race Against Slime 2 campaign earned them $3 million in revenue in December 2015, pushing lifetime sales to $25 million.

  The campaign saw a variety of YouTube stars teaming up to see who could defeat the most slimes in a short space of time, with the winning team having the prize money donated to the charity of their choice.

  In the end, $250,000 of money was raised for charity, which is nice.

  
  

• 2 Everything you ever wanted to know about retention

  

  So you've made your game and a bunch of people have downloaded it. Great! But you still need to hang on to these people somehow, so you can continue to monetise them. How do you do that effectively?

  If you've been scratching your head over this very question, then fear not. Guest columnist Torulf Jernström has rather helpfully laid out everything you need to know about retention.

  He starts by explaining what retention actually is, what's a normal level of retention for a new game, and goes on to offer some suggestions as to how to keep your retention level high.

  

  Amongst other suggestions, he recommends focusing on making your game look as good as possible, saying that "there's a higher chance of featuring when your game looks amazing."

  "People who go to your pages on Google Play or the App Store have a higher chance of downloading your game."

• 1 How to get a job at UK's 'best indie' Space Ape Games

  

  UK developer Space Ape is going from strength to strength with its strategy games Samurai Siege and Rival Kingdoms, and they're looking to hire 50 new employees over the next 12 months, so there's never been a better time to try and jump into their fold.

  To give you a hand in that regard, we asked Space Age's COO and co-founder Simon Hade about their company culture, and what they're looking for from someone who wants to get involved.

  "People need to really own their work, love what they do, and have extremely high output," said Hade, who noted that "that can be scary for some people, exhilarating and liberating for others."

  "The latter tend to find their way to us."