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The making of Angry Birds 2, Bethesda's F2P Boogeyman, and Apple and Google unite

We round up the top five stories of last week.

The making of Angry Birds 2, Bethesda's F2P Boogeyman, and Apple and Google unite

This week saw one of the most-anticipated sequels in mobile gaming history hit the app stores.

So it's no surprise that the "Making Of" Angry Birds 2 was one of the most-read stories on last week. We chatted with the general manager of Rovio Stockholm, Oskar Burman, on just how his team went about following up one of the biggest brands on mobile. 

Elsewhere, our in-app inspector had a bee in his bonnest about Bethesda's holier-than-thou attitude to free-to-play. After their release of Fallout Shelter, they were quick to badmouth the very business model they'd embraced to launch their mobile title.

Last week also saw Marvel Contest of Champions become Kabam's fastest game to ever hit $100 million in revenue, Mobcrush scooped two ex-Apple and Google veterans, and Gumi's new Berlin studio has some interesting strategies up its sleeve.

Click the link below to find out more about each story in detail.


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  • 5 Why Gumi's new Berlin studio is embracing risk to reinvent F2P mobile strategy gaming

    Why Gumi's new Berlin studio is embracing risk to reinvent F2P mobile strategy gaming logo

    Perhaps with the exception of GungHo's Puzzle & Dragons (although even that's arguable), hardcore Asian games haven't found big enough international audiences to be labelled a 'global success'.

    That's why these companies are looking to crack the west with a different approach: going local

    Netmarble has just invested $130 million into US publisher SGN, while NetEase announced an indie developer fund. Marvelous has had a European publishing operation for a number of years.

    Never afraid of a big commitment, however, Gumi has decided to set up its own firstparty studio from scratch.

    Jon Jordan caught up with Are Mack Growen, Gumi's VP and Head of Europe, to talk through the move and Gumi's plans for the future. 


  • 4 Mobile gaming streamer Mobcrush adds ex-Appler Greg Essig and ex-Googler Koh Kim to team

    Mobile gaming streamer Mobcrush adds ex-Appler Greg Essig and ex-Googler Koh Kim to team logo

    With the likes of Twitch, Everyplay and Kamcord already staking out their claims, the mobile game streaming sector is already getting competitive.

    Los Angeles-startup Mobcrush is looking to deep industry partners to ensure it gets its share of the pie.

    To help it, it's just hired Apple’s former Apple App Store lead Greg Essig and Google Play’s old games lead Koh Kim as co-heads of business development.

    Essig and Kim both worked for just over three years with the Californian giants, with Essig increasing games billings by over six-fold during his tenure at Apple and Kim being instrumental in launching Google Play’s business development team in Asia.


  • 3 Bigger, badder, birdier: The Making of Angry Birds 2

    Bigger, badder, birdier: The Making of Angry Birds 2 logo

    Just four days after launch, Angry Birds 2 had racked up over 10 million downloads.

    The day before Rovio pulled the cloak, however, we caught up with Oskar Burman, the general manager of Rovio Stockholm who led the creative team behind the sequel.

    “When we started this game, we went back to the roots of Angry Birds,” Burman says.

    “We wanted to investigate what Angry Birds would look like if it was created in 2015 as opposed to 2009."

    These new updates include a multiplayer arena, slick visuals, and a slew of in-app purchases and rewarded video ads.

    “If you’re making a sequel to one of the most successful games ever, you want it to be good.

    “What we also wanted to do was to deepen the backstory and create a big world for the player to explore. We wanted to build that into the game itself, so that even the players who only play the games understand the depth of this world.”

     


  • 2 Marvel Contest of Champions is Kabam's fastest game to $100 million revenue

    Marvel Contest of Champions is Kabam's fastest game to $100 million revenue logo

    Vindicating its decision to ditch its web games, Kabam is now happily announcing that Marvel Contest of Champions has generated $100 million in revenue.

    Released in December 2014 on Google Play and the App Store, it is Kabam's fastest title to reach that revenue total.

    In contrast, Kabam's The Hobbit game took 13 months to hit the magic number.

    As we recently considered in our Charticle, Marvel Contest of Champions has performed well both in North America and Europe.

    In terms of its Asian performance, South Korea is currently the game's best country, although it's not yet been released in China.

    Longtu Games is currently working to localise and culturalise the experience for release later in 2015.


  • 1 Bethesda vs. the F2P bogeyman: Why Fallout Shelter's success is built upon a false premise

    Bethesda vs. the F2P bogeyman: Why Fallout Shelter's success is built upon a false premise logo

    Our In-App Inspector has a bee in his bonnet - a bee called Bethesda.

    In his own words, Matt Suckley wrote "Something about the way Bethesda has communicated Fallout Shelter's $5.1 million success- a major victory in its own eyes, rather less so when judged against the broader mobile landscape - has been bothering me."

    The issue, he says, is that Bethesda's snide comments against F2P as a business model damages the industry as a whole.

    It's been quick to point out free-to-play done badly, and in the process draws further black marks against a business model it itself embraced.

    "It's achieving goodwill by pitting itself against an idea of free-to-play game design that doesn't actually exist, a monsterised amalgam of every cash-grab scandal that's been paraded in front of the hardcore gamer crowd, from Dungeon Keeper to Theme Park."


News Editor