Why you're losing players, Supercell is winning, and how to talk on camera

A glance at last week's top stories

• 5 Why Nordeus is opening a 'blank slate' office in London

  

  At Pocket Gamer Connects London 2015, George Osborn spoke to Aman Ghei from Top Eleven developer Nordeus.

  Ghei is heading up the company's new London studio, which has been set up to enable Nordeus access to a wider talent pool of developers.

  He filled us in on all of the details in a video interview - including what sort of games the studio is looking to make.

  
  

• 4 Rovio Stars is looking for 5 stars to build out publishing team

  

  Based in Espoo - just outside of Helsinki, Finland - Rovio Stars announced last week that it's on the lookout for the best F2P games that will appeal to the massive global audience that Rovio has access to thanks to Angry Birds.

  Rovio Stars is the company's publishing arm, and the open positions are as follows:

  • Executive producer,
  • Senior games producer,
  • Art director,
  • Senior product manager, and
  • Product lead.

  The news follows the appointment of William Taht as head of external publishing.

  
  

• 3 7 top tips for talking about your game on camera

  

  It's a simple truth that talking about your game on camera is now an industry necessity.

  You might need to preview it for a media outlet, or simply be interviewed at an industry event.

  You may be speaking on stage with the talk being posted online, or your marketing team might want to create some company videos.

  So we put together a list of seven tips for how to talk on camera and present both your game and yourself in the best light.

  
  

• 2 Supercell sees 2014 revenue rise threefold to $1.7 billion

  

  A company that's proven it's cracked the F2P market is Supercell, who just announced its 2014 financial figures - and they're pretty impressive.

  Last year's sales grew threefold to $1.7 billion - though indeed it was less than some analysts had expected.

  Superdata, for example, had estimated Clash of Clans could generate at least $1.8 billion by itself.

  Gross earnings (EBITDA) were up 111 percent to $565 million.

  
  

• 1 10 reasons players are leaving your game

  

  Around 80 percent of mobile app store revenue is generated by F2P in-app purchases, so it's no secret that F2P is big business.

  The issue is being able to publish a F2P title that keeps the player hooked - so deltaDNA shared its insights with us on how to improve retention.

  For example, the big data analytics platform found that developers often set their difficulty too high too early - and alienated players as a result.

  Another issue comes when players run out of the resources that they start the game with, and are then asked to purchase more. 

  Out of the list of ten tips, however, deltaDNA said this: the most important thing is for you to use analytics to gain a better understanding of your players' behaviours and personalise the gameplay accordingly.