The evolution of celebrity game UX, Nonstop Knight's fast start, Chinese obstructions, and Clash Royale's relative decline
Welcome to PocketGamer.biz's weekly rundown of the stories clocking up the hits, picking up the click-throughs and generally keeping the advertisers happy by serving up page views.
Or, if you'd prefer, the top five stories currently dominating our readers' attention.
Each week, we'll be counting down the biggest news from the previous seven days, giving just a glimpse of the industry's big issues, from five to one.
Handy for you, each headline in the list also allows you to click through to the article in full, so you can make sure you've not missed out on any of last week's big stories.
#5: Unity isn't an engine. It's about a providing successful games-as-a-service. So why don't developers get it?
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Unity isn't an engine. It's about a providing successful games-as-a-service. So why don't developers get it? »Fresh back from his first experience at Unite Europe 2016, Ric's opinion piece on the conference covered what he felt was the disconnect between Unity's new business model and what developers thought Unity's business model was.
To some degree this is understandable as developers would tend to assume the small licence fee they pay to Unity is the company's key revenue source.
However, over the past 18 months, Unity's profits have been generated from its growing activity in the mobile game advertising space, mainly through rewarded videos through Unity Ads.
"It's clear that Unity are trying to help developers go into the free-to-play market as much as they can, by making it easier for them to add IAPs and implement ads," Ric comments.
"But, for whatever reason, it feels like developers are still slow to understand the importance of building games with F2P in mind."
#4: From Stardom to The Empire: How Glu has evolved the UX in its celebrity games
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From Stardom to The Empire: How Glu has evolved the UX in its celebrity games »At different points in its history, Glu Mobile's celebrity sim games have either been top grossers or bottom feeders.
Without going into detail in terms of the underlining gameplay or meta-game, Ric Cowley decided to take a look at the progression between the various games in terms of each title's user interface and user experience.
In this regard, at least, there's a clear progression, with most recent release Britney Spears: American Dream the most polished game so far.
#3: Nonstop Knight is Flaregames' most successful launch ever with 2 million downloads in 4 days
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Nonstop Knight is Flaregames' most successful launch ever with 2 million downloads in 4 days »Idle dungeon crawler Nonstop Knight hit the app stores hard, generating 2 million downloads in 4 days.
Developed by Finnish outfit Kopla Games and published by German company Flaregames, it's been ranked in Top 5 RPGs in Apple App Store in 126 countries, with particular success in Asia.
It ranked #2 in South Korean App Store.
Indeed, it's been the most successful launch in Flaregames' history, and has player feedback at 4.5 stars and above in all countries.
#2: Chinese government stamps down on mobile games, requiring state clearance for all games and some updates
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Chinese government stamps down on mobile games, requiring state clearance for all games and some updates »As with all things Chinese, it's not clear how significant the announcement that from 1 July, all new mobile games will have to be pre-approved at least 20 business days before launch by China's State Administration of Press and Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
Some are predicting nothing less than the end of civilisation, or least, the $5.5 billion Chinese mobile game market.
Others see this as merely another example of governmental fiat that will either prove meaningless or fall apart under the stresses generated by its own bureaucracy.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
#1: Why is Clash Royale running out of steam?
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Why is Clash Royale running out of steam? »Everyone loves Clash Royale.
That is everyone loved playing it until it got too hard and dull.
And now everyone loves talking about how much money it's making as well as how many people aren't playing it anymore.
And the latter is certainly the context for Torulf Jernström's discussion about why Clash Royale is running out of steam?
He notes:
"One reason is that the game starts to get grindy after a while. In a sense, all mobile F2P games do that, but personally I noticed it more in Clash Royale.
"The core itself, with its inherent ~50% win rates felt like arm wrestling someone equally strong as I am. Which means that it quickly gets exhausting instead of fun."