The return of Eggebrecht, the lifecycle of mobile games, and Nokia's not dead, just resting

Last week's top 5 stories

• 5 Traplight Games raises $500,000 to launch user-generated social racer What on Earth!

  

  Tampere-based developer TrapLight Games announced $500,000 in seed funding.

  Set up in 2010, the studio consists of 12 staff, who have experience in companies working with companies like Supercell and RedLynx, not to mention previous employment with Disney, Warners, Sega and LucasArts.

  The investment has been provided by VC companies Sunstone Capital, Finnvera Venture Capital, and East Wings, and angel investor Henric Suuronen, who's the president of Nonstop Games.

  The cash will be used to help launch its debit game, user-generated, social-leveraged, goal-orientated comic racer What on Earth!, which is due for release on iOS in early 2015.

  
  

• 4 Turrican and Rogue Squadron dev Julian Eggebrecht on taking 4 years to make the perfect iOS fish tank sim

  

  Back in the early/mid-2000s-era of console gaming , German/US developer Factor 5 was one of the scene's cutting-edge players.

  But its one-time president Julian Eggebrecht hasn't sitting on the beach thinking about past glories.

  Instead, with new outfit TouchFactor, he's spent the past four years working on FishTouch, what looks like the most ambitious fish tank simulator ever.

  "You can stream your tank via Twitch, and switch on the back camera as a background (or the front cam for that matter), and use your tank as a virtual stage or studio to broadcast yourself to the world," he explains. 

  
  

• 3 Rumour: GungHo Online buys 70% stake in PlayPhone to gain US and emerging markets reach

  

  As yet still unconfirmed, it was reported in the Japanese financials of GungHo Online that it had bought a 70 percent stake in US carrier-focused social mobile gaming platform PlayPhone.

  The reason the deal would make sense is that PlayPhone would give GungHo strong distribution in territories where it's currently weak, such as the US and Latin America.

  
  

• 2 Rise and fall: The numbers behind the lifecycle of mobile games

  

  Most F2P companies now treat retention is the key metric from which all other performance indicators flow.

  That was the background to Fiksu's Craig Palli's guest column, which looked at the 12-month retention curves for five games, which had each generated over 20 million downloads.

  Simply put, his conclusion is that it's normal to only have 2-3 percent of your player base active over such a period.

  "Understanding and planning for the cyclical nature of mobile games (before they launch) may be your ticket to long-term success," he warned.

  
  

• 1 Girlfriend in a coma: Nokia isn't dead, just resting until 2016

  

  Demonstrating the power of the brand - even one that is for the time being suspended - Keith Andrew mused over the implications of Microsoft's licensing deal with Nokia to use the name on smartphones which will expire in 2016.

  "There's every chance that the Nokia name could return on smartphones within a couple of years, he concludes, in the opinion piece Girlfriend in a coma: Nokia isn't dead, just resting until 2016.