The making of Crossy Road, Zynga's $153 million from ads, and Finland's bet on culture

Last week's top stories

• 5 How Heroes Charge charged up the top grossing charts in Germany, Russia, Korea and the US

  

  Heroes Charge has been one of the champions of the high-profile TV advertising push this year, but it's been firmly wedged on its upward trajectory since 2014.

  Our most recent Charticle revealed some key figures behind its success.

  We found that iPhone is the lead platform for Heroes Charge, though it's much more efficient at monetising its iPad downloads.

  In terms of regions, it looks like Heroes Charge is performing best in Germany and France, with the game now in the top 20 in both. The German market is marginally in the lead.

  
  

• 4 Why Kabam chose LTV over ARPDAU

  

  A recent press release from Kabam sparked debate last week among our Monetizer Mavens.

  The major F2P publisher had revealed that in 2014 it eased "monetization requirements on several games to generate greater long-term customer loyalty."

  So we took the opportunity to ask our panel of experts whether this could signal a wider shift in terms of engagement/retention versus monetisation within the F2P industry.

  While most agreed that Kabam's decision made sense, Nicholas Lovell of Gamesbrief had a warning.

  "For all those people out there who wish companies would be less aggressive with their monetisation, be careful what you wish for," he said.

  "What you seem to be getting is companies who are laser-focused on keeping players inside their ecosystem forever, making it even harder to break a new title."

  
  

• 3 Culture trumps strategy: Why Neogames looks beyond Excel to define Finland's success

  

  Our regular guest column series on the Nordic games industry continues with a look at what metrics we should be using to define Finland's success.

  KooPee Hiltunen of Neogames Finland Association argues that the country's game industry started from hobbyists creating games without any economic pressure, and it is this ethos that will ensure future success.

  "As fascinated as I am by (my precious) figures about the Finnish game industry," he says, "I try to keep in mind that Excel sheets don´t develop games. People do.

  
  

• 2 Zynga generated $153 million of revenue from in-game ads in 2014

  

  A lot of column space has been devoted to the growing value of in-game advertising over the last 12 months, and it doesn't look like that's going to ease up in 2015.

  This chart from Zynga's financials reveals that for companies with a lot of inventory, there's plenty of money to be made.

  To evidence the point, during the company's most recent quarter, Zynga generated $57.5 million from adverts - that's around 30 percent of all its Q4 revenue.

  

• 1 Why did the chicken... the making of Crossy Road

  

  "It all began with Flappy Bird," says Crossy Road developer Matt Hall, as Hipster Whale's chart topping game shows no signs of ending its download streak soon.

  We caught up with the studio to chat through the  decisions they made in creating Crossy Road, how the game's visual style was born, as well as its financial success.

  "Matt had heard about ads doing well in other mobile games but they were an experimental part of our game and so we didn't know what was going to happen," says the other half of Hipster Whale, Andy Sum.

  "But it turns out that they've been successful and they're definitely a viable addition to buying characters in-game, especially for those who are unable to.

  "If we do a [another] mobile game, it's likely that we'll use ads again."