Awesome Dashboard charts, Japanese celebrity endorsements, and the most interesting games for Apple TV

The five hottest stories

• 5 Is your F2P monetization playbook up-to-speed?

  

  As the free-to-play market matures, you need to know the right strategies to make the most of your monetization.

  To help with that, Fuse Powered has released its own playbook, which gives advice on the right tools and "plays" for monetization at various points in the game's development.

  It looks at the right strategies to use on different types of players, and what you can offer them to maximise their monetisation potential.

  

• 4 6 awesome Dashboard charts for F2P games

  

  It's important to keep track of the data that your free-to-play game is bringing in, as it'll help you work out what needs to be worked on and how your users are interacting with the game.

  But it's easy to get overwhelmed, and lose track of what's important. To that end, Isaac Roseboom of deltaDNA has some advice on the charts you should be following.

  

  The charts range from DAU/MAUs to tracking your user's FTUEs, and four other important areas to focus your attention.

• 3 How celebrity endorsements work in the Japanese mobile game market

  

  Celebrity endorsements for mobile games are all the rage, particularly in the West, with both Kate Upton and Mariah Carey lending themselves to Game of War ads to help boost sales.

  But as David McCarthy points out, celebrity endorsements have been around a lot longer in Japan, and can involve a lot more than just advertising a single game.

  There's the additional user acquisition from the celebrity engaging their social media followers, as well as cross-promotional opportunities to expand your brand.

  McCarthy goes into detail about these opportunities, and how his company, Cybrid, is using them to good effect in its game BFB Football.

  
  

• 2 Futureplay prepares to launches its view-to-play revolution with Farm Away!

  

  Adverts in mobile games are nothing new, but Finnish developer Futureplay is focusing its monetisation on them, starting with the super-casual farming game Farm Away!

  It uses what Futureplay calls a "view-to-play" model, which avoids putting adverts in "negative moments", such as game over screens, to encourage players to take advantage of the rewards offered.

  In the case of Farm Away!, the ads will help players to grow their crops and livestock to generate cash and make themselves virtual farming millionaires.

  The game's due out on the 5th of November, but it's already in soft launch in Finland and Thailand.

  
  

• 1 65 top games for Apple TV: From Beat Sports and Afterpulse to Galaxy on Fire 3 and Guitar Hero Live

  

  The new Apple TV was attracting a lot of attention last week, as developers were given just over a week to get their games and apps ready to be launched on the device.

  But that hasn't stopped a plethora of developers from taking on the challenge, and we've been keeping a list of the ones we're most interested in.

  From iOS staples like Crossy Road and BADLAND, to brand new games like Beat Sports and Guitar Hero Live, there's plenty out there for players to get stuck into.