Why is Mickey crossing the road, GDC learnings, and how screen orientation matters

Last week's hits

• 5 Disney announces Hipster Whale collaboration Disney Crossy Road

  

  Disney and Melbourne studio Hipster Whale have announced at GDC 2016 that they will be collaborating to create Disney Crossy Road.

  Based on Hipster Whale's breakout hit Crossy Road, which now boasts more than 120 million downloads, this version will include over 100 Disney and Pixar characters - from the iconic to the obscure - across nine themed worlds.

  The pixel art aesthetic wil remain intact, as will the chiptune music.

  
  

• 4 ZeptoLab's Eugene Yailenko on lessons learned from King of Thieves

  

  Released in February 2015 after 2 years in development, King of Thieves eventually found its audience with 24 million downloads.

  It was, however, a difficult road up to this point, and a journey thats seen the game change dramatically.

  "If you think the game is hardcore now, you haven't seen that first prototype," reflected ZeptoLab's Eugene Yailenko at GDC 2016.

  The biggest departure from the original brief, though, was the reduced focus on user-generated content.

  Originally envisioned with LittleBigPlanet, Super Meat Boy, and Clash of Clans as influences and reference points, Yailenko had to reconsider this when players proved "too lazy" to engage with full editing tools.

  

   

• 3 What EA's Petri Ikonen learned from designing SimCity BuildIt

  

  Creative Director at EA's Helsinki-based mobile studio Track Twenty, Petri Ikonen has been in the industry since starting as a game designer in 2003 at Sumea.

  During that time, he's designed a number of mobile titles - the most high-profile (and challenging) of which was SimCity BuildIt.

  "It's been on top grossing charts since launch, and I'm very proud of it, but it was difficult," he said at GDC 2016's Smartphone and Tablet Games summit.

  The first challenge he identifies is that of working with such a well-known IP in SimCity.

  "There are so many fans out there, and they have such huge expectations - are we able to deliver that?" he questioned, recalling the concerns of the team at the project's outset.

  

• 2 The top 5 ways mobile developers are chasing away their own players

  

  Taking the stage at GDC 2016's jam-packed Smartphone and Tablet Games Summit, UserTesting's VP of Product Marketing Michael Mace's talk was a cautionary one.

  Identifying what he calls 'The Mobile Traps' - the most common UX mistakes made by mobile game developers - he aimed to help developers boost their retention by ironing out these issues.

  His first example was identifying the failure to unify store description, art style, and game design as a common issue for confusing people.

  "If you confuse people, they'll go and do something else. Its really important to pull those things together," he says.

  
  

• 1 From Clash of Clans to Clash Royale: How portrait mode trumped tablet-first gaming

  

  One reason Supercell's Clash Royale is a departure is that it's the company's first game to be designed to be played in portrait not landscape mode.

  It's a trend that goes beyond Supercell, and one that's more about screen orientation, but all about the UX of mobile content consumption. 

  "It's these aspects in terms of how people actually use their touchscreen devices that is best reflected in the rise of the portrait mode for games," argues Jon Jordan.

  "It's how they use their always-available phone for texting and browsing etc (only using one hand) and that's how they expect to play their games too.

  "Actually, they don't even think of it as gaming. It's just another way to pass the time."

  And that's a big change from the "tablet-first" gaming mantra that Supercell trumped back in 2012.