Pearl's Audience Growth
Wooga and marketing agency HeyHuman target younger players with new Pearl's Peril influencer campaign
"Are you a friend of Pearl?" campaign looking to expand the four-year-old game's audience
Change The Game
Google Play launches Change the Game initiative to promote diversity in mobile games
Finds that 49% of all mobile gamers in the US are women
Simogo Goes
Device 6 developer Simogo stepping back from mobile games to focus on console development
Points to issues surrounding perpetually updating games for new hardware
Nintendo Switch Sales
Nintendo's Switch clears 10 million units sold nine months after launching
2.37 million units sold in the last three months
Expelliarmus
Jam City seals licensing deal for Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery mobile game
Title set to hit the app stores in 2018
Iap Inspector
How does Dragon's Watch monetise?
IAPs from the players' perspective
Further Research
User testing firm Player Research expands its services with new lab in Montreal
Former Compulsion and Ubisoft user researcher Morgan Kennedy
Smart Sales
The art of the sale
Scientific Revenue CEO William Grosso discusses monetisation and how to best use discounts
Pre-orders And Discounts
Apple adds pre-orders and introductory subscription discounts to the App Store
Drum up support for your app or game earlier
Sowing Discord
Gamer messaging app Discord clears 87 million registered users
Now has 14 million DAUs sending 9.5 billion messages a month
Culture Club
PG Connects Advent Day 11: Gram Games, Rovio and friends on why company culture is fundamental
Brand new addition for Connects 2018 conference series joins packed 12-strong track programme
Hutch Hires
Top Drives developer Hutch picks up two new staff from Firefly Studios and NaturalMotion
Mark Ffrench and Jason To join as Senior Programmer and QA Embedded Tester respectively
Uk Mobile Charts
Weekly UK App Store charts: Animal Crossing holds on at the top while Episode shoots up the grossing ranks
Rankings from November 27th to December 3rd
Branching Out
Advertising agency Pocket Media opens Tel Aviv office
Ex-Linicom Head of Video Alon Reichman named GM alongside video specialist Mor Goldring
Best To Play
ZeptoLab’s CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars named Google Play’s Best Game for 2017
Quirky brawler proves popular on Android
Rewarding Success
Monument Valley 2 wins Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards
Beats Fire Emblem Heroes, Super Mario Run, Old Man’s Journey and Hidden Folks
Hot Five
5 hottest mobile games stories: Mark Pincus on scale, Stanga Games raises $500,000, and Clash Royale's Olympic spirit
The hottest articles of last week
Party Time
PG Connects Advent Day Ten: All work and no play wouldn't be PGC anyway
Free drinks, dancing, and discourse for delegates at Global Connects post-conference bash
Key Connections
PG Connects Advent Day Nine: Developers get to meet publishers, guaranteed
Scheduled SpeedMatch session for one-to-one meetings adds to the networking prowess of PGC London 2018
Money Money Money
PG Connects Advent Day Eight: Discover the way to financial success
Let Sisu Game Ventures, Agnitio, Nitro Games, FunPlus, LVP and friends show you the way in reworked PGC London 2018 track
Discovering Publishing
Digital trading card specialist VirtTrade signs three year partnership with Discovery Channel
Expands into independent publishing
Another Ipo
Ruzzle developer MAG Interactive launches IPO with $137 million valuation
Share prices at around $5
Reflecting On Data
Breaking down the download numbers required to get your game in the App Store’s top rankings
We use Reflection’s data to gain an insight into the average daily downloads per country and subcategory
What's The Target?
Can PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Call of Duty raise the bar for mobile shooters?
And if they can't, what will?
Big Indie Pitch
Arcade shooter Defenoid shoots down the competition to win the Big Indie Pitch at G-Star 2017
Dead 2048 and GWARP take second and third spots
Even More Insight
PG Connects Advent Day Seven: A speakavalanche from Rovio, Bandai Namco, NaturalMotion, Seriously, Nitro Games, PlayRaven, Gfinity, Lima Sky
Latest unveiling of confirmed speakers for 2018 London Connects conference rolls in
Crazy Ad Experiments
Animoca gets revenue boost for Crazy Kings with AppOnboard's Rewarded Demo zones
Developer trial new playable ad format
Super Evil Razer
Super Evil Megacorp forms strategic partnership with Razer to advance mobile eSports
Razer's going to sponsor a bunch of Vainglory tournaments
Spatialos Goes Mobile
PlayRaven becomes first mobile game developer to use SpatialOS through partnership with Improbable
Project Metro will be the first mobile game using SpatialOS, but there's no info until next year
To The Top
Big Indie Pitch winners Splitter Critters and Hidden Folks named Apple's Games of the Year 2017
Splitter Critters takes the iPhone crown, while Hidden Folks is the best game on iPad
I Want To Believe
FoxNext partners with Creative Mobile on mobile game The X-Files: Deep State
FoxNext can't be stopped
Level Up
King, Ironhide, Cartoon Network and more kick off Uruguay’s Level UY conference talks
Event also hosts Indie Showroom, workshops and CONAVI Awards for local developers
Pole Position
Hutch's CCG Top Drives races past three million downloads in two months
Adds over 80 new Porsches to its ever-growing list of car cards
Stillfront Acquires Goodgame
Stillfront acquires Hamburg-based strategy game developer Goodgame Studios for $318 million
Goodgame's owners now become majority shareholders in Stillfront
New Track
PG Connects Advent Day Six: ZPLAY, Snap, DeltaDNA, Exit Games, Outfit7, Google confirmed for new Developer Toolkit track
Latest addition for 2018 conference content focuses on core aspects of successfully making mobile games
Happy Birthday Finland
Rovio, Supercell, RedLynx, and more celebrate Finland's 100th birthday
Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää Suomi!
Bridge Constructor Portal
Valve licenses Portal IP to Headup Games for branded Bridge Constructor game
Bridge Constructor Portal is not the game we expected, but exactly the one we deserve
Blockchainization
Spells of Genesis developer EverdreamSoft adds ability to "blockchainize" cards for full ownership
Turn your digital cards into an item that can be sold for real money
Android Market Share
Android's US market share grew 8.2% in October 2017 while iOS faltered
Kantar Worldpanel blames November launch of the iPhone X
The Next Generation
Code.org raises $12 million to provide more computer science education for children
22 million users of its platform, 10 million of which are girls
Search Ads Basic
Apple launches stripped-back pay-per-install Search Ads Basic service in the US
Designed for smaller developers with small budgets
Free Entry, Big Win
PG Connects Advent Day Five: Time to enter our Very Big Indie Pitch Competition
Shortlisted entries for flagship pitching event get free access to PGC London, underpinning conference's devotion to helping indies
Champion Of Fire
Amazon's 2017 Champions of Fire casual eSports tournament wraps up in New York
Twitch streamer Yassuo wins $10,000
Xiaomi Ipo
Report: Xiaomi exploring a potential IPO in Hong Kong with a $50 billion valuation
Could raise $5 billion to help its expansion in India
Connect The Dots
Dots CEO Paul Murphy to step down at the end of 2017
COO Patrick Moberg to take over
Turn To Ad 67
IronSource launches choose your own adventure-style "4D" interactive ads
Make ads even more personalised
Investment Window
Underworld Football Manager dev Stanga Games raises $500,000
CEO Adam Jaffe on turning the bootstrapped indie house of part-time devs into a full-time games business
Mtg Investment
Modern Times Group launches $30 million investment fund for eSports and online gaming
Looking for minority investments in US and European companies
Bad To The Bone
Badland developer Frogmind pushes into free-to-play with soft-launched brawler Badland Brawl
Slingshots and brawling in the Badland universe
Snagging Influencers
5 ways to snag a top gaming influencer
YPSocial CEO Yogin Patel lets us in on his secrets to bagging a top influencer