Why What Happened
The most significant mobile games news of 2017
Trends behind the headlines
Staff
Jon Jordan
Job Title
Contributing Editor
Contact jon@pocketgamer.co.uk
About A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Articles by Jon Jordan
M&a Mayhem
The most significant mobile game deals of 2017
Who signed on the dotted line?
Passion Play
From Japan with a local twist: The making of The Secret Police's RPG Dragon's Watch
How a London startup improved the JRPG
Shooting Blanks?
It’s got millions of downloads but what is NetEase's plan to monetise its PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds clones?
First move advantage on hold
Two Become One
What the hell is happening at Game of War and Mobile Strike developer MZ?
The baton is passed
New Vision
Why CEO Frank Gibeau sees augmented reality as a key long-term opportunity for Zynga
No gimmickry. Just creative integrity
Mixing Messages
How a new AR mode could extend CSR Racing 2 from game into petrolhead status symbol app
The whole world’s a garage
Double Down
How will Peak Games spend its new $100 million warchest?
Spending Zynga’s largesse
Maximising Value
Win-win: Peak Games sells its casual card game portfolio to Zynga for $100 million
Peak doubles down on match-3, Zynga boosts card sector
Soft Power
From snipers to sofas: The transformation of Glu Mobile
Two games that changed everything
What’s Next?
Profit over scale: Why EA isn’t concerned EA Mobile’s growth is slowing
Steady as she goes
Platypus Bifurcation
Nintendo’s Switch trick: Selling like 3DS but selling games like Wii U
Optimised dual use
Steady As It Goes
2017 - the year not much happened in mobile games, says Verto
Consumer behaviour
Power Of Nemesis
Authentic yet distinctive: How Middle-earth: Shadow of War came to mobile
Spanning worlds
Every Plane’s A Game
Twists and turns: How Glenn Corpes accidentally built the “fastest AR action game”
From Magic Carpet to ARKit
Seeking Balance
How Titanfall: Assault nudged its players’ tactical ambitions
The power of Amp Field
Seeing Clearly
Is it price or vision that limits VR’s reach?
Putting Oculus Go’s price in context
All Upside Down
No monetisation, just old school passion: BonusXP on making Netflix tie-in Stranger Things
CEO Dave Pottinger on a different sort of project
One Billion Downloads Later
From Kabam SVP to DOD Media CEO: Mike DeLaet on sharing his smarts
One door shuts, open another
Modern Combat Or Bust
One year on: Whatever happened to Gameloft?
Vivendi’s revival on hold
Recalibrating Success
Can mobile gaming move from rinse-and-repeat to more meaningful moments?
Meta matters
Through The Pain Barrier
The slow, steady progress of Zombies, Run! from mobile game to fitness platform
CEO Adrian Hon explains
One Minute Heroes
Panzerdog on distilling the essence of console shooters into its 5v5 mobile game Tacticool
Fast-to-start, quick-to-end
Bucks For Bangs
Panzerdog raises $950,000 from Mail.Ru to launch mobile shooter Tacticool
Finnish/Russian dev closes seed round
Paradise Lost
Where is mobile gaming’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds?
Have we gone too clever, got too niche?
Taking Flight
Deconstructing Rovio’s pragmatically Finnish IPO
Angry Birds dev going public
What Comes Next?
21 months later, why I'm still playing Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes
A neverending story
Skin In The Game
Bitter decisions Disruptor Beam hopes will sweeten The Walking Dead: March To War
Only the smart survive
Big Bets
Stick or twist: What’s next for the mobile social casino sector?
Stick within a $3 billion market or twist for $40 billion?
A Waiting Game
Why Jam City’s IPO is on hold
Recent launches have failed
Two Become One
Gamevil and Com2uS combine to create a new European joint venture
Sister companies make it formal
Retention Tool
How Summoners War’s unexpected success disrupts conventional wisdom about mobile eSports
Audience comes first
Fuelling Design Home
Glu Mobile’s great user acquisition experiment
Investing for the future
Firing On All Cylinders
Despite profitability, Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau says it’s too early to declare victory
Dog on the up
Of Metal And Men
From console FPS to mobile RTS: The shaping of Titanfall: Assault
Particle City’s journey
Reinforcements
Has MZ just pulled all its legacy game marketing to focus on Final Fantasy XV?
Game of War and Mobile Strike collapse on download charts
Spooky Business
Balancing the bang and the buck: The making of Zombie Gunship Survival
Limbic Software and Flaregames explain all
Inconvenient Truth
Why the mobile games industry underestimates MZ at its peril
Are you playing FFXV or Brawl Stars?
Not A Forever Franchise
Zynga shuts down mobile Mafia Wars after three months
Another one bites the dust
Vaulting Ambition
What happens when global expansion goes bad: A cautionary tale from Japan
What GungHo and Mixi learned from GREE and DeNA
Blitz Meets Socom
How Forces of Freedom is shooting for mobile eSports success
Reinventing the coffee-break
Uncertainty Principle
What went wrong with Breaking Bad: Empire Business?
Canned after 18 months testing
Champagne Or Success?
Why (I hope) the experts are wrong about Brawl Stars
Something completely different
Feeding The Fire
The explosive rise of Scopely
US publisher just can’t stop raising cash
Two Masters
Can Brawl Stars save mobile eSports?
Supercell’s biggest challenge
Risky Businesses
As the mouse leaves the game stage, enters a fox
Will FoxNext perform better than Disney Interactive?
Hard Knock Life
What will be the impact of losing the App Store’s top grossing charts?
Another Apple shake up
All About The Money
Naive, greedy or both: Why can’t games companies IPO properly?
The uncertain pricing of uncertainty
Maximum Leverage
Why Tencent’s M&A strategy is smarter than gotta buy ‘em all
Second Pocket Gems deal was beginning of the end
Good Hand
Why Zynga Poker’s success is the tail wagging the Zynga dog
Frank Gibeau on the road ahead