A female barbarian and male knight strike fearsome poses in this Diablo Immortal concept art

6 Months In, Diablo Immortal is Crushing It

Diablo Immortal has earned $284 million in mobile revenue in the 6 months since launching worldwide, according to data.ai estimates.

With 75% organic downloads, growing revenue per download, and additional significant revenue from the PC release of the game, Diablo Immortal is clearly a monster hit for Blizzard and NetEase…

Diablo IV's frightening Daughter of Hatred villain

Analyzing Diablo IV’s LiveOps Plans

Over on the Diablo IV blog, we’re getting substantial details about the game’s live service ambitions. They sound ambitious, familiar, and judging by Diablo Immortal’s $100m+ live service revenue to date, will surely be a massive success for Blizzard. It’s clear they’re working to differentiate D4 from Immortal and set the expectation that there is no pay-for-power / pay-for-progress in this game. It’s amazing to think how far the F2P and Live Services business model has come in terms of hardcore gaming acceptance over the past decade…

South Park’s Missed Monetization Optimization

After watching the South Park: Phone Destroyer announcement trailer at E3, I eagerly switched to the Canadian App Store to check out the game (as well as fellow E3 reveal Brawl Stars). From the trailer, I had assumed it was a Heroes’ Charge inspired game infused with South Park’s signature characters and irreverent humor. Within the first few minutes, it became clear that the gameplay was not another Heroes’ Charge clone, but instead a side-scrolling, […]

5 game monetization optimizations for Vainglory

Don’t feel like reading? Enjoy this quick video analysis instead. Trumpeted on stage at WWDC, given the Editor’s Choice on release and featured to an unprecedented degree in the Gamers television ad for iPhone 6, no game has seen as strong of a promotional push from Apple as Metal showpiece Vainglory. The fantastic take on MOBA for mobile devices has seen strong reviews and industry support. And yet the game’s performance has underwhelmed relative to […]

I spent $100 in Assassin’s Creed Unity so you wouldn’t have to

This article originally appeared on Kotaku Ten hours into Assassin’s Creed Unity, I’m having difficulty finishing up memory sequence 6. That’s just about the middle chapter of the game. I think my character is too weak. His armor isn’t strong enough. Neither are his weapons. I could stop working on this memory, instead grinding on side missions and locating chests until I have enough Livres to buy more powerful gear. Instead, I open up the […]

New approaches to free-to-play game design – from GDC Next ’14

Slides and audio from New approaches to free-to-play game design, my game monetization talk presented at GDC Next ’14 in Los Angeles. Here is the talk description: Too often, a game team chooses the free-to-play business model without truly considering the design of monetization elements early in the project. Only when it is too late into the development cycle do they learn that there is not a clear or compelling reason for players to spend money within […]