Chartboost

Chartboost Presents: GameFounders Demo Day

melfers — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:20:08 -0700

We’re very excited to be hosting a demo day on May 31st with European gaming accelerator, GameFounders here at Chartboost HQ in San Francisco! GameFounders has selected eight awesome indie developers who will be giving demos of their games at 4pm, followed by a happy hour with drinks and appetizers.

To learn more about the teams and hear a little about their process, check out their videos on GameFounder’s blog. They’ve been on the road, traveling first to London, and most recently to Sweden, and we’re very excited to be welcoming them to San Francisco. Want to join in the fun? We have limited capacity, so register for the event via EventBrite here before space runs out!

Are You Game?

davidrhom — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:30:00 -0700

Dear Developers,

We are looking for teams interested in participating in a closed Beta program for our upcoming product to be released soon. Beta testers will have exclusive early access to our product, exclusive support from our product and engineering teams and contribute invaluable feedback to help shape our product. We will be selecting twenty-five (25) developers to test and provide feedback on our products.

If you meet the following criteria, please submit the form from the link below:

Have a game (FREE or PAID) live in the iOS App Store
Available for download in the US
Integrate our Beta SDK and code into your selected title(s)
Completed by June 3rd to be live in the iOS App Store by June 15th
Ass Kicking Attitude to make things better

Beta Test Application Form

Thank you for your interest! - David

This Just Pushed: New and Improved Campaign Overview

melfers — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:17:00 -0700

Chartboost is always trying to make our products better and easier to use for our developers. That’s why, after listening to your feedback, we’ve made some great improvements to our Campaign Overview page that we think you’re going to love! Improvements include:

Filter by App: Developers with tons of campaigns can now filter by app in order to quickly and easily identify all campaigns associated with an app and which of those campaigns are performing well.

Advanced Filter Options: We’re now offering the option to filter by role (advertiser or publisher) and campaign type (cross promotion, direct deal, or network).

Beautiful new interface: We’ve updated the graphics to match our new App Overview page for consistently gorgeous design.

The Campaign Overview page allows you to easily compare performance metrics between campaigns to determine which are most successful over time.

A shot of the new and improved filters offered in the Campaign Overview page.

Check out our website for more details and keep an eye out for more improvements to the dashboard coming soon! As always, you can contact us at feedback@chartboost.com for any suggestions or features you’d like to see us add in the future.

Chartboost Breathes Europe

pepeagell — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:33:00 -0700

As you know, even though we are based in Silicon Valley, Chartboost has been a global company since the very beginning and Europe is home to many of our most beloved partners.

Companies like NeonPlay, NaturalMotion and First Touch Games (from the UK), Kiloo (from Denmark), Outfit7 (from Slovenia) and Supercell (from Finland) were early adopters of our cross-promotional tools and have been great ambassadors of Chartboost in their communities.

Today, we work with hundreds of game developers in Europe, including King, HandyGames, Wooga, Miniclip, SpilGames, Djinnworks, Fishlabs, Gameloft, Bulkypix, Stardoll and SocialPoint. In Russia and the Middle East, Chartboost has also become an important partner for leading companies like GameInsight and Dragonplay.

“Making a good game is just not enough. In today’s increasingly competitive market, nobody can afford to solely rely on virality anymore. Here at Fishlabs, we are constantly looking for partners whose proposition is focused on serving the developer and driving high-quality traffic instead of blind volume. Chartboost has been pioneering this space and continues to be at the core of our strategy for acquiring high-quality users.” Kai Hitzer from Fishlabs

I’ve had the pleasure to build and grow the relationships with many of these developers since I started at Chartboost. During these 2 years, I’ve had very early and very late calls. I’ve tried to visit them in their cities when I was in Europe or, in some cases, we’ve been lucky to shake hands in conferences.

Our brand new office in Amsterdam will definitely facilitate our catch-ups with all of you. From Amsterdam, we will better serve our European partners with closer account management and real-time support.

“We’ve partnered with Chartboost since the beginning of 2012 and their cross-promotion tools (implemented in the HayDay newspaper) have been an important element of our distribution strategies. We’re excited to see the company moving closer to our headquarters, which is also great news for the rest of the game developer community in Europe.” Erlend Christoffersen from Supercell

Amsterdam is the perfect location for Chartboost’s expansion plans. On one hand, the Netherlands has a vibrant and growing development community with big companies like Spil Games and indies like OrangePixel and CodeGlue. On the other hand, it’s a central location that will allow the Europe team to be closer to Chartboost partners and the main game development hubs (London, Paris, Hamburg-Berlin, Helsinki, TelAviv and Moscow).

And I couldn’t be more excited with the team. It will be led by Ilja Goossens, a veteran game developer. Ilja will be joined by Vincent and Milène to do account management. They will be complemented by Cori and Anish, 2 early members of the Chartboost team who are moving to Amsterdam for several months.

If you’re in Europe, you will start hearing more and more from the Chartboost Europe team. In the meantime, feel free to visit us if you’re in Amsterdam or shoot us an email at europe@chartboost.com.

-Pepe

Top Chartboost Creatives, April 2013

melfers — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:13:00 -0700

Every month, Chartboost rounds up its top performing creatives to give our developers an idea of what makes a good interstitial. Each of the creatives highlighted below had a higher-than-average CTR during the month of April. As always, we recommend highlighting that your game is free, using a call to action (Get it Now!) and inserting the Apple branding for iOS games. Check them out below!

Chartboost Celebrates Take Your Kids to Work Day

melfers — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:30:01 -0700

Chartboost celebrated ‘Take Your Kids to Work Day’ today by inviting some of our smallest Chartboosters in to the office for a day of fun! Facepainting, Draw-Your-Favorite-Game-App, and movies were only a few things on the agenda (and maybe a nap at the end of the day… for the parents).

Big News: Chartboosters land in Amsterdam

marialegre — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Dear Developers,

Earlier this year, Sean and I spent some time visiting some of our loved partners in their remote locations. Among them were Kiloo in Arhus (Denmark), Natural Motion in Oxford and Neon Play in Cirencester (UK).

That trip reminded us of one of the amazing things about this industry: developers are everywhere - and from anywhere they can reach an absolutely global audience.

You are all everywhere, but we were in San Francisco, and even if we live in a global interconnected world, there is no perfect skype connection that can replace a beer and a handshake, so we decided to change that.

Hello Amsterdam, Welcome Ilja!

The European team will be led by Ilja Goossens. As the founder of Gamundo and Virtual Fairground, Ilja made games for mobile and other platforms. Ilja shares our gaming DNA and will be joined by two of our earliest employees, Cori Savaiano and Anish Godhwani, plus two new Chartboosters making it a team of 5 on day one.

Sean, Ilja and I at Chartboost HQ

Coming Soon to a City Near You

We are planning tons of trips and visits to our partners, and we will also host some happy hours around the Barcelona for Gamelab in June, and Festival of Games this week.

In the meantime, all of you who pass by Amsterdam, feel free to crash our office for free beer and internet. And if you are there now, come join our launch party this Thursday 25th at 7pm at our office in Rokin 75, 4th floor. I’ll be there with Ilja and the team and would love to say hi :)

Europe, we look forward to growing bigger and better together!

maria

SDK 3.2 is out!

kswizz — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:33:00 -0700

Developers,

Today we released version 3.2 of the Chartboost iOS SDK. This SDK does not collect UDID and will be required for anyone submitting to the App Store after May 1st per Apple’s guidelines. Please note that apps currently live with a Chartboost SDK will continue to work past this date and your SDK update can occur as part of your normal release cycle.

We’ve been preparing for this transition since last September when we released version 3.0.7 that collected both UDID and IFA. We strongly encourage developers who are using an older version (pre 3.0.7) of the SDK to upgrade as soon as possible. Developers who remain on these older versions could start seeing a negative impact on performance as IFA becomes the industry standard.

Questions? Shoot us a note at support@chartboost.com.

This Just Pushed: New and Improved App Overview

corisavi — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:06:00 -0700

Spotting trends in the performance of your apps is crucial to improving your results in the long run. With that in mind, we’re excited to release an update to our Apps Overview page in the Chartboost dashboard that makes it even easier to track your key metrics. Improvements include:

Slick new interface: the graphics are more beautiful, lines are crisper easier to read, and it loads faster than the previous version. You can now hover over the chart and the specific data point will show along with the date (example below).
New platform view: the app tabs provide either a high level roll up at the platform level or you can segment by iOS/Android/Amazon for all your apps.
Easier navigation: the apps tabs enables developers with many apps to find the one they are looking much faster than before. Hover over the app name to retrieve the App ID and Signature or click on the app name to reach its Edit App page.

The example App Overview page below compares bootups and impressions delivered for all Android apps, with Feb 14th highlighted.

Below is a sample platform view showing total apps, installs, revenue, and campaign data grouped by platform.

Check out the help center for more details on the Apps Overview page and keep an eye out for more improvements to the dashboard coming soon!

As always, ping us at feedback@chartboost.com with feedback on our new dashboard or other features you’d like to see us add in the future.

Top Chartboost Creatives, March 2013

nateahearn — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:29:43 -0700

Chartboost is always looking for ways to help our partners maximize the reach and effectiveness of their campaigns. While each game is unique in the types of users it draws, there are certain creatives that are more effective than others in raising click through rates.

Each of the interstitials highlighted below had a click through rate of at least 28% during the month of March. Read on for tips about what makes these creatives successful after the jump.

If you have any questions on making effective creatives, feel free to reach out to support@chartboost.com or ping us on Twitter . See you next month!

Chartboost & Kiloo GDC 2013 Party Pictures

melfers — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:51:00 -0700

It’s the Monday after GDC week here in San Francisco, and everyone at Chartboost is still reeling from the whirlwind of meetings, presentations, and of course – parties.

While many companies opted for blow-out bashes at clubs and lounges, Chartboost decided to keep things close to home by co-hosting a party with Kiloo in our brand new SOMA offices. Complete with a Mario and Pac-Man themed photobooth, 100 bottles of Kiloo branded champagne, and awesome developers like nimblebit, GREE, Pocket Gems and Miniclip, things got a little crazy – in the best way possible!

Didn’t make it to Chartboost & Kiloo’s GDC extravaganza? Check out the photos below.

Developer Spotlight, March 2013: Ludia

nateahearn — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:26:00 -0700

While there’s certainly no silver bullet to attacking the App Store, Ludia has shown great success by leveraging big brands to help break through the considerable noise digital storefronts bring. They’ve successfully launched games like Jurassic Park Builder, The Price is Right Slots, Family Feud and several others, each of which has risen to close to the top of the charts. Ludia’s success is predicated both on the following that these big brands garner and their ability to craft quality game experiences in these familiar worlds.

We sat down with François Daoud, VP of Marketing at Ludia, to discuss his thoughts on mobile games, how Ludia has been able to find success and why Chartboost is such a meaningful piece of their overall strategy.

Chartboost: What do you LOVE about making games?

François Daoud, VP Marketing: Our teams are really passionate about what we do so to see our collaborative efforts come to fruition and hit those top charts is extremely rewarding. Plus, Ludia is a fun place to make games!

Chartboost: What’s the single most interesting thing you’ve learned about your users since Ludia came into existence?

François Daoud, VP Marketing: The commitment they have to our games. No matter how long they’ve been playing, our users are relentless in providing feedback. They notice everything, from major updates to the subtle changes, and they aren’t shy about it!

Chartboost: How does making branded games differ from making standard mobile titles?

François Daoud, VP Marketing: Working with the world’s leading IP holders and their brands certainly has its benefits. We get instant recognition & awareness worldwide. Collaborating with our licensing partners allows us to deliver products to the market that are “on brand” and pleasing to our core target audience. We’re able to run cross-promotional marketing efforts via their networks and other online channels that give us that extra exposure. Additionally, we’ve run cool campaigns involving talent. For example, during one of our Who Wants To Be A Millionaire promotional campaigns, we brought Meredith Vieira into the Facebook game for one hour where she actually won the million dollars! This was wildly successful and very well received by our fans.

Chartboost: Is there any single common element that Ludia brings to each of its branded games or is fairly tailored for each title given the differences in each universe?

François Daoud, VP Marketing: We really encourage our players to interact and share the fun with their friends, hence our “& Friends” franchise.

Chartboost: Give one piece of advice to a developer that’s just starting out and making their first mobile game.

François Daoud, VP Marketing: The game needs to be fun & social! Virality is important but sometimes not enough to get proper visibility. In order to have good discovery, you’ll also need to invest in Marketing to avoid getting lost in the App Store shuffle. Make sure you work with partners like Chartboost to find additional ways to monetize your app.

Chartboost: Why are you working with Chartboost? What makes us stand out from the rest?

François Daoud, VP Marketing: The SDK was very easy to integrate, a first in the industry! The platform is transparent, allowing you to optimize your ad buy or publishing activities. The ad format is “clean” & consistent. My ads are performing above industry average.

Chartboost: Give us a glimpse into some of your upcoming projects for 2013. What can people expect next from Ludia?

François Daoud, VP Marketing: More awesome games! New top-tier brands & themes and more of the usual fan-favorite game shows!

Top 10 Things You Must Do in San Francisco During GDC

nateahearn — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:22:00 -0700

Each and every year the gaming universe descends upon the Moscone Center in San Francisco for GDC (Game Developer’s Conference). It brings in more than 25,000 attendees each year and, for that one week, is the hub of all things gaming. Being that Chartboost is headquartered in San Francisco, we thought it’d be appropriate to tell everyone some of the best things to do in what we all consider to be the greatest city in the world.

1. If the night is clear, grab a coat and a bottle of wine, hop in a cab and see the view from the top of Twin Peaks. Directions.

Yes, this is actually the view from Twin Peaks. It’s fantastic.

2. Walk or bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. A lot of people will tell you that driving it is fine, and it is, but for the real experience you’ll want to hop on a bike or stroll across our nation’s most iconic bridge. Directions.

3. Head over to Alamo Square and snap a picture at the best photo opp in the city. The Painted Ladies are known by most as the “Full House house,” but to others the Alamo Square setting is just a place to relax with friends on a nice afternoon. Directions.

4. San Francisco seafood in two varieties. The first is of a move touristy flavor and will take you to Fisherman’s Wharf. Everyone has to do it. Don’t fight it. Directions. The other option is to head over to Swan Oyster Depot and get an authentically delicious taste of what San Francisco has to offer. Directions.

5. The original Barbary Coast Trail is one of those awesome San Francisco tourist attractions that’s actually worth doing. It takes you through the old Red Light District in San Francisco which, in present day, is actually a nice little tour of a few neighborhoods in San Francisco’s downtown area. All you have to do to follow the trail is keep an eye on the ground and lookout for the emblem below. Directions.

6. Enjoy some of old school San Francisco at The Huntington Hotel where you can eat at the Big Four Restaurant, enjoy a spa treatment at Nob Hill Spa, and even hop on our nation’s only moving monument, the San Francisco trolly cars. Directions.

7. If GDC isn’t quite nerdy enough for you, head over to the California Academy of Sciences and take in the center’s nightlife where you can enjoy both exhibits and libations. Directions.

8. Second only to Seattle, San Francisco has a ton of coffee shops around town. There are none better than Philz Coffee, where they offer every type of caffeinated deliciousness under the sun, each brewed individually. Directions.

9. If there’s one single thing that we San Franciscans love about our city, it’s the bevy of food options. Not just food options, but incredibly high-quality food options. Our city is home to some of the best dining in the country, so please, take advantage while you’re here.

10. Don’t be naked. Seriously, it’s against the law now.

Chartboost University: Our 1st Graduating Class

davidrhom — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:37:12 -0700

Hello World!

Chartboost University: Boot Camp attendees have graduated and everyone (Speakers included) have had a very fulfilled two weeks of experience. Our teams have traveled the world to come to San Francisco, work out of the Chartboost office and learn from the best and brightest the mobile gaming world has to offer.

Last week speakers from Booyah, GREE, Kabam, Z2Live and several others; this week we added Beyond Games, Get Set, Kerosene Games, Pocket Gems, Sequoia Capital, Shiny Shoes, Tout, Twyngo and several others. After two weeks of information packed sessions, we asked our beloved indie developer teams to share some closing comments on the program.

Here’s what they thought.

What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned so far?

Coconut Island Studio @Coconut_Island - Probably the most surprising thing this week that we learned was during the presentation on legal topics. It was eye-opening how important legal protection actually is, especially after hearing the examples of what could happen if a terms of services and privacy policy have not been setup.

Dobsoft Studios @dobsoftstudios - We were very surprised to learn of the potential revenue opportunities in Live Ops (having dynamic special events occurring in your game). It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Having live ops keeps a game fresh and keeps users engaged and coming back for more on a regular basis.

Esquilax Games @esquilaxgames - The most surprising thing we have learned so far is how big this industry is. Also how many people from all over the world is so passionate in developing video games.

Immersive Interactive @Immersive_News - Backend structure and changing the game’s values on the fly.

By converting all game’s variables into an editable document stored on the cloud, we can modify user’s experience according on what we see in analytics

Last Pick Productions @lastpickprod - There is a magical fridge at Chartboost that never runs out of drinks.

Ok seriously though, some of the surprising things we learned were not so much surprising… but how important they are were! For example, we had always known that it would be ideal to have access to out game after it launched. We would be able to tweak some values here and there and change the game on-the-fly. This was one of the things on our wish list of things to do. But after talking to numerous people about it, we learned this is ESSENTIAL. Not just for being able to tune the game, but also for things like anti-piracy, preventing cheating, closing security flaws, and many other reasons! So now this feature is on our TO DO list, instead of our WISH LIST.

Onimobi @onimitch - Publisher experiences and general discussion through out the weeks has really opened our eyes to what a publisher could do and the variance in the quality of a publisher. Not all publishers are bad, and if you go looking there might be a deal that is good for the developer.

Wolfmans (Glitchnap) @glitchnap - Going to Sequoia Capital was very eye opening for us. None of us has any schooling or experience in running and funding a business, and the QA session we had with Michael from Sequoia was a crash course in just that.

Again we were assured that your game’s launch is not the only moment that matters. If you’ve launched a game, it shows promise in the first analytics (people come back to it etc…), then you’ll probably be able to find an investor to help make your game grow and reach a bigger audience.

What is one thing you learned during the Boot Camp that you have immediately put into practice?

Coconut Island Studio - We learned that one thing that helps a game have ‘stickiness’ that keeps people coming back to a game is the social aspect. Especially if you can include player clans where each player has a role in a team. We added a feature to our game that allows both cooperative and competitive play between Facebook friends.

Dobsoft Studios - We’ve immediately made plans for our future analytics strategies. It is going to be immensely valuable to learn how our users are playing our games so that we can tweak and improve things for the better.

Esquilax Games - Thinking about user retention and monetization. We immediately started having ideas to adapt our game so it would perform better in the App Store, without compromising the gameplay which is the most important aspect in a game.

Immersive Interactive - We’ve learned a whole new vision about monetization and how players evolve during the game.

We had a vague idea on how we were going to structure it, but the Boot Camp has helped us a lot to clarify it.

Last Pick Productions - After hearing about how important it is to use analytics to track what users are doing in your game, we were able to implement this practice while at CBU. We now have some basic data being captured and we will continue to add more metrics to track and tweak as we go forward. This wil be critical in getting feedback from players as our game progresses.

Onimobi - Looking at the balance of our economy and analysing the spending of a player with regards to sources and sinks. Also looking at other economies in the game, other than a coin economy (for example, a special token you collect).

Wolfmans (Glitchnap) - Matt Coombe from GetSet (Megarun,…) talked to us about his experiences in developing, and how they went from having no experience to becoming a game that everybody knows. Lots of very helpful info, the biggest one being how creating tools that smoothen or shorten your pipeline is almost always worth it. What we’ve been doing while at Chartboost is investigating a physics based movement mechanic for our endless sailor game, looking for what Matt called intrinsic fun. Instead of having the programmers figure out how all the physics work, and what all the values should be, we focused on creating tools that allow those values to be tweaked in realtime and integrated a (very rough) map editor into the prototype, so you can test ideas on the fly.

Since we want our game to be fun at the core, it makes so much sense to create tweaking tools that let you adjust and pinpoint exactly where that fun lies.

If you could give one piece of advice to fellow early-stage developers, based on your experience at the Boot Camp, what would it be?

Coconut Island Studio - Apply to attend the next Boot Camp!

Apart from that, make a great game that you are passionate about, but if you are intending to make a living from making games, you must also consider how you will provide yourself with an income from that game.

Dobsoft Studios - If you’re truly at the beginning stages of making your game, maybe you don’t need funding or a publisher just yet. During those first steps, it is usually better to try and bootstrap as much of the development process as you can, in order to get something playable that you can start showing people.

Esquilax Games - Try to make a small but good quality projects, thinking about all the aspects regarding to apps development (monetization, gameplay, user retention, marketing, art, sound, etc), because the faster you fail, the faster you can try again.

Immersive Interactive - Don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at successful game’s structures and monetization systems and see which ones of them fits your game.

Keep being original on your game design and mechanics but takes references on how big companies monetize their games

Last Pick Productions - This one is kind of obvious, but learn as much as you can. There were so many aspects of creating a mobile game that we simply overlooked or thought weren’t important. The internet is your best friend when it comes to resources for creating mobile games. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or ask for help. There are a lot of people out there that started out in your shoes and are willing to help you out. Invite a developer out for coffee and pick their brain. Send an email to someone asking if they are willing to chat with you about their area of expertise. The worse that can happen is they say no, but more than likely they will help you out!

Onimobi - Always listen to advice that’s offered and given to you, but remember to trust your instincts and go with your gut.

Wolfmans (Glitchnap) - Decide for yourself if you want to make games because you love making games, or because you want to make money. We found out that this is a continuum, where each of us is placed in a unique location. Communicating and discussing your ambitions within your team is very important, and something we’ve been doing constantly while at CBU.

The best advice is to keep your eyes out for the next CBU, or similar programs. It’s a unique and bonding experience for the team, with an amount of information that could take us years to acquire on our own.

Chartboost Twitter Contest for GDC!

nateahearn — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:52:57 -0700

Calling all GDC attendees! As you make your way to and around San Francisco you might notice something a bit different adorning the tops of your friendly neighborhood taxi cabs. As you probably already know, we love our developer partners. Anything we can do to highlight the ones cranking out great mobile game content is a worthy cause in our mind, which is why we’ve designed 75 different taxi cab tops to highlight some of the best content around.

Now, the challenge: If you see one of these taxi cabs careening down a San Francisco street with your game on top of it, whip out your phone, snap a picture and tweet us @Chartboost to show off your discovery. We’ll then send you a prize in the mail in the coming weeks!

Happy hunting!

An Indie's Tale: Tapps Games

nateahearn — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:35:00 -0700

Independent developers are the lifeblood of the gaming industry. Whether on console or mobile, they’re the ones bootstrapping their way to creating games in the hopes of one day making a full-fledged career in our business. While our monthly Developer Spotlight series takes a look at more well-established companies, we wanted to devote some space to the upstarts as well. That’s where “An Indie’s Tale” comes in.

Here we’ll look at developers that either have yet to release a game or have just one or two games on the market in the hopes of providing insights to others trying to make a name for themselves. This time around we chatted with Rene Retz, CEO of Tapps Games, a small game studio in São Paulo, Brazil founded in 2010.

Chartboost: How did Tapps Games come to be a company? In comic book terms: what’s your origin story?

Rene Retz, CEO, Tapps Games:Tapps was founded in 2010 as a developer of enterprise softwares for the iOS platform, specially the then-newly released iPad. By 2011 with a very small team and without any previous experience in the gaming industry we decided to steer our focus to mobile games. Suddenly we had to learn, think and worry about illustrations, animations, game and sound design, mass marketing and so on. That was definitely the biggest challenge, but we think we are finally starting to get things right!

Chartboost: What’s your main goal for the games you’re making? Everyone wants to produce great, high-quality content, but what sort of niche are you trying to carve for your company?

Rene Retz, CEO, Tapps Games: In a few words, our goal is to entertain as many people as possible. We are now into the development of fun casual games of all genres, from puzzles to action games and everything in between.

Chartboost: For a small developer, you guys have a ton of games and apps (53 on iPhone alone) on Apple’s App Store. Was that a strategic decision? How is it working out?

Rene Retz, CEO, Tapps Games: It is part of our strategy indeed. With many big players from the gaming industry entering the App Store, we realized back in 2012 that it would be very difficult for a small company with so little experience and investment to compete with them on big games. Our focus since then has been the development of high quality and well polished fun casual games.

Chartboost: How do you go about building a good team? What do you look for in new team members?

Rene Retz, CEO, Tapps Games: During interviews we are not only looking for great programmers, illustrators or game designers. Besides talent and knowledge, we seek passionate people that share our vision and want to help us build a great company and develop great games. With that in mind we were able to build an outstanding team of good friends to not only work with, but to play videogames by the end of the day or to have a beer during our happy hours.

Chartboost: Making a great game is one thing. Building a business around it is an entirely different story. What’s your strategy for building a company and products that last and how does Chartboost factor into that strategy?

Rene Retz, CEO, Tapps Games: With so many published games we now understand the importance of having solid advertising networks to work with. We have tested many of them and Chartboost proves to be one of the best. Its SDK is now integrated to every game we release and it is currently one of our most important sources of revenue as our portfolio quickly grows.

Chartboost: Give people a taste of your next product and when they’ll be able to get their hands on it.

Rene Retz, CEO, Tapps Games: One of the games we are currently working on is called Macho Dash. It takes place in Mexico during El Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) and you control Gonzaléz through the haunted deserts of Mexico killing zombies, skeletons and other monsters with the aid of funny weapons — being Maria, the six-barrel revolver, Gonzaléz’s favorite. It is scheduled for release in about two weeks.

Know a great indie developer that we should be featuring but haven’t yet? Let us know about it @Chartboost.

Top Chartboost Frames, March 2013

nateahearn — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:18:00 -0700

There are lots of tools Chartboost offers to developers in an effort to both make you more money and optimize the user experience for your players. One such tool is called Frames. Frames allow publishers in the Chartboost network to make promotional creatives feel more a part of the game they’re appearing in, which drives up eCPM and Click-Through Rate.

In an effort to better-educate our beloved partners on what makes a quality Frame, we’re kicking off a new column here on the Chartboost Blog that will highlight three of the top frames for the given month, as well as the uptick in performance that each developer experienced thanks to the use of a custom Frame.

*Note: This is not actually a Chartboost frame.

And now, without further adieu, I give you the top three Chartboost creatives for the month of March.

Have an awesome frame of your own and would like to get it featured on the blog? Ping us @Chartboost.

Chartboost University: Boot Camp, Week 1 Update

davidrhom — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:03:00 -0700

The first week of Chartboost University has concluded! Companies traveled the world over to come to San Francisco, work in the Chartboost office and learn from the best and brightest the mobile gaming world has to offer. The week included participation from Booyah, GREE, Kabam, Z2Live and several others. Now that the sun has set on week one, we asked our beloved international indie developers for some feedback on the program. Here’s what they had to say.

How has your experience been so far?

Coconut Island @Coconut_Island: Experience has been great so far. We’ve enjoyed meeting the cool people at Chartboost, very down to earth, smart, and passionate about what they do.

One of the most interesting things has been how many well known companies are within walking distance of each other. We’ve had the chance to meet and listen to experts from these companies share their knowledge and insights with us. There’s a lot of best practices and techniques we have learned that we are now going to put in to use when designing our own games.

Being in San Francisco is fun and enjoyable. Almost everywhere we go, people are laid back, relaxed, and easy going. Cars always give way to pedestrians at crossings. On the rare occasions when they don’t, I’ve seen the locals kindly informing them “What the heck are you doing man!?”.

So yes, it’s been great. Learned a lot, the city is interesting and beautiful, the people we are meeting are just the best!

Dobsoft Studios @dobsoftstudios: We’ve had an amazing first week at the Chartboost University program. Some of the things we’ve learned from guest presenters have directly influenced our current project, and there has been valuable and relevant information to take away from each of them.

Esquilax Games @esquilaxgames: So far it has been amazing, even better than we though it would be. We are learning a lot from successful people that share their experiences with us and give us advices that are helping us to make good decisions for our next videogames releases.

Since we have arrived there have been lots of great surprises and we have learned some inspiring stories that show us that it is possible to succeeded in what we are doing.

Furthermore San Francisco is a wonderful city, full of joyful people and also very big companies related to the videogame industry.

Immersive Interactive: By the moment it’s been great. Talks are very interesting, Chartboost guys are very helpful and sharing experiences and ideas with other developers is really constructive.

That’s a great introduction into videogame’s commercial environment

Last Pick Productions @LastPickProd: Our experience has been amazing!

The sessions are informative and there is often time to have one-on-one conversations with the speakers about our game. This is really nice as it lets us get insight into our project through the eyes of various industry professionals.

The staff at Chartboost have been awesome. They are super friendly and accommodating to us, always available for any questions we may have, and generally just make the working environment energetic and motivating.

The other attendees are also super friendly and are always willing to help us out by sharing their knowledge. They are a great group to work with and I am positive that after CBU ends, we will keep in touch and continue to help each other out.

Chartboost University is an amazing opportunity, and I strongly encourage indie game developers to apply to their program if they run it again next year.

Onimobi - Mitch @onimitch: It has been a great learning and thought provoking process so far. We’ve gotten a lot of tips and advice for Leaf Rider, which has been really useful.

Onimobi - Simon @si_design: Chartboost university has been a great experience for a small indie developer like ourselves. We’ve met lots of great people who have given us lots of useful feedback about our game, and there’s been a great mix of talks covering all aspects of game development.

Wolfmans @glitchnap: It’s been great for us Wolfmans. The week started off with Maria Alegre telling us Chartboost’s origin story and telling us to dream big. That message has continued throughout many of the talks, as we went to visit GREE and Kabam, some of the biggest and most impressive offices we have ever seen. We received some expert advice on do’s an dont’s when hiring artists both audio and visual, which will definitely resonate until we need it, which will be soon as we’re hoping to start real development of Zumbie before summer.

From the talks, what do you think all indie developers should hear about?

Coconut Island: One thing we’ve noticed, is that for us as indie developers, we want to focus on developing a really cool, unique, innovative gameplay and the business and money making side of the process usually take a back seat until we’ve almost finished development. We’re afraid it will affect the “purity” of our game design.

However, since being here, we’ve seen the other side of game design, where game development and monetization are given equal importance, and have been turned into successful games that many people are playing and enjoying.

We’ve also been given some insights on how to build an in-game economy in such a way that it has more chance of being balanced. Of course, it’s not possible to predict everything that players will do, so another thing that was covered was how to setup analytics to monitor the state of the game and be able to tweak the balance of the game in meaningful ways, but without upsetting the existing user base.

There’s so much more that has been covered as well:

Best Practises for hiring and working with artists. Insights into the importance of audio and how to work with sound engineers.

Live Operation - giving a game the ability to have ongoing events that players can participate in, which extends the lifetime of the game and improves retentions

I’m sure there’s more things we’ve missed, but that should give a good idea of some of what we’ve learned so far.

Dobsoft Studios: One of the things that has been brought up by multiple presenters (and which we’ve somewhat neglected in our past games) is the importance of analytics. Understanding how your users are actually playing your game can be one of your most powerful tools in shaping future updates and creating a better product.

Esquilax Studios: The most valuable thing we have learned so far and we think everyone should know is that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel to succeed. It’s very useful to play and learn from other videogames to know which are the right decisions that took them to the top of the industry.

Also they should know that it’s possible to succeed being a small team, but it requires a lot of work and effort.

Immersive Interactive: We’ve been given very good advices about monetization, keeping the game challenging and engaging.

Other talks are related to legal and outsourcing details, and they gave us a general vision about specific development processes that will improve our negotiation skills.

Last Pick Productions: There have definitely been a few resonating themes, or tips, that consistently come up. Here are a few of the main ones:

Make sure you have access to your game AFTER it launches! Use a server to be able to make changes to your game on-the-fly so you never have to wait through certification processes.

Make sure you capture user metrics and analyze that data to tighten the player experience.

Cater to your players. Your community is the lifeline of your game, take any and all steps necessary to keep them happy and engaged in your content.

Players will ALWAYS find a way to play your game completely different from how you expect them to play. Be prepared to make changes after your game has launched, and ideally have a “”flexible”” game structure that let’s you adapt easily to changes.

Onimobi - Mitch: Introduction to economies (by David Hom) was extremely useful. It really helps to understand how an economy works on a basic level of sinks and sources, and how important it is to design a balanced economy for the longevity of a game.

Visiting Kabam was very inspiring but the thing that struck me was they described their USP as great customer service. This is often something that’s overlooked, especially inside the game.

Onimobi - Simon: All indie developers should hear about as much as possible! All the talks have been informative and insightful, and every piece of knowledge gained is a small step towards building a better game.

Wolfmans: Something that stuck out for us was the way modern community focused games, like Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot, or Gree’s Crime City, differ in development lifecycle from the traditional games-as-a-product games. Companies usually develop a game, and crunch until release, and then throw a party and start thinking about their next title. In the modern (often mobile) community focused games, the real work starts after launch, with live-ops, tweaking, analytics-rinse-repeat, … Live-ops are an interesting concept, that I think can also be applied to games that are less community focused, to increase longevity of a game. Definitely something worth looking into.

What We're Playing #9

nateahearn — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:45:00 -0700

Chartboost University: Boot Camp is off to a splendid start here in San Francisco. Teams are learning, people are getting a taste of our city and the talks that we’ve hosted thus far with the likes of GREE, Booyah, Kabam and more have been fruitful. Despite all that, the fine folks of Chartboost still took time out to play some lovely mobile games for the ninth installment in our What We’re Playing series.

For those that don’t know (shame on you), the aim of What We’re Playing is to shine some light on games that might otherwise go unnoticed and to give you a peek into our twisted definition of “fun” when it comes to mobile games. One thing to note: While we here at Chartboost truly do love our game developer partners and play just about every game that uses our technology, not every game you see here will be a partner title. This is what we play when we’re home from the office with our feet up on the couch looking for a bit of gaming R&R.

Have a game we should be playing but aren’t? Tell us about it @Chartboost.

How far we’ve come…

Mark Kinsella - Head Groundskeeper and Lead Table Tennis Instructor
@MarkKinsella
Playing Virtual Pool by Celeris

Now that I’m an expert at real life table tennis, I’ve started to master the ancient game of billiards. Based on the original 1995 PC game, this version is expertly translated to a smaller touch screen device. As you progress through Career Mode, you’ll play such AI experts as Buzzsaw, Frenchy, and Big-T while earning money and unlocking new locations and tables. The controls are great, the options are numerous, and it’s a fun game.

Kenneth Ballenegger - The Architect
@kob
Playing Trainyard by Matt Rix

Trainyard is one of the most well-crafted puzzle games on iOS. While it sadly does not yet support the iPhone 5’s taller screen, it remains an old favorite of mine. The game’s objective is to draw train tracks onto a grid in order to connect wagons with their destinations. Each wagon has a color, and can merge or collide with other wagons to create new colors. The later levels can be incredibly challenging!

Sachin Goel - Coding Things and Eating Wings
@SachinGoel
Playing Ridiculous Fishing by Vlambeer

Ridiculous Fishing is easily the best iOS game I have played in recent memory. What’s not to love? Fishing, guns, fake tweets and pixel graphics! The game takes you on a magical journey through different areas of the ocean, where at each location, your character is challenged to sink his tackle to the seabed by avoiding sea creatures. As soon as you collide with a fish, your tackle starts ascending to the surface and you’re tasked with collecting as many fish as you can on the way up. Here’s the kicker though, once the fish reach the surface, they jump in to the sky for rewards-based target practice.

Nate Barker - The Bearded One
@ kneyght
Playing Musaic Box by KranX Productions

In the immortal words of Bob Marley, “One great thing about music, when it hits you, you put it in a game.” Or something to that effect. Anyway, there’s more than one great thing about Musaic Box. It’s my favorite new puzzle game because it challenges both your spatial recognition, but also pattern recognition and auditory sensitivity. The objective is to fit pieces of a song together so that when played at once it sounds like a song, not a jumbled mess.

The challenge is that the melody, percussion, bass, and solo parts are in different pieces. Putting them in order requires meticulously listening to the same 8-bar phrase over and over. To help you are a rudimentary hidden object game for locating clues and a few visual tricks for recognizing puzzle pieces. Honestly though, explaining this does not do it justice. After all, wasn’t Charles Mingus the one who said “Talking about Music Games is like dancing about architecture?” Conduct your own investigation.

Cori Savaiano - Publisher Relations Manager
Playing Candy Crush Saga by King.com

It’s week 21. I’ve been dreaming of stripes and wrappers, and those sprinkle bombs zapping away the blues. Have you ever matched two sprinkle bombs? Have you ever matched two wrappers? When I close my eyes I invision sliding a red hot to the right and scoring a stripped. The time bombs are distracting me from my real mission: destroy the jelly. I dutifully swipe and match to rid the playing field of those translucent squares. Dear mom, please send more lives.

Michael Golden - The Man With the Silver Touch
@DaliLemma
Playing Sword & Sorcery by Capybara Games

I really like games that blur the barrier between fun and art, and Sword&Sorcery is by far one of my favorites in the mobile genre. The characters and landscape of the game are beautifully pixilated, and when combined with the musical themes by Jim Guthrie and time bending mystical puzzles it weaves an amazing tapestry that is absolutely mesmerizing. This game is very deep and you can easily get lost in the intricately constructed sessions and who knows, you may even learn something about yourself in the process.

Thanks for checking out this week’s entry in our What We’re Playing series. We’ll see you in two weeks!

Meet the Boot Campers: Coconut Island Studio

davidrhom — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 09:30:35 -0700

As we get closer to the first ever Chartboost University: Boot Camp, which kicks off next Tuesday, March 12, we thought it’d be a good idea to fill everyone in on exactly who will be attending. While we already posted a quick peek at the participants, we thought it was only fair to profile each of the seven developers. So, in the one day left until we’re joined by our international comrades, you’ll be treated to one interview per day. We hope you enjoy them!

We’re posting these in reverse alphabetical order, which makes Coconut Island next up on the chopping block. Wish them luck!

Chartboost: How and when did you know you wanted to be a game developer?

Wesley, Programmer/Game Designer, Coconut Island Studio: 15 years old. The first time, when I played a game called “Uncharted Warters II” made by KOEI (a Japanese game company), I was shocked by the art, story, music and the gameplay, at that time, I know game development will be my career, I will devote my life for game development.

Paul, Programmer/Game Designer, Coconut Island Studio: I’ve played games all my life, and loved computer games ever since a family friend let us borrow a very early games console. I have no idea what console it was, but it was black and white, and had games like Pong and Tank and about 30 other blocky games built in to the machine. I must have been about 6-7 years old? (1982-83). However, I did not get into game programming/design until much later. So many years passed and I had been working in the I.T. Industry for about 10 years, and always felt like it wasn’t where my heart was. I had just arrived back in New Zealand in early 2008 after working overseas, and was looking for a job in I.T. However, I also knew of a institution called Media Design School which offered a Game Development course. Also I had recently been reading a few books that suggested that doing something that I liked would be a good thing. I went to the school to check out its curriculum. From the moment I walked in the door, I knew this was something I had to do. So I enrolled in the game programming course ( My background had been a Computer Science Degree ) and have never looked back. One thing that surprised me was how much work it was, but also that it was never too hard as the final result of being able to create games was so satisfying. It was also surprising how maths suddenly became a lot more interesting once I learned how useful stuff like trigonometry and other previously dry branches of number crunching actually became very practical tools in “getting stuff to move around the screen”.

An early in-game shot from Coconut Island’s upcoming new, title Batte Cats

Chartboost: How did your team first meet each other?

Wesley: I met Paul on GDC China 2010 in Shanghai, my game and his game were both in the finalist of IGF China, after that event he want to find some cool game company in China to join. So he joined us after 3 months.

Paul: My student team project at Media Design School called “Dead Steel” was nominated for the GDC China Student IGF awards. I attended these in Shanghai in late 2010, and that’s where I met Wesley. However, I didn’t start working with them just then. It wasn’t until a few months later when I was looking for work that I saw a job advertised online for a Coconut Island Studio programming position. I applied and I’ve been with them ever since!

How did you come up with your company name?

“Coconut Island” was the name of my girl friend’s blog. When I started my own indie game studio, I asked her to give me some advice of the studio’s name(I’m not good at giving name to anything.), after some short discussion we both think the best name was “Coconut Island” from his blog. So she borrowed that name to me, and married with me now.

What is your favorite aspect of building games?

Wesley: Creating and designing a game is always the most favorite work for me.

Paul: Wow, quite a few seem to come to mind but I’ll stick to one for now. Some of the most rewarding times are implementing a game feature that initially I had no idea how to program it or how it would work, and actually seeing it perform properly in a game. Game Jams in particular often give me that experience, rapidly trying to implement a new game design and having everything from art, code and sound all fit in together at the last minute to produce a game.

Another shot from their new project, Battle Cat

What is your favorite mobile game right now?

Wesley: Triple Town, Tilt to live, Game Dev Story, Tiny Wings

Paul: If I look at the hours spent on mobile games in the last week, my favourite game is Real Racing 3. I’m surprised myself, as initially I was strongly against all the in-app purchases and waiting times for repairs, and the fact that the tracks are narrower and its much easier to receive damage to your car than ever. I would have been willing to pay a premium price for a fully unlocked game. However, one thing that has made it interesting for me, is because I refuse to pay any real money towards this game, it really makes me more careful about avoiding damage and driving more carefully, so much so that I feel like when I’m damaging my car that I’m really losing something. Like I’m losing all those hard earned credits because I know they are going to have to go towards repairing my cars. So I actually feel like there is something at stake when I am racing, and it makes the experience more thrilling for me. Something I would never have imagined after having played it initially. It reminds me a bit of that game where you only had one life and you had to jump between buildings (Just One Life?). I experienced real excitement, tension and fear in that game from the very real consequences of missing a jump, something I wish more games would have, and which I’ve found Real Racing 3 does provide a bit, at least for me.

An honourable mention goes to Super Hexagon as my previous most played game in recent months.

What is your favorite classic game?

Wesley: Football manager 3, Uncharted Waters II

Paul: Again, wow, do I have to pick just one? I’ll have to go back to my Commodore 64 collection for this one. I’ll just name a few favourites then try to pick one! Let’s see, there’s International Karate+, Last Ninja 1 and 2, Defender of the Crown, Turrican 1 and 2, Paradroid, California Games, Wizball, Creatures 1 and 2 (love those torture chambers!), Airborne Ranger, the SSI / TSR Goldbox RGG’s.

These titles are all brilliant, and if the only game system I had access to today was a Commodore C64, I would still be happily playing them as they all have large amounts of replay value. I might have to go a fire up my C64 emulator now!

Concept art from their new project, Battle Cat

What do you think the future of gaming will entail?

Wesley: Game will become a mass media to express more opinion, be more emotional and teach more people to learn some knowledge. It will become a more influential culture product.

Paul: Predictions being unpredictable, here’s my go at it: An increase in high quality free-to-play games that are not just glorified gambling machines (I hope).

More people making more video games as the tools to make them become cheaper and easier to use. This will lead to increasing the pool of amateur developers. The downside will be perhaps the average quality of games will become lower, but there will also be more talents discovered.

What do you hope to gain from our Boot Camp?

Wesley: I want to learn how to make a fun game, how to modify a game to be more fun and how to survive and grow as an indie game company.

Paul: Specifically, learning more about game analytics and how to use them to improve our games. Also learning more about how to promote and market games effectively.

Generally speaking, learning anything and everything I can about game creation, design, development, project management, art, audio. The more I learn, the better chance there is to make a good game.

I’m also excited about seeing the legendary San Francisco and soaking up some of the atmosphere and hopefully inspiration (hope I’m not talking it up too much here!) from other game developers. I think experiencing a new environment is great for stimulating the mind!

Check back in tomorrow for our next Boot Camp developer profile. Be sure to hit us up on Twitter @Chartboost.