Tracking what’s popular has never been more important, as is developing compelling features for your game to help it stand out from the sometimes crowded competition in the mobile gaming market.
Game Features Power Mobile Titles
With the seismic shift to free-to-play models in recent years, players have never had as much choice as they do now with what mobile games to enjoy. There are many notable, incredible successes with free mobile games, many failures, and noteworthy middle-of-the-road releases.
In the free-to-play (F2P) business model, the game being free is rarely appealing in and of itself, it’s more so the game’s features that drive levels of interest in today’s mobile games market. There are countless free games on the major app storefronts, so it’s critical to ensure that yours stands out by developing games with interesting features.
Not only do interesting game features help your game stand out and attract the right audience, but they can also become a core part of the game’s identity that evolves and becomes a core part of your game community’s participation.
Evolving Game Features
Changing your game’s features over time has the capacity to keep existing players engaged, attract new players, and showcase to your entire player base that you’re ready and willing to make changes to stave off stagnation.
For example, expanding social features to include cooperative gameplay modes or in-game action to include environmental hazards is a sure fire way to pique the interest of your existing players who’ve already experienced these game features in a less advanced state. Furthermore, additive changes like these can appear impressive to prospective new players.
Another wise move to foster support is to involve the community of your mobile game as you develop features. Taking player feedback seriously is a fantastic way of communicating that you care about their opinions and experiences. Rather than just creating and evolving your game features as you see fit, it’s worth incorporating player feedback where possible. This isn’t always realistic, as some input might not be applicable, but relevant feedback should be considered where possible to help players feel heard and valued.
Identifying Winning Game Features
It’s best practice to use data to make informed decisions rather than simply guess which feature belongs in your game. Conducting market research to understand what’s popular with different demographics for different games is essential to developing winning games with features that keep your audience expanding and engaged.
Conducting this kind of research as early as possible in the mobile game development cycle is critical. Rather than disrupting the development process at potentially critical moments, features should be designed and approved before development begins in earnest. Reactionary decisions to uproot a development plan to incorporate game features based on last-minute research could have dire consequences, including delaying the game’s release and changing the whole development paradigm.
An immediate benefit to data-driven game features design and development is ruling out features that most likely won’t fit your mobile game. For instance, if you’re developing a story-based mobile game with a serious tone, it’s unlikely that facilities for colorful costumes and wild characters will make much sense, and the existing mobile games on the market would support this idea.
This ideology of data-driven game feature development can easily be carried through for existing game features or mechanics. Through metrics gained from players experiencing your mobile game, it should become clear where they’re spending most of their time, what features are resonating with them, and what areas might require improvement.
Starloop Studios is an expert services provider for gaming projects on mobile and all other platforms. We offer an incomparable range of services for gaming projects including full-cycle game development, co-development, game porting, and more. Contact Starloop Studios today to learn more about what we can do for your projects!
