Mobile game development is a lucrative industry with new innovations happening every day. The growth of modern technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality has presented new opportunities for game developers. From indie developers to large corporations, all are aiming towards making the next big hit. Stories of games like Pokemon GO, Candy Crush, Flappy Bird are yet another reason for the ever-increasing traction towards mobile gaming industry.
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While these rising metrics sure sound amazing it is not easy to successfully develop a mobile game. A lot of challenges are involved in building and monetizing mobile games. With the rising competition in the gaming industry, it is more important than ever that you mitigate risks and don’t make common mistakes that led to failures.
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Top 5 Challenges in Mobile Game Development:
1. Avoiding Feature Creep:
Feature creep is the situation where the game is saturated with ideas and features. This happens if the focus deviates from the core offering and target market. To avoid feature overload you should launch your mobile game in phases. Each prototype can provide insights into user behavior that should guide future decisions about features and improvements. Whatever you do, make sure that the core essence of the game is not lost. You can also remove some features from time to time to maintain a user-friendly experience.
Read More: 8 Steps to Successful Mobile Game Development
2. Identifying the Optimal Monetization Policy:
There are several different ways to monetize mobile games. You can try ads, freemium model or paid subscription. Each of these has its own pros and cons. For instance, ads are easy to implement but can hamper user experience. You will need clever gamification to trigger purchases in a freemium model. Lastly, paid games face limited downloads due to barriers to entry. The choice of model depends upon your revenue goals and target market. You can even combine two models like freemium and ads.
Read More: The Right Approach to App Monetization
3. User Retention:
User retention in any game requires consistent efforts from developers. To effectively engage users you need to understand their reasons to leave. Some common reasons include bugs, lack of gamification, complicated interface, better alternatives etc. In case of games, users easily get bored with one type of play. You will need to constantly update your game with new levels, characters, design elements etc. Again, you can study user reviews as guiding stones for eliminating bugs and implementing ideas.
Know More: 7 Ways to Engage and Retain Your Users
4. Raising Funds:
It is challenging to raise funds for a game. In the absence of funding your access to talent and infrastructure will be limited. Thus, you will face show progress. There are multiple ways to secure funds like angel investors, venture funding, crowdfunding from Kickstarter, and loans.You can also use some of your personal savings to initiate the project. Alternatively, you can use free or inexpensive prototyping tools like GameSalad. In this case, you will need people who are willing to work on a revenue-sharing basis.
Read More: How to Estimate the Cost of Your Mobile Game?
5. Securing Users:
Even the best game will not make money if no one comes to play it. Constantly securing users is very important to ensure momentum in earnings. For a mobile game to go viral it needs investment in marketing, branding and promotion. With a good marketing budget, you can acquire reviews in top blogs and publications and place ads on social media and websites. You can even try showcasing your ad in other games to quickly acquire gamers. Overall mobile game marketing needs a holistic view towards promotion and acquisition.
Read More: 10 Steps to Market Mobile Apps
In conclusion, good knowledge of target market and a focused approach to development helps in overcoming all the obstacles in mobile game development. At NewGenApps, we have worked on many games over our course of 10 years. Our experience in developing different apps and games has helped us gain many useful insights. If you have a project then feel free to get in touch. Our team of experienced developers is capable of shaping any project into reality.
