Designing and Implementing Common Market for Cross-Game Purchases between Mobile Games

The mobile game markets are increasingly competitive and the game publishers are looking for new ways to increase player retention and cross commercialization of games. In this paper, we examine how a purchasing system using virtual currency based common market can be designed and implemented in order to create a larger service platform. The solution enables cross-game purchasing of virtual items from one game into another. We present how such a system can be designed, how it would fit into larger vision of multi-game ecosystem and what kind of limitations there are when implementing such a system. As a result, we describe solution of a bank and a marketplace entity, which are responsible of the transactions, virtual items and connecting games to each other. As a conclusion, we are presenting the expected challenges and expansion plans for the common market system

Split-Screen : Videogame History through Local Multiplayer Design

By looking at videogame production through a two-vector model of design – a practice determined by the interplay between economic and technological evolution – we argue that shared screen play, as both collaboration and competition, originally functioned as a desirable pattern in videogame design, but has since become problematic due to industry transformations. This is introduced as an example of what we call design vestigiality: momentary loss of a design pattern’s contextual function due to techno-economical evolution

Counting Customers in Mobile Business – The Case of Free to Play

In recent years mobile games have become a major part of the mobile market since gaming apps generate a major amount of the platforms revenue. Whilst different business models have been used - free to play seems one of the most promising to monetize games in the mobile market. Yet, this new concept of monetizing digital content has not obtained much attention of researchers. One research gap is the prediction of users purchasing behavior, as it is a major challenge for practitioners as well as for researchers and of vital importance for managing marketing expenses and designing game mechanics. In this paper we use an existing prediction model for purchasing behavior to analyze its applicability in the mobile market. We use two data sets from free to play games to train and test this well-known model. We can show that existing models, even though they are designed for the same type of customer relationship, struggle with the case of free to play. We show detailed information on the model performance and conclude that because of the unique purchasing behavior in free to play models should be redesigned or the process of application should be more structured

A Contribution to Theory Building for Mobile Marketing: Categorizing Mobile Marketing Campaigns through Case Study Research

Marketing experts consider the mobile device as an extremely promising marketing tool as it supports them to cope with their major challenge: getting time and attention from customers. Current mobile marketing research mostly covers success factors and acceptance analysis. Categorization, when addressed, lacks in appropriate foundation and is not linked to objectives at all. In this article we examine 55 case studies in order to identify relevant characteristics of mobile marketing campaigns. The outcome of the paper is the derivation of four mobile marketing standard types and an examination of campaign objectives that can be addressed by mobile marketing. The proposed scheme allows to unambiguously characterize any given mobile marketing campaign and to identify the respective objectives.

Audio design in mid-core mobile games

This thesis explores practical aspects of audio design in mid-core games – a massive segment of the modern mobile game market. Despite there is no shortage of professional literature about game audio in general, most of it describes either purely technical or very general matters, taking video games as undivided whole. Games, however, can be broken up into distinct categories, based on genres, platforms, audiences and other criteria. This is the direction I take with my research, focusing on a specific type of games, developed for mobile devices and targeted towards a well-defined audience. The goal of my thesis was to find out if mid-core mobile games require special approach to audio design and what this approach would be. The first two chapters focus on critical aspects of mobile game audio and audio design principles of mid-core games. Two latter chapters describe practical matters of audio design for an actual video game, starting with design principles and ending with project-specific challenges and creative choices. The results show that audio design for mid-core mobile games has a few special aspects on top of existing principles of mobile game audio. These aspects result from the design patterns shared by majority of mid-core games developed for mobile platforms

Videogames and virtual assets exchange

With the increase of the online videogame industry and the acceptance of the players to invest time and real money in the games, the developers create new business models for selling virtual assets. This works is part of a postgraduate thesis in development and examines the business of video games, virtual assets, why players spend real money and the advantage of a common market between different games would have to increase the profits of the developers and allow the time invested by the players to also give them profits.Facultad de Informátic

The Industry and Policy Context for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion:Market Analysis, Future Prospects and Key Challenges in Videogames, Serious Games and Gamification

The effective use of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion (DGEI) of people and communities at risk of exclusion will be shaped by, and may influence the development of a range of sectors that supply products, services, technology and research. The principal industries that would appear to be implicated are the 'videogames' industry, and an emerging 'serious games' industry. The videogames industry is an ecosystem of developers, publishers and other service providers drawn from the interactive media, software and broader ICT industry that services the mainstream leisure market in games, The 'serious games' industry is a rather fragmented and growing network of firms, users, research and policy makers from a variety of sectors. This emerging industry is are trying to develop knowledge, products, services and a market for the use of digital games, and products inspired by digital games, for a range of non-leisure applications. This report provides a summary of the state of play of these industries, their trajectories and the challenges they face. It also analyses the contribution they could make to exploiting digital games for empowerment and social inclusion. Finally, it explores existing policy towards activities in these industries and markets, and draws conclusions as to the future policy relevance of engaging with them to support innovation and uptake of effective digital game-based approaches to empowerment and social inclusion.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

How Should We Support Designing Privacy-Friendly Apps for Children? Using a Research through Design Process to Understand Developers' Needs and Challenges

Mobile apps used by children often make use of harmful techniques, such as data tracking and targeted advertising. Previous research has suggested that developers face several systemic challenges in designing apps that prioritise children's best interests. To understand how developers can be better supported, we used a Research through Design (RtD) method to explore what the future of privacy-friendly app development could look like. We performed an elicitation study with 20 children's app developers to understand their needs and requirements. We found a number of specific technical requirements from the participants about how they would like to be supported, such as having actionable transnational design guidelines and easy-to-use development libraries. However, participants were reluctant to adopt these design ideas in their development practices due to perceived financial risks associated with increased privacy in apps. To overcome this critical gap, participants formulated socio-technical requirements that extend to other stakeholders in the mobile industry, including parents and marketplaces. Our findings provide important immediate and long-term design opportunities for the HCI community, and indicate that support for changing app developers' practices must be designed in the context of their relationship with other stakeholders.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figure

How can we design privacy-friendly apps for children? Using a research through design process to understand developers' needs and challenges

Mobile apps used by children often make use of harmful techniques, such as data tracking and targeted advertising. Previous research has suggested that developers face several systemic challenges in designing apps that prioritise children's best interests. To understand how developers can be better supported, we used a Research through Design (RtD) method to explore what the future of privacy-friendly app development could look like. We performed an elicitation study with 20 children's app developers to understand their needs and requirements. We found a number of specific technical requirements from the participants about how they would like to be supported, such as having actionable transnational design guidelines and easy-to-use development libraries. However, participants were reluctant to adopt these design ideas in their development practices due to perceived financial risks associated with increased privacy in apps. To overcome this critical gap, participants formulated socio-technical requirements that extend to other stakeholders in the mobile industry, including parents and marketplaces. Our findings provide important immediate and long-term design opportunities for the HCI community, and indicate that support for changing app developers' practices must be designed in the context of their relationship with other stakeholders