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Games Speak through Mechanics, Not Rules

Brand Game Development

Core Engine: If you strip out all the mechanics that put obstacles in your players’ path, what’s left? The core engine is the bare minimum set of mechanics you need to have a functioning game. Mechanics: Games are not very good until you have constraints that make it hard for players to achieve the objective.

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How to Build Better Mechanics for Rewarded In-Game Ads

Game Refinery

A common way to monetize freemium mobile games is through in-app advertising, where ad placements are sold to generate profit from the entire player base. The progression mechanic is based on watching ads, with each ad increasing the number of rewards for the next pull. Dragonscapes Adventure’s floating reward prompt.

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Attracting investors and publishers with the right kind of game demos

PreMortem.Games

Disclosure: This article has been written as a part of a paid cooperation with Xsolla Game demos are as important to a successful game marketing strategy as trailers and advertising. Typically highlighting a game’s mechanics in their raw form, even before content and visuals receive their final polish.

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The Curious Case of Playable Ads and Traditional Marketing Strategies

Deconstructor of Fun

Digital advertising has come a long way since the first banner ads of the 90s. This is the future of digital advertising - where creative interactivity transforms even the most traditional marketing principles. Playable Ads created by Playable Factory (Angry Birds, Whiteout Survival, Eatventure, Smash Legends) What Are Playable Ads?

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5 Levels of Communication through Game Development

Brand Game Development

The following excerpt is from Games Speak through Mechanics, Not Rules (Dev Diary: 04/28/17). If you strip out all the mechanics that put obstacles in your players’ path, what’s left? The core engine is the bare minimum set of mechanics you need to have a functioning game. That’s a mechanic. Chess tells a story.

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Colony: Letting Leaders Lead without Losing Losers (A guest post by Burt Yaroch of the Healthy Gaming Network)

Brand Game Development

I’m going to use the term “runaway leader” to refer to a specific, purposefully included design mechanic. It is a mechanic by which the player in the lead position gains advantages that serve to move them further into the lead. Was Colony designed with a runaway leader mechanism? What’s a runaway leader? Absolutely.

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How to Build up a Facebook Page as a Board Game Dev

Brand Game Development

In this past year, I’ve been using Facebook’s advertising system to increase the visibility of blog posts and to drive people to the Highways & Byways Kickstarter mailer. A few hundred dollars in advertising money have gone a really long way toward increasing the visibility of my projects. Smart Advertising.

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