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Kongregate News
Exciting News: Kongregate Will Be Joining the MTG Family

Hi everyone, I wanted to share some exciting news: Kongregate is being purchased by Modern Times Group (MTG), a Swedish-based entertainment company (you might be familiar with some of MTG’s other game-related brands: ESL (eSports), DreamHack, and InnoGames). My brother Jim and I co-founded Kongregate in 2006 with a mission to help independent game developers succeed, building out an open platform for browser games, with fair treatment and monetization for developers, and lots of social features for players. In July 2010 we were acquired by GameStop, kicking off

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Engineering
Unity WebGL Memory Optimization: Part Deux

Now that the Unity WebPlayer is mostly a thing of the past, making sure your Unity WebGL content runs smoothly is more important than ever. The main pain point that we hear from developers relates to the dreaded “out of memory” errors that end users encounter when trying to play WebGL games. This is a particularly frustrating issue for players using 32-bit versions of browsers, since they are much less likely to have a large contiguous block of free memory for the Unity heap. This article will cover some more

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Game Development
China Is Kind of a Big Deal for Indie Games

This article was written by Lars Doucet and originally posted on Gamasutra back in March. We found it so useful that we're hosting it here, with Lars' permission. For the past five years I've been maintaining Defender's Quest, I've kept telling myself: there's got to be some magical untapped audience I've yet to reach. I've tried every possible trick to find them, and while many have helped, none have been a silver bullet. Support Mac and Linux 5.2% and 1.8% of lifetime revenue, respectively Participate in Humble Bundles

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Kongregate News Jun 21, 2017
Exciting News: Kongregate Will Be Joining the MTG Family

Hi everyone, I wanted to share some exciting news: Kongregate is being purchased by Modern Times Group (MTG), a Swedish-based entertainment company (you might be familiar with some of MTG’s other game-related brands: ESL (eSports), DreamHack, and InnoGames). My brother Jim and I co-founded Kongregate in 2006 with a mission to help independent game developers succeed, building out an open platform for browser games, with fair treatment and monetization for developers, and lots of social features for players. In July 2010 we were acquired by GameStop, kicking off a partnership that allowed us to make significant investments in the health and growth of the site and company as a whole. (If you’d like a trip in the wayback machine, check out the announcement we made at that time.) In 2013, GameStop’s backing also allowed us to diversify into the mobile gaming world as a publisher, and we’ve gone on to help bring more than 40 games to mobile, including hits like AdVenture Capitalist, Animation Throwdown, and The Trail, just to name a

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Web Jun 15, 2017
The Agony and Ecstasy of Coming Up with Achievement Names

I'm pretty sure I've designed more achievements in games than anyone else on the planet. I don't make this claim lightly. I've been making badges at Kongregate for 10 years now, with nearly 3,000 achievements total. I wrote a popular Gamasutra article about how to design them, and later spoke at GDC about achievement design. I've gotten this down to a science. Play a game (until you know it inside and out), identify potential tasks, filter out the bad ones (see above Gamasutra article), expand on the best ones, carefully set the thresholds (not too easy, not too long/frustrating), decide what difficulty it should be, ensure it highlights the best the game has to offer, make sure all the technical API submissions are working properly, find a relevant image, crop/resize it, BOOM, done! ...except, wait, no, it needs a name. Dammit. That's always the hardest part. Whenever I speak with developers during the achievement-making process, I always give them a chance to suggest names if they want, and about 90% of the time their response is, "I'm

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Game Development Jun 05, 2017
China Is Kind of a Big Deal for Indie Games

This article was written by Lars Doucet and originally posted on Gamasutra back in March. We found it so useful that we're hosting it here, with Lars' permission. For the past five years I've been maintaining Defender's Quest, I've kept telling myself: there's got to be some magical untapped audience I've yet to reach. I've tried every possible trick to find them, and while many have helped, none have been a silver bullet. Support Mac and Linux 5.2% and 1.8% of lifetime revenue, respectively Participate in Humble Bundles (back when they were really good) Sell direct, on GOG, Itch.io, etc. significant chunk, still dwarfed overall by Steam Localize all the things Professional: German, French, Spanish, Japanese Volunteer: Russian, Korean, Italian, Czech Probably worth it? But not crystal clear. Well, I finally found these magical undiscovered players: they're in China. In "Steam Discovery 2.0, Stegosaurus Tail 2.0," we noted the trend of Chinese players appearing on the global PC gaming radar. For one, Valve mentioned the trend at Dev Days 2016: and I had noticed it

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Monetization May 25, 2017
GDC Talk: Lifetime Value and the Long Tail of Mid-Core Games

Our own Tamara Levy spoke at this year's GDC about maximizing lifetime player value in mid-core games. Using genre-specific predictive models developed from the Kongregate portfolio, we demonstrate how and why post-D30 retention can be key to increase your revenue. Through case studies, you'll learn strategies to boost both early and late revenue, as well as game core loop modifications to drive better player investment in the long run. GDC Talk: Lifetime Value: The long tail of Mid-Core games from Tamara Levy

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Kongregate News May 18, 2017
Hack Your Way into GRIDD: Retroenhanced

We’re excited to announce that our first original Steam title is now available: GRIDD: Retroenhanced! GRIDD is a tough-as-nails shoot ‘em up with the nostalgia of an old-school arcade game but the souped-up graphics and dynamic gameplay of a modern racing game. Hack your way into an AI-protected super-advanced mainframe. Race through cyberspace, avoiding the viruses sent by the AI, and eventually go head-to-head with the corrupted artificial intelligence system. From Italian indie developer Antab Studio, GRIDD takes the traditional top-down arcade shooter and turns it on its head with a fully 3D point of view, dynamic camera angles, and a next-gen, neon style. "GRIDD is our love letter to games, hacking movies, and cyberpunk culture that emerged from the 1980s," said Andrea Tabacco of Antab Studio. "We wanted to return players to the arcade halls of their youth but with graphics and gameplay enhancements that take full advantage of today's technology.” “It’s fitting that GRIDD is the first original title we’re bringing to Steam as a publisher,” said John Cooney, Director of Premium Games at Kongregate.

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Marketing May 14, 2017
To Booth or Not to Booth: The Key Rules of Trade Show Marketing

Should trade shows be included in your marketing mix? Is it worth the cost? There is not an easy answer, as there are a lot of considerations to weigh. In this post we will examine some of the core “rules” we’ve identified when considering attending a trade show. We will focus primarily on business to consumer (B2C) shows such as PAX. Kongregate has taken part in PAX East in 2014 & 2016 and the GameStop Expo for 6 years, which is their version of PAX (GameStop is Kongregate’s parent company). Based on our experience, here are some of the key elements to be aware of when considering a trade show presence: Audience The audience is highly targeted & valuable. You will only reach a fraction of the total show attendees. There is no question that the right trade shows can attract a highly targeted audience. Find out what companies have attended in the past, looking for those that align with your customers. Are these companies going back year after year? If they were “one and done” then maybe

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Kongregate News May 11, 2017
Dungeon Crawling Goodness Comes to Mobile in Bit Heroes

Descend into a nostalgic 8-bit adventure in Bit Heroes, now available free on iPhone, iPad, & Android! A Kongregate.com standout, Bit Heroes has been charming players with its strategic turn-based gameplay, robust multiplayer features, hundreds of pieces of loot, and unique pets like floating pizzas and tiny unicorns. This live synchronous world is a true shared experience for players across platforms and across the globe. Originally started as a side project among three friends, the full game is being developed by Nevada-based indie developer Juppiomenz. It’s a deep RPG with tons of loot to find, upgrade, and evolve into powerful weapons & gear. Players can also upgrade their power by recruiting monsters, and even past bosses, that they have defeated to fight with them. In addition, Bit Heroes includes a compelling Guild system, Raids, weekly events, and PvP for hours of additional content. Players that compete in the Player vs. Player Arena can fight both friends and foes for epic loot, and the top PvP player will be immortalized in each player’s town square for the ultimate

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Kongregate News May 05, 2017
Animation Throwdown Is Now on Steam, Freakin’ Sweet!

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!” You read that right, everyone’s favorite collectible card game is now available free on Steam. Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards brings popular characters from Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Futurama, American Dad, and King of the Hill together for a no-holds-barred card battling game. Animation Throwdown was co-developed by two of our favorite developers, Chinzilla & Synapse. Both indie developers bring a ton of experience with collectible card games to the table. San Jose-based developer Chinzilla created Little Alchemist, while Chicago’s Synapse Games developed Spellstone, Global Assault, and one of our biggest Kongregate.com hits, Tyrant Unleashed. In the game, players select a character from their favorite franchise and receive a selection of collectible cards featuring characters and items from that animated series. As they progress through the game, they’ll collect additional cards from each franchise to build the ultimate deck of characters. From Peter Griffin and Bender to Tina Belcher and Hank Hill, players can customize their deck to reflect their personal play style. The Steam version of Animation Throwdown will include Steam Achievements,

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Engineering Apr 27, 2017
Unity WebGL Memory Optimization: Part Deux

Now that the Unity WebPlayer is mostly a thing of the past, making sure your Unity WebGL content runs smoothly is more important than ever. The main pain point that we hear from developers relates to the dreaded “out of memory” errors that end users encounter when trying to play WebGL games. This is a particularly frustrating issue for players using 32-bit versions of browsers, since they are much less likely to have a large contiguous block of free memory for the Unity heap. This article will cover some more tips and tricks for diagnosing and resolving memory-related issues with your Unity WebGL game. Monitoring Memory Usage When profiling and optimizing your Unity WebGL game, it is important to keep track of multiple kinds of memory usage. The first is the Unity heap, which defaults to 256MB and can be changed in the Publishing Settings interface under “WebGL Memory Size.” We touched on some optimization techniques for this chunk of memory (and why you want to keep it as small as possible) in a previous blog post. To reiterate, the

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Game Development Apr 25, 2017
Juicy Beast: All the Tools We Use to Make Games

This week, we're hosting a guest blog post from Juicy Beast! We receive a lot of emails about the tools we use to make our games, so we thought it’d be easier to just list them all here for you curious folks out there. Photoshop We mostly use Photoshop for UI work and everything “branding” and “marketing”. It’s obviously a standard, so no news here. One trick we use a lot is “Generate > Image Assets”, which automatically exports all your layers to PNGs if they’re named correctly. You can also customize the size, quality and file type of the exported image. It’s magic. Illustrator We use Illustrator every time we need to come up with a new logo, either for one of our games or to refresh the Juicy Beast one (for the 100th time). We occasionally stray from Illustrator for a more hand-drawn look, like with the Knightmare Tower logo and Toto Temple Deluxe logo, but even then, we start in Illustrator to sketch things up quickly, as it tends to handle type more easily

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Kongregate News Apr 20, 2017
Banish Your Case of the Mondays with Office Space: Idle Profits!

We re-teamed with Ultrabit, the creators of Kong favorites Raid Brigade and Pocket Politics, and FOXNext Games to bring Mike Judge’s 1999 cult film to the small screen in Office Space: Idle Profits, available for free today on iOS and Android. Now office workers around the world can tap tap tap their way to an early retirement and really stick it to The Man... LUMBERGH. “I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.” You’ll start the game as a lowly Initech worker trying to make ends meet when you learn of your impending layoff. You decide to strike first and team up with Peter, Samir, and Michael Bolton to devise a virus that steals pennies from different departments within the company. As you upload the virus to each department, you’ll unlock new floors to infect, and start saving for your early retirement. “Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.” “I wouldn't say I’ve been *missing* it, Bob!” As you continue your quest for revenge,

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Marketing Apr 13, 2017
Mobile Art Testing Guide

Should I Do a Marketing Art Test? Early marketing testing allows you to gain insights into how well your game's creative performs during player acquisition. There are two main reasons to run an art test: The game’s art is not entirely decided and the team is looking for art direction. To determine how marketable an established style is. It’s important to note that if you aren’t willing to change anything, it’s not worth running a test! What do I want to learn? Narrow down your art test to 1 goal. You can run multiple tests if you wish to learn multiple things, but never try to cram a bunch of items into one test or you are likely to invalidate your results. There are several different things you can test; I’ve focused on the main four below. What theme works best for my art style? When testing a theme, try to keep everything else in the picture as close as possible. Notice how each image below has 4 characters in a similar grouping. It’s

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