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Kongregate News
Animation Throwdown Celebrating One Year of Bird Being the Word and Touching Butts

It’s official: Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards is a year old -- freakin’ sweet! Launched last September 15th, the game has been a huge project for us at Kongregate and we’re happy that it’s been so well-received! To celebrate this big milestone, we put together an awesome new update including a mythic Bob Belcher, new heroes, and a 1-year anniversary gift for all our amazing players. Thanks for your support throughout this last year, and we’re looking forward to bringing you even more awesome content

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Marketing
Direct vs. Agency: The Complicated World of Influencer Marketing

So, you want to get YouTubers and Twitch streamers playing your game, but aren’t sure where to start? First off, you should ask yourself if your game is YouTube-able. Think you’ve got that covered and want to get started, but aren’t sure if you should get an agency or try reaching out to influencers directly? Then you’re in the right place. Knowing whether to go Direct or through an Agency is a big question and depending on your situation, there might not be a clear-cut answer.

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Developer Spotlight
Castaway Cove Q&A: How Synapse's New Tidal Idle Came to Be

We sat down with the co-founder of Synapse Games, Alex Reeve, to explore their newest launch Castaway Cove, an idle game set on a far-off deserted island. Synapse is responsible for hit titles like Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards, Spellstone, and Tyrant Unleashed. When not developing games, he’s busy playing Dominions 4 and XCOM. KONG: Even though many people reading here on Kongregate may be aware of Synapse and the games you have developed over the years, do you mind reintroducing yourself? What is the short history of

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Kongregate News Sep 15, 2017
Animation Throwdown Celebrating One Year of Bird Being the Word and Touching Butts

It’s official: Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards is a year old -- freakin’ sweet! Launched last September 15th, the game has been a huge project for us at Kongregate and we’re happy that it’s been so well-received! To celebrate this big milestone, we put together an awesome new update including a mythic Bob Belcher, new heroes, and a 1-year anniversary gift for all our amazing players. Thanks for your support throughout this last year, and we’re looking forward to bringing you even more awesome content in the future! Update Animation Throwdown today on iOS and Android and read more about the game’s new features below! Mythic Bob Bob has been added to the Mythic lineup, but don't rush to the store just yet! Mythic Bob will ONLY be available via events. We've added information about Bob here. Swole Club and Swole Challenge A new event is coming to Throwdown! Compete in the Swole Club to earn upgrades to your heroes. Swole Club is a long-term event where you can earn Gun Show Tickets. Use

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Marketing Sep 08, 2017
Direct vs. Agency: The Complicated World of Influencer Marketing

So, you want to get YouTubers and Twitch streamers playing your game, but aren’t sure where to start? First off, you should ask yourself if your game is YouTube-able. Think you’ve got that covered and want to get started, but aren’t sure if you should get an agency or try reaching out to influencers directly? Then you’re in the right place. Knowing whether to go Direct or through an Agency is a big question and depending on your situation, there might not be a clear-cut answer. So here are some of my tips for knowing what’s best for your situation. 1 vs. 100: Are My Emails Falling into a Black Hole? You’re on a shoestring budget, but want to get your game out there? That’s not a problem, but be prepared to invest a lot of hours into outreach and relationship-building. First things first, influencers hate spammers. Don’t pull a list of 5,000 influencer email addresses off the internet and send them a mass email. YouTube and Twitch are very tight

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Developer Spotlight Sep 05, 2017
Castaway Cove Q&A: How Synapse's New Tidal Idle Came to Be

We sat down with the co-founder of Synapse Games, Alex Reeve, to explore their newest launch Castaway Cove, an idle game set on a far-off deserted island. Synapse is responsible for hit titles like Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards, Spellstone, and Tyrant Unleashed. When not developing games, he’s busy playing Dominions 4 and XCOM. KONG: Even though many people reading here on Kongregate may be aware of Synapse and the games you have developed over the years, do you mind reintroducing yourself? What is the short history of Synapse? ALEX: Sure! We started making Facebook games way back in 2008. The first of our games to gain a significant amount of traction was called War Metal, which was a multiplayer web RPG game set in a dark, futuristic world. It was a lot of fun to work on, so we ended up making a spin-off/sequel called War Metal: Tyrant. This was a CCG built in the same world. We ended up launching this on Kongregate, and we fell in love with Kongregate and the community right away.

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Mobile Publishing Aug 31, 2017
Go on a Tropical Adventure in Castaway Cove

We at Kongregate are excited to announce today's launch of Castaway Cove, a tropical island-themed idle mobile game from Synapse Games! Marooned on a deserted island, players in Castaway Cove are tasked with collecting survivors to help find food and resources, explore the mysteries of their new island home, and build a tropical paradise. The fifth mobile game collaboration between Kongregate & Synapse Games, Castaway Cove is the first game to delve into the idle genre, mixing traditional idle mechanics with a robust collection system where players send survivors out to explore the island, collecting food and resources to upgrade their village. Players can also compete in special limited-time events to unlock rare survivors with special skills who work harder and faster than normal villagers. Eventually players will even collect enough wealth to set sail from the island and move on to bigger and better things! “The creation process for Castaway Cove was a bit of a new adventure for us,” said Alex Reeve, co-founder and CEO of Synapse Games. “With Kongregate’s help, we tested multiple art styles, gameplay

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Talks Aug 28, 2017
Casual Connect Seattle 2017: Did That Publisher Just Ghost Me?

Earlier this month, Kongregate's Mel Montano gave a talk at Casual Connect in Seattle about publisher and developer relations in the modern age. Check it out below! Casual Connect Seattle 2017: Did That Publisher Just Ghost Me? from Kongregate

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Guest Post Aug 24, 2017
Guest Post: Growing a Gaming Community (Before You Have Players)

This article was written by Nathan Lovato and originally posted on GameAnalytics.com. When you get started with social networks, it’s tough. Nobody follows you. Nobody reads you. Nobody knows you! How do other game developers get those thousands of followers? 2 years ago, no one knew me either. I was terrible at communication, and I didn’t like it. Back then, I had failed a company, largely due to a lack of online presence. And today? Not only do I enjoy the exchanges with the community every day: I learned to communicate the hard way and it paid off. With a niche concept in game design education, I’ve got 30 000 Youtube subscribers, 50 more every day, and companies who come to me with job offers. Thanks to them all, I’m fully independent. When it comes to getting visibility, there’s no short answer. No definitive formula to drive the people’s interest. It’s hard, it takes time, and it’s a unique skill you must develop and hone. That’s why we got in

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Analytics Aug 17, 2017
Don’t Rush Your A/B Test!

If you have been working in game development for a while I have no doubt that you’ve used A/B testing at least once. It’s a powerful tool, allowing you to check various hypotheses with data before introducing any changes to the entire game’s user base. There is no space for gut-feeling here; we should rely only on pure numbers. Sounds pretty straightforward -- could anything go wrong? Apparently, it could. In the world of A/B testing there are a lot of pitfalls. Here is a list of the most common ones: Running the A/B test without a clear hypothesis and metric to measure Jumping to conclusions before getting statistical significance Uneven distribution in the variants between geos, platforms and whatnot Incorrect implementation of the A/B test conditions Issues with the correct assignment of an A/B test group Too short of an A/B test (i.e. one day only), resulting in biased data In this article we will be focusing on the issues caused by rushed decisions. Here at Kongregate, we care

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Kongregate News Aug 16, 2017
The Trail: Frontier Challenge Is Now on Steam

Journey across land and sea in an epic adventure in The Trail: Frontier Challenge, now available on Steam! From legendary game developer Peter Molyneux and 22Cans, The Trail: Frontier Challenge takes players to a new world where they’ll collect, craft, and trade in an unexplored land as they journey to Eden Falls, a bustling frontier town. As you amass fortune and notoriety, you'll work together with other players to build a thriving community in Eden Falls and ultimately become the Mayor of the most successful town in the new frontier. The Trail was originally launched on mobile, but has been completely redesigned for a wholly PC audience with new challenges, character skill trees, and more strategic gameplay. PC players will also have to contend with the weather; extreme cold will require travelers to eat additional food, while muddy terrain can slow their progress. Play The Trail: Frontier Challenge on Steam today! The game is regularly priced at $14.99, but is currently 10% off in celebration of its launch. For more information on The Trail, follow the official game

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Game Development Aug 10, 2017
Exploring Motivation: Why People Play Games for Years

Retention is the most important metric for a free-to-play mobile game’s long-term business outlook. If you want to understand the link between a player’s lifetime value (how much money they ever spend in the game) and how long they continue to play your game, Emily Greer gave a GDC talk in 2013 absolutely packed with web data. This post will expand on that talk by highlighting some game systems in Kongregate’s mobile publishing portfolio that we’ve seen successfully drive long-term player retention. It will also highlight the core motivations created by each game and discuss how that system ties into that motivation. An excellent resource on the subject is Quantic Foundry's 2017 GDC talk on the anatomy of player motivations. AdVenture Capitalist offers a simple promise that any fan of idle games can appreciate: click more, get more powerful. Quantic Foundry's talk highlighted idle games in particular as incredible motivators for people who are motivated by the accumulation of power and the desire to complete every quest and collect every achievement. There are hundreds of idle

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Kongregate News Aug 09, 2017
Kongregate Announces $10 Million PC & Console Fund to Expand Cross-Platform Publishing Initiative

San Francisco, CA (August 9, 2017) -- Kongregate, a leading game publisher, today announced a new $10 million initiative to help fund promising PC and console titles from independent developers to continue Kongregate’s expansion into cross-platform publishing. This fund is inclusive of both paid and free-to-play titles. This fund complements Kongregate’s push onto PC and console, and provides independent developers customized marketing, financial assistance, and production support. As both a premium and free-to-play publisher, Kongregate positions itself to provide and nurture a wider group of indie developers and their titles. Specific benefits to developers include: Platform relationship management Marketing support including paid UA, PR, and social influencer campaigns Game analytics and performance benchmarking Expo presence at major and developer-local events Design and build consulting QA and certification support Localization and technology expertise Kongregate launched its first original title, GRIDD: Retroenhanced, on Steam and Xbox One and is following it up with Peter Molyneux’s The Trail: Frontier Challenge and Super Fancy Pants Adventure, based on the popular web game franchise, both coming later this summer. Both games are

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Engineering Aug 03, 2017
Death to Flashy

Let me tell you a tale about an initiative to reduce Flash dependencies on what used to be a "Flash gaming" site. This is the story about a large-scale project with the best possible outcome being that users don't notice any changes, and the worst possible outcome of everything breaking horribly. This, my friends, is the story of Kongregate's Death to Flashy initiative. In the Beginning When we first started building Kongregate, we didn't have to worry much about whether or not users had Flash installed. It was very much ubiquitous, and since you couldn't play most of the games on the site without it we could build features based on the assumption that Flash was available. We built our chat client in Flash, we created APIs for both ActionScript 2 and 3, games implemented them, and all was good. For a very long time, the vast majority of the games on Kongregate were made with Flash, even most of our externally hosted "iframe" games. Some of these external games eventually needed a way to interact with Kongregate via JavaScript,

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Marketing Aug 02, 2017
How to Market a Game Profitably

Jeff Gurian, Kongregate's VP of Marketing and Ad Monetization, recently did a podcast with Appmasters, a mobile marketing agency specializing in growth hacking for independent developers. Jeff talks with Appmasters founder Steve Young about a wide range of topics including how to effectively market a mobile game, ad monetization tips, the rigorous marketability testing Kongregate performs, and what Kongregate looks for in both games and developers they publish titles with. The full Appmasters podcast can be found here.

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