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Game Development
HTML5 Is Here

HTML5 has been hailed as the future of gaming in web browsers for years. Back in 2011, however, HTML5 was running into headwinds due to issues with performance and compatibility. There was general optimism about the technology, but few were willing to adopt it for their own games. Things became more urgent recently, though, with the deprecation of NPAPI plugins (i.e. Unity, Java, Silverlight, etc.) and an ominous cloud hanging over the long-term viability of Flash. So where are we now? For context on the following data, Kongregate.com

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Mobile Publishing
Challenge Accepted! "The Trail: Frontier Challenge" Coming Soon to Steam

Are you ready to discover the undiscovered? Are you ready to climb the tallest mountains, wear the finest clothes, and earn a fortune beyond compare? Then welcome to the New World! Welcome to Peter Molyneux’s The Trail: Frontier Challenge, launching this summer on Steam! The Trail: Frontier Challenge is an innovative game in which players from across the globe can explore together as they collect, craft, trade, and journey to Eden Falls, a frontier town just beyond a vast mountain range. As players amass fortune and notoriety, they work

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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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Mobile Publishing Jul 20, 2017
Challenge Accepted! "The Trail: Frontier Challenge" Coming Soon to Steam

Are you ready to discover the undiscovered? Are you ready to climb the tallest mountains, wear the finest clothes, and earn a fortune beyond compare? Then welcome to the New World! Welcome to Peter Molyneux’s The Trail: Frontier Challenge, launching this summer on Steam! The Trail: Frontier Challenge is an innovative game in which players from across the globe can explore together as they collect, craft, trade, and journey to Eden Falls, a frontier town just beyond a vast mountain range. As players amass fortune and notoriety, they work together to build a thriving community in Eden Falls and ultimately become the leader of the most successful town in the new frontier. The Trail was originally launched on mobile, but has been completely rebuilt and redesigned for a wholly PC audience by including challenges, character skill upgrade trees, and more strategic gameplay. “Our goal with The Trail: Frontier Challenge was to take the core gameplay and narrative of The Trail on mobile, and reimagine it for Steam players,” said Peter Molyneux, Creative Director, 22cans. “PC players are looking for

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Game Development Jul 19, 2017
HTML5 Is Here

HTML5 has been hailed as the future of gaming in web browsers for years. Back in 2011, however, HTML5 was running into headwinds due to issues with performance and compatibility. There was general optimism about the technology, but few were willing to adopt it for their own games. Things became more urgent recently, though, with the deprecation of NPAPI plugins (i.e. Unity, Java, Silverlight, etc.) and an ominous cloud hanging over the long-term viability of Flash. So where are we now? For context on the following data, Kongregate.com has had 500-1500 games uploaded every month for nearly a decade, with over 100,000 games to date. We’ve often been known as a “Flash” platform because Flash dominated other technologies, but we’ve actually been an open, technology-agnostic web platform since 2007, also supporting Java and Shockwave early on. We were the first platform to officially support Unity, long before it was ubiquitous, starting in 2011, and we also built native support for HTML5 in 2013. All of this puts us in a unique position to have a

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Game Development Jul 06, 2017
Working with Intellectual Property: It's Freakin' Sweet, I Tell Ya H'what

Over the last 7 years I’ve worked on a variety of Facebook and mobile games; a handful of them were with different celebrities and intellectual properties (IPs). I've been working on Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards at Kongregate for the past two years. I joined during pre-production, saw it through launch, and continue to support it through live servicing. Animation Throwdown is a card-battling game that incorporates the worlds of 5 animated properties from Fox: Family Guy, American Dad, Futurama, Bob's Burgers, and King of the Hill. Before Kongregate, I was a producer on Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff at TinyCo. Before that, I worked as a designer and producer on a variety of projects with celebrities and brands at Grab Games: Baby and Me (working with Brooke Burke and ModernMom.com), Brad Paisley World for Facebook, and a few other games that were never released. Partnership First of all, these projects are partnerships. You get to work on amazing properties that have a fan base who cares deeply about that property and, if you’re lucky,

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Analytics Jun 29, 2017
Retention Primer

Retention is an important metric to look at when predicting the success of a game. The general definition of retention is how many players have stayed in a game on a given day relative to when they first started playing, but as you'll see below, there are several ways to calculate this. When evaluating games, retention is one of the key pieces of information that we're looking at. Strong retention coupled with strong monetization is the real winning combo, but strong retention won't mean the same thing for every game. The baseline of good metrics for a CCG will be very different from the baseline of metrics for an idle game, but before comparing across different genres or games, you have to understand what's being measured. It is important to understand that different analytics platforms calculate this differently. A true comparison can only happen when the calculation is the same; due to this it is important to know the source of your data. It is also worth noting that different platforms will label these differently. Hard Retention (Kong Preferred) How

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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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