Kongregate Developers Blog (Page 3)

Kongregate News Aug 09, 2018

Insights from Kartridge Developer Survey

Part of our philosophy when building Kartridge was to be a platform that served the needs of both players and developers. In addition to focusing our efforts on making a player-friendly platform, we’ve also been making sure to treat developers fairly, which involves regularly talking with developers to find out what tools and features they need. In this way we can try our best to tailor the platform to the service of developers rather than forcing them to conform to us. This is why we invited a small group of indies to join an early advisory council and why we have been showing off early builds at conferences while taking lots of notes. As part of this endeavor, we recently sent out an email to everyone who signed up for our Kartridge developers update emails (which you can do at https://kartridge.com/developers/). To our delight we had a fantastic response rate, even for the somewhat long survey. So first off, a big thank you to everyone who took the time to fill one out! The survey turned

Mobile Publishing Aug 07, 2018

Taking a Swim with Sharkbite Games: A 'BeSwitched' Q&A

KONG: Today we are chatting with Sharkbite Games, creators of Kongregate’s latest mobile release BeSwitched (available now on Android and iOS devices). Sharkbite Games, founded in 2016 and staffed by industry veterans, is led by Rick Ellis and Susan Mackey-Ellis. For those who are unfamiliar with the startup, can you tell us a bit about your backgrounds and how Sharkbite Games came to be? RICK: Our studio is made up of game industry veterans, people who have been making games for upwards of 25 years. Our current team has all worked together in the past on various projects so we don’t have many of the startup “growing pains” trying to learn each other’s personalities and strengths/weakness, which has been nice. Individuals on the team have worked on some of the industry’s most amazing and popular titles: Steam, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Guild Wars 2, F.E.A.R., Condemned, Paradise Bay, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, and Deer Hunter to name a few. As a group, we decided that we wanted to build highly social games

Mobile Publishing Jul 31, 2018

Sharkbite Games Brews Match 3 Fun with 'BeSwitched'

Help Lily Defeat the Evil Warlock in Kongregate’s First Match 3 Release Kongregate, in collaboration with Sharkbite Games, has launched BeSwitched on iOS and Android devices. BeSwitched marks the first casual and Match 3 game release for Kongregate and follows Lily, a magical witch, through her Match 3 adventure. Lily's castle has been enchanted by an evil wizard and is in disrepair. Players must adventure through the lands to set her captured friends free and fix up her castle to be in tip-top shape. BeSwitched features over 200 levels, baby dragons, collectible items, and is available now on iOS and Android devices.

Marketing Jul 24, 2018

How Ad Networks Take Advantage of Blind Environments

20 Buzzwords & Other Crap Ad Networks Get Away With Buzzwords are abundant these days. In pop culture it is all about crypto, blockchain, and ICOs. The mobile ads space is no stranger to buzzwords either. A few years ago it was all about "the brands" that were supposedly coming to revolutionize the mobile ad landscape and boost CPMs (they have not). Now we’ve moved onto terms like header bidding, programmatic, flattened waterfalls, and RTB, which will be the next big things on mobile to drive up CPMs. But will they? The answer is that it very much depends on whom you ask and your approach to ads. We Have All Been Getting Screwed... I recently saw a few studies about how programmatic (or header bidding/RTB, same things) boosted CPMs for advertisers by up to 30%. On one hand, that is great news! A new tech (albeit one that has been around on the web for years now) is helping to make the mobile marketplace more efficient and competitive. That is always a welcomed sign, right?

Web Jul 17, 2018

June 2018 Contest Winners

Each month, developers win cash prizes for having the highest-rated new games! Click here for official rules. Check out the official contest page here. TOP WINNERS 1st Place: $1,750 Medieval Angel 5 -My Destiny- (Part 1) by VasantJ 2nd Place: $1,250 Tough Growth by FeatherHatGames 3rd Place: $1,000 Tales of Nebezem: Four Fates by Beranek 4th Place: $750 Up Left Out by targaciej 5th Place: $500 Press The Button by truefire We reached out to the top 5 winners to ask about their inspirations and experiences developing last month's top games on Kongregate! First-Place Winner VasantJ, developer of Medieval Angel 5 -My Destiny- (Part 1): First of all, I would like to thank everyone who has supported the series so far and I hope you would continue to do so in the future. Medieval Cop and Medieval Angel wouldn't exist without your support. The series started off as a simple Detective game but flourished into something much more. I see many people requesting that the original Detective style be brought back. Fortunately for you guys, Medieval Cop

Talks Jul 10, 2018

Ad Mediation: Maximizing Your Mobile Ad Revenues - Jeff Gurian (Mobile Growth Summit '18)

What is Ad Mediation and how is it impacting your business? Jeff Gurian discusses maximizing your mobile ad revenue at this year's MGS New York 2018 hosted at the Paley Center for Media.

Guest Post Jun 28, 2018

7 Things You Should Be Aware of Before You Make Your First Game

This week's guest post is from plarium.com, the home of top online MMO games. Making a game is challenging, but thanks to modern technology and software development, anyone with the passion and dedication to learning the trade can make something playable and (more importantly) enjoyable. However, it takes a long time, and a lot of experience before the average person can start creating something people will want to invest a fair amount of money and time in. We all dream of creating the next Elder Scrolls epic or Far Cry adventure, but the truth is you need to start small. This means curbing your enthusiasm appropriately and focusing on a project which you know you can handle to the best of your ability. Your first game will have a lot of bugs; it might not even be very playable. But none of that matters -- at least for now -- you just need to see that you can actually manage to complete a full game. So whether it is a small team of individuals working from a small office

Web Jun 12, 2018

May 2018 Contest Winners

Each month, developers win cash prizes for having the highest-rated new games! Click here for official rules. Check out the official contest page here. TOP WINNERS 1st Place: $1,750 Three Goblets by adventale 2nd Place: $1,250 Scalak by chomi3 3rd Place: $1,000 ZS Dead Detective - Roving Eyes by Lu_Muja 4th Place: $750 Hat Wizard 2 by taccommandeur 5th Place: $500 Faraday's Flaw by esthetix We reached out to the top 5 winners to ask about their inspirations and experiences developing last month's top games on Kongregate! First-Place Winner adventale, developer of Three Goblets: So, I have been developing games on and off for years. Most of them were RPG Maker games that never got finished. I learned a lot from them and decided to actually make a game that others will get to play -- that was Monster Clearer. After that, I decided to go big and make a truly large and awesome game... but that got canceled after eight months of development hell. With that, I wanted to share some tips I learned from

Kongregate News Jun 07, 2018

'GRIDD: Retroenhanced' Now Available on the Nintendo Switch

Kongregate has teamed up with the indie developers at Antab Studio to launch GRIDD: Retroenhanced on the Nintendo Switch. This marks the second Switch release for Kongregate and the first for the Italian indie developer, Antab Studio. GRIDD: Retroenhanced is an intense arcade-style shoot 'em up heavily influenced by '80s hacker culture and cyberpunk. Players will fly their ships through a computer system filled with an evolving set of glowing gates, obstacles, and enemies as they attempt to take down an unrelenting security mainframe in a nod to previous rogue computers of the cinema world. With its pulsing synthwave soundtrack by Melbourne-based musician Dream Fiend, and its early home computing style, GRIDD: Retroenhanced takes a classic era and evolves it into a modern arcade experience. GRIDD: Retroenhanced twists the tough-as-nails difficulty of classic arcade games by constantly adapting the difficulty to the player’s in-game performance. As players succeed and gain mastery of each element of the game, those elements become more difficult in future encounters. Likewise, obstacles too difficult to beat will relax until they reach just the right