October 2012
Beginner
336 pages
7h 51m
English
Content preview from Game Design Secrets
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Understanding the Anatomy of a Successful Facebook Game
My strong general advice to beginning Facebook game designers is to learn from the games on Facebook that have reached a provable success point. However, many developers associate total MAUs with success, when there are actually a number of other factors that go into a successful and profitable Facebook game.
To find these game design winners, I recommend using AppData.com, a website service founded by my sometime boss Justin Smith (see sidebar interview), which extracts Facebook game MAU and DAU (daily active user) activity into handy charts (see Figure 3-4). When reviewing the data, look for three factors, covered in the next three sections.
Figure 3-4: Successful Facebook game growth: MAU and DAU/MAU (Copyright 2012 Inside Network Inc., a division of WebMediaBrands. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from AppData.com.)
Growth or Strong Activity after Three Months
Thanks to cross-promotion and heavy advertising, new Facebook games, especially those from top developers, usually get a big growth spike at launch. But often, that’s not because people are really enjoying the game. The real test is how the game performs after the first three months, when cross-promotion and marketing generally has run its course. Then, you need to look at another metric.
Strong DAU/MAU Rates after Three Months
“DAU/MAU” refers to ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.