Freemium Mobile Games: Design & Monetization - Softcover

Freemium Mobile Games: Design & Monetization reveals the essence of what freemium games are and provides a framework of best practices and in-depth game design schematics for developers to follow. Although the interaction of brilliant game design and monetization mechanisms based on scientific psychological research has successfully stormed the top grossing mobile charts, the roadmap to success remains elusive... until now. Freemium Mobile Games: Design & Monetization is a detailed guide for the new wave of gaming industry professionals that have to embrace the overwhelming trend of games as a service. The free games that already dominate the billion mobile market, have stolen a lot of the industry's brightest away from console and desktop game production, but this new mobile playground also has new base rules. The book frames this ongoing industry shift as the substitution of AAA publishing with HHH polishing and outlines for developers the new path to success. Freemium Mobile Games: Design & Monetization is also suitable for casual gamers who enjoy playing Clash of Clans in the mornings, Puzzle & Dragons in the evenings and Candy Crush Saga in-between. Examples from these and many more iOS and Android games are employed, to illustrate both best practices and poor game design decisions that can make or break the user experience. Many of the psychological mechanisms exploited by freemium game design to keep casual gamers playing and spending are demystified, which allows users to identify and counteract exploitative biases such as priming, loss aversion, anchoring, sunk cost fallacy, and many others.

Dimitar Draganov is a game design and monetization expert with background in economics, statistics and psychology. After spending his youth as a professional gamer in the strategy, shooter and moba genres he got inspired by the rise of freemium and has spent the last five years building a career solely focused on the mobile gaming space. Dimitar's vast hands-on experience with game design, monetization, predictive analytics and CRM systems during pre-production, production and live operations of mobile games makes him an extraordinary source of know-how and in-depth understanding of the free-to-play business model that currently dominates mobile. Dimitar's formal education includes a BA in Integrated Social Sciences from Jacobs University Bremen, an MA in Economics from Brown University and an M.Sc. in Probability and Statistics from Sofia University.