Mobile Games
topic on 4 shows · 9 statements across 8 episodes
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
Lenny's Podcast 
the a16z Podcast 
20VC
9 statements about Mobile Games, every show
Pincus: Zero of 40,000 new App Store games sustained top 50 ranks
“You know, there was something like 40,000 new games launched last year in the app store and zero, you know, became top 10 hits and zero even sustained top 25 or 50.”
Subscription models fail for mobile games due to long engagement lifespans
“The lifespan of that experience is much longer in time, and so it doesn't make sense to pay a subscription for something that, that gives you that much runway.”
Allebest: A mobile snow survival game made $400M in nine months
“There's just, there's a mobile game that launched literally last year in the last nine months that in that, in those nine months did four hundred million dollars in revenue, some kind of like snow survival game or something.”
Steve Zhao: Build for what users will want in two years
“One of the biggest lesson I learned from mobile games is you don't create what's popular today. Because by the time you're done, it's going to be 10 months too late. So our job is to figure out what do people want in a year or two.”
Chen: Mobile games require high monetization to sustain paid user acquisition
“Mobile games, you know, all the iOS games have been about, well, it's always going to be sort of, you know, paid install driven, so the monetization needs to be incredible, right? Needs to be free, and then monetization needs to, you know, you sort of are tryi…”
Narula: PC Platforms Like Steam Present Steep UX Barriers For Mobile Gamers
“A lot of people had previously played mobile games. And one of the requirements was to download the game from Steam in order to interact with it. These weren't like hardcore gamers. Just the click process in Steam was utterly alien to them. I mean, these are p…”
Minimalist character design broadens a game's mainstream audience appeal
“I always felt like the less character a game had, the more like a wider audience could almost project whatever they wanted onto it. So it was like, maybe you won't find the most hardcore fan, but it's going to appeal to such a broader sort of audience.”
Mobile games must launch with far more content than developers expect
“On mobile,
What we call consuming content happens so much faster.
So that means, like, when you release a game, don't have just, like, 10 levels.
Like, you need, like, an order of magnitude larger than that, because you'll be surprised how much people just …”
Wise: Mobile gaming startups no longer require venture capital
“If you launch a mobile game today, there are rigorous data models, which basically mean you don't need venture capital anymore. You know that there'll be certain targets you need to hit, and some growth investor or someone else will buy you.”