If you have landed on this page, you are probably a mobile games developer with big ambitions. You ultimately want to have a hit game that will reward you both creatively and financially.
Well, that’s why we created Coda. We aim to help smaller studios and individual game developers create games that will prove popular and lucrative.
In some ways, the odds are stacked against you. The bigger studios not only have significant amounts of money to spend on perfecting games, they also have the financial muscle to market them effectively.
If you are an indie game developer, you need to be super savvy to compete. That’s where we come in. We can help you to find the right game to create, perfect that game, and ultimately monetise it. We passionately believe in indie developers, and we know that our technology will give them a chance to compete with the big boys.
When indie game developers talk to us, they invariably ask very similar questions. Here are five we get asked all the time.
1. What kind of help can you give me?
From our experience in the hyper-casual industry, the first stage of development is actually the most critical but it also tends to be the biggest barrier. Unless you are strategic at the ideation stage, you are blindly betting. No matter the quality of the game you build, your efforts are largely futile. At the end of the day, you need to build a game that attracts users.
- Finding a game idea based on market data
Our Market Intelligence tool offers a comprehensive, informed view of all of the games that are in the app stores, including trends and top charts. Developers can use the dashboard to easily pinpoint and zero in on games and mechanics that are doing well.
We take this one step further with our Coda Partner Program. We’ve built the technology to more systematically identify game ideas that have the greatest potential to become a hit game. Each week, we share the latest hit game ideas with our partner studios and developers. This makes it possible for them to direct their efforts on games that increase their chances of publishing. Our goal with the program is to enable talented developers to focus on what they do best -- creating great gameplay.
- Testing your game idea for free
Because hyper-casual is fast and constantly evolving, developers must be quick to prototype and test. In order to make testing more readily available, we have self-serve testing on the platform. Coda’s self-serve testing lets developers directly upload their gameplay video and run their own marketability test. We cover the testing costs and share the results once the test is completed.
2. How do you help produce my game?
Once you have your game idea, we can work with you to ensure that the game you produce is as sticky as possible. Launching a successful mobile game requires multiple integrations, adaptors, and gaming modules. We have developed the Coda SDK, a Unity plugin that handles everything from Attribution and Analytics to Monetization, all in one go. You don’t need to have in-depth knowledge of all the different SDKs. The Coda SDK also delivers a better experience for players by reducing bugs and increasing the quality of your game. Again, we want to take care of as much of the games production process as possible, leaving you to focus on the creative component of the game.
3. Can you help me fund my game?
This isn’t something we do, but we can certainly help. We can introduce you to companies like Fast Forward Games. This is an initiative that aims to bring gaming CEOs, angel investors and VCs together to jump start investment opportunities for developers and studios. They offer their time, expertise, network and experience to help accelerate the funding process for gaming start-ups.
There are other ways of securing funding. Some countries, especially post Covid19, have business development funds which you can use to invest in your games. There are also the crowdfunding options with sites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter. If your game has potential, but needs financial backing, we can point you in the right direction.
4. How do you monetise my game?
Many times, we see game developers focused more on their game construction and not on the way they might make money out of it. Securing contracts with lots of ad networks can be time consuming. Coda rationalises this process. We have a simple plug and play monetisation solution which has MoPub as the mediation layer and provides access to 15 ad networks, including AdMob, Ironsource, Facebook Audience Network, Vungle and Unity. We also work with the companies to incorporate all types of in-game advertising, from standard display ads to more integrated deliveries.
The Coda SDK uses machine learning to ensure that your game is as successful and profitable as possible. By tapping into player activity in real-time, we can determine the best time to serve an ad for each player. We also advise on which types of ads are the most relevant for your game. Is it just interstitials, or can you insert rewarded ads and how can they help your game become more sticky? We can predict player response and plan to deliver ads when they are most likely to click on them and most likely to continue playing your game. Read more about the technology behind how we optimize and monetize your game in our machine learning Masterclass series.
5. Can you tell my game is going to be successful?
In short, yes. We will have a very good idea about whether or not your game is going to be a success or not within hours of it hitting the app store, thanks to our advanced machine learning technology. We have developed a Lifetime Value (LTV) model, which enables us to calculate how much a game is likely to make.
As soon as the game is published on the app store, we closely monitor its performance and quickly gauge its potential.
The prediction is made by a machine learning algorithm called a ‘Random Forest’. It calculates average user playtime and how many ads they will see in that time. It can then come up with a figure for how much the game will make.
If we see that the potential LTV is going to be high, then it makes sense to use our marketing resources to push players towards that game. We want the machine learning algorithm to suggest that a game will make more than we spend on it. When that is true, we can push that game forward much faster and acquire users more aggressively. You can read more about how the technology works in our Masterclass series.
Regardless of the size of your studio or skillset, Coda is determined to help you optimise and improve your game development processes. Our tools are designed to help empower developers to give you access to market intelligence and features that would normally only be reserved for larger players in the industry.
So if you have been developing a game, or would like to develop one, and need a partner to take care of the tasks that you are less experienced at, like monetisation and marketing, sign up to the Coda Platform and come and talk to us.
