Deep Dives
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DEEP DIVES
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A New Era of Self-Publishing
Reading Time: 20 minutes Earlier this year, Palworld took the world by storm. It became the biggest third-party game launch ever on Xbox Game Pass, dominated the Steam charts, and spawned a craze for monster taming not seen since Pokémon Go. What makes this story even more special is that Palworld’s developer Pocketpair is an independent studio without a…
New Horizons in Habit-Building Gamification
Reading Time: 37 minutes Gamification, in a nutshell, is taking gaming mechanics and applying them in a non-gaming context. The proper execution of gamification can help boost multiple metrics, from engagement to monetization. According to Duolingo’s former Chief Product Officer Jorge Mazal, leveraging gamification helped Duolingo 4.5x its DAU. In this deep dive, we look at the growing genre…
The 4X Evolution of Century Games
Reading Time: 22 minutes No, this is not a repost of last year’s Frozen City deconstruction, but it is about another Century Games hit that tasks players to survive in a frozen environment: Whiteout Survival. Both games look very much alike, especially during the first sessions. If you’re thinking there’s something fishy going on with this likeness, you are…
The State of UGC Games (2024)
Reading Time: 27 minutes Big thanks to David Taylor for spearheading this essay — and to our OGRI partners for making it possible! To explore working with Naavik and David on your UGC games consulting needs, please contact us here. We’d love to chat. It was a massive year for user-generated content (“UGC”) games in 2023. New platforms launched,…
Revolutionizing Play: The Emerging Trends in Backend Game Services
Reading Time: 14 minutes In the past, games were self-contained adventures, existing solely within the confines of a cartridge or CD. Whether it was a pixelated rescue mission or navigating barrels tossed by an enraged ape, the gaming experience was limited to the physical medium. Today, however, games have evolved into expansive, interconnected universes, constantly updated and simultaneously experienced…
Dave the Diver: Nexon’s Approach to “Fun First”
Reading Time: 27 minutes Today we have a deep dive with Dave the Diver! Read on and find out how this feel-good smashed the charts in Steam. We have also prepared our regular game of the week at the bottom of this newsletter.
June’s Journey: The Quintessential Hidden Object Game
Reading Time: 21 minutes
June’s Journey recently celebrated its 5-year anniversary and hit the $500M revenue milestone. How has this game been able to surpass all other hidden object games? Let’s dig in and find out.
Web3 Market Update – Q3 2023
Reading Time: 30 minutes This quarterly web3 report emerges in the middle of the crypto winter that began in early 2022. There are still a number of first generation web3 games hanging on with a mix of bots and die-hards, but there have been very few impactful game releases for some time. We’ve also seen a pull-back in venture funding, and many ambitious games are still expectedly taking a long time to see the light of day.
The Evolution of Hybridcasual
Reading Time: 32 minutes In January 2019 a notorious article predicted that the then-booming hypercasual genre would eventually become unsustainable. More than a year later, Apple announced IDFA deprecation. The fallout has kept a few of us here at Naavik busy all the way through 2020 and 2021. The clearest way out, especially for the most established hypercasual companies,…
Unofficial Realms: The Rise of Dedicated Game Servers
Reading Time: 12 minutes Gen Alpha’s Gaming
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