Marketing

About the game Streets of Rogue

In 2017 tinyBuild released Streets of Rogue, a unique visual successor to the hit game Punch Club. Streets of Rogue is remarkable for the variety of its game features and genre elements. The developers combined an intense top-down roguelike, a retro pixel art style, an atmosphere of irrepressible excitement, classic character levelling, and questing. The game revolves around playing through a series of randomly generated cities. This can be accomplished via brute force, stealth, or hacking — it’s up to you!

How and why the game needed to be localized

Streets of Rogue quickly garnered a warm reception from gamers and the press alike, so tinyBuild naturally decided to bring the game to a wider international audience.

Recently we at Alconost were producing several videos for games and, in the process of working with clients, we heard questions again that we had heard before: what should we show, should the video have a voiceover or not, how expensive is it to translate into multiple languages, what source materials do we need, how can we capture video of the screen of a mobile device… To answer these burning questions once and for all, we would like to share with you and give specific examples of how we make videos for games.

We think our experience will be useful both to anyone who is trying to produce video independently and to developers who are outsourcing creation of video for their games.

Written by Alconost

Nowadays, visual communication is crucial. So, companies that do not work on enhancing it, leave opportunities to capture more leads, and grow business. In this post, we will go through some useful tools for content editing and social media storytelling. Let's go!

In the previous article, we discussed the most important languages for app localization. Soon afterward we received several requests to share our perspective on the key languages for game localization. That’s why we came up with this new post.

We’ve analyzed localization languages from the perspective of return on investment.

There are numerous case studies, research projects, and forecasts regarding the most promising countries and languages for game localization. In this article, we’re going to examine the game language issue from the perspective of the most efficient allocation of your localization budget.

What are the highest- and lowest-priority objectives when it comes to game localization?

We suggest raising this question first before selecting localization languages. Why? Because, depending on the type of game you’re localizing, your business objectives, and your audience’s expectations, there are several levels of localization.

You can do the minimum required and stop at the first level, or you can go further with a step-by-step localization and maximize outreach.

The first thing to start with is the localization of keywords and game description for app stores. This alone might work perfectly well if your game has little to no text or voice and its interface design is fully compatible with the standards of the country you are targeting.

Next, if your game contains text-based instructions, you have no choice but to translate them. In addition, other design choices will also need adjustments in terms of colors, numbers, and other local standards.

Finally, voice-over, if present in the game, must be translated as well, or at least subtitled. Or you can fully complete the localization process by rerecording voice-over in your target languages, thereby providing the perfect user experience.

Written by Alconost

According to predictions of the analytical platform App Annie, interest in mobile apps will enjoy stable growth over the next four years. So, if you’re considering bringing your app to new markets, this is the time to do it.

During my two years as the localization manager, I came to understand that localization has its own rules, and knowing them can help you adapt any product for a new market quickly and competently. These principles will be useful for anyone who wants to localize an app but doesn’t know where to start.

1. Evaluate the potential

Start with the most important thing: figuring out which languages you need to localize your app into and determining whether or not localization is justified at all.

Here’s an example from my experience: Israel isn't a high-priority market for Badoo, but the app is localized into modern Hebrew. Moreover, only 6% of Israeli Badoo users actually run the app in Hebrew (as a comparison, 62.5% of Israeli users speak English). In this particular case, localization is justified even with these statistics, but a similar situation could represent a losing proposition for your app. So, study your market.

Attackers and defenders to face off in digital metropolis security challenge featuring real-world critical infrastructure and technologies.



Cybersecurity experts at Positive Technologies and Hack In The Box are inviting red and blue team security specialists to test their skills attacking and defending a full-scale modern city at The Standoff Cyberbattle held during HITB+ CyberWeek. This mock digital metropolis with full IT and OT infrastructure including traffic systems, electrical plants, and transportation networks will feature all the latest technologies used in actual critical infrastructure installations, allowing players to expose security issues and the impact they might have on the real world.

App localization statistics, case studies and analytics

The goal of every app developer, product manager, and marketing manager is to drive their app’s visibility and broaden its coverage. At the same time, this is also a way to approach the ultimate business goal of increasing monthly active users and revenue.

This brings us to the idea of app localization, which allows a product to reach new geographical regions and satisfy specific needs and user expectations. As such, localization must address multiple linguistic, cultural, regional, and religious considerations.

Written by Alconost

A/B test is not enough

There is a common opinion that A/B test is a universal, half-automatic tool that always helps to increase conversion, loyalty and UX. However misinterpretation of results or wrong sampling leads to the loss of loyal audience and decrease of margin. Why? A/B is based on the basic assumption that this sample is homogeneous and representative, scalability of results. In reality, the audience is heterogeneous — recall the “20/80” distribution for income. Heterogeneity means that sensitivity to A/B varies significantly within the sample.

Every manager knows what it is like to solve a problem. This is a daily activity for many people and it usually leads to the best outcomes. If you ignore or admit problems in your business, competitors can quickly pass you and your company will hang behind.

Any action that is aimed to solve a problem should identify this particular problem and its causes. Understanding the causes, you'll be able to set priorities and choose alternatives for the best solution, as well as directly implement this solution. The ability to solve internal and external problems timely and make responsible decisions is what managers should learn from the very start of their career. In this article, we’ll identify powerful problem-solving activities and analyze some effective techniques and exercises for teamwork.

Microgaming is justly considered a founding father of the online gambling industry as it created the world’s first online casino platform back in 1994. And the first mobile casino was launched in 2004, again by Microgaming. Over the years, the brand’s legendary casino products have gained a high-profile reputation.

Backlog prioritization requires simplification and weighting of tasks. Each one belongs to strategy like ads acquisition or CRO. We may consider turnover, operational costs, other metrics as input; profit margin, ROI — as output in case of retail. The perfect goal is to find 20/80 solution and focus resources on a single strategy at a time. Metrics tied to strategies gives the dimension of model. Sometimes unit economy relations are violated because of non-linearity. In practice it means low/insignificant correlation and poor regression. Example: it is impossible to separate acquisition and conversion — the quantity of acquisition affect its quality and vice versa. Decomposition of tasks/strategies assumes linear decomposition of nonlinear system. Besides nonlinear statistical evaluation of strategies is required when CJM can't be tracked or online/offline channels can't be separated.

Let's say, your website offers content, products, or services for people from different regions or countries who speak different languages. Search engines will probably count this as duplicate content, leading to low rankings.

Successful decisions are being achieved by the efforts of individuals. Their collaboration is the key to success. No matter if they have won a basketball champ or released a new software product.

Where does the team path to success begin? In this post, we share ten essential tips on how to improve team meeting discussions and describe five powerful methods that accelerate brainstorming sessions. IT professionals, this will perfectly suit you too.

WordPress SEO plugins will help you automatically add meta tags, load pages faster, correct redirection mistakes, optimize images, etc. Free and premium versions of the most popular WordPress plugins for SEO in 2019 are listed down below.

What is redirection?

Redirection is a way of forwarding the user to the URL that is different from the one they initially clicked on. Down below some of the most common types of redirection are listed.

Backlog prioritization leads to the choice between strategies. Each one has its metrics. There is a requirement to choose the most important one. ML scoring is a solution when non linearity exists and economy is nonlinear. See introduction here. Two groups are considered. First (I) corresponds to web conversion {bounce rate, micro conversion, time, depth}. Second (II) corresponds to attraction of new visitors from organic channel {visits, viewers, views}. The target function is a number of commercial offers per day. The task is to reduce the dimension to get the optimal simple strategy. In this case online/offline B2B channels can't be separated: market is thin and new customers may have some information about 'the brand' from both channels. Therefore statistical evaluation is closer to reality than direct CJM tracking in this case.

Dr. Martin Kleppmann is a researcher in distributed systems at the University of Cambridge, and the author of the highly acclaimed «Designing Data-Intensive Applications» (O'Reilly Media, 2017). 

Kevin Scott, CTO at Microsoft once said: «This book should be required reading for software engineers. Designing Data-Intensive Applications is a rare resource that connects theory and practice to help developers make smart decisions as they design and implement data infrastructure and systems.»

Martin’s main research interests include collaboration software, CRDTs, and formal verification of distributed algorithms. Previously he was a software engineer and an entrepreneur at several Internet companies including LinkedIn and Rapportive, where he worked on large-scale data infrastructure.

Vadim Tsesko (@incubos) is a lead software engineer at Odnoklassniki who works in Core Platform team. Vadim’s scientific and engineering interests include distributed systems, data warehouses and verification of software systems.

Contents:

• Moving from business to academic research;
  
• Discussion of «Designing Data-Intensive Applications»;
  
• Common sense against artificial hype and aggressive marketing;
  
• Pitfalls of CAP theorem and other industry mistakes;
  
• Benefits of decentralization;
  
• Blockchains, Dat, IPFS, Filecoin, WebRTC;
  
• New CRDTs. Formal verification with Isabelle;
  
• Event sourcing. Low level approach. XA transactions; 
  
• Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, Memcached, Redis, Elasticsearch;
  
• How to apply all that tools to real life;
  
• Expected target audience of Martin’s talks and the Hydra conference.
  

In 2019, things are going to shake up particularly with regards to in-app purchases and the best approach. In the event that you are eyeing to procure great income from these administrations, at that point you should look at the tips underneath.

Introduce Timely Discounts

Given the relentless challenge in the Mobile app world, it is significant that you venture up your game. One of the techniques that you can actualize is having constrained time offers. In doing this, you get the chance to publicity the item or administrations among versatile app clients. The time factor is likewise vital as you don't wish to overstretch the markdown offers.

Besides, you have to bring on board mastery to enable you to think in transit forward with regards to the limits. Keep in mind, you should be strategic in request to gain more income and clients.

Adventure into Partnerships

It is anything but difficult to fly solo with regards to Mobile apps however you can't neglect the need accomplices. As you advance your items and administrations, it is significant that liaise with substances that can support your incomes.

In any case, picking the best corporate to connect with is no stroll in the recreation center. You will be required to investigate how their items/administrations can enable you to manufacture your image. Under this, you may have joint effort between an application for wearable emergency clinic gadgets and social insurance association. The outcome will be an increase in the number of clients accessing the in-app purchases.

Besides this, you may pick to package together at least two items under your image when pushing the in-app purchases.

With this post, I start a series of SEO related articles where I'm going to share my 11+ years experience in SEO to help you understand better how it works. The top-rated comment on Reddit in the post I saw last week What do you wish developers knew about SEO? was: «The most dangerous thing in SEO is a developer that thinks he understands SEO. They so rarely do». So this article is for developers who want to deliver a better SEO for clients and SEO beginners, as well as for the entrepreneurs, who are about to hire an SEO agency. You need to understand, why some sites are on top in search results and some will never be there.

No matter how cool your search solution is, without a reliable way of testing it you will not be able to do any improvement without breaking something valuable.

Even a tiny increase in overall search result quality might have a noticeable effect on conversion rate. Naturally, you can use exit-rate to judge if your search needs improvements and do required adjustments, but will you be able to make sure those changes are safe? What if improved relevancy for a specific category breaks search for several other categories?



Moreover, high exit-rate means no matter what you are going to do, the problem has taken place, so dozens of customers already didn’t manage to find what they were up to. Basically, the only way to proceed is to have a reliable search quality validation approach.