Red Rift

High-quality application optimization

Application optimization is a priority, but in many cases a rather difficult task. A lot of developers, releasing new applications, focus only on large and developed countries, but they forget about countries with a large population, but with poor connection to the internet. For example, in India with a population of almost 1.5 billion people, only a third are connected to the Internet, while most of them use devices with small screens and a small amount of RAM. In this case, high-quality optimization helps to promote applications. Reduce the size of the application. For many users, the size of the application is crucial when installing it. How to do it? - Minimize the number of third-party libraries. In this case, it will become more difficult for developers to work with the application, but sometimes it's not rational to connect an entire library for a couple of functions. All these functions can be described in code. It will slightly increase the development time, but significantly reduce the size of the application. - Create lightweight images. Pictures take up the most space in the application. To compress complex images, use the WebP format. Pictures in this format weigh almost 10 times less than original. If the pictures are simple in your application, use vector images. Such images weigh less and adapt to any screen, without losing quality. - Optimize your application code with additional programs. For example, the Proguard deletes unused application resources and optimizes the code. - Use the built-in resources of the platform. For example, the Android operating system has its own drawable objects class, which makes it possible to draw simple images inside the system without loading external program resources. At the same time, if you have the same images, but of different colors, you can store them not as two copies, but as an image + color filter, which also saves a little space. The creation of such non-standard solutions takes some time, but will help to significantly save free RAM on users' devices. - Use the App Bundle. With this feature, the application is not assembled by the developer, but already on the platform. This will help to compress the application size by about 30%, because the type of user's device is already known on the platform, and the application will be assembled only from those elements that suit it. Internet connection is far from always stable and cheap. How to make the user feel comfortable while using the application even with a poor connection? - Use ETag to download only updated information, and not re-download what has already been viewed by the user. - Data caching is the main tool in the absence of a high-quality connection or expensive traffic. - Add the ability for the user to decide whether to upload pictures or not. It takes a lot of traffic to download images, and if the user wants to see only the text, he won't have to wait until the rest of the page content is loaded.

Covid-19 VS Game Industry

For the first time in many years, an event occurred that shook the whole world and affected the lives of millions of people. While the coronavirus epidemic caused losses to many large companies, the mobile games and applications industry was in its best time. Self-isolation has forced many people to rethink their lifestyles, learn the online profession, and even change their regular work to remote. Due to the fact that not only office centers were closed, but also entertainment complexes, people had to find a replacement for the usual entertainment on the Internet. The need for entertainment of people who are forced to stay at home has increased several times. During the epidemic, for example, many online cinemas made discounts and even offered almost free movie viewing for a whole month trying to attract as many users as possible from such a marketing-friendly time. The need for mobile games also grew, as games are one of the fastest and most affordable ways to get the necessary emotions. In this article we will look at how the mobile games market has changed during the coronavirus epidemic. Downloads Let's look at the statistics. Looking at the markets of mobile games in the USA and Russia, it can be noted that on average the total number of downloads from January to March 2020 increased by 91%. At the same time, residents of the United States were more willing to download new games and applications to their smartphones, which may be due to the fact that the epidemic in the United States took place on a large scale, and the prohibitions during the period of self-isolation were stricter. Income If we consider game income, then the advantage is for iOS developers. Users of Apple devices are much more willing to spend money on in-game purchases, so the developers got the main income from games on Android platforms from the in-game advertising. Genres The most popular genres of games during the coronavirus pandemic were also Casual, Action and Arcade. However, you can also notice the growing popularity of the Simulation and Role-Playing genres on different platforms. Communication During self-isolation, the demand for instant messengers and social networks also increased. The most popular applications for communicating with people from around the world are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. Game marketing As for game marketing, in recent months, the most relevant way to advertise games and applications remains advertising through bloggers in YouTube, as blogger advertising prices have decreased, and views and conversions are growing. For some game genres, advertising on TikTok and Instagram is also well suited. Under such favorable conditions during the pandemic, the number of new players grows naturally and the main goal of publishers is only to keep them. Many developers note an increase in the installation of games and applications by 10-60%, depending on the genre. Conclusion Today we can note an increase in active users, the number of installations, as well as a decrease in competition in the gaming market, which contributes to the development of this area. The most important thing now is to properly dispose of new opportunities: wisely choose the channels for attracting users (social networks, in-game advertising, YouTube), as well as choose communication strategies for social networks and instant messengers. Choosing the best approach to attract players and keep them in the game will help increase revenue from the game or application.