The main thing for the past week (February 8-12, 2016)

 Underground Game Design #1: about game design in general
What is the difference between games and toys, what is an honest free-to-play, whether a game designer should understand monetization – you can find out about this and much more in our transcript of the first issue of the podcast “Underground Game Design”.

Why has Blizzard radically updated Hearthstone?
On February 2, Blizzard announced the introduction of two game formats to Hearthstone.

The players met the news ambiguously. We tried to figure out what made the American company take unpopular measures.

How are currency shops arranged in top games?
When developing or supporting a free-2-play game, the question often arises – how to properly design a premium currency purchase window and how to set up discounts.

Representatives of the Playliner startup with the help of their service found and analyzed screenshots of banks (currency stores) with the purchase of premium currency of 150 of the highest-grossing mobile games in the USA.

How Supercell Broke the Farm in Clash of Clans
At the end of last year, Supercell released one of the largest recent additions to the highest-grossing mobile game of 2015 – Clash of Clans.

Despite the large number of innovations, the players met the update “with hostility”. What the Finnish company did “wrong”, – I understood App2Top.ru .

Study: love of competitive games depends on age
There is an inverse relationship between the age of the player and the desire to play competitive games, – says the analytical company Quantic Foundry.