5 things you need to implement in any mobile game

русская версия - здесь

I have three posts in drafts(called "You don't need server" and "3 reasons to switch from Asset Server", "Execute impossible to pardon: how to deal with hackers"), but decided to write this one just because it seems more timely than others.

We had discussion with Yuri about what makes any game perfect and what features must be implemented and come up with some common and must-have features:

• in-app-purchases. No comments here. If you want to make money from your game, you'd better have well-tested, stable in-apps;
• analytics. The thing is you can not predict user behaviour unless you have any clue what your user is doing in the game. And it's better to have as much information as possible - you know where is your problem in your game mechanics and can easily fix it up;
• local and remote push notifications. We didn't implement them in the first releases of Road Smash and we feel regret about it. What is the easiest way to let the users play updated game? Obviously, push notifications.I know that users may hate pushes and remove your app just because they are got annoyed by your app, but in 70% it works.
• Anticheat protection. You know, cheaters always exist, especially on android and you need to prevent your game from being hacked. Somebody may say that you need to protect everything, somebody have an opinion that you need to give up on hackers and let them play. I think that hackers wouldn't pay. They would keep hacking the game until they find something or even delete it from their devices, but they would never pay. So I came up with the decision here: protect only that things that cost money or may affect other users. In business terms there are two most important things for developer: users that bring money. When I say money, I mean in-apps, when I say affect other users, I mean scoreboard, social, competition parts of your game. And you need to keep tiny balance between letting gamers play comfortably and prevent players from stealing your money.
• Ads. I underestimated role of ads, thought it's annoying and may push your user away. But I was wrong. Firstly, you can integrate ads, so they will become part of your gameplay. Users will want to see some ads just to get some goods instead. And of course, it is a great chance to  get money from users that will never pay :)

The main purpose of any game is to have a lot of users in game and keep them as long as long as possible, letting them pay for any reason. In that meaning these five features described must be implemented, well-tested as soon as possible.

And to make this post more concrete, I have some links to assets to share with you to get that features implemented in the easiest way.

• in-apps: use unibill. It supports app store, google play, windows store out-of-box, including receipts, subscriptions, etc. Must-have!
• analytics: there's a wonderful and free plugin, called GameAnalytics. It supports events, heat maps, gameplay stats. If you are fan of old-school analytics, you may check out for my wrapper to Flurry plugin in my github repository, I'll push all the code as soon as I find free time for it. 
• push notification: there are too many good plugins in assets, so I don't know what's the best option here. I'd recommend pushwoosh service, because it provides a lot of features out-of-box, but let me leave this topic open.
• anticheat: well... there's no common solution as it really depends on what kind of game you are working on. Maybe some kind of playerprefs encryption, in-apps encryption? Did I miss something?
• ads: there is a bunch of different options: admob, tapjoy, adcolony, applifier. Some of them provide banner and image ads, some of them kind of video or partnership ads. Choose one you like the most.