Heaps Agency

Why Are There So Many Remastered Games?

The last few years have seen a fair share of remasters and rereleases of games. To name just a few, Demon Souls (the launch title for PS5), neo-Persona trilogy (3, 4 and 5) or even Quake 2 have all re-entered the market and are (for the most part) available for a wide variety of gaming systems. Some more niche franchises also get remasters or even remakes, like in the case of Live-A-Live or Shining Resonance Refrain (we won’t talk about this one anymore). I currently play Nier: Automata on my Switch. So, why is this the case and why do companies really love pumping out older titles? Let’s find out in this article.

Business Or Personal Account On TikTok For A Gaming Studio?

TikTok offers 2 basic account types – personal and business. Choosing the right one can be a hard nut to crack. This blog entry is meant to help you with choosing the right one for your gaming studio.

What Would Pikmin Series Need To Sell Well?

Pikmin is an odd series. Long story short, you, represented by Olimar – a spaceship captain – need to steer sentient aliens that seem a bit like radishes (yeah) through a series of maps. It’s a combination of a strategy and a puzzle game. The first Pikmin game was released on the Gamecube in 2001 and the latest in the series, Pikmin 4, was released 3 days ago, on the 21st of January. Even though it’s a 1st party Nintendo franchise, which usually does wonders for the strength and sales of the IP, it’s not exactly flying off the shelves. Shigeru Miyamoto believes that the lack of sales and popularity may result from the fact that it’s an RTS and that, while most such games don’t put a lot of emphasis on the conservation of your units, Pikmin does. I think there’s more to that, though and I’ll present my theories in this article.

How To Make Your Game Easy To Port?

The more, the merrier. At least when it comes to sales in the industry. One of the basic ways of expanding to broader audiences and selling more copies is to create a port of your title. After all, it means expanding to new markets and allowing thousands of people to give your creation a shot. In this article, I’ll talk about how to make your game appealing to publishers and easy to be released for various platforms.

2 Methods of Increasing the Review Score of Your Game

Good reviews, whether as a part of a PR push or an effort to get a better KPI (yup, some companies use the Metsacore rating as one), are quite important in the industry. After all, they can greatly influence the sales of your title. In this article I’ll showcase two ways of securing a better rating and, hopefully, making a better game. Keep in mind that what I’m going to talk about are just tools that you or 3rd parties can use. They don’t guarantee that your game will be rated better, but they significantly improve the chances for it to happen.

Is Selling RPG Maker Games Hard?

RPG Maker is an awesome engine. Some cult titles like OFF, LISA: The Painful, To The Moon, Peret Em Heru, Ara Fell or Fear & Hunger 1 and 2 were made. It’s well known since the 90s when it was first released in Japan. Its purpose was to grant the possibility for all people to easily make their RPG game, usually in the style of early Dragon Quest games. You know, turn-based combat, an overworld, a levelling system and all other staples of old JRPGs. The engine got many plugins over the years and it has granted tremendous possibilities, compared to what it used to be. As RPG Maker is also easy to use, it makes for a great first dive into the world of learning game, level and combat design.

Still, all these accolades don’t necessarily mean much in the world of video games, especially on the business end of it. RPG Maker games are often overlooked by distributors and publishers. Today, we’ll talk about 3 reasons why this is a case and why using Unity, Unreal Engine or Godot would probably be a better choice if you want your game to sell well and have it widely available.

Hello World!

Hi everyone, Jakub Mamulski, head of Heaps Agency here.

In a turn of events, I decided to become a freelance marketer. At this point in time, this blog consists of the old content that I used to host on my old personal website. New content will be uploaded soon.

If you’d like to check out the services that I offer, feel free to navigate the website and contact me. There’s still tons of work that I need to do here, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Cheers!

Why Diablo Immortal and Blizzard ultimately won (+YT AUDIO/VIDEO VERSION)

Blizzard hasn’t had the best few years. While the company can list some successes, such as the decently perceived Overwatch 2 tests and the launch of the legacy version of World of Warcraft, in recent times, it’s not considered to be in its heyday. The massive harassment scandal that surfaced last year, oddly political and controversial statements and activities regarding China, losing the position of the MMORPG market leader to Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV, or the “Do you guys not have phones?” remark made by Wyatt Cheng (DI’s game director) when the public didn’t react positively to the reveal of Diablo Immortal, were ones of many mishaps this industry giant had to deal with.

Yeah, Diablo Immortal. A F2P mobile game made by Blizzard in the world of Diablo, their legendary hack & slash series, was quite frowned upon by pretty much all of the stakeholders – fans, other industry professionals, the press, since the beginning. Of course, the game has a lot of problems, such as an unpolished PC port or the infamous harsh monetization policies. Yet, despite that, Blizzard considers the game a success, as it surpassed 30 million downloads and brought more or $100 million in sales during the first two months of the game being on the market. The title also has a decent 3.8/5 rating on Google Play Store – a lot of these reviews are still probably lowering the overall factual score.