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In our early days, "Live-Ops" meant frantically pushing out holiday-themed updates. It was exhausting and reactive. We w...
03/07/2025

In our early days, "Live-Ops" meant frantically pushing out holiday-themed updates. It was exhausting and reactive. We were constantly chasing player attention instead of building it. This was a wake-up call.

We learned that successful Live-Ops is not about seasonal skins. It is a science of player engagement, built on a predictable calendar of events, challenges, and rewards. It turns a game from a product into a hobby.

How do you approach your Live-Ops strategy? The biggest pain point is often moving from a reactive to a proactive calendar.

Here’s what’s unfolding beneath the surface: Generative AI is no longer just for concept art. We're using it to build dy...
02/07/2025

Here’s what’s unfolding beneath the surface: Generative AI is no longer just for concept art. We're using it to build dynamic, responsive game narratives in real-time.

Imagine NPCs that create their own unique dialogue based on a player's actions. It’s a complete shift from pre-scripted story trees. What took me 3 years to figure out, you’ll learn in 3 minutes: The key is not the AI model itself, but the "prompt architecture" you build around it. This framework guides the AI to generate content that is coherent, emotionally resonant, and aligned with the core game lore.

What's your biggest challenge with Generative AI in games? Many struggle with maintaining creative control.

What I’m about to share might contradict what you’ve been told—but it works for setting up a profitable Game Studio. Do ...
01/07/2025

What I’m about to share might contradict what you’ve been told—but it works for setting up a profitable Game Studio.
Do not hire specialists at first. Hire "T-shaped" generalists.

You need people who can code but also have an eye for design. Or artists who understand marketing funnels. Why this matters: In the early stages, speed and adaptability are your biggest assets. Specialists create bottlenecks. Generalists solve problems across disciplines and move faster. A team of 5 great generalists will outperform a team of 10 average specialists every time.

What is the biggest hurdle you face in the Setup and operation of Game Studio?
Finding the right talent is a universal challenge.

We made this mistake—and it cost us a 6-figure publishing deal. We assumed the publisher understood our game's core loop...
30/06/2025

We made this mistake—and it cost us a 6-figure publishing deal. We assumed the publisher understood our game's core loop. But we never clearly documented the "feeling" we were targeting. The initial prototype felt flat. They passed on the deal. The lesson we learned the hard way: Technical specs are not enough.

You must document the intended player experience. Now, we use a "Core Feel" document for every project. It describes the emotional journey in detail.



What is your biggest pain point when it comes to Game publishing? Sharing a clear vision with partners is a frequent issue.

Here’s a trend that’s hard to ignore. Pure hypercasual is evolving. Players are smarter. They expect more. We are seeing...
27/06/2025

Here’s a trend that’s hard to ignore. Pure hypercasual is evolving. Players are smarter. They expect more. We are seeing a major shift towards hybrid models that blend simple core loops with deeper meta-layers. Think of games like Archero or Survivor io .

What this means for developers: Your old playbook is obsolete. You cannot just build a simple, satisfying mechanic anymore. You need to build a world around it.

This requires a different approach to Game design for STEAM and mobile. It is about creating long-term engagement, not just a few minutes of fun. This is where future revenue lies.

By the end of this post, you'll know exactly how to structure a Game UI UX that boosts retention. We audited 50 successf...
26/06/2025

By the end of this post, you'll know exactly how to structure a Game UI UX that boosts retention. We audited 50 successful hybrid-casual games. The key mistake 90% of struggling games make is having a cluttered interface.

Successful games follow a 3-layer rule:
1. The Core Layer: Only gameplay controls. No distractions.
2. The Session Layer: End-of-round progress, rewards. Clean and quick.
3. The Meta Layer: Upgrades, store, events. Kept separate from gameplay.

This simple shift will change how you do UI forever. It respects the player's context.

What's your primary obstacle with Game UI UX? Many find it hard to balance feature richness with simplicity.

What we are seeing in the market is a quiet arms race in AI-powered Game Advertisement. Creative testing is no longer a ...
25/06/2025

What we are seeing in the market is a quiet arms race in AI-powered Game Advertisement. Creative testing is no longer a manual process.

Studios are using AI to generate and test hundreds of ad variations overnight. This is a massive advantage. Most people overlook this—but it changes everything. If you are still testing 5-10 creatives per week, you are falling behind. The new standard is automated, high-velocity testing that finds winning ads faster than any human team could. This is the difference between scaling a game to millions and running out of budget.

We spent 3 months building a complex procedural generation system for a new Steam game. We thought it would create endle...
24/06/2025

We spent 3 months building a complex procedural generation system for a new Steam game. We thought it would create endless replayability. But players hated it. They felt the levels were random and meaningless.

We had to unlearn everything thought we knew about player motivation. We scrapped the system and hand-designed the first 100 levels. Our playtester retention tripled overnight. Lesson: "Endless" content is not the same as "valuable" content. Are you facing challenges with your Game Mechanics in Unity and Unreal Engine? Sometimes the most complex solution is not the best one.

Happy International Women in Engineering Day!Here at BounGames, we're celebrating the incredible women who are at the he...
23/06/2025

Happy International Women in Engineering Day!

Here at BounGames, we're celebrating the incredible women who are at the heart of our innovation and creativity. A huge thank you to all the female engineers, especially our talented design engineers and developers, who are instrumental in bringing our games to life.

Your passion, technical expertise, and unique perspectives are shaping the worlds we build and the stories we tell. You are not only breaking barriers in the gaming industry but also inspiring a new generation of young women to pursue their dreams in STEM.

We are proud to have you on our team and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where your talents can flourish.

We used to believe getting the lowest CPI was the key to hypercasual success. We were wrong. We had a game with a $0.15 ...
22/06/2025

We used to believe getting the lowest CPI was the key to hypercasual success. We were wrong. We had a game with a $0.15 CPI but an LTV of only $0.14. It was a failure. The obsession with acquisition cost is a trap. It forces us into a red ocean of clones and burns out our creative teams.

Why this matters: The real goal is not the cheapest install. The goal is sustainable profit. We shifted our focus from CPI to LTV-to-CPI ratio. This meant building slightly deeper mechanics and focusing on retention from day one. It changed everything.

What's your biggest challenge with Game monetization? Finding the right balance between acquisition and lifetime value is a common struggle.

Three AI-powered design tips that will save you a week of work: 1. NPC Dialogue Variations: Stop writing 20 versions of ...
21/06/2025

Three AI-powered design tips that will save you a week of work:

1. NPC Dialogue Variations: Stop writing 20 versions of "Hello, traveler!" Use a language model (like o3-pro) to generate contextual variations based on player state, world events, or even time of day. Feed it a prompt, get 50 options, and have your writer just edit and approve. Saves days of tedious writing.

2. Concept Art Moodboarding: Instead of spending a day searching for references, use an image generator to create a "visual seed." Prompt it with your core themes (e.g., "bioluminescent fungus infecting a crashed starship"). Use the output as a unified starting point for your art team. This aligns vision in hours, not days.

3. Dynamic Difficulty Tuning: Instrument your game to track player failure points. Feed that data into a simple model that suggests tweaks to level parameters. Instead of manually guessing why 40% of players quit at Level 7, the AI can highlight that an enemy's speed is likely 10% too high. These aren't about replacing designers. They are about automating the grunt work so you can focus on the fun.

Which repetitive task in your design process would you most like to automate?

Here's our secret weapon for monetization design. 🤫 It’s not a complex analytics dashboard. It's a whiteboard covered in...
20/06/2025

Here's our secret weapon for monetization design. 🤫 It’s not a complex analytics dashboard. It's a whiteboard covered in sticky notes. Each note has a "player feeling" written on it: "Frustrated but determined." "Proud of this new skin." "Relieved I got a boost." "Happy to support the devs."

Before we design any IAP or rewarded ad placement, we have to match it to a feeling. If the monetization doesn't align with a positive or motivating player emotion, it gets scrapped. No exceptions.

This simple, human-centric check prevents us from building aggressive systems that burn out players. It keeps us honest. It's how we balance revenue with respect. What's one non-digital tool you can't live without in your workflow?

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Rumeli Hisar

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