作者：Chay Hunter

如果你和我们一样，你应该已经提前设想过自己的2017。你会如何降低游戏的用户获取成本，提高用户粘性并推动更多用户购买？你将在哪里节省更多时间？不管是独立开发者还是工作室，游戏开发者总是希望能掌握越来越多的技术技能并因此节省每天的时间。

当然了你可以找到许多能够帮助你省下大量时间的应用和服务，但明确怎样的应用最适合自己却是非常困难的事。这也是我们为什么要选出由游戏开发者所投票产生的一列最佳游戏开发工具的原因，这能够有效帮助你们节省下大量时间去致力于自己真正喜欢的事。

在本文中我们将基于手机游戏生命周期的不同元素而着眼于一系列能够带给你帮助的应用，资产和工具包，并且将基于不同业务领域进行划分。

广告和盈利

Adjust

成本：0

支持：所有主要平台

Adjust能够为手机应用提供具有洞察力的市场营销分销工具。对于游戏开发者来说这能够帮助你们了解用户是如何知道你们游戏以及每种主要来源的成本。你们也可以使用Apptrace充分利用用户反馈以及应用商店的评论。

Adwords Conversion Tracking

成本：25美元

支持：Unity 5.3.3+

iOS和Android上的默认转换跟踪服务非常有限且需要大量的定制。基于面向Unity的Adwords Conversion Tracking资产，你可以轻松衡量来自Adwords/Admob的转换率并开始为自己的展示和市场营销活动衡量ROI值。资产能够提供完整的Unity界面。如果你是在Google Play Store的话这便非常重要。

Mobvista

成本：0

支持：所有平台

你可以使用Mobvista跨越243个区域去推广游戏。因为精确的目标定位，强大的曝光以及各种广告形式（游戏邦注：不会破坏游戏体验）让这一工具能够帮助你轻松接触到更多用户。平台将把原生广告直接整合到相同类型的游戏中。你将能够随时获得比产业中3%的平均转换率更高的转换率。

Unity Ads

成本：0

支持：所有平台

Unity Ads是游戏开发者都认识的市场上最受欢迎的手机广告平台。因为专注于跨平台和跨游戏的视频内容，这种广告将比普通的展示广告创造出更高的转换率。而Unity只会在用户安装了广告商的游戏时才会付你钱。所以你最好在合适的地方以及合适的时候去呈现广告，在不破坏玩家游戏流的前提下呈现广告能为你带来比呈现过多广告更多的收益。

分析和出错记录

GameAnalytics

成本：0

支持：所有主要平台

GameAnalytics是由游戏开发者为游戏开发者所创造的一种免费分析工具。它能帮助你通过超过50种游戏参数去理解玩家行为，提高用户粘性并最终获取盈利。只需要几分钟时间你便能够将其设置妥当，它还带有面向每个主要平台和引擎的工具包。

Crashlytics

成本：0（不包含企业成本）

支持：Android和iOS平台

基于Crashlytics你便可以开始实时监控你的应用问题。你该如何提高用户粘性呢？你可以避免玩家遭遇烦人的漏洞而拥有完美的用户体验。而Crashlytics便可以通过事先处理玩家问题帮助你有效做到这点。

Fabric

成本：0

支持：所有主要平台

Fabric能够帮助你管理各种事故报告，发展，分析与盈利工具。这是世界上排名第一的软件开发工具包管理平台，并且能够与GameAnalytics和Crashlytics有效整合在一起。基于该工具你只需要轻松点击几下遍可以将不同工具包安装到项目中。基于那些服务它也能够创造各种账号并自动索引你所需要的密钥。

合作与工作流

UniMerge

成本：15美元

平台：Unity 3.2.0+

基于UniMerge，游戏设计师能够通过图像渲染，原图与目标的无缝合作而更有效率地进行创造。来自Unity商店的这一插件让团队成员可以各自致力于不同部分的图像元素，如纹理，然后将结果与完整版本的控制结合起来。

iOS Project Builder for Windows

成本：29美元

平台：Unity 4.6.9+

如果你是主要致力于PC的Unity开发者，那么面向Windows的iOS Project Builder便是你需要添加到工具箱中的必要工具。真的不开玩笑，这的确是一种非常棒的工具。拥有了它你便不再需要切换到Mac并发行Xcode为iOS创建游戏了。这能够为你节省下大量时间。

GameFlow

成本：20美元

平台：Unity 5.4.0+

GameFlow是一种视觉编程工具，能够帮助你有效简化游戏开发。基于这一工具你便能够在视觉编辑器上创造复杂的游戏逻辑，效果和互动，而无需编写任何代码。它同时还包含强大的省时功能，如宏指令和快捷键能帮助你自动化一些乏味的任务。

用户粘性和用户留存

GetSocial

成本：0–250美元

平台：所有主要平台

GetSocial让你能够最大化游戏的影响范围，提高玩家的忠诚度，减少流失率，并能够有效规划你的市场营销成本。它将提供给你所有能够创造吸引人的应用内部社交市场营销平台所需要的东西，并有效提高你的用户留存—-同时还能将应用内部购买与有机安装比例提高25%以上。

Twitch

成本：0

平台：所有主要平台

Twitch是世界上最受欢迎的面向在线游戏的平台，拥有超过200万的广播者和1亿多的月访问者。在这里你可以创造让用户通过送礼物和评论进行实时互动的游戏体验。它能为不同数据流提供广播级的视觉效果，包括玩家数据和迷你地图等等。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Time-Saving Tools for Mobile Game Developers

by Chay Hunter

If you’re anything like us, you’re already thinking ahead to 2017. How will you lower acquisition costs, improve engagement and drive more purchases? Where will you find the time? From basement to studio, game developers manage a growing remit of technical skills… yet the hours in a day stay fixed.

For sure, there are thousands of time-saving apps and services that you can make use of – but figuring out which are best is difficult. That’s why we’ve curated a list of the top game development tools, as voted for by game developers, to help steer you in the right direction and free-up your time to focus on doing what you love.

In this article, we’ll highlight a selection of apps, assets and SDKs which will help you – a busy GameDev – take care of different aspects of the mobile game lifecycle. Each business area is listed below… let the timesaving begin.

Advertising & Monetization

Adjust

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

Adjust provide insightful marketing attribution tools built for mobile apps. For game developers, it will help you understand how users reach your game and what each lead source costs. You can also repurpose your users’ feedback and app store reviews for product management with Apptrace.

Adwords Conversion Tracking

Cost: $25
Supports: Unity 5.3.3+

The default conversion tracking in iOS and Android is limited and requires a lot of customisation. With the Adwords Conversion Tracking asset for Unity you can easily measure conversions from Adwords/Admob and begin measuring ROI for your display and remarketing campaigns. The asset offers a full Unity interface. Essential if you’re on the Google Play Store.

Mobvista

Cost: $0
Supports: All platforms

Advertise your game across 243 regions with Mobvista. Precise targeting, unparalleled exposure and a range of ad formats – ads that don’t break from the gameplay experience – make it easy to increase your reach and fuel your growth. The platform feeds native ads directly into games of a similar genre. You’ll be getting conversion rates much higher than the 3% industry average in no time.

Unity Ads

Cost: $0
Supports: All platforms

Unity Ads is a market leading mobile ad platform built with game developers in mind. With a strong focus on serving video content cross-platform and cross-game, the ads are more relevant with better conversion rates, compared to more generic display advertising networks. Unity only pays you when users install the advertiser’s game. This means that showing the ad in the right place, at the right time, without breaking a player’s game flow will actually result in more revenue than showing too many ads.

If you’re looking for more ways to grow your user-base take a look at this post: How to Expand your Audience with Game Accessibility

Analytics & Error Logging

GameAnalytics

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

GameAnalytics is a free analytics tool built by game developers, for game developers. It helps you make sense of player behavior, improve engagement and drive monetization with real-time insight into more than 50 gaming metrics out-of-the-box. You can set it up in just a few minutes, with SDKs for every major platform and engine.

Crashlytics

Cost: $0 (enterprise costs undisclosed)
Supports: Android & iOS platforms

Start monitoring your app’s errors for actionable insights in real-time with Crashlytics. How do you improve engagement? Create a loyal player following with a UX free from annoying bugs. Crashlytics helps you achieve this by dealing with player issues proactively, before tickets flood your support team and eat up your bandwidth.

Fabric

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

Focus on building great games and let Fabric help with managing your various crash reporting, growth, analytics and monetization tools. It’s one of the number 1 SDK management platforms in the world and is closely integrated with GameAnalytics and Crashlytics. With it, you can locally install different SDKs straight into your project with just a couple of clicks. It can also create accounts with those services and automatically retrieve the keys that you need.

If you’re new to game analytics you should definitely check out this post (it’s one of our most popular): 15 Metrics All Game Developers Should Know

Collaboration & Workflow

UniMerge

Cost: $15
Platform: Unity 3.2.0+

With UniMerge, game designers work more effectively via seamless collaboration of graphic rendering, artwork and objects. This plugin from the Unity store allows team members to work apart on graphics elements that make up part of the larger whole, such as textures, and then combine the results with full version control.

iOS Project Builder for Windows

Cost: $29
Platform: Unity 4.6.9+

If you’re a Unity developer primarily working on PC, the iOS Project Builder for Windows is an extension that you need to add to your arsenal. No joke. This tool is an absolute gem. With it, you no longer need to switch to your Mac and launch Xcode to build your games for iOS. Save time and build them directly from Windows.

GameFlow

Cost: $20
Platform: Unity 5.4.0+

GameFlow is a visual programming toolkit that helps simplify game development. With it, you can create complex game logic, effects and interactions, in a visual editor without having to write a single line of code. Bring powerful time-saving features to your development, including macros and keyboard shortcuts to automate tedious tasks.

Are you a game designer? You may find this article of interest: Squeezing more juice out of your game design!

Engagement & Retention

GetSocial

Cost: $0-$250/mo
Platform: All major platforms

GetSocial gives you the ability to amplify your game’s reach, improve player loyalty, reduce churn and make your marketing spend go further. It provides everything that you’ll need to create highly engaging in-app social marketing platforms, with the ability to double your retention – whilst increasing in-app purchases and organic installs by more than 25%!

Twitch

Cost: $0
Platform: All major platforms

Twitch is the world’s leading video platform for online games, with over 2 million broadcasters and 100 million monthly viewers. With it, you can build gaming experiences that give audiences the ability to interact with live sessions, through dynamic gifting and commenting. It enables overlay of broadcast quality visuals for different datastreams, including as kill counters, player stats and minimaps.

Is your churn rate embarrassingly high? Learn how to get it down to a respectable level: 16 Reasons Why Players Are Leaving Your Game

Final Note

What do you think? Which tools best help with your day-to-day? If you think we’ve overlooked any gems please reach out to us on Twitter with your thoughts – we’d love to hear from you.(source:gamasutra)