Doesn’t matter how good the app is. If your load times are too slow and your file sizes are too large, you’ll start to churn users. How do you deliver lightning speed without compromising your app, and keep them coming back for more? Don’t miss this VB Live event!
It’s a tough balancing act between delivering rich content and letting players enjoy the game without a painful loading screen. And in some countries, speed and minimalism are a must, not a nice-to-have, if you’re going to succeed.
Somehow, it’s not an issue that people discuss a lot, but load times are incredibly important. If users have to wait more than five seconds for your app to load, then you’re done. And once the user is actually inside the app, the load times could still kill you.
“We pretty much have to do magic to give the sense of speed on our apps, that things are happening fast and make it appear like it’s all happening seamlessly,” admits Jonathan Meson, CEO of VisualBlasters.
VisualBlasters’ drawing app, FlipaClip, has a huge amount of rich content. It’s based on raster images that customers draw on and save. Users can have thousands of images and layers upon layers in each, and scrub through a series of images to animate them at 30 frames per second.
So balancing speed and the kind of content that chokes on a dime — and is the heart and soul of the app — is an ongoing challenge.
“The biggest issue, especially with Android, is the diversity of devices you can find,” he adds. “India and other countries have tablets that run a little bit slower, or don’t have the big CPUs or amount of memory available.”
Which is a reminder that if you want to launch your app globally, you need an app that is fast, light, and has small file sizes. You can’t get away with putting out a bloated app.
“In many of the upcoming regions, they just don’t have the infrastructure to allow people to download big apps in the first place,” Meson says. “They might not have the same access to unlimited mobile data. If your app is too big the download will be cancelled and they’ll forget about it.”
Developing something that’s quicker, slicker, and globally successful has to start literally at the drawing board.
“Look at the very core, main feature of the app — what makes the app great?” Meson says. “How are you going to make that happen? How are you going to structure it? Do some planning before you start getting down into the code. Do research on what are the best technologies you can use to make that happen.”
“Doing research has saved me so much time,” Meson adds.
For more how VisualBlasters nailed the loading sweet spot, the technology you need, and how to get downloaded globally, don’t miss this VB Live event. Meson is joined by several others who have stared down the speed demon and conquered it.
Don’t miss out!
In this VB Live event, you’ll:
- Identify the best practices for optimizing load times for games with rich content
- Find out the risks are if you fail to optimize load times, including the dangers associated with global reach
- Discover what to do first, and which technologies can help you get there quicker
Speakers:
- David Holtkamp, CEO, Crimson Moon
- Jonathan Meson, CEO, VisualBlasters
- Martín Domínguez, CIO at Etermax
- Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat
This VB Live event is sponsored by Akamai.
