Editor’s note: Ilya Gelfenbeyn is the co-founder and CEO of Speaktoit, which develops talking virtual assistants for Android, iOS and other platforms.

As mobile apps have grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry, large corporations have adopted an increasingly hefty presence within that industry. This fact may worry some independent developers and startups, especially those that find themselves in direct competition with much bigger, better-capitalized, better-established enterprises.

But startup developers shouldn’t necessarily fear competition from their bigger brethren. Being small comes with its own set of advantages, and the presence of big enterprise in a space can often be a help, rather than a hindrance. Here’s some advice for small developers on how to hang with the big boys.

1. Embrace being small. Who says bigger is always better? Large, well-capitalized companies may have more resources, staff members and time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll come up with a better app.

• Take advantage of the lower bar to entry. And thanks to the relatively low bar to entry for creating a mobile app, which tend to be much less sophisticated and much more easily brought to market than, say, computer software, the field is wide open for small startups or single developers. In 2009, Ethan Nicholas developed the game iShoot in his spare time, and the app eventually rocketed to the No. 1 spot on the Apple App Store. Try telling Nichollas (and plenty more examples like him) that a bunch of staffers at a large gaming company could have done better.
• Take risks. If you’re just starting out as an indie developer, you don’t have shareholders to please, payroll obligations to meet, or a brand to uphold. You may have bills to pay or a family to support, but hopefully you’ll be in a position to experiment. This puts you at an advantage to many corporations, who are often too concerned with making a safe play than to seize the next big opportunity.
• Leverage your flexibility. Bureaucracy can stifle innovation, and it can also make it tougher for companies to respond to the market. At a large corporation, a new idea might have to go through several layers of approval before developers are even allowed to start working on it. In the time it takes them to get off the ground, you may be able to pre-empt them with a similar offering.
• Develop partnerships. It tends to take much longer for large companies to agree on partnership terms with other players, whereas you can start working right away with partners who can help advance your progress. Being an indie app developer means that you are a part of a very large community of highly motivated, talented people. Rely on them! (more…)

Editor’s note: Today’s guest post comes Quinton Wall, director of platform technical evangelism at Salesforce.

Despite all of the hype around mobile computing, I think too many are underestimating the impact of mobile. That’s right: underestimating the mobile transformation underway. Maybe not in the near term, but definitely over the long run. Think about it. For the first time, high school graduates won’t recall the feeling of working without a fully-powered, always-connected computing device in their pocket. That’s a powerful demographic tailwind behind the sails of mobile, and a big reason why, according to IDC, by 2015, at 1.3 billion people, 37.2 percent of the entire global workforce will be mobile.

How do software companies and independent software developers capitalize on this? It’s certainly on the top of mind of the developers we speak with. In a recent discussion with Athani Krishna, co-founder and vice president of product strategy at field service automation software provider ServiceMax Inc. expressed his excitement around mobile, and the opportunity it presents. Krishna made it clear that success here has little to do with the precise phone or tablet form-factor they’re using. No, what is more important is the context of what the user wants to achieve and where they’re trying to complete that task. It’s about all of the other dimensions mobile computing brings between the app and the user such as their location, connectivity quality, and others in the work or social network that may be nearby. “The idea of mobile first design is something that’s a big force for us, and we’re engineering that into all of our applications,” Krishna said.

Successful software companies must be able to design to mobile and they need to be able to do so swiftly. Here are the handful of must-have capabilities we believe developers need to succeed today: (more…)

Editor’s note: On April 25, Facebook announced an agreement to acquire Parse, a cloud-based platform providing tools for mobile app developers. The mobile backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) company could be used by Facebook to make it easy for mobile developers to integrate its SDK and use Facebook login, Open Graph and other components of its platform. And with the recently completed acquisition of advertising platform Atlas, we speculated last week that Parse and Atlas could be made — or some parts of it — free to most advertisers and developers to bring them deeper into Facebook’s ecosystem, ultimately driving ad revenue. Ty Amell, founder and CEO at StackMob, a cloud-based mobile application development platform, explains why Facebook has a big problem on its hands, regarding the steep cost of its platform for developers that’s causing them to leave the platform for mobile. In an effort to stop the exodus, Amell elaborates why Facebook agreed to acquire Parse.

The Facebook acquisition is just the latest move of large public companies taking long hard looks at the MBaaS and API industries. Salesforce recently launched their mobile services platform, Microsoft is in preview with mobile services on Azure and Intel recently bought Mashery for $180 million. Not to mention Layer 7 being acquired by CA Technologies.

With Facebook’s most recent acquisition, does this mean Facebook is moving into the MBaaS space? The short answer: not necessarily. Facebook has a big problem — many of the game publishers that made money for Facebook are starting to leave the platform. While Apple can still get away with charging a 30 percent commission to app developers, Facebook is having a hard time justifying those types of commissions. Apple’s App Store is on rocket ship growth trajectory while Facebook’s platform growth may have plateaued. Without that growth, publishers are having a hard time justifying the steep cost of Facebook’s platform. Public companies like Zynga are having a hard time reaching earnings projections as more and more users move away from Facebook in preference of mobile. (more…)

Editor’s note: Arcade action game Nimble Quest is the latest offering from Tiny Towers and Pocket Planes developer NimbleBit. Kevin Oke, Lead Designer at both Adrian Crook & Associates, a social-mobile game design consultancy, and PlayRank, a second screen startup, analyzes the stickiness in Nimble Quest. He previously wrote a guest post for Inside Mobile Apps that analyzed engagement in Supercell’s Clash of Clans.

NimbleBit, creators of Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes, released their latest title the aptly named Nimble Quest at the end of March. While it’s a fun game, I’ve found four key issues described below that I believe limit its stickiness and in turn, its ability to monetize.

According to AppData, after a strong start peaking at No. 6 on the top free iPhone apps chart for the games genre, it has slid to No. 217 as of this writing. Its rank on the top grossing iPhone apps chart for the games genre is at No. 190. These positions may be at least partially attributable to the issues I found.

The Compulsion Loop

This is the biggest barrier for Nimble Quest to overcome. The nature of its compulsion loop makes for a very grind heavy experience that hinders its stickiness.

It’s a rule of thumb in game design that the shorter the loop, the more addictive the experience. By analyzing the loop (diagram above), one can see that unless the player is willing to spend hard currency, they have to restart from the beginning every time. The variable session length nature of the game means that as the player and their friends improve, it takes more and more time for them to challenge their ever-increasing high scores.

Essentially Nimble Quest is banking on players getting invested enough in leaderboard competition to start paying once the grind becomes too much to bear. This is a risky hook to rely on here, as it’s one that is much better suited to games with more of a sense of permanence and ownership, like city builders and strategy games such as Kingdoms of Camelot by Kabam. The reason being that without such permanence, it’s much easier for the player to decide to quit when the grinding gets tiresome.

As in any freemium game leveraging the player’s time for money, if the player tires of the grind too quickly and churns out, they can’t be monetized. However Nimble Quest is especially at risk here because of their compulsion loop. Fixed session lengths with level progression and difficulty determined by a party XP level would have provided more stickiness. (more…)

Editor’s Note: Earlier this week, Apple booted out app discovery service AppGratis, which promotes paid apps by offering one for free everyday, from the Apple App Store for violating clause 2.25 of Apple’s App Review Guidelines, which states that “Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.” The app also violated clause 5.6, which states that “Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind.” VentureBeat reported that Apple reached out to AppGratis last Friday, informing the company that it was welcome to change its app and resubmit it. AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat said in a company blog post that there were no discussions between Apple and AppGratis in advance of the Cupertino, Calif.-headquartered corporation removing the app. Dawlat (who also explained the full story of how AppGratis got pulled) said he did eventually speak with an Apple employee over the phone and does want to speak further with Apple.

With all that said, in today’s guest post from Noya Polliack, marketing director at Side-Kick Games, a developer of family and mid-core games, says that despite discoverability being a huge issue for app developers in the crowded mobile app market, AppGratis is the latest example of Apple being keen on clamping down on any apps that violate its policies.

Six months after adding clause 2.25 to Apple’s App Review Guidelines, AppGratis finds itself outside of the best store in town – Apple’s App Store.

AppGratis is the second app banned from the App Store due to the new guidelines which restrict apps from providing pure app promotion services. These Apps usually function as app recommendation services and/or alert users when discounts are available. Among this type of apps are FreeAppADay, Appoday, Daily App Dream, Appsfire and more. Earlier in December, the popular AppShopper app was removed from the Apple App Store.

Both AppGratis and AppShopper offered developers burst campaigns — massive traffic in a short period of time. The result of these campaigns is usually high ranking in the Apple App Store for a few days. This method of app promotion is used by many developers in order to overcome the number one problem in the crowded app market today — discoverability.

At the moment there are still plenty of other discovery apps, which offer third-party promotions. While Apple’s next move is unknown, it’s definitely an issue that app developers should address.

Is Apple acting in the users’ best interest?

One of the reasons the new clause was added is that by attracting millions of users, third-party aggregators like AppGratis allow a way for developers to spend their way to the top 25, violating the Apple App Store’s purity. However, big game development studios that can afford to create a marketing buzz before they launch their app can be accused of doing just the same. While these well known studios get the media’s attention and use their apps portfolio to cross promote their new app, indie developers with a low marketing budget and a single app stay behind. Sadly, the outcome is that many new great apps are not visible to iOS users.

It’s also important to remember that burst campaigns can be executed using different user acquisition tactics such as web-based affiliate networks, ad networks and user acquisition networks. Since all of these sources use in-app ads to promote other apps, we can expect to see the mobile ads market growing faster than expected.

As Apple’s ranking algorithm remains a mystery, it’s known that the number of downloads plays a key factor in Apple’s app store ranking. Since app installs can be acquired one way or another, it only seems fair that users’ experience and rating will have a much stronger influence on apps’ ranking.

Looking at Apple’s latest moves — adding clause 2.25, clamping down on incentivized apps downloads, changing the Apple App Store’s look and the unknown magic formula of how to get featured — it’s clear that Apple is keen to stay “hands on” picking the “right” apps for its users.

Editor’s note: Today’s guest post comes to us from Jan Beckers, co-founder and CEO of HitFox, an incubator focused on investing in and acquiring game distribution and user acquisition startups. This article is the second in a five-part series of articles analyzing game platforms and the patterns that historically repeat itself.

Part 2: From marketing to product focus

In the first party of this article series, we discovered how gaming platforms are very similar to countries in many ways. Both types of entities have specific rules and regulations, growth and decline cycles, competition and taxes. We saw that just like countries and societies, game platforms show patterns in the development of these features. We then took a closer look at the first of these crucial patterns, the acceleration of platform cycles.

A question that is equally elemental as it is crucial, regardless of platform is: “How do I distribute my budgets?” This question is dynamic as the crucial success factors change with the platform cycle. And there is one pattern here in that stands out strong.

Pattern 2: Marketing wins on early platforms, product wins on mature platforms

In the early days of a platform, specific knowledge was rare.  Consumers and users are largely uninformed and don’t truly understand or relate to the platform. With a new technology entering the market there is an instantaneous shortage of information. The customer has to get used to a platform. At the beginning there won’t be many media resources. Word of mouth recommendations by friends also need time to build up. In consequence, discovery mechanisms and filtering functions are weak at the outset of a platform.

The shortage of information extends to the products offered for a platform and in our context the games. A user that wanted to pick a game on Facebook in the early days of the social network was like a tourist that just arrived in a new country, trying to decide on which restaurant to pick — without a travel guide.

The potential customer has to rely on marketing in order to make his decisions. Zynga was masterful in using this situation for their advantage. The company successfully focused on marketing with numerous “Ville” titles, which are only marginally different. Their early emphasis on marketing helped to establish them as a crucial player in the social games market.

Marketing wins on a new platform. It’s a land grab.

This foundation for decision making changes significantly over time though. With the development of a new ecosystem, the number of available information sources increases. And over time, the consumers have repeated interactions with businesses. Not only can the customer access information at his or her will, accumulated lessons and experiences are now part of the decision making process.

Mature platforms have educated users.

Mature platforms have experienced users that have played many games. They know the owners reputation and they can more easily differentiate between good and bad games. Brands and franchises become more important. Even if the user lacks experience, the media, e.g. game magazines, websites, blogs and forums deliver plenty of information, providing tools for both filtering and discovery. And friends discuss the games on Facebook or over drinks at the bar. The user can now make educated decisions based on product quality. The first consequences can be seen in the mobile market now with players like Supercell and King.com. Both are hugely successful with a focus on top-quality. “Now it’s a lot more about the product quality and the product itself,” as Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen stated in a recent interview.

The best product wins on mature platforms.

To sum up: In order to be as successful as possible, developers and publishers have to go with the natural platform flow. They need to concentrate on marketing when a platform is young and then use the early success and the user base to build the best product over time.

Editor’s note: Today’s guest post comes from James Lamberti, vice president and general manager of AdTruth (he was formally of mobile ad network InMobi and ComScore), a technology that enables audience identification through anonymous device recognition. In this post, Lamberti discusses why Apple and Mozilla making the decision to block and reject cookie tracking is a good thing.

You can bet that privacy advocates across the digital industry were celebrating recently. In response to Mozilla’s intent to block all third-party cookies by default and Apple’s decision to reject apps that use cookie-tracking, digital advertisers are wondering what this disruptive news means and how they should respond.

If anything, these changes should be applauded. While this news may come as a surprise to marketers and digital advertisers, it should be seen as an opportunity for the industry to address a problem that’s been an issue for years. The audience-identification options are limited; but this is a critical function that marketers depend on every day.

With cookies quickly falling by the wayside, the industry needs an alternative that is universal in nature, functions across all devices, on all operating systems and across every use case including desktop, mobile and apps. Apple’s push toward identifier for advertising (IFA) is a step in the right direction but is limited to iOS devices and doesn’t support all use cases.

Second, a universal alternative needs be based on the concept of privacy by design. This means privacy has been factored in from the beginning, not added as an afterthought. It also means providing the flexibility to recognize and respect privacy protection mechanisms, such as online behavioral advertising (OBA) and Do Not Track.

While keeping privacy in mind, a solution must also be effective. Performance and longevity are of great value to marketers and must reach an acceptable rate for a solution to even be considered. The key is for advertisers to understand and recognize their audiences well enough to provide relevant content: no more and no less.

And finally, with the number of mobile users and devices in world, we need a solution that has the ability to scale. Digital marketing is delivered and measured in billions of impressions and fractions of seconds. If this speed and scale can’t be supported the approach isn’t going to be adopted.

The news from Apple and Mozilla has caused many in the ecosystem to wonder how they will continue to reach customers in a time of diminishing options. They shouldn’t worry. As the ‘deterministic’ cookie approach continues to fade out, there is an opportunity for a more ‘probabilistic’ approach – one that meets the criteria outlined above – to be adopted. Don’t fret; it’s time to thank Apple and Mozilla for helping reframe the audience identification conversation.

Editor’s note: Today’s guest post comes from Veronica Picciafuoco, director of content for Docracy, a free repository of open source legal documents. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released a report, which outlined recommendations (not laws, yet) for mobile platforms and mobile app developers across the country to better inform its users what personal data is being collected and how the data is being used. Picciafuoco explains three reasons why app developers should have a privacy policy that outlines data collection.

1. The FTC thinks you should

In the U.S., a privacy policy isn’t mandatory requirement. But things are changing for mobile apps. The FTC issued a long report this month titled Mobile Privacy Disclosures. This document lays out a long list of recommendations for both platforms and app developers. Simply put, the FTC thinks every mobile app should have a readable, accessible privacy policy to explain users what data are collected, how, and why.

Here’s what the FTC thinks developers should do:

• Have a privacy policy and make sure it’s easily accessible through the app stores

According to a June 2012 study, only 28 percent of paid apps and 48 percent of free apps available in the Apple App Store include a privacy policy or link to a privacy policy on the app promotion page. If you are on the “dark side”, it’s time to draft a solid privacy policy and make sure it’s accessible from your app, and not just from the privacy link when you submit the app to the various stores. If your app asks users to login via Facebook to find friends, the login screen is a prominent spot to place the policy link, so every user has the chance to check it.

• Provide just-in-time disclosures and obtain affirmative express consent before collecting and sharing sensitive information (to the extent the platforms haven’t already provided such disclosures and obtained such consent)

As a user, you surely have met the pop-up notification that asks permission for push notifications. That’s an example of “just-in-time disclosure” provided by the platform itself. The FTC knows that few people read privacy policies, and wants you to notify your users about important privacy disclosures in the moment it occurs. For example, if your app wants to access the user’s address book to find other friends already playing the game, a pop-up is the best way to tell them in details what information are being collected and why.

• Improve coordination and communication with ad networks and other third parties, such as analytics companies, that provide services for apps so the app developers can provide accurate disclosures to consumers

This is referring to external libraries, SDK and other third-party code that app developers often integrate in the app to facilitate advertising or analytics. The FTC is trying to tell you: it’s ok, but do it responsibly. Check public repositories for bugs, apply some due diligence on the reputation of the companies behind the code you are embedding. In short: use some common sense here, as you’re ultimately responsible for major loss of data from your app, even if due to third-party code.

• Consider participating in self-regulatory programs, trade associations and industry organizations, which can provide guidance on how to make uniform, short-form privacy disclosures

The FTC is suggesting shortcuts to make your privacy policy up to industry standards. There are many trade associations in this space, including App Development Alliance (ADA), Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), International Game Developers Association (IGDA), Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and many others. I personally oversee a crowdsourcing effort to open source a standard mobile privacy policy.

2. You can be fined you if you don’t follow or update your privacy policy

The FTC issued Path a whopping $800,000 fine for violations of their own privacy policy. Path said it wasn’t collecting certain information when, in fact, it was. While it’s normal for an app to ask permission to access third-party information on your phone, like address book info, what data you collect (and what do you do with it) is crucial. If you cater to minors, for example, you’re subject to COPPA, a federal law that says you must obtain “verifiable parent consent” if children under 13 use your app. Since Path collected birth dates, they knew for a fact they had kids using the app, and never did much about it. Result: $800,000 to the FTC. If you know that you have kids on your website, call your lawyer and find out how to comply with COPPA. If you don’t really know, make sure users represent they’re over 13.

3. You users will trust you more if you do, and your platform, too

A recent survey found that 57 percent of all app users have either uninstalled an app over concerns about having to share their personal information, or declined to install an app in the first place for similar reasons. Instagram is said to have lost something like six million users after the their controversial Terms of Service change: people are starting to care about the legal implications of the apps they use. You can get away from the FTC, but there are crowdsourced policing tools in place now (TOS;DR, PrivacyChoice, etc.) and it only takes one vocal user to spread a bad rumor. There’s also a positive side: good early behavior can help establish a level of trust with your user base that has positive effects on retention, and may even give you a competitive advantage.

Conclusion: get a privacy policy: it’s not that hard

There are pretty compelling reasons to have a good privacy policy for your mobile applications. It’s not something that only big publisher can afford. You can start with a free online template or a free privacy policy assembler and have a lawyer review it for a small fixed fee.

Looking at what the competition is doing can also help you figure out what kind of disclosures go in a policy. The important thing, particularly with mobile apps, is to make sure the policy stays true at every update. Every time add or fix something, think if it had an impact on your privacy statements, and edit them if necessary. Added a new analytics script? It should go in there. If you adopt a “privacy by design” approach from the beginning, this process will become automatic and naturally integrated in product development, keeping your legal risks low.

Editor’s note: SessionM has a term for users who are constantly using their mobile device. The rewards-based ad network calls them power users, which are defined as users who generate the most in-app activity — including interacting with mobile content, social activities and in-app ads — across all app categories. The company’s co-founder and chief technology officer Scott Weller — formally of MDI, GameLogic and Gamesville.com — lays out five tips on how developers can turn average users into power users, resulting in a higher potential for the success of an app.

1. Be a guide

Don’t expect casual users to “figure out” the app features. Instead, guide users through the most important features on their first visit and show them exactly why they should use the app. Walkthroughs help reduce the chance a user will become frustrated navigating the app and increase the chance a user will take full advantage of all the app has to offer.

2. Offer personalization

Your features should be meaningful to users, that’s why they downloaded the app, right? One of the best ways to provide a valuable experience is through personalization. Make sure to provide settings that users can change to customize features and content to their liking. Not only will this provide a better experience for users, but will also give you more insight into the types of people using the app and how to boost conversions down the road.

3. Add reminders

Often the reason a user doesn’t return to an app is just a matter of the app not being top of mind, so adding push notifications is a great way to remind users to come back. A study by Urban Airship even showed that users who receive push notifications in an app have a 26 percent higher retention rate after one month. Supercharge the usefulness and response rates of push notifications by delivering valuable content and tying the content to personalization options previously initiated by the user. Be measured, though — random and repetitive notifications can lead to a quick delete of the app.

4. Reward for good behavior

Humans innately like to be rewarded, so providing something of value to a user when they complete an activity or milestone is a great way to encourage them to come back. Not only are rewards a way of saying “thanks” for a user’s time, but they can also go a long way in providing users a pathway for discovering other features they would have otherwise passed-by. Daily rewards are key to staying top of mind and becoming part of a user’s daily routine.

5. Get with the in-crowd

Your users are social creatures, and most love having the opportunity to share their in-app experience with others. When you build social features into your app, you reduce the risk of users leaving to socialize outside of the app. Of course, social features can help drive users’ friends into the app, too. To help promote this, provide suggested Twitter and Facebook messages that speak to the feature set of the app, not just the app itself.

Editor’s note: Clash of Clans, one of two titles from Finnish mobile developer Supercell, has continually topped the iOS charts and raked in loads of money for the studio. Kevin Oke, Lead Designer at both Adrian Crook & Associates, a social-mobile game design consultancy, and PlayRank, a second screen startup, takes a deep dive into how Clash of Clans effectively engages and retains players.

Supercell’s Clash of Clans (CoC) has been a top grossing title on the iOS app store for months now, and in the course of playing (and becoming addicted to) the game, I began to unravel just how it manages to engage and retain players so well.

Meaningful Downtime Mechanics

Games relying on appointment mechanics as part of their compulsion loop typically have trouble addressing the downtime that arises in between these appointments. Specifically, how to engage players during this time, as generally the most engaging gameplay and core mechanics are intertwined with these downtime-creating appointment mechanics. In city builder games, usually the only thing available to the player during downtime is re-organizing their cities — shallow gameplay, generally speaking.

In this sense, CoC is no different. However the composition of the player’s village is not only vital to success, but a downtime session of moving gold mines and cannons around can directly lead to a micro-transaction.

A quick explanation for those that have not played CoC: The layout of your buildings, walls, traps, and weaponry are key, as you need to defend against raids from other players. An airtight defense quickly becomes the obsession of CoC players as they try to protect their stores of gold and elixir. Using the Replay feature (more on this later), they watch and learn from their defeats, tweaking their layout to patch holes in their defense.

In short, this is a fantastic downtime mechanic. Why?

• It’s meaningful.
• It creates additional, long play sessions (a level 20 player could easily spend half an hour doing a total revamp of their defenses).
• Spurs on purchases — “I could defend the south side of the village with just these two cannons if they were upgraded. But I don’t have enough gold … But if I don’t upgrade, I’m too vulnerable.” A perfect example of this mechanic leading to a micro-transaction.
• The player’s fortress layout is personal and unique. This attachment is great for engagement long-term.

As you can see, this isn’t just a fantastic downtime mechanic, but a fantastic gameplay mechanic period.

Loop Optimization

Loop optimization provides the player with tricks to discover and exploit over the course of their lifetime within the game. A prime example in social games is Farmville players finding and planting the seeds with the best coin/XP cost ratio. Instances of loop optimization help with long-term engagement by making a game more difficult to grok, and in competitive games, providing an edge to players with the will to unearth them. In social games with appointment mechanics, they also create more sessions per day.

Loop optimization in CoC is centered on resource collecting and raids. In classic appointment mechanic fashion, for the player to most efficiently harvest gold and elixir they need to return to the game and harvest right when the resource generating structures are at max capacity. Harvest any time past that point, and it’s the equivalent of turning on a tap to fill a bucket and leaving, coming back, and seeing the bucket overflowing — wasted resources. This is not unique to CoC in any way, but it’s still important in maximizing the number of daily sessions per player.

The more interesting loop optimization comes from player vs. player (PvP) and the threat of raids. Leaving hoards of gold and elixir sitting around makes the player a very appealing target for raids. Thus they are encouraged to check in often and do one of two things:

• Collect their resources from the buildings that generate them, moving them into their storage units, which if the player is smart, are behind fortifications.
• Collect and spend their resources immediately.

As the player can only build a certain number of defenses at any given time (based on the level of their town hall), they can never provide adequate protection for all of their structures.

Thus the need to check in often and spend, or move the gold and elixir to storage units that are better protected — it’s a common strategy to keep storage units behind walls and near archery towers and cannons, and leave gold mines and elixir collectors out in the open, as they store much less and therefore are less of a loss if pillaged.

This all means that saving up for big-ticket upgrades and buildings is risky. The more time spent saving up, the bigger the loss and time wasted if the player is raided. Recognizing that a moment of tension and risk is a great time to conduct a micro-transaction, Supercell offers a shield that will protect the player from raids while they are saving up. Or the player can just buy the item in question immediately with hard currency. (more…)