Best Practice: How Robot Entertainments Hero Academy went big in China

Hero Academy from Robot Entertainment is a huge hit with U.S. and European iOS gamers. But even though China was the second biggest market for Hero Academy by downloads, it was still only reaching a fraction of China’s potential iOS audience. After partnering with Robot Entertainment to create and release a new Chinese version of the game, we went through Hero Academy point by point, and identified several likely problems it was having here: Time zones and social media (…) Western fantasy theme and game elements (…) Marketing, gameplay tutorials, and community (…) The overall results were hugely gratifying: Within 48 hours of launch, the Chinese version of Hero Academy made the Top 10 list in free games, and Top 25 iPhone apps overall. Even better, this new Chinese version of the game was downloaded more in its first 3 weeks on the market than the original, non-localized version attracted in its first 8 months in China.
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