Explore game curation and featuring on the App Store

Hi everyone, I’m Kelli. I'm a games editor on the App Store editorial team, and I describe myself as a lifelong player. And when I say lifelong, I mean my first Mac was a tan box with a floppy disk drive. So it's been a minute.

Now, one of my favorite parts of what I do is getting the chance to help players find new favorite games. So if there is an opportunity for me to help make a connection between what you're making and all the people who are going to love it, I consider that doing my job well.

Today, I'm going to share a bit more about how players discover your games through editorial, across the App Store and the games app. I'll take you through what editorial placements look like. Then I'm going to talk a bit about what we're looking for in games. And after that, I'm going to tell you how you can tell us about your latest projects.

Okay. Let's get started. So there are three primary ways that people can discover your games on the App Store by browsing our curated tabs, by being referred from outside the store, and by using search.

As a member of the editorial team, I'm going to focus on how we curate and how that curation shows up when people browse the App Store and the games app.

Now we're very proud of our store. It's curated by hello again, real humans worldwide. Our editorial approach is to celebrate the best games that the App Store has to offer. Create a trusted place that's curated by experts, where players can find great new games for their devices, and then to make stories and collections that inform, help and inspire our players every day.

The App Store, as you heard before, is available in 175 storefronts and more than 39 languages, and our editorial featuring is reflected across all of these markets. Our global editorial teams play everything that we feature once we found a game that we want to promote, we then decide how, where and when to highlight them on the store so that we can help shine a spotlight on your incredible work.

And we do this across every platform and every app Store, from iPhone to iPad, Mac and Apple TV.

Now, when people open up the App Store, the first thing they'll see is the today tab, which is updated daily to include the latest stories. You'll find a lot of types of coverage here, and we'll go into that in a moment.

From there, visitors can tap to view the Games and Apps tabs, which have a higher density of content, encouraging broader discovery across the App Store catalog with more focus on collections and personalized recommendations.

On today, Tab editorial takes many shapes, from tips about our favorite games to behind the scenes developer stories. To launch stories like this one we have up here about The Stanley Parable.

We also put a lot of focus on in-game game event coverage and other opportunities for players to reengage with their favorite games. We want to showcase the biggest and best events happening on the store, while also personalizing the page so they see what's most relevant. This way, players are not only discovering new games they've never played before, but they're also able to keep up with what's inside their favorite games.

Editorial also features curated collections. These showcase games that share a common theme. Some of those might be things like controller support or offline play, or what we're looking at here. Try before you buy, which includes games that can be downloaded for free with a one time purchase to unlock full access.

Our collections cover everything from subgenres that suit different moods to specific features, themes, and styles of play.

Moving one tab over on games tab, our visitors get a games only experience that showcases more of a broad content, and here there are plenty of opportunities to be featured in different ways. In the example we have up on the screen, I've highlighted some of the placements that include artwork, which we may request from you.

You can also tap into categories that focus on more specialized interests. For example, not all of our players are interested in roguelikes, but if someone is looking for them, we want to make sure that they can find them.

Just like today, GameStop includes collections where we publish things related to trends and cultural moments. Another example, let's say a popular superhero movie has just come out. We might have a superhero collection for players to interact with that content. Players can come to this tab to regularly find new games, updates, and relevant events.

Your game may be considered for coverage BeatsX that we hit at regular intervals during the year. Got to catch my breath. Some are festive moments, like we just had Halloween or Valentine's Day, which is coming up. Others align with events that may be International Women's Day, Earth Day, Accessibility Awareness Day, and pride.

This is when the stories behind your games can really shine. As we highlight relevant in-game events, do behind the scenes profiles, and also surface the games in related collections.

In addition, our global editors will plan content based on events in their local markets. What you're seeing here are just a few examples of some of the things we've done in the past. Could be cultural moments, seasonal celebrations, or any other themes that we could highlight.

I'll get into how we make sure that we know your game includes those features in a little while, but these are definitely moments that you can think about when you're trying to think about how your game may appear on the store.

Our curation also appears on the games app. Misha just went over that app in detail, so I'm just going to quickly touch on where you'll see editorial content on the app. You're going to see a lot of the games that we've featured on the store pages, but with some additional considerations for Game Center features.

On the home tab of the games app, you'll see curated games from collections from our editorial team.

These are displayed alongside other personalized recommendations like Game center activity and events for games you're playing.

On these pages, you may see stories to help customers understand the app or various pieces of curated content like single app cards, where we have a standalone piece of art or collections to get customers deeper into our catalog of games. And as Mischa mentioned before, if your game is utilizing Game Center features, there are more opportunities to find it placed in the games app.

More straightforward categories like racing, action and indie are also available on home. They'll lead to fully curated destinations, and we're excited to showcase a lot of the best games that we found here. Those categories will also appear when our customers head over to search.

Now that I've covered how editorial appears on the store, let's talk a little bit about how we make featuring decisions.

When considering what to feature in general, our teams look for great games across all categories and business models. There's no checklist that we go through or specific requirements, but some of the factors that we consider are on the screen right now. Our editors may look at things like your gameplay design, your mechanics, your UI, the gameplay flow.

We may also consider artistic considerations like your visual style, your animation and your sound design, or more technical aspects like your controls and overall performance on our devices. This could also include OS and device specific features. In-game localization and accessibility are also important considerations, as we try to ensure that our featuring can appeal to players around the world.

I could probably create an entire new presentation, just talking about all these different facets of games. But what I'd like to do now is just spend a little bit of time going into detail on just a few and giving you some of the practical considerations that we look at as a team. I'll be going through examples in gameplay design, art and animation, storytelling and controls.

So I'm going to start with a game called Afterplace. This is an adventure designed to be played with one hand in portrait mode, where you use swipes and moves and taps to attack.

While the game feels easy to pick up and play, there's plenty of depth to really master challenging fights as you explore the world. Each character has a whole lot of really amusing dialog, and the cryptic map has a lot of well-placed secrets. Putting all of these features together, we were able to get into something that makes the world feel not only worth exploring, but replaying. And I've actually replayed this game maybe two and a half times, and I don't think I've found everything.

Our team awarded the game Editor's Choice. It went on to win an Apple Design Award, and the game fits into a wide range of different collection types, so I could consider this for adventure games, indie games, great games on iPhone, or when the developer submits things like post game content or releases it on other devices, which this developer has. There are many other opportunities where I could feature, and he consistently kept us alerted about those updates.

Next, let's take a look at art and animation with Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Standout examples for art and animation can take many forms. Sometimes that's creative use of pixel art or more high production value games like the ones we're seeing here. This one launched not only on Mac, but what you're seeing on iPhone and on iPad. The developer brings us into a rich and detailed world with vibrant colors and a satisfying amount of comic book style flash.

The side scrolling look is a nod to classic Prince of Persia games, while also bringing modern elements into this mythical setting. It looks great and it runs extremely well across all the platforms we played it on.

A game with well crafted visuals may be considered when we're looking at collections of games with great graphics. Now, the visuals can be a high point, but it's definitely not the only thing that we consider. We're always looking for original ideas and overall high quality experiences.

Which brings us to cyberpunk 2077. This is a game our team was happy came to Mac earlier this year and the game looks amazing. Absolutely, yes. But this is also a great example of storytelling. Cyberpunk's incredibly detailed world is filled with immersive stories and complex characters. The stories touch on themes like the blurred lines between man and technology, while also making the experience feel customizable and centered to how you choose to move through Night City. It does this with expertly voiced dialog and a wide array of choices that players can make to make the story feel like their own.

Considering this point in a different way, never is a beautiful game from a small studio that definitely has a memorable and recognizable art style. And that art also goes a long way when it comes to storytelling. Never manages to do that with almost no spoken words. Its themes are driven home through rich color scapes, well-crafted sound, and really amazing hand-drawn animations. It tells a poignant story about love, loss, and growth that anybody can understand.

And now, my last example. I'm sure everyone recognizes this game. We're going to take a look at Dead Cells, but specifically talk more about controls. When the team considers controls, we're not just looking at whether they function. We're looking at how well they function and how they feel to use in Dead Cells. Even with fast paced action, the controls remain responsive.

The developers also included customizations to make the game feel more comfortable with touch controls, things like auto attacking functionalities. The game features a lot of accessibility considerations like minimizing screen shake, so we've actually featured this game in games that are accessible on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Players have the ability to move button locations on the screen as well for more tailored input experiences.

While we don't expect this level of customization and versatility in every game we review, these are just great examples of giving players tons of options to improve their experience. Again, there's no featuring checklist, and there is so much more that I wish I could cover right now. But if the game that you're making is incorporating any features like this, or features you think are important to tell us about, it's definitely something we're looking for when we plan promotions.

At this point, I've covered a lot about featuring opportunities across the App Store and the games app. So how do you get that information to my team so that we can consider you for these placements.

Our teams are always looking to feature new games in game events and preorders, and with the featuring nominations tool, which you can find through App Store Connect, you can submit that information directly to editorial team members all around the world. And we're checking these nominations every week. Using this tool, you can tell us about your game, launching big updates or interesting facts about your development or your game content. I'm going to give you a few helpful submission tips for the tool when you're planning to submit a nomination, especially if you're planning to submit for a new game, you should do so when you have a TestFlight build available, or a build in your system that you feel comfortable with an editor playing. Like I said earlier, we play all the games that we feature, so if we don't have a build that we can test, we won't be able to make that featuring decision and we don't feature games that we haven't played.

If you're going to describe your content in our fields, it's best to keep those notes short, but there are other areas of the tool where you can add TestFlight links, other descriptions, roadmaps, anything you might think is helpful for us to get specific information.

For timelines. You should ideally submit nominations at least three weeks in advance to give the editorial team time to review your content for consideration. Depending on how your game is highlighted, it can sometimes take an extended amount of time to plan featuring. So if I was going to plan featuring for your game in a collection, that might be something I could put up pretty quickly. But if I was going to plan a story for your game, that might take a little bit longer. For stories, it's best to give us about eight weeks. That might sound like a lot of time, but it gives us time to assess the game. If it's new, write and edit copy request, and then maybe prepare video for your artwork placements and then have the option to globally localize that coverage so it can be published more broadly.

If your game has multiple unique updates on the way, please submit those as individual nominations. So if you know that you're going to be releasing new content in your game, and it's going to come out over a period of a few different dates, it's best to send those in as separate nominations for individual updates. And if your important dates change, not a big deal. You can go into the tool and you can adjust the dates. Keeping these things in mind will help ensure that the editor reading your nomination has the most accurate and up to date information when they plan for featuring.

Most of the information that I've covered can be found on the Getting Featured on the App Store page on the Apple Developer website. This page explains some of the ways that we highlight content on our store, our featuring considerations, and has a link for the featuring nominations tool. That's it for me on editorial, and I thank you for spending the day with us. I’m going to pass it back to Charlyn.