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Why Do We Need to Reskin Games and Apps?

Reskinning of games and apps has become a trend. We must have seen how popular games have gone under designer knives and come out with brand new colours and appearances. Gamers always look for dazzling experiences and reskinned games provide for this greatly.

Reskinning of games – Games are reskinned in order to change the look and feel of it. A game that has been nicely developed may not look good as enthusiastic players always look to have good gaming experience clubbed with good visual treat.

It is often found necessary by game owners to change the look and presence of their existing games because of not being able to become popular. Re-design is handed out to companies for better outputs.

Why Do We Need to Reskin an App?

Reskinning generally means replacing or repairing a surface. Skin, in the digital sense means the GUI or the Graphical User Interface. A developer reskinning an app would digitally be defined as he/she is updating and modifying the appearance of the app. Template and the spruce code need not be changed to carry out reskinning.

Advantages of Reskinning

Mobile app industry is growing by leaps and bounds. The app market being highly aggressive and competitive there is a notable change in consumer needs. Mobile Apps and games are made and marketed keeping a fine relevance with the market trends and suitability with the consumer needs. Developers not only create new apps but also change, update, improve or modify existing apps to suit the current requirements and trends.

1. Reskinning Saves a Lot of Money

Creating a source code for an app (or for a game) requires a lot of manpower (hiring programmers is essential which takes substantial money). In order to enhance an app a small number of skilled individuals is required to focus on improvement and modification of the game or app. Added features and details can be included without shelling out big money and resources.

2. Better ROI

There are several companies and developers who purchase games and apps that belong to competitor companies and reskin them. This makes way for improved versions of existing popular apps and games. Users show a lot of interest in buying reskinned apps and games. This proves to be a good source of ROI (return on investment) for developers and companies.

3. Reskinning is a Time Saver

It takes a lot of time and energy in writing source codes for apps. Developers find reskinning a smooth way to avoid this painful journey of writing codes from scratch. It often takes weeks and even months to find successful launch of an app. Success is never a guarantee (for a newly launched app or a game) so it is often an easier choice to reskin in order to avoid extreme time and effort routines.

4. Better Marketing and Reaching Audiences Faster

Since reskinning takes less time, launch or marketing can be done faster than originally coded apps. You can happily release your app in a very short time. This will reach you to bigger audience bases in a short period of time cutting you out of huge competition. By simply changing the look and making geographical requirement (or cultural territories) related changes the games can be floated successfully. Bigger territories of audiences can be gained by changing the cultural and geographical feel in the games.

Disadvantages of Reskinning

You stand a high chance of being rejected on the app store. A reskinned game or app might take time in getting approved. These might be the early signs of getting a rejection message. There are numerous game and app producers who come up with copies of existing apps and games. This is a thing that is not taken well by many communities.

Having a series of similar looking apps and games creates confusion. This is something that does not go down well with consumers or industry players.

Readymade codes are often unusable which makes reskinning difficult and at times even impossible. A reskinned app or game can often be unable to see the light of the day.

Legal hassles can also take place when a newbie tries to beat an existing game or an app owner in his/her own territory. An existing owner will never take it lkightly when he sees a copy of his/her game or app running in the market.

Reasons Why We Start Thinking of Reskinning

You might ask yourself why you need to reskin or even start thinking about it. It’s not like everyone seems to be doing reskinning then why you. Copies of popular games have a good market as users never mind shelling out money for good (old and existing) games having better visuals.

Visual variations depending on age, country and culture are kept in mind before restructuring the look and feel of an app or a game.

Anton Sinelnikov had replicated games like Angry Birds, Temple Run and Plants vs. Zombies. This had spelt confusion in the app world. Duplicate games were created by Anton who did not take into account the original source codes and the rising dissent among game developers like Imangi Studios and Popcap Games. Users bought cloned games and when there were numerous complaints (lodged by game developers and marketers) Apple closed down its support.

Why Do We Need to Bother About the Dos and Don’ts in Reskinning?

As mobile game enthusiasts, it is important to take note of how a game looks and the senses it arouse. One must never trick people by just presenting new themes with different set of backgrounds, music and sound enhancements. Sole intent must be to make a big difference. Reskinning is a way of good presentation (and carrying forward the popularity of existing games) and must never become a corridor for churning out cash.

Is Reskinning an Intelligent Strategy?

There have been numerous claims that game developers and marketers take all good names and credit which should be a prized possession of original brains behind the games.

There is a lot of bad blood among developers who feel that there is a rising battle in the gaming community as to who snatches a game first and chooses to reskin it.

Another negative line of thought surrounding mobile app and game reskinnig is the fact that there is no guarantee whether the remodelling and redesigning of a game or app would actually come in handy. A game’s popularity does depend on its design elements but only to some extent. If a game is not found good by serious game addicts then the entire process of reskinning would be a futile attempt.

If you have a budget for buying source codes you can include Apple’s own iAds, Chartboost or RevMob in your games and apps in order to churn out revenues. Expensive games have self monetization codes embedded in them. This can also be taken into account while reskinning mobile apps and mobile games.

Now that you have a better understanding of the terms “reskin mobile apps and games”, if you are interested in getting a Mobile APP done for your business, or revamping your old one… discuss your ideas with us at www.radikal-labs.com/contact