Case Study: Halfbrick achieves lower costs, faster game launches, and better analytics with Looker

Halfbrick Studios Slicing into the gaming market with Google Cloud

Halfbrick Studios, the Australia-based game developer behind Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, wanted to cut infrastructure management, lower costs, and speed up development as it prepared for new launches like Fruit Ninja 2. The company also needed better analytics and more flexible live operations to support user retention goals and rapid game updates, and it chose Looker as part of its Google Cloud-based data stack.

Halfbrick Studios implemented Google Cloud services including Firebase, Firestore, BigQuery, Cloud Run, and Looker to modernize its backend, analytics, and liveops workflows. With Looker and the broader Google Cloud setup, Halfbrick reduced analytics/event processing costs from AUD$24 per day to AUD$4 per day, shortened time to production from three months to one month, and eliminated the need to hire an infrastructure engineer, while improving scalability, testing, and player engagement.

Halfbrick

Nik Kyriakidis

Lead Engineer