We believe that getting millions of downloads and seeing games reach the top free charts contributes to forming better game teams. When it comes to hyper-casual, game teams have a much greater chance of feeling real business success. Reaching business success and getting a return in revenue for your development costs are some of the key factors that influence how well a team functions. The luxury of moving on so quickly to the next game in case of KPI failure is not something we’ve found so readily there when working on larger scoped productions. This makes it appealing for any developers who don’t want to sink a massive amount of resources before getting a return to shift focus to hyper-casual. The scope, however, allows us to cram what typically takes one to three years into one to three months. The team goes through concepting/ideation, prototyping, pre-production, soft launch and world wide release. The production cycle of hyper-casual games is no different in steps and stage-gates than that of a top grossing casual to midcore title. It’s less likely that the top whales of the most profitable in-app games are actually going to brag about those games.įrom my experience with puzzle games and social casinos, top spenders are a little embarrassed to share that they’re so addicted to a game, while younger audiences are not. We’ve seen from our organic downloads that our most engaged players (especially the young ones) brag about their new games to their friends. We see them as the best fit for a game played on a mobile device in terms of controls, sessioning and how quickly you can have a round of core gameplay.Ĭompanies like TabTale, Voodoo and others have begun to grow these games with user acquisition, generating very low CPIs, and in the case of very viral games, eCPI - which you are not going to find when you compete on the top grossing charts, hunting whales with your UA. They focus on core mechanics and crystal clear progressions, and there’s no endless array of features or meta-game to learn. ![]() There are a few factors that led to the popularity of hyper-casual games:įirst and foremost, from the players’ side, hyper-casual games are made more for mobile than any other game genre. Why do you think hyper-casual games have become so popular with developers and players right now? The chart below shows that hyper-casual has been around, generating downloads and entertaining many hearts, for a few good years now (even before anyone called them hyper-casual). Furthermore, if you do some digging into App Store and Google Play history and you’ll find that there have always been very high performing hyper-casual games. When the app stores first launched, many of the original games were designed with ‘mobile-first’ thinking, and were built according to the above-mentioned pillars. ![]() When did the hype around hyper-casual started? Theme/IP has mass appeal and doesn’t specifically target a specific audience.Innovative for PX sake, not for innovation’s sake.Difficulty curve and progress that makes you feel like you’re improving at the game.Very easy to learn usually one single input in terms of controls very clear outputs. ![]() Snackable core gameplay - intuitive and can be understood in the first five seconds of a UA video.Roy Shtoyer: TabTale views all games that focus on the following design pillars and game mechanics as part of the hyper-casual genre: What is your view on the hyper-casual definition? There are many ways to describe hyper-casual games. TabTale studio manager for hyper-casual Roy Shtoyer gives the lowdown on how the genre started, what developers need to know to get in on the action, and offers a deep dive into one of its own successes in this must-read interview. As anyone giving even a cursory glance to mobile games industry trends over the last year will know: hyper-casual is one of the big buzzwords.Ĭasual games published at a large scale and powered by ad monetisation, companies like Voodoo, Ketchapp, Playgendary and TabTale have been at the centre of this increasingly lucrative space.īut now that everyone’s talking about hyper-casual, are there still opportunities within it?
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