How to conquer the farming games market? Minigames FTW. Implement or die by Matej Lancaric!

farming Mark is around like 70% iips to 30% ads on the other hand Felix would disagree uh and would say this should be way more on the other hand I would say this should be a little bit less farming games I don't see the the lot of placements opportunities in farming game genre or the sub genre why that's why I think this is never going to be 50/50 hybrid split [Music] this is a no [ __ ] gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail powered by our ad monetization game design and user acquisition Triple Threat expertise welcome to the two and a half Gamers the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles

let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry hello everyone welcome this is a new segment which is I'm which I'm going to call ASMR insights because I have I had this idea about as sharing different topics and it's going to be me and only me today uh in the next session it's going to be someone else yeah keep uh I will keep you posted for sure so in this in this episode I'm going to talk about how to conquer farming games Market because there's millions of players worldwide and nobody's talking about and I'm going to also show how I play Archer 2 on the screen while I'm going to talk so for us

our YouTube listeners and uh Watchers you can actually check it out and obviously listen to what I'm going to say so the farming games Market presents both significant opportunities and formidable challenges with the steadily growth uh and the growing audience over the past decade this genre continues to Captivate millions of players worldwide we have multiple games in this rra and I'm going to talk about few best performers and the the top ones and uh when we're talking about the market share obviously we can't skip talking about Heyday Township cologne ID lber Empire and we have some some others like Dragon capes Adventure from our friends from Century games so in this episode I'm going to talk about the

current market State the Highlight key trends and offer actionable insights for developers and marketers looking to enter or expand their presence in this very competitive space so what are the market growths and Dynamics the farming games Market has experienced consistent growth over the last eight years with major markets like United States Japan Germany and United Kingdom driving this uh expansion so we looking at us on the first spot I'm I'm talking about let's say q1 this year which is q1 2024 if you're looking at us Japan Germany UK Canada South Korea France Australia and maybe China and other markets us is basically just bringing almost

70% of the the whole Revenue maybe 50% is the is is a better statement I'm looking at Q4 q1 overall of uh the the games I mentioned it's $300 millionar in terms of the revenue 150 million is coming from us only 27 million coming from Japan and then we have Germany with 22 million United Kingdom with 14 million and then the rest is not that meaningful it's already going down according to market research the the global gaming Market is projected to re reach 270 billion by 2025 with the simulation and farming sub genres accounting for a significant portion of this growth specifically the G farming games Market is expected to grow

uh at 6.3% annual growth rate which is from 20 20 to 2025 so titles like Township and Heyday continue to dominate the genre with millions of active users so you're looking at township and with the monthly active users or you know what let's uh let's let's call this weekly we can talk about monthly as well afterwards in the later stages of this this episode well we look we're going to look at uh and weekly and this kind of monthly as well afterwards so back to the back to the numbers on Township is actually looking at 8 million weekly active users that's quite a lot of lot of players then and that's only on Android on iOS it's another 2.5 million so all together is like 10 so if we look

at other graphs in the in the sensor t for Township and check the the real monthly active users we are going to get slightly different number so if you look at Ma in the last so we looking at 23 million monthly active users for Township which is incredible and if we combine compare that to Heyday we are looking at for Heyday we are looking at actually the same almost the same number so you're looking at 22 million monthly active users for Heyday and we we are looking

at 22 million monthly active users for for Township and in some of the months during this year they actually uh had more monthly active users than than Township if you look at the the revenue on the other hand Township is doing way way better which is interesting we looking at the same amount of monthly active users but honestly October last well actually last month Township reached 40 million revenues in in one month while Heyday only 12 that's that's very impressive and honestly last month was the best month in terms of the township Revenue you know Township was launched in

September well no in June 2013 in B soft launch obviously but now it's the alltime high that's just wow that's why why I'm actually talking about this because these games are killing it on the downloads and revenue side especially Township so Township alone was downloaded over 100 million times on the Google Play uh which is defin ly reflecting the the massive region and influence of of this game so these Evergreen titles have succeeded by continuously evolving their game playay adding new features engaging Their audience with regular updates and events obviously if you look at Township in 2011 or 13 versus Township 2023 those are two completely different games different game Loops they added so

many different things into the into the mix I wonder if or when hey they starts to push more money or more budgets in their UA what would happen because Township is definitely running significant amount of money on a monthly basis into the UA so when are looking at farming games and the market benchmarks look at the um the games di menion Township versus Heyday family Island we have Colon D as well and dragon capes and I kind of put CI ability in this category as well but it's more like simulation rather than farming or kind of uh simulation game so let's call it simulation if we are comparing the the township versus he which I already did we have a big gap in terms of the the rest of the market family Island kind of

on the third spot or colon I on the on the other side on the fourth spot as well so it's it's kind of clear that uh if you look at arows we we are looking at township looking at 54 cents ARB Dow Dragon capes Adventure which is 22 cents now on iOS and then we have ID lber with 15 cents or then we have Heyday which is 5 cents interesting in terms of the retention if we look at Heyday versus Township and compare it versus colik and and family Island Heyday is the best redention profile interestingly enough not the highest revenue so as we always say retention doesn't really pay bills you kind of come and pay lunch come to

the restaurant and pay lunch with retention the waiter will look well yeah look will be very interesting hello can I pay my Lun with retention unfortunately no anyway uh so we are looking at Hey Day 60% day one retention 37% day seven retention and this is getting getting interesting because the 30 retention is 20% Which is incredible uh but and we have day 60 which is basically 12% I mean I'm looking at the data in sensor Tower so this might be a little inflated and the real retention is lower but still in terms of the comparison kind of does the job so we're looking at township which is day one 48% day seven which is 25% and day 30 which is 12% comparing day 60 to to he Day Day 60

down Tri is 8% and then the rest of the the game is clone D it's it's low obviously it's not even even close I mean kind of close but it's still 41% they won 16% day 7 8% day 30 and 6% day 60 family Island 45% day 1 day seven is 30% well that was obviously not not correct day 7 is 18% day 30 is 7% with day 64% so we have all of these different numbers and if we look at day 90 which supercell they know what they're doing obviously the Heyday is at 9% day 99% is incredible Township is 6.5 then we have the family island with 3% and Colony with 4.4 so again JRA is dominated by old

games these two games is they are super old and still make a lot of money and Township made 40 million last month which is the best month like till this date since they Globe launched Evergreen games right so they're evolving the feature set staying ahead of the competition because I guess St because of the stable player base Township evolved into a new game to increase the engagement and conquer the market share so play but players expectations are super high you must watch the the genre leaders feature set and then kind of get inspired the older female audience Drive the genre which requires product let UA and kind of implementation of the mini games tied to UA will be mandatory from now on and you you won't be able to survive in the current gaming Market if you like this and this is not only going to be applied

to to simulation or farming games it's actually across the board you look at how Kingdom guard or white out survival or last war is actually killing it on the not only UA side but also downloads and revenue side Forex strategy games are able to drive hundreds of thousand insts per day and making fre or 2.5 or three million a day in revenues that's incredible so you definitely need to think about this and our also friends from Total battle that we from scor score Warrior that we often mention on the podcast they were trying to find the best possible solution for implementation of the mini games for quite a while and then after seven years

now they are the only non-chinese Forex game in the top charts again you won't survive in the current gaming Market if you are not thinking about mini games or at least you know trying to implement them quite quickly and quite soon so what are the key trends they are shaping the market in terms of the farming so social integration and Community Building so social features become increasingly crucial in farming games I mean I guess you remember F whe uh from back back in the days when you opened Facebook and anything that you you you were able to see there was just millions of notifications from front whe some games that allow players to interact compete or collaborate with others see higher engagement and retention rates for example Farm three introducing new

social mechanics that have helped stay relevant in the crowded Market on the other hand it didn't help that much Zinga moved the operations to India because of cost reasons I would I would assume but based on the revenues it's still kind of viable isn't it it makes 40K per day maybe less maybe more in in different days but it's not VI I mean it's not interesting enough for for companies like Zinga let's get back to Trends so diverse demographics the farming game audience is predominantly female with a significant portion of players age 35 and older this demographic is drawn to the genra it's relaxing and nurturing gameplay and often shows strong loyalty to games that meet their expectations if we look at the the actual demographic Graphics it's 25

35 until 55 basically there are some younger gamers in this category but most mostly like the most revenue is coming from 35 Plus finally enough I've already kind of become the the main target audience for a lot of games that are targeting 35 Plus on the other hand I'm not female but still now I understand that I'm the main audience for a lot of a lot of people uh and gaming companies okay back to the trend again monetization strategies you know successful games in this Runner often rely on a combination of Ina purchases and ads on average the revenue split in top performing farming market around like 70% iips to 30% ads on the other hand Felix would disagree uh and would say this should be way more on the other

hand I would say this should be a little bit less farming games I don't see the the lot of placements opportunities in farming game genre or the sub genre why that's why I think this is never going to be 5050 hybrid split developers who optimize their monetization strategies can see see strong results uh obviously by targeting high value payers and kind of optimizing that placements for Maximum Impact as as I mentioned there's not that many options there but if you try to optimize the Maximum Impact you can squeeze a little bit more out of um out of players and the latest Trend and I would say the biggest one the emergence of mini games and this is this is quite important so what what township did incorporating mini games within the main game playay Loop has proven to be fair effective strategy for enhancing

engagement and obviously winning on the UA front so mini games offer variety of uh mini games off variety and help maintain players interest over long term you know you know how Township did it so I think you see Township ads maybe every day either on Facebook or in any other game that you play and you see all these idle mini games and playables that they use so I started playing Township just because why not I play Township a while ago and now when I started playing it I played for tutorial and then suddenly wait a second there is one one thing in the in in in the there is one thing in the tutorial that says you can get reward by simp solving the puzzles H that reminds me

something let's play so obviously I clicked play and voila I was in the [ __ ] mini game well in the playable that I'm seeing every day on Facebook or oh not play playes on Facebook but playable and any other UA channels so this I think was quite helpful in terms of the growing user base downloads and revenue afterwards and the key trends uh in the game Market could be around creative advertising and UA strategy so as mentioned Township is running a lot of playables but this Rems critical for for Success so the combination of mini games and UA and playables and creatives so playables is and interactive end cards

allow potential players to try the game before downloading obviously very effective in this run R and with others as well couple with aggressive and creative refresh Cycles these strategies can significantly improve the campaign performance and R Us so as I mentioned look guys there are so many different um Trends in the in the farming and in in general in games we have freezing families that or kind of families that uh family island is using Township uses a lot of idle mechanics and stacking mechanics from the hyper casual genre and a lot of different things this narrative um story driven ads but these games are getting inspiration from one gen in one J only and mainly from this yep you got it right it's idle games its Township is driving

inspiration a lot of inspiration from idle games especially from idle Lumber but as I discovered recently because I was um checking the creative approach of both games Township and Idol lber and I found out there is one creative that they kind of shared and it was an exact one to one copy found out that player actually bought um a stake uh in up Quantum which is the developer behind idle Amber so yes idle games for other games as well as are as an inspiration so what are the new like opportunities for new games to enter this Market breaking into farming games Market requires Innovation and deep understanding of genre Dynamics and new games must offer something unique to capture the attention of the wellestablished player

base so let's see here are some like actionable strategies focus on Niche markets so consider targeting Ander markets or introducing features that appeal to specific sub demographic within the broader audience for example integrating mental Wellness elements into the gameplay could attract players seeking more meaningful experience it's leverage data driven UA obviously using data analytics to optimize UA campaigns focusing on the early early indicators which is day one day three day seven retention rates to adjust strategies in real time I mean this should lead to set benchmarks for day one day three day seven RW as well to achieve long-term positive campaigns and uh and draw Us in let's say day 120 180

360 these games have as we discussed with the retention rates have different well not different but quite good longterm retention curve so you could potentially leverage this in the in the UI operations experiment with social and multip multiplayer features with enhancing social interactions can significantly boost player retention and lifetime value so consider also incorporating multiple multiplayer elements or cooperative challenges to integrate increase engagement this could be quite tough but also how many different games uh with multiplayer are there in terms of farming not that much right invest in high quality creative production so in market dominated by visually ping and engaging games and also the Evergreen ones with a Heyday on one side which uses a lot of high production supercell

is creatives which is oriented on brand on the other hand Township using everything they can to decrease the cpis so anything from misleading uh creatives to idle and altered gameplay and then more most recently giant chickens and and things investing in top tier creatives is just nonnegotiable regular refresher creatives to stay ahead of you the company competition so what are the final thoughts the farming games Market is pretty big and there are definitely opportunities for those who can navigate it uh those challenges the Guardians is still growing uh but the player expectations are definitely evolving and uh with significant Revenue potential I think there has never been a better time to invent invest in this rra

however success will require a commitment to continuous UA Innovation and data driven decision making and deep understanding of your target audience and also the creatives approach will be absolutely crucial for you with the combination of mini games whatever works on the UA side implementing it into the game as a standalone Loop or as a mini game in tutorial will be absolutely mandatory so thank you very much for for listening This is highly experimental and it's going to take some time until we get this get it right so please share your feedback comment under the video share um all your thoughts how I can improve and we see how others can improve their uh parts of this uh new segment and join our slack Channel

and thank you very much for listening until next time cheers bye-bye [Music] [Applause] [Music]