Mobile Gaming Market Review 1H2024 | AppMagic Data Analysis

hello everyone and welcome to a new series where we will go over the state of mobile gaming for the first half of 2024 with us to discuss essentially the market dynamics genre comparisons and then to take a look at top performing games and interesting new releases as Stan Mina from App magic welcome Stan thank you thank you Joseph really glad to be here and really glad to shed some knowledge of what was going on in the first half of 2024 let's just dive in what's what's going on with the market danan oh that's that's a good question and I've got some good news really here so looking at the overall market dynamics we've all seen that that in the like postco Handover period it was pretty rough like it was really turbulent lots of layoffs and for the first time ever as an industry we've been declining right so right now it seems we are stabilizing at last so comparing the overall worldwide Revenue

Dynamic to the first half of 2023 we can see that the numbers are pretty much the same so we are not growing yet but at least we are not Fallen either so I think that's good news right and when you say the games Revenue worldwide that's Mobile gaming right absolutely absolutely we are talking about Mobile gaming first and foremost so maybe one comment I can make as well is to your point I think this is a really important chart for people to see and to understand because what a lot of what what happened with covid is that there was this huge growth right in terms of of a monetization and revenue being generated and a lot of the executives at mini game studios extrap linearly extrapolated that growth and made a lot of hiring decisions and growth plans based upon that but then this chart then explains why do we see so many layoffs today why do we see so many companies retrenching and this is exactly the reason why but yeah please please go ahead Stan yeah yeah sure thing

uh yeah you've just mentioned if you look at 2021 the numbers are crazy and from this year we were going down so for the first time luckily we are on a plateau and so far uh the second half of the year is looking good as well so the Reon chance will end up stabilized or maybe even growing a little bit which is really important right now for the whole industry if we look at the downloads uh the situation might be even better so the downloads uh there was a like one to two% growth compared to through the first half of 2023 why is it important because previously a big piece of this party was driven by hyper casual games which feel pretty rough during last couple of years post idfa privacy policy basically balancing the CPI and the LTV of the users was pretty hard so without this big category and a lot of new releases among hyper casual games it's really great to see that the number of

downloads are increasing as well it is I'd say not as Vivid as the revenue growth but at the same time it's a good factor and Stan when we see that drop from 2022 the the 27.4 like in the um from 22 to 23 do you attribute that to the hyper casual or do you have any theories or uh you know thinking in terms of uh of why we see that bigger drop from between 22 and 23 and then do you have any thoughts on what are your prognostications on the second half of this year yeah yeah that's a good question so say there were apparently two reasons first of all we've mentioned it already hyper casual drinking as a category and affecting the whole market and secondly uh during the covid and we also already mentioned it the companies were growing big the user acquisition campaigns were also growing big so there were a lot of scalings going on postco for a lot of games these scalings stopped so for the last year we could

see for a lot of uh major players in the market that they uh their focus shifted from trying to acquire new users rather to working with the liveops working with new Vans operating and already launched games rather than trying to scale new titles and that might be another reason for this little but still visible drop into downloads right and maybe one thing I can mention anecdotally that I don't know how big of a factor this is but I do know that in the past there used to be a lot of game studios that had very aggressive UA models that would basically bake in a very Rosy projections in terms of you know Raz and things of that nature over time and I think that since we've seen the lack of profitability in in in uh in certain games and game performance I I think there's more of uh conservatism with respect to how aggressive you are with

your UA model so I'm not sure to what degree that is a factor but I I know that's been happening in in terms of like being less aggressive with the UA models absolutely absolutely totally agree there and I'd say that uh the M the major reason for this year to be looking quite good so far regarding the downloads is that some of big releases that happened during the last couple of years like Monopoly go like uh L War survival that we going to discuss like Squad Busters all of them scaled a lot during the end of the last year and the beginning of this one so i' say the the picture might be a little bit different for the second half and you can also see that for the previous years the second half of the year is usually not as impressive in downloads than as the first half right and I I just wrote something recently on Monopoly go and Royal match and what we saw was a really dramatic decline in in downloads so absolutely absolutely I think the main

reason for that is that both of the games they experienced a real big scale and now they're trying to uh boost their LTV up and to work with already acquired user base rather than look for for new audience by the way talking about uh looking for the new audience and markets if we look at the tier one West specifically one of the most popular niches or there one of the most popular markets the situation is even better so there is not just a stabilizing of the market or uh a plateau of the revenue but there is a significant growth in the mobile Revenue going on with 7% growth compared to 2023 and this is big like this is even bigger than for 2022 and almost on par with the last covid year 2021 it's really important because Tier 1 West is one of the main drivers of the whole mobile mobile game

uh Revenue so uh with tier one we East by the way declining a little bit despite the growth of several titles this is important so it means basically that for a lot of titles out there if you play your cards right if you work with already launched games boosting liveops working with mechanics introducing new monetization features you can still be successful and you can grow with the industry great so good news as well especially if you're focusing as a developer on tier one west region going from there uh regarding the downloads the situation is pretty much the same so we can see that the uh the main uh growth factor of the revenue was not because of the new audience coming to the games but rather of already existing user base interacting paying more playing more engaging more so I'd say that the the majority of the market

was more about um already veteran produ projects and already games uh that are pretty famous and that are in status quo in the top charts and their attempts to enhance liveops and the events rather than trying to Quire users more to monetize them and to you know uh come up with new launches and new releases so in general I'd say that's a new trend compared to like five or 10 years ago where we were as an industry we are focusing more we are maturing and we are focusing more on operating and already existing titles rather than trying to look for the trends and to come up with new releases each year yeah I think that's something that I've anecdotally um heard about as a general Trend as well which is to your point a lot of the sort of execs that major Studios have been talking about okay yeah we're we're actually going to pull resources and

budget from new game development and we're just going to try to live operate and put resources into what we know is working um until things settle down in terms of you know uh more having a more stable Market environment so that they can plan better and things like that so um yeah yeah absolutely everything that you're saying seems to align with what you know a lot of conversations that that I'm having with a lot of game industry folks yeah I mean it's not surprising they're just judging by supercell they really shifted their focus from trying to come up with new titles killing their new projects in soft launch rather to expanding their self system and focusing much more on driving liveops and events and the results are here we've all seen what was done with braw stars going from Lake historically Top low to to the biggest revenue for basically for all their lifetime and we will definitely talk about it yeah I

can't I can't wait to talk about that and yeah yeah but to your point though I think that brawl stars is actually a very important data point just because it's such a it's a big game it's a highly visible game and just the dramatic you know Revenue increase and performance increase of that game that that team has executed upon I think there are so many companies now looking at brawl stars and trying to figure out okay brawl stars made the this huge Improvement how can we do the same thing and uh and and yeah I I do think that increasingly what we've been seeing to what you've already said and and what I've been hearing anecdotally is this shift towards having a greater focus on live Ops and trying to understand how to optimize live Ops that does seem to be a greater focus and the brawlstars example is one that really uh you know catalyzed a lot of folks to to to really start to look at that much more deeply absolutely absolutely so talking about

big games and top charts let's have a closer look at what was going on with the top rossing games because I mean the uh the correlations and the differences that happened to the charts are pretty pretty interesting to explore well first of all right from the get-go comparing the top 10 worldwide charts of the crossing games from January to June we can see that some of the contenders made it out of the top League just a quick note here it doesn't really mean that there are some problems because it's a natural state of things when the games are fluctuating in and out of top 10 it's absolutely normal it can be seasonal so I'm sure coin Master T tx6 and genin impact are doing pretty pretty well and just looking at their numbers it is true but like this June and this half of the year they're not here with us at the same time uh looking another like elephant in the room

dungeon and fire origin crazy boost like the game appeared in the second half of May and rocketed up in the top charts and I'm sure we will discuss it as well but it's crazy and I have to mention it that it's only Sol to iOS so apparently it was not introduced to Google Play but I'm sure it was introduced to Google play analogs in China and it is only in China so I mean only one region only one platform the the numbers are absolutely crazy um going from there Roy match still going strong which is interesting because it's apparently the only new Match 3 title that not only made it to the top but stayed in the top right which appears to be much more difficult as as we see nowadays yeah plus words your point I think that some of the this this chart in particular I think is very interesting for people to look at because the market dynamics between January and June are quite different and

to your point there there's a few kind of Grudge matches or like battles that that we're seeing in the charts that's like how I like to characterize it which is know now dungeon and Fighter versus honor of Kings because you know the the other thing that people don't understand is that if honor of Kings is listed here as you know one two three four fifth what they also don't understand is because this is a Chinese game in the Chinese market um we're only seeing part of the revenue because there are so many alternative app stores and things like that so like the money being generated by dungeon fighter origin in honor of Kings is crazy and and so that like that's one battle the other battle that I wrote about recently was like Monopoly Go versus Royal match it does seem like Royal match is whether this this kind of Decline and in downloads much better from January to June and so we we'll see how that plays out and then the other interesting battle is white out survival versus last war survival yeah so uh yeah and and it seems like last war is is

kind of making some Headway there but uh you know these are interesting kind of battles to to to watch for and so yeah great great chart this one absolutely absolutely yeah so I mean easily for Dungeon and fighter or or on ofk the like real overall Revenue can be twice as much can be three times as much which is absolutely crazy for the overall worldwide Market but even looking at like iOS only and China only it's already huge okay so and it's really interesting you've mentioned both L War survival and white out survival because historically these are four week strategies and they are both really high in LVS which is really sweet but at the same time really difficult to develop for these two games there are like two competitors on the ring there are other games in the industry there are other games in Forex strategy but they definitely look at each other first and foremost and especially it's Vivid when we look at last word survival user acquisition strategies so just looking at the graphs

you can see how they try to have this Gap in the downloads and in marketing campaigns compared to Wi all survival to be just a little bit over the top and well the results are here at the same time they're working much much better with the core mechanics with the meta and especially with with liveops and the overall results is that they made it to the top three while White House survival uh it grew as well but only to the ninth position yeah and maybe I could also for our audience provide a little bit of context just so they kind of understand some of the Dynamics Behind These two games and the companies behind them so first of all Century games was actually so I used to work at a company called fun plus that launched King Of Avalon which is the game I led but then they also have Guns of Glory state of survival things like that the Sentry team actually was um all of the old like social gaming assets and other assets

was sold and they created a new entity the former COO of fund plus joined um became the CEO of century and uh I I think the very interesting thing that that happened with Century games is they adopted kind of a different development model uh one that's really oriented towards High player validation really quick iterations and small teams that scaled later and so I feel like this was an opportunity that fun plus uh let go like they they kind of missed uh whereas the Sentry Games Team um with under the leadership of CQ and and also sha who who kind of joined as their CTO I think really figured out a good way of doing um development better than previously and so they kind of changed that um and the the first fund the last war guys are actually I I don't know the exact kind of history but it's there there's some history with elex the guys that um that

were also in Forex for a very long time so these are companies that have um you know good leadership and and they they've got experienced game developers there and the other thing you mentioned UA so some people are already aware of this but one of the things that white out survival kind of um popularized with this was this notion of taking an existing game with high conversion a more like a uh with with a focus in terms of like being able to attract a lot of users um have that gameplay be the initial gameplay experience and then shifting to Forex so kind of the thinking was like there used to be like fake ads to get players into a game what what they did is they took like frozen City and they noticed that Frozen city was performing extremely well and kind of made that that kind of like the theme and the initial gameplay that and then they shifted to 4X last war survival also then adopted that strategy and

that's a strategy that's really been powering the success of last war and white out survival um they're both using that strategy to a lot of success in terms of being you know top 10 uh grossing game and we we'll see how that battle plays out but yeah that's one of the more interesting Grudge matches to watch over time absolutely absolutely so then let's dive deeper let's discuss the games we've just mentioned at least some of them you know to to have a better optic at what is going on so first an obvious elephant in the room uh but before that maybe we can focus just for a sec only on the uh top West Crossing games because there are some interesting things going here as well when we take big Chinese titles and big Asian RPGs out of the equation which is important we can see that there were some shifts well first of all last were we've already mentioned it it grew but not as much as in the world the world world ratings which basically means that a big piece of their revenue is coming from

Asian region which is interesting also brawl Stars we've already mentioned it we will discuss it for sure but this growth I can't say was inevitable but it is super impressive and I think everyone in the industry are looking at them right now and thinking okay so what what is the main reason what are the main drivers how did they manage to do this and can we as a team do the same thing and well spoiler alert potentially yes but if we implement it right so that said let's go to the to the games themselves elephanted the room dungeon and fighter origin so to be honest I haven't played the game I've seen some of the YouTube videos from what I grasp it's an action RPG it's an official version in a pretty popular Chinese franchise that was originally on PC and console and then made to the mobile which is especially interesting is that they they didn't change the game play or the

graphics a lot so it's basically a really old school Graphics just uh catered to the mobile from the uh uxui perspective to be able to uh to play it but still uh the game just in the lifetime Revenue hit almost by that by this moment $300 million in just two a half months maybe three which is insane and once again it's iOS only and China so as we've already discussed taking into the picture different Chinese stores as alterations of Google play it can be easily twice as that so I'd say that a really I think good lesson here to be to be taught is that Chinese market is absolutely huge we sometimes forget about it but it's an obvious um it's an obvious uh example of how just one game with a big fan base in Chinese market can outperform the whole world

the whole world which is absolutely crazy right taking from there the real correlation that I love is uh dungeon and fighter and Diablo and the reason for that is that both of the games are action RPGs both of the games originated from PC and consolle so this is a part of a long leading franchise and this is the first super successful um game on mobile for both of the franchises what is really interesting here is that well Diablo Immortal apparently was released by blizzard and they knew what they were doing they are trying to implement new features new events New Seasons so they are really focusing on their player base and they they were and are pretty successful but just look at these graph I mean during two two and a half months dungeon and fighter was able to achieve almost the same numbers as DIA mortal during the two years since the release I mean that

is crazy two years compared to two months so that is just a very a very clear picture that shows how how big this number is and how big this Chinese fan base and Chinese audience can help with with the boosting of the game yeah and for people who complain about the monetization mechanics and tactics and Diablo Immortal if you look at the the RPD down there of DIA versus dungeon dungeon and fighter you you can see it's over over 4X right so oh yeah yeah yeah like I don't know how popular this game would be in the west yeah yeah but at the same time not sure they needed to be popular on the west like that right right yeah yeah all right so taking from the air going to the second place last wor survival as we've already mentioned Forex strategy a pretty dwel genre uh the game was globally launched at the end of 2023 and the gra shows it really

really clearly so for the second half of the Year there was a soft launch going really really stable then there was a initial Global launch and then from the beginning of this year the scaling happened and they went really really big their main us strategy is misleading hyper casual creatives what is which is pretty interesting because I say for white out survival their main competitor they are using misleading creatives in some sense as well but they are rather trying to use more casual mechanics I'd say while last for survival goes even one step further and introduces a lot of hyper casual especially running mechanics I'm sure you've seen these creatives with a with a person running with with a gun yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you can see it on the icon as well what is interesting and you've mentioned it already is that they decided to introduce this type of mechanics in the beginning of the game so basically uh for a player especially

when they are casual ones coming from more casual niches to to have a smoother transition into the uh dating world of Forex fages for the first like 20 30 40 minutes you are playing a runner you're playing a casual game and then all of a sudden you're like Forex stry full scale so I'd say that uh they made a really good job implementing not just the misleading hyper casual creatives but but also this part of the initial gameplay and tutorial that helps them to grow and the growth is definitely there so comparing them face to face you can see that for wi out survival there is this as I've already mentioned Gap in the downloads that they try to try to use and try to track so from the beginning of this year there was not a single moment when wide out survival marketing campaigns overperformed last war and it's not just

downloads because we all know that sometimes driving uh pretty heavily and relying pretty heavily on marketing campaigns can uh lower down your RPD Revenue per downloads and thus the overall LTV of the project not the case here so they grew both the user base with the marketing campaigns and the average RPD and I think uh later this year closer to maybe November or December we probably will see them on bar or maybe last word survival even has a chance to outperform his competitor so I think these two are really interesting to track and really interesting to look at for the upcoming second half of the year and of course last but not least the comeback of the year we've already mentioned it a couple of times all starts yeah so just a heads up at the end of 2023 the game was alltime low

really really struggling with these campaigns with this user base at the end of first half of 2024 it's alltime high the like The Logical question the reasonable question here might be what has happened and I'd say there were two things that liveop team and brol stars team decided to focus on the first one was making the game even more casual so before that I'd say braw Stars was something in between a casual audience and Casual approach and more competitive approach with uh cyber um Sportsmen trying to you know compete with uh different Leagues with different rank games so what they did they introduced several changes in a row that um that made the game to appear still pretty competitive but at the same time open to any casual type of player for example they rework their rank

league so instead of going there pretty late down the road they made it uh available much earlier so that each and every casual player can be introduced to the PVP can be engaged and then some of them naturally will be thrown away but some of them will stay and will become more competitive so I'd say this is one of the main engagement drivers that appeared in the game not not just that but this really helped with retention and with engagement at the same time there was a big focus on new lab Ops events especially collaborating with different IPS and new modelization techniques so just to show you I think the best way to do it is use our liveops and updates calendar tool available at app magic so what we did we've been tracking brawl stars for the last year analyzing and deconstructing each and every update even land monetization offer and monetization feature and you

can see it very clearly first of all you can see this growth in the revenue metric so we are looking at of course Revenue performance right here the first major change appeared in the end of the last year in the beginning of this one and it was a whole rework and update of the battle pass so what they did they rebalanced the rewards inside making the free pass more appealing to Casual players and at the same time they added an additional layer of paying options so it's like one free two pay options it's pretty pretty trendy right now in core and Casual games having two pain passes at once and it results in a great boost like twice as much in revenue and continue to grow then what they did and you can see it uh in the second red circle a lot of minor changes to the rank system to the leagues catering to more casual audience and then two really

big paks and this is the big work and big impact on the events baby shark and Godzilla two absolutely new not just event but a combination of events with a big IP backing them up and it really works so we can see just judging by the numbers that it's not only just steady growth but also big Peaks helping both with engagement and with the revenue so all in all i' say this is something that really helped to well uh reanimate the the title to say at least and I think that's one of the main reasons why supercell decided to push Squad Busters the new the new game in the global launch from the soft launch right in Stan one of the things that when I think about brawl stars from a gaming exec or product manager perspective that the two things that really stand out to me is that one at least anecdotally and from a lot of folks when when I looked at this game it it seems like there's a much greater female audience for this kind of

a game like a shooter type of game or a multiplayer PVP type of game than other games it's very similar to like if you were to look at the audience for a csgo versus valerant right many more females in valerant versus csgo and brawl Stars I I think I I don't have the numbers but just anecdotally when when I talk to different people about the games that they play and a lot of younger kids and things like that I see a lot more girls playing brawl Stars than speaking to your point about casualization and the other thing that um I I Noti is just like in terms of uh the the orientation of the gaml right the gameplay itself is something and I don't mean this in a bad way but it's it's very shallow in the sense that like if you were to take the two Extremes in terms of from a gameplay perspective of brawl Stars versus like a wild Rift for example um the amount of complexity and depth in terms of progression strategy depth uh in a wild drift is at the far

extreme compared to like a brawl stars and the other thing that you'll notice is that um the impact of that you'll notice is that there's a lot of game modes and I believe that they have more game modes relative to like a wild drift which has just a single you know primary map and mode is that it keeps the game interesting so you have a lot more modes that speaks to that the gameplay itself is is basically more casual than like a wild drift with more complexity depth all that kind of stuff you have to you have to memorize a lot of things in terms of Champions items things of that nature and so it would make sense what you're talking about in terms of casualized liveops because of one I would say the the demographic of the players that play the game and two in terms of the gaml itself which is in my opinion much more casual than another multiplayer PVP shooter or mobile type of game absolutely absolutely and I

think with Squad Busters they they even took it one step further so making it even more casual i' say what the the definition we love to use in our research team is uh mobile like wild reef is very very strategic oriented I mean there is depth there are different characters you have to really know what are they about and it's really demanding on you for example because you really know you really have to know what is going to happen next for brawl star and especially for squadb uh it's more on the cotic F of side of things you don't know in advance what will be the modes so uh you don't really take your Heroes based on the modes it's not a strategic depth but rather ptic fun part of the game play where you try to adapt on the go and say okay so like four minutes super fun super fast I mean for a while drift it can be easily 20 30 40 minutes like a

full scale pc/ console mobile which is totally fine but I generally believe that it's just two different types of audience these games try to cater to right so taken from there uh we've talked about the overall Market uh state of the market and we talked a little bit about the top grossing charts then let's have a deeper look inside the niches and inside the genres so what was going on with the most interesting JS and how they feel up to dat of course it won't be possible to cover all of them at once so instead of that we will focus on several major casual genres which are pretty popular among developers and at the same time that have been trending lately so I think it might be really useful to discuss Match 3 and Casual Casino as big and very famous genres that uh had several big changes recently

in the first half of 2024 and and at the same time uh look at emerging niches like merch 2 match 3D or idle tycoons that during the last couple of years they were growing really really fast so it's interesting to see are they an interesting um unobvious hidden jab as a niche for developers still or their much much uh redder right now and closer to say mesh 3 so it's really important to know what what is what okay and just looking at this chart stand when I when I see your categorization and and your characterization of match three complex metag game so for for this specific categorization would that in I assume that includes the the play r games the garden the the Scapes games basically absolutely Abol because they have a complex meta game and I would assume you don't include Candy Crush because it's more uh Saga map oriented and then kind

of like what I would consider in between a game like a Royal match would that go into the complex metag game or would that go somewhere else i' say that that's a great question first and foremost so in our categorization Royal match goes into the complex metag game okay you're totally right that it's closer and something in between uh simple mattera that is made by King or the lack of mattera at all or like renovation mattera that is usually used by pler but I'd say that there is some mattera overall and we've seen for example this year uh going deeper and deeper developing it more and more for example uh albums were introduced with Collectibles and just recently a month ago they decided to switch it and instead of making it a permanent core feature or meta feature they decided to make it a um time limited event which additionally tries the fomo from the

players and of course drives the engagement from the players so we can definitely see that they initially the mattera was uh something in between but right now it's becoming more and more complex and more and more deep going from there let's talk about Match 3 and Casual casinos as you mentioned um casual Casino might be a good genre to start because the the situation here is pretty interesting so historically the genre was dominated by coin master and I mean it was the origin root of the genre as it goes so you can see like the the blue the genre was blue uh came out of of blue and it consisted of blue uh old way but several years ago Monopoly go hit the gas pedal and made it to the top so they grew really really big and I say right now uh the question will be what what's up with Monopoly go because is it still dominating the genre

or there were some changes for the niche and are there any chances to compete in this Niche so if you're a developer should you try and maybe come up with a casual casino game or there is a status quo and it's almost impossible to make it to the top judging from here I'd say that uh looking at the genre at could you could you go back one second because I I think one thing that I think is interesting Dynamic here is that um what what it one interpretation of this graph is that Monopoly go actually dramatically grew the overall market right yes and because I would say that just just my understanding if you look at the the game design and like the the core of it it really is very similar to coin master and so yeah I it it does feel like you know and that one they grew the market it's declining now but I would suspect

that this this could potentially suggest that there should be more competitors in this space um so I I think we'll likely this is just my guess I think that people will look at the success Monopoly go despite its kind of big bigger fall uh throughout the first half of this year and try to start innovating around different ways of attacking this problem because they would they would believe game developers would believe that there is something here that's not being exploited as much as it could be absolutely that's that's a really great idea i' say that for Monopoly go obviously it was a question of big IP and it helped scop play a lot and I mean scop play with their resources with their knowledge of marketing campaigns they really had a big Advantage here compared to all the other developers in the industry the thing that not a lot of uh developers out there discuss from my point of view maybe discuss too little is that uh Monopoly IP is not just about

lowering cpis when acquiring users which is totally absolutely true but it's also about maybe having a much more comfortable core gameplay that helps you to implement different events helps you to implement different uh time limited offers much more consistently than for coin master so we we've done a big research and Monopoly go events and live Ops and what we've seen is that for coin Master their core gam play is built uh the way that it doesn't really help to go out to other type of game plays to other type of M activities so the moment you're interrupted and you will be interrupted you feel like you're abandoned a little bit so for each and every activity coin Master introduces outside of the core game play you feel as a player that something is disturbing and this is a really big lack of the current like core game play because I

mean for casual Casino for kind Master let's be honest here it's it becomes pretty boring after some time so you need some type of addition some something to spice it up for a monopoly go using the tabletop mechanics and using the both visuals and the mechanics of just another approach another angle they have much more possibilities for introducing new vents new new liveops new monetization features right on the board without going from the core without going from The Meta without basically interrupting your flow and flow is one of the most important feelings for casual casino games i' say for the players that really into it so I I totally agree with you here because if we take this into the consideration it means that there is a lot of opportunity for other developers out there as well to you know know uh enhance this formula and think okay so what is missing right

now how can I cater to a broader audience or how can I make the core gameplay be more adaptive to different variations so that I can Engage The Audience more so absolutely I think there is a chance we will see maybe some contesters come to this Niche maybe from like match three Niche uh that try to use best practices out of other genres and bringing them to Casual casino right and I think to your point like there there is an opportunity for innovation in terms of like maybe mid late game a core game play but I also think if you if we look at what some some of the games that we just looked at because the rpds for for these games are relatively good right so if you were to also think Could you actually do something like a white out or last war where because you've got healthy rpds here but if you're able to top of funnel some other mechanic or some other theme or

something to draw in players and convert them into the higher rpds of of the the core gameplay here that um that you could potentially also help Drive significantly your game using the same tactics and techniques that last war and uh white out survival have used so I I actually think that there is a lot of the main takeaway for me is that this space is under innovated that there is a lot of room for growth both on the the front end the and and in terms of top of funnel as well as the back end to the things that you're you're talking about and from like a um from like a metaphor perspective whether it's a board or whether it's lot or something else so I just think that there is like this chart to me screams out hey guys look game developers this is a a wide openen space for people to start attacking and it's been it it just hasn't been figured out well enough yet

in my opinion true true just don't get us wrong it's it it will still be difficult because yeah it's very difficult exactly but I mean pretty sweet as well yeah absolutely and I mean just looking at the numbers if we look at the RO data we can see that like compared to the first half of the last year it more than doubled compared to the 2022 is three times more I mean for a pretty established Niche it's an incredible growth so definitely the majority of these was driven by Monopoly go as we've already discussed what is interesting is that Monopoly go had a real big user acquisition campaign in the second half of the last year and so right now the downloads in the niche are going a little bit down organically but at the same time the revenue is still going up because it's a consequence of Monopoly go Bond in a big part of the traffic and monetizing them pretty

effectively so for downloads you can see that they're pretty much on the same level maybe even a little bit less like a couple of percent and that's uh that's because Monopoly go in itself uh it's download share has decreased from 75% to 50% and I mean the share of the whole niche of the whole genre from the revenue perspective it's like still 60 to 70% of the whole Niche so there is an opportunity there for sure both for monopo team and for other developers out there who has enough experience and enough resources to know try to compete in this Niche by the way talking about trying to compete match three the king of the red oceans the one that everybody usually tend to and say to is yeah you don't want to go there like that's the territory of that's the dark territory Simba we never go there so um the question after Royal match appeared

several years ago uh suddenly appeared maybe it is not as impenetrable as we used to think about it so right now uh we have seen during last year for example quite a lot of developers trying to tackle this to test these red ocean waters and see can they make it to the top so it's really interesting to see right now whether or not it had an effect on the overall Market Niche and whether or not these titles uh making it to the top remain there because it's one thing when you try to scale and go to the like top 20 top 10 and a very different one when you try to be there for several months for half a year maybe for a year straight so just looking at the numbers we can say that the genre is still in pretty good shape I mean it's not growing as much as casual Ino or merch 2 or mesh 3D but the growth is very very

steady so it's like going from uh 6 to 7 to 800 Millions which is very very steady especially considering the overall decline of the like overall mobile Revenue industry this is pretty good numbers but at the same time you can see that the downloads had a drastic fall so like going from 60 to 44 even less than in 2022 which once again shows us that the majority of the revenue drivers were were from already existing audience and once again it's not the first it's not the last time during this episode we are talking about live Ops it's all due to live Ops to demonetization and to operating an already existing game so as an industry we are at this moment where we have to think really deep and care really a lot about already existing players and not just try to accumulate as much volume in user acquisition as we

can looking at the top grossing there are some interesting things here well first of all uh Chrome valy Customs that appeared last year and everybody were looking at them because what they did was pretty brave they decided to go bold and to use the best match three practics and best match three approaches but focusing on a male audience in a historically female niche last year they were looking really good and I mean uh in the first half of 2023 they made it to the top 10 right now not so much ninth position and they're going down so right now they earn half as much as in the first half of last year so it seems that something is not working they either should go deeper with an already audience they acquired or try to go broader which might be a bit difficult considering their main setting and considering the type of audience they triy to to go deeper before so I'm

really interested in how the things will be going with chrome valy Customs because as far as I remember uh they also began experimenting with liveops they introduced IP they partnered with exhibit if I'm not mistaken so this is going to be interesting yeah one of the things that I'm kind of surprised about is that when we look back I actually was hope well I was I was suspecting that somebody would actually figure out more of the RPG battle Match 3 like Empires and puzzles and you know a Legendary game of Heroes I I don't think they quite hit the mark in the same sense that you don't have like a a match three RPG battle match three that's more like brawl Stars more casual and one that has a a greater balance between male and female but I think that that's to me the opportunity that's not being exploited

in match three like I wouldn't try and go head-to-head against a Candy Crush I wouldn't try to go head-to-head in terms of like escapes type game but if I were looking at match three with complex meta I would be looking at these games that really in my opinion didn't quite hit the mark with the RPG battle but I would say I would I would try to think if I'm trying to make a game like brawl stars for for match three how would I do that and yeah I think from for I I think that's the big for me when I look at the match three space I think that's the opportunity it is true it is true I'd say that uh I mean the r capes games and play decided to like perfect and already existing form to the max so it's really difficult to come up with something brand new there and we've seen it with uh with Royal match and with dream housee their new game in development and the experiments and the updates that

appeared in the game uh we can see that they try to you know go and experiment with the core a little bit having diff different implementations and different uh parts of other niches and other genres into the match 3 formula which might work apparently surprisingly uh there is a newcomer a piggy Kingdom you can see it on the 10th Place for the first half of this year and my main surprise is that it's a clone of Royal match uh in the like Aesthetics from coin Master like the combination of the best practices in the industry what what is surprising is that usually in really big established uh markets with status quo when you try to copycat a game you're are almost settle to fail so there is no chance you will make it to the like to the top 50 even not talking about top 10 so this is something really interesting going on right now additionally I I went

and checked out the website of of the development team and it's very surprising because there is not much information there they're pretty unknown as developers uh I I can't even say What type of game I I think this is the first game they've developed so not a lot of information out there so I mean uh really interesting team of developers no additional information about them coming up with a clone of Royal match and making it to the top 10 in the grossing this is something I didn't expect at all for this Niche I'm not sure they will be able to stay there just like with chrome Val Customs but I'm really surprised that this is like a copycat that made it so far and made it so high so yeah in my in my experience I've noticed that any of the companies that are successful in Match 3 have some historical Legacy context behind them right whether it's like a mansion where it was actually app

Lov and then they pulled a bunch of uh leads from Jam City or you know any of these companies that are successful in Match 3 including Royal match right they they're um you know they're they're basically people who have done it before I don't ever see so I I'm I'm suspicious of piggy Kingdom even if there's no information about them they EX somebody or they're being backed by some company that you know has experience like like for survival is you know basically elex or something like that yeah yeah absolutely same thoughts here so there is no chance uh new developers can come to the nation just take it by storm there should be something there either experienced developers in the team or backing it up as you mentioned uh with with some information experience I'd love to be wrong on that I I hope they are a team that's just like brand new and just like oh hey we got a you know

top 10 match three complex meta game just just from the start but uh in my experience every time I've done enough Research into one of these guys especially for match three you you generally find out oh okay that makes sense yeah it makes sense yeah yeah exactly yeah well we'll see uh talking about good experience and good Legacy so mystery Matters by plays it Rose in the rankings and almost doubled its Revenue the previous half year which is pretty pretty impressive I mean playx already has a very very wide portfolio and very good portfolio in the top grossing with dominating it almost but it's still great to see that their new titles make it to the top 10 too I'd say that one of the reasons were scaling as usual that was happening in last year's Autumn and the growth in the revenue is one of the results but also what they did they made a big impact and big push push into liveops uh I think uh what they did they

just introduced the best working strategies from other Scapes games like Expedition event like time limed limited events and all of them helped with both engaging the players and growing up the revenue and conversion to to the monetization so I think we'll see what is going with the this red ocean in the second half of the year but so far the results were pretty interesting especially compared to the last year when there were a lot of newcomers to the niche taken from there and talking about another game with number in the title another Niche uh it's merged two with complex meta and this is something really interesting because just like with casual casino and coin Master originally it was dominated with by merge Manion like it was on the throne for quite a while for long enough to M core to be not by Supercell and back them up and then I think they're the

main Founders and owners of the company right now so it's basically a supercell portfolio company but the genre is still growing so it's not stable as say mesh 3 but there are a lot of evolution in core in met a lot of experiments and in events as well so there are some older games that find better ways to monetize and to retain players due to really improved and good live Ops and despite them being quite old they compete hard so you can see gossip Harbor you can see Seaside escape and especially Travel Town the red part of this pie growing bigger and bigger big enough to dethrown merge Mansion which was in imag inimaginable before so going deeper and exploring the numbers apparently this Niche was really sweet for the Developers because in 2022 it was like a little bit over 50 million

and four times more for the first half of 2024 pretty impressive and it's still growing so if we see if we look at the downloads uh in contrast with say casual casino and Match 3 where the the majority of growth was driven by already existing players here we are talking about new users as well so the growth is both for the revenue and for the downloads usually it means that the Cher is still fresh there is no status quo in the tops there is a chance for the developers to come up with new mechanics new ideas experimenting with the core and meta and also for already established companies in the top grossing to acquire more and you more users and to retain them so right now this Niche is still looking pretty good for newcomers looking at the top Crossing uh there are top several games that made it out of the top 10 like mergin and merge mayor but the most important part

happened to to merge mention we've already mentioned it historically it was the king of the Town well not anymore it was first dethroned by travel town and travel town is looking really really good at the moment with a very good liveop system and um gossip Harbor and cide is Cape are also looking really really solid what is interesting is that that both of these games gossip Harbor and C Escape they were developed by microphone limited and the guys are famous or notorious if you would like uh for taking already working formulas copying them but tuning the monetization cranking up the live Ops and using their marketing teams in order to make it to the top I mean just from the get-go uh both of the games gossip Harbor and sead is capes originally were copycats of travel town and lava pies

both games are in top grossing are still in the top grossing of this Niche but microphone limited have been actively scaling both of the of these games and have used the best approaches in liveops so I mean events copying that of Travel Town like Pi a box or Royal match like competitive event for a hundred of players with social competitive Parts different albums and collectibles with got different PVP unique races so all of these summed up to a very steady growth in the top Crossing and we also can see some of the newcomers so for the seventh and 10th position we can see still see that this is a niche that is pretty open for new developers so I'd say that at the moment like the uh middle point of 2024 it is still something you can try to play with and maybe to to uh have pretty good chances of

success taken about that the last uh number genre uh in our category match 3D I think a lot of developers out there were looking uh at this Niche because from from the first glance it seems pretty easy to copy I mean the the basic game play is not so difficult but at the same time uh it was growing as crazy I mean the top three games match Factory grew 14 times happy match Cafe two times Joy match 3D almost four times in the revenue so mainly this was happening because of the uh adding new monetization features and enhancing liveops so i' say that games that already made it to the top they have significantly increased their revenue compared to the previous half year so this is another Niche that is pretty interesting and pretty sweet for the developers and for both new and experienced once just looking at the numbers compared to 2022 I mean almost

10 times higher in the revenue the growth is crazy of course part of the reason is that initially this was a very knee shunter and usually for this type of gen when there are a lot of newcomers and a lot of experiments going on we can see this type of growth coming in several years but here I'd say the possibilities and the opportunities are still there because reasons of the revenue growth are mainly because of uh several titles first of all match Factory we've already mentioned it and it really put a big emphasis on adding up a scaling monetization mechanics and just looking at their tier one West numbers you can see that the downloads are growing as crazy as well so pretty much the same as merge 2 it's not just catering to an already existing audience it's also expanding the niche and I say that for the year maybe for upcoming two years it will continue to grow because right now I think it's not

saturated yet so there is still opportunity and the same goes with the top grossing so since February match Factory has surpassed triple match 3D in Revenue we've seen this incredible growth affecting the whole Niche and the game is being actively improved I mean looking at the new modelization features like passes introducing new type of events and the former leader had added only minor updates so this is a good lesson for everyone of us that if you really cater to your audience if you add up both monetization and engagement mechanics then you can even surpass previous leaders they that looked indestructible the same happened to coin Master the same happened to merge mansion and I say that it's like one of the main lessons of the today's episode and the first half of 2024 by the way one of the new commers and you can see it on the 10th position it's

uh no no no sorry uh on the sixth I think match wheer uh makeup ASMR it's an interesting case because this is a game uh there is not much to say about besides the fact that it's Store creatives icon basically all ASR are all almost entirely misleading so even just looking you know at the name makeup ASMR looking at the icon and this is interesting because usually when we are talking about misleads we're talking about still casual things and here this is a casual genre and a casual game that uses hyper casual misleads just like we've seen with last word survival going to the top and it worked for both of the games so there are different opinions about using misleads about about using these type of ads uh but you can totally just judging by the numbers you can see that it can work for some of the games out there the

question is can it work long term not sure about it we will see got it the last one is Idol Tycoon so bear with me it's like the the last genre we will talk today uh the reason we are talking about it is uh that because during the last couple of years it was considered as a growing niche as well as pretty good for new developers not so more so what we can see that first of all it is declining and the developers and the players are less interested in this Niche maybe it is connected to a lot of new releases so the genre is just overs saturated you can see all the newcomers uh the Frozen City we've already talked today about Y and there are just too much games in the niche so the players are a little bit bored and a little bit tired by the niche and you can see it very clearly by the revenue so it down almost 10% and the same with downloads

almost 10% down so I'd say that if you're looking in the nich idol Tycoon is not the best one the main uh differences that happen to the top grossing comparing the first half of previous year to this one is just uh some of the veteran games going down like Idol lber and Frozen City and some of the veteran games going up like golden goblins and Idol Mafia but but not a lot of changes started qu a lot of old games so I'd say that at this point Idol Tycoon as a niche is looking pretty much as farming so it's very stable it's on a plateau there is a very viid status quo in the top grossing and this is not a niche you would love to enter if you want to be really successful and to scale up really rapidly right going from there talking about new releases and new games so this is an interesting part it really exciting one because it's always really great to look at the newcomers first of all let's look at the

most downloaded games for the first half of this year among the newcomers what we can see is well first of all uh the top one position is definitely a hyper casual game so well everything is good so far because the major downloaded games are Hy hyper casual usually left to right magic dress dress up game hyper casual mechanics uh you choose between the two items of clothing the graphics is really simple and i' say even close to kids games maybe that's one of the reasons for its success by the way but you can also see that it's not just about hyper casual games so you might notice for example uh some Asian titles uh some Asian RPGs in this uh in this top and Squad Busters right on the second pos position I'd say that one of the reasons for Squad Busters to appear there is cross promotion used in all supercell games

another reason is uh a big marketing boost but at the same time uh the same fall in the metrix happened right after the growth so i' say that in the second half of this year there is a chance sad Busters will not make it even the to top 10 not talking about top five going from there so we've looked at the top to download games let's look at the top rossing and the situation here is much more interesting well first of all as we've already mentioned dungeon and fighter origin or Simple dnf Mobile all the first place going strong with almost $300 million in the revenue uh not much to mention here just to highlight once again that the game reaches its amazing results being produced only on iOS and only in China so this is a really interesting case but looking at the top 10 places overall you

can see that uh in general is very uh heavily affected by Asian RPGs a lot of them coming to the market a lot of them becoming really successful a lot of them having really good RPD ders so looking to the right column you can see that for the majority of the Asian RPGs that appeared this year and made it to the top the numbers are pretty sweet so would say that right at the moment we have a domination of Asian RPGs among the top releases and top new releases of course once again as with the most downloadable Squad Busters made it to the top as well but in comparison it was like the second most downloadable game but only the ninth most monetized which is really important here also uh a little late to the party uh zenet Zone zero and you game by Hoover verse and you like urban fantasy arpg it was released just this July and it

apparently didn't make it to this top but I'd say that looking at the numbers so far just like with supercell and Squad Busters there was a great initial boost but then the numbers went down and it's one of the worst mioo launches uh of all time compared to gansin compared to other games so that's interesting because I mean both the Western and the Eastern developers they struggle with the same problems with their new Heats trying to come up to the market and make them Global in scale all right um is there is that the end is there much more I think yeah I think that's it we already had a lot of on the table for all this well yeah so Stan this is this is awesome thanks so much for basically a pretty indepth overview of the state of mobile gaming I think that um you know from my perspective I think it was a really great coverage in as far as like the

overall growth in the market the different kind of genres the performance the top genres as well as new games and releases and things things like that so definitely appreciate your time and maybe Stan maybe we could end with a little bit more info on app magic and if anybody wanted to contact you how would they get in touch with you yeah yeah absolutely great idea so app magic is an analytical tool for analyzing mobile markets and gaining actionable insights I usually tend to say that our Moto is uh receiving actionable insights really fast and really ateas almost by Magic uh so for folks out there we're a sweet combination of Market intelligence analyzing different niches uh looking up for competitors for their main metrics like Revenue downloads retention da you name it and also analyzing markets from game design perspective so for example the tool you're looking at right now live Ops and updates calendar helps to

track and to analyze almost 200 casual and core game games what types of events updates and modelization features are running inside of them how are they affecting the performance so which one of them are more more successful which one of them as a developer you should try and Implement in your game as well how they are made both from the gameplay perspective and from the business perspective so what are the main reasons for them to appear in the game what are the main triggers and what are the goals they're trying to achieve is it growing engagement is it growing retention and so on right and I would say that this tool here the the live Ops tool is the one differentiator in terms of app magic that I was probably most impressed with when I think about the other data services I think you guys have done a a really good job on the live op side thank you appreciate it yeah we are proud of it as well and yeah to be honest we we expected tons of insight out of it during the last year so yeah if you're looking for tracking all the

main players inside the niches not just your Niche but also other markets but because it's really important sometimes you know to be aware of everything what's going on this is one of the main if not the best tool for this type of this type of research awesome all right well with that thank you so much Stan for our audience catch us next quarter as we would will try and do this every quarter in terms of of a state of the mobile gaming Market overview and thank you for joining catch you next time it was a pleas thanks Joseph and see you there byebye bye [Music] the

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