The Future of Hyper-casual Games | GameJam CEO Christian Calderon

today we'll be speaking with Christian caldron who was the chief revenue officer at ketchup which was one of the companies instrumental in the growth of hyper casual games marketed and it was now the CEO of a new startup addressing the high per capita market called game jam and just to provide a bit more background however we've seen the market has evolved fairly significantly since 2013 with a number of key games that focused really on on gameplay and monetizing through through ads in 2018 in particular was a breakout year for hyper casual games as you can see from the graphic behind me that of the top 20 games by downloads in 2018 15 of those 20 more hyper casual games in the number-one game he likes jump definitely was was able to generate a massive number of installs for that year and as I mentioned earlier ketchup was one of

the key companies instrumental in the growth of the hyper casual market as you can see they were a top publisher by my download ranked in from 2014 to 2016 he made a big jump in 2017 and then again 2018 was a year that hyper caps are really blossom so it's great that we are able to talk to Chris caldron who was the chief revenue officer and a key executive at ketchup at the time to talk about the history and the origins of this market and then also as a CEO of Game Jam we can talk to him also about the emerging opportunity and how he believes that the market will kind of evolve in the future so with that let's jump right in [Music] everybody I'm here today with Chris Calderon he was a CEO Game Jam and today

we're just gonna be talking about the hyper casual games market and Chris's new startup game jamming so first of all just talking about the hyper casual games market sort of blew up in last year and this year it sort of plateaued but can you just just tell us a little bit about you know what is this kind of what do these kinds of games come from and how that they've been so successful yeah so I think these campus have really kind of been or not for a long long time um you know early day is flappy birds you know a game like this can be considered a hyper casual um prior to game jam I was a chief revenue officer I catch up and we've been making these games since 2014 and 2018 to 2014 when we launched 2048 basically a hundred percent at the base scheme we were top publisher back to back year year from 2014 is it 2017 getting hundreds of millions of downloads every single year

so in a way these games have always been kind of popular um I think the major shift that happened was probably in 2017 were we saw more than 60% into the top 30 games all considered to be hyper casual games right and I think this shift came because of the revenue I think last year what a lot of us are thinking is that revenue from ads and games has surpassed revenue for me that purchases and games and I think the system becomes a really huge opportunity for these types of games okay so what are the keys to success in like today's market has that changed since 2014 to today definitely it definitely has um so like kind of to go back to catch up I think the for us we look at games we

were just basically looking at something that felt fun to be honest we didn't really even and you keep the eyes in the very beginning just looking at a game if it felt fun and then we would publish it as the industry has gotten more competitive like all things I think everyone's paying a little bit more attention to the data so looking at things like retention and lifetime value and even now doing user acquisition which was never a thing and done in the past with hyper casual games and I would say like now definitely you you need that you a component to scale hyper casual games are in the past you never really needed that ok in terms of like the key players in the market I think people may have heard of voodoo I mean beating lions to use them can you talk about new who are the top 3 4 or 5 players in the market and then who do you think is the best position for for success of those sort of top players right so I see definitely voodoo ketchapp line studios

I think really huge games also is has had some success but I think probably the top the ones that are poised to do really well in this market are part of the ones that have the capital contribution for for user acquisition so similar to what we kind of saw in in the ip-based days where you know machines owned and he's kind of big budgets going towards you a I think companies like that but people are just for marketing have a lot of potential to win it out in this market but and also the companies that have the the expertise behind scaling these games economically I I think these guys are probably the ones best set up to really dominate dominate

this market and so you are the chief revenue officer kitchen and kind of left to start your own company could you just just talk about you know what's the specific opportunity you're going after as game jam what made you decide to kind of even start your own company yeah so I the opportunity that I saw was that this is pretty pretty new still like everything's changing a lot um the thing in it for me was I saw ax been for mobile this is increasing double digits over time I think by 2020 it's going to be more than 300 billion and that had this ad revenue contribution for games is going to exceed in-app purchases at a macroeconomic level and also like smartphone penetration isn't growing nearly as fast anymore as it was here five ten years ago so the ad revenue

versine per user is just increasing so much that it's just a huge LTV opportunity for these types of games and this creates the opportunity to to scale these games different types of different types of games really quickly because as you know for these games the payback window is really short like we're making a money back in in a week sometimes days or a couple of weeks and it just creates this opportunity to scale a game and make your money back quickly which to me is less risky than scaling a game and making your money back in a year or six months and so that's what I really knew really liked about about it plus my Lee my previous history I catch up and a dots I felt like I could you just go out and you know try to make top games and let's see if I can make it happen and

just really specifically going back to your first thought about starting a company like could you just like take us back to like you know were you sitting in a lunch room where you're driving and you're just like oh I should start a company and then like how did you what were the sort of initial steps did you talk to a specific partner did you have someone that you're working with how did that sort of happen yeah I know that's a good question um I think the the same aha moment for me was like I need to start my own business was I was in I was in Vietnam and I sold that uh basically a lot of these new games were kind of popping up and I realized at that moment there's there's a huge opportunity here it's like it and if I'm gonna do it I'm gonna have to act quickly and so I just I've always wanted to start my own business and I thought I have the tools that I need I've done

here's a requisition before I know how to monetize games I have a lot of potential to make this type of business and I thought there wasn't going to be a better moment than vending there so immediately I started working towards towards that and your company is based in Vietnam which I thought was pretty interesting can you also just talk about the company itself like you know how many people do you have how they kind of split up amongst different sorts of disciplines or functions yeah sure so we're about ten people almost yes everyone's in Vietnam and almost everyone's in Vietnamese that have another buddy of mine that works with me and Chris russy's or chief operating officer I work with them at needed company and and then we have an artist from the Philippines and outside of that everyone is Vietnamese and the team is roughly split up half developers half artists and the developers are all

pretty much full stack one of them is a data scientist so he works with me specifically in our platform and then the artists are kind of half and half 2d and 3d and so they um the 2d team is focusing things like UI UX in any of the 2d components and then the 3d team also full-stack so we'll have a 3d 3d artist I can rig and a mini render and texture any of that you can do everything by himself so everyone's pretty independent um and we kind of worked pretty quickly we work with in weekly sprints try to prototype a game within a few days to a week great and final question duccini kind of upcoming trends or changes coming to the hyper casual games market and I don't sort of plateaued a little bit coming into this year but what's your prediction in terms of where the hyper casual market goes going into you know later this year next year right so I

think the types of games that we've been seeing in the space are pretty much the same like tons of ball games and and so I think that the there's a huge opportunity here because the ads LTV for these games are much higher than they ever were before which which creates opportunity for different types of games that are filled with different types of people also within like Tier one markets we can pretty much assume that CPI's are going to increase a little bit faster over time especially for specific titles where everyone's kind of marketing to the same audience right so I think that leaves the room for different ways to market the games a big thing that we haven't really seen done well yet at scale in a repetitive fashion is IP well

integrated very well into hyper casual games and I think that could be a really big theme for this year next year and to build on top of that games hyper casual games that are not ball games or just add tripping 100% a driven games that kit the puzzle games I could be trivia games I can be anything else that are killed two different types of audiences and I think wurst the hyper casual like market so to speak is is growing to these different branches of different types of games because of the LTV capacity and our ability to market to new audiences and new people so I think that's how the evolution of this these types of games will play out okay great there you have it you're with Chris Keller on CEO Game Jam that's it all right thanks [Music]

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