Hyper Casual Games Saw A Massive Growth in Q1 2020

Today, the mobile games statistics show that more than 50 percent of the global video game revenue is generated from mobile games, as people are utilizing most of their time to play games. In 2020 it is estimated that 2.7 billion gamers will spend $77.2 billion on games. One particular genre dominating the gaming industry – Hyper casual games and these games are set to benefit from the growth.

In accordance with an app marketing platform, this lockdown period recorded the highest installation of hyper casual games, which in turn increased fierce competition.  Also during the Q1 of 2020, the app downloads and engagement showed records as high as 103% globally and with China recording 3.5x alone.  Hyper casual games are easy to play, and is replayable, thus making them highly addictive.

Revenue Report – Q1 of 2020

Hyper casual game’s showdown was 72% in March, worldwide. China saw a 300% expansion in the showdown between December 2019 and March 2020, while South Korea recorded a 152% increment. Japan and Germany recorded 137% and 69%, separately. During April and May, hyper casual games stayed mainstream, however the development rates began tightening.

Important Analysis

1. The global downloads and installations of hyper casual game apps doubled.Many countries recorded their highest.
2. People spent more time on these games, thus leading to expansion in app showdowns.
3. Engaging Cost Per Installs (CPIs) are all over the place. While in general CPIs diminished 35% before the finish of March, the expense of gaining hyper casual clients in the U.S. is more than two fold than that of EMEA ($0.19). In any case, advertisers can expect the most noteworthy transformation rates (17%) from the US, the highest quality level of hyper casual gamers.
4. At the same time, there was a decrease in the APAC costs forcefully, and it was $0.20. Globally, CPIs showed a much lower rate, which was $0.17 in Q1 2020. These results were likely to affect the low CPIs in LATAM, especially in countries such as Brazil and Mexico, where there are lots of energetic clients who love the games.

Hyper casual games are a combination of simple mechanics and minimalist templates. The fun and simplicity concept played as key factors is drawing-in a large audience and keeping them engaged no matter the advertisements. User acceptance of the ads has helped to build an exclusive business model for mobile gaming, thus, making the game 95%  ad dependent for revenue.

According to Mr Paul H. Müller, co-founder and CTO of Adjust,

“Hyper casuals cleverly blend the best ad experience and most engaging mechanics to appeal to the broadest category of players. In doing so, they have redefined the traditional models around user acquisition and ad monetization.”

COVID – 19, one of the  reasons for the massive growth in the first quarter… The current pandemic has taken the world by storm. It messed up societies and economies big time. Many companies witnessed a massive fall; on the contrary it fundamentally brought in alot of revenue among the gaming companies. Lockdown and stay at home orders showed cumulative records in downloads and installation of games, especially hyper casual games. Also the quality of hyper casual and mobile games during the pandemic has shown that the smartphone was the most preferred gadget for many.

Now the question is will the growth be sustainable after the social distancing easies out, will this genre continue to rein? Nothing is for sure, but it looks like hyper casual games are surely here to stay. Thus, This will be of significance for mobile advertisers from different verticals, and optimization and automation will take hold.

Approach

What we get to see with hyper casual games is that they have an alternate way to deal with great gaming publishers. The concept is just not about publishing one game, then  having a  huge user base, nurturing it and finally giving the game a short-life. Rather, the idea of giving every game a short life period is that users will  move on to the next game within the company’s portfolio, thus creating a snowball effect. This continuous roll by users helps the growth of the company’s user base.

Success of Hyper Casual Games

1.Hyper casual game developers and publishers know their selling points, and this is the core feature for the success of a game.

2.Hyper casual games are easy to understand and need no tutorials, thus  the target audiences come with no age limit, gender or cultural differences. Hyper casual games attract an audience with both content and type.

3.Hyper-casual markets have an  inclination to ad-based monetization, their content of the ad creatives matches that of the games, thus leading to users acceptance. Therefore, recording positive user experience and good conversion rates.

What’s expected?

Hyper-casual games have increased in the most recent years, which means they have successfully changed non-gamers into players, something other game types couldn’t succeed to do. With no doubt, these games will continue to grow as it did in 2019 and Q1 of 2020 but as the demand increases in the market, developers will soon look at new concepts to enter this space, thus growing rates will face bigger and riskful challenges than before. So developers and gaming companies will focus more on keeping the games as simple and easy as before yet make them interesting, the games will be data driven such that it optimizers ad buying and in turn reduces CPI, and finally development costs will reduce so that the increasing   iteration cycles will help them win the race and stay in the market.

Conclusions:

The future for hyper casual gaming industry looks all good but will have to face different sets of challenges thrown at them, so game developers and gaming companies should pay good attention and accustom to all the market changes which will help them succeed in the long run – it sure is time for all developers and publishers to have their strategy in place as it a a genuine instance of “survival of the fittest”.