Mobile F2P is still alive – and nothing will change that. The mobile gaming market has changed dramatically, and to stay on top of it, you have to resort to new methods of user acquisition. Read GameAnalitycs’ article on how not to get lost in this vast world of gaming.

A side note: Ball Blast by Voodoo has been downloaded 75 million times

How to make a game nowadays?

Creating a competent mobile game requires a certain amount of knowledge and strategy. There are established concepts and formulas that are used to determine “project success”.

In the pre-IDFA era, the strong core gameplay was always a reflection of D1 retention. Changes in core gameplay were always reflected in it and usually got early retention. Long-term retention was the norm of building a strong-performing game. In the post-IDFA era this still applies but getting great retention is not enough these days. As the CPI vs LTV formula broke down, everyone is looking at the possibility of acquiring as many users as possible as cheaply as possible as the targeting got thrown out of the window anyway.

That’s why you have to resort to new tricks if you want a game with really cool metrics.

User acquisition creatives

In the past, a sort of “fake” gameplay element was often used as advertising in order to lower the CPI figure. However, as time went on and now we can see full-fledged gameplay as advertising, which smoothly entices the player to download the project. There are some examples of popular games creatives.

Firstly, Topwar: Battle Game by Topwar Studio. This game still makes steady 22 million or more USD per month.

User acquisition
Topwar still makes 22+ millions
An example of a game advertising creative

The next successful title is a Stormshot by Funplus.

This game is still pretty fresh. Global launched a few months ago, with revenues growing steadily. In Stormshot, we can see that they took their time to not just copy the usual pin puzzle lava creative, they actually develop a pretty lovely puzzle game with a full-fledged physics element that is stitched carefully into the onboarding of the game.

The game still generates under $8 millions
Gameplay tied to creatives

The fact, you only see these „shooting“ levels in the creatives and in the store. And this is really cool, because you can see that the characters and the game have the same setting/theme of graphics and no longer are just slapped playables.

What do we have as a result? A lot of people don’t like the hyper-casual game genre, and it’s declared dead almost every year. Last time, even by Voodoo himself, a titan of the hyper-casual genre, and the trend is likely to continue.

The unique accessibility and the ability to capture a truly wide audience, be it 4X, RPG, Idle or Casual, is currently the only way to scale these CPI-hungry machines consistently.

In the upcoming months and next year, we are going to see more genres implementing this strategy to tackle the ever-increasing CPIs.

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