Mobile Games Playbook

Episode 60: Mobile Gaming in 2024 - Exploring the top trends that dominated the year

Liftoff

This episode of the Mobile Games Playbook dives into the mobile landscape of 2024 with GameRefinery’s experts, Erno Kiiski, Chief Game Analyst, and Teemu Palomaki, Chief Game Analyst. They’ll explore the trends that have shaped 2024 in mobile games, analyzing how midcore genres like 4X and CCGs are adapting to wider audiences and the rise of hybrid casual games before delving into the growth of trending features, including live events, overarching currencies, and loss aversion mechanics.

Join us as we break down the biggest trends of the year in this essential guide to understanding 2024 in mobile games and a sneak peek at what the future may hold.

Remember to subscribe, leave a review, and check out our websites, https://liftoff.io/ and https://gamerefinery.com/, for more information on game development topics and strategies for growing your game.

Jon Jordan: Hello, and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what it takes to make a great mobile game, what is and isn't working for mobile game designers, and all of the latest trends.

I'm Jon Jordan, and today is definitely all about the latest trends. The end-of-year roundup podcast is always the host's favorite one, and that's what we're doing today. So we're really gonna delve across the past 12 months with our two experts; I’m glad to welcome them back. Familiar faces to us, familiar voices as well. So we have Erno Kiiski, Chief Game Analyst at Liftoff. How's it going, Ernoo? 

Erno Kiiski: It's going great. 

Jon Jordan: Yeah, good. And, Teemu Palomäki, Chief Game Analyst at Liftoff. How's it going, Teemu? 

Teemu Palomäki: Going great. 

Jon Jordan: Good, good. So, you have really done your homework today, and you are going to really take us through all the action that's been happening. You're going to be talking about some big releases, and then you're going to be talking a bit about some features as well. 

So we're going to kick off with the big releases of the year, and within that, you have encapsulated a very cool trend. So, Erno, you're going to take us away. 

Erno Kiiski: Yeah, sure. Of course, there are a lot of releases, you know, that we could spend hours and hours discussing here, but we tried to narrow it down to more specifics and more of a general idea of what makes these games interesting in terms of the grand scheme of things, what is happening in the market. 

I think one, probably with the most releases and most action happening last year, was the 4X genre and the 4X strategy genre. That genre has definitely been evolving, but I think this year was the one when we saw a surprisingly big amount of games scaling to the top of that subgenre. And also, the interesting notion here is that pretty much everybody who went and was able to scale them used the same kind of tactics. So what is the tactic?

Of course, as we know, the current market situation and what it’s been for years and so on, and the difficulty of scaling UA for the whales and finding your whales for your 4X strategy games, which is, of course, a very different market.

So, the trend is to make the 4X strategy out of that niche, trying to casualize it, trying to find a wider audience. This year, we definitely saw multiple very successful examples of that. And especially if you go even deeper, like how these games have been casualizing the experience, it's been through these mini-game layers; it's not a new thing itself.

If we think about the 4X strategy and games like Evony, which is like an age-old game, and they did it already like years ago, did the whole like pull the pin ads and then adding it on to the first-time user experience and the early player funnel. But then it's basically forgotten about, but what is new about this new generation of these casualized 4X strategy games, it's that actually, these casual hooks and the gameplay are much more part of the whole experience, and it's much more intertwined into the whole experience. Of course, the emphasis is still that, okay, you know, that's what they push to, you know, with their UA, with their creatives. And definitely it has a bigger emphasis on the early player experience.

And then gradually, there are more, kind of deeper 4X mechanics and gameplay, but still, those are not just mini-games that you play separately and then kind of forget about, but they are actually intertwined into the whole gameplay loop, and they're part of the gameplay loop for a longer period of time than just the beginning.

So some games to highlight from this year, of course, like Whiteout Survival. That was the big game last year. That game last year scaled to the very top and is still at the very top. What they did, was, of course, they had the survival element in the gameplay. This kind of like, you have your base, and you need to, you know, make sure that people survive and all that stuff.

I'm sure many of these games that came this year saw the success of Whiteout Survival. And especially in terms of the names, because, for example, the two names that come to my mind, and if we look at the top charts and with games that scaled the most, first of all, definitely Last War Survival, very similar name, survival in the name.

But to be honest, if we think about the gameplay hook and the creatives, what they did, it was quite a different angle than what Whiteout Survival did. So Last War Survival uses this hyper-casual gate mini-game that we have seen; anybody who has used any apps probably has seen these ads. So you have these gates, and then there's like multipliers, and you need to move the character and go to the right gate 

So hyper casuals have been using it for a long, long period of time, but Last War Survival, actually, yes, they have this very shallow minigame in there as well, but it's also part of the game as one of their key PvP modes and arena modes that actually you are, you know, moving the character, you have this kind of like a similar gate element into the gameplay. And then, you know, the further you go into the game, the more 4X elements are introduced. It has a casual, very casual theme, very cartoonish theme. and that game pretty much it launched right at the start of the year; I think it was like last days of December or something like that.

Right at the end of last year, but it has been scaling pretty much throughout the year. And it's now, especially in the U.S., the top 4X game out there. It's like the top-grossing game, hovering around there in the whole market. So, insane scaling, an insane success story in terms of this casualization of a 4X strategy game.

And to continue from there, there’s a game called Dark War Survival, again, a survival game. This is actually a game from the same company as Last War [Survival]. And, this game just launched in September, so it's relatively new. But it's been scaling ever since. And again, same strategy, same game plan that, okay, we have a 4X strategy game.

Okay. How can we make it more approachable? What kind of gameplay layer can we add to it? This time, it's actually much closer to what Whiteout Survival did back in the day, but now the setting is more like a zombie apocalypse or this type of apocalypse survival aspect. 


And that game, again, has been scaling like crazy. So that company at least have found immense success with this strategy, and then the third one that I want to highlight on this same strategy pattern; all of these are from Chinese companies, but the third one is different from Last War and Dark War, so it's game called Top Heroes. 

And to me, it's the most interesting and most differentiating from all of these, because actually this game, what is the casual layer on this game? It's actually almost like an idle arcade that you have seen in the hybrid casual type of games where you, you know, move characters.

It's a very, very light-action RPG, a hybrid casual game like Dreamdale from Saygames. It's a bit similar to what Top Heroes has. And that's one of the core layers of the game. It starts with that layer. Yes, 4X comes to start in the play later on, but then that gameplay hook and gameplay part of the gameplay loop doesn't go away at any point.

Yes, their emphasis changes. Maybe 4X becomes a much bigger part of it towards the end game. But it's not anymore that, okay, we just make a mini game, slap it on top. And then, you know, you play 10 levels, and then you forget about it. And then you get stuck with the actual 4X, and then people churn because it's not the game that they thought, but it's actually a much more sophisticated approach and much more part of the initial design process.

This has been the way that the 4X have found a totally new dawn, so to speak, with many new games scaling and finding success with this kind of approach. 

Jon Jordan: Now, it's a very good point because 4X, I guess, has always been one of the best-monetized genres or subgenres in mobile, back in the days of 2015, and actually, it's interesting that 4X games have tended because they've been so hardcore, they've also tended to be very sophisticated in terms of their UA, obviously Machine Zone back in the glory days, spending the most amount of money on UA and had the best UA funnel and inflow.

But obviously there's only a certain amount of people who are going to play those games. I'm sure we've all played those sort of, you know, Mobile Strike style games, and you go in and it's like within two minutes, just like, whoa, what's going on here? The problem was just everyone dropped off straight away.

What you're saying makes sense: The 4X people are building their UA funnel from the ads into the game, and that's going sort of deeper into the game. Obviously, at some point, you need to get those people to be in the 4X thing, which is the really deep, monetized aspect of it.

But what you're doing, from what it seems like, this sort of casualization, you're saying, of the sort of earlier stages, it's just getting people engaged in the game, and then you can get them into the sort of deeper parts, which is sort of really where you want them, but it's, you're really focusing that sort of, you know, mixing up UA and game.

Erno Kiiski: Definitely. And exactly that, like these mini-games of this type, we have seen it in 4X for a long period of time, but now the past two years, it's been much more sophisticated. And it is also a part of the retention and engagement for the games because I don't see, like Evony back in the day, the pull the pin style; it's not the one that keeps building up retention in that game. It's just a hook to get the player in. And then, if you're lucky, some of them stick and then, you know, but the so much lower CPIs that they get from there, then back in the day, it was enough to get like, the equation was positive.

But now, with this one, it's a much bigger part of the game, which is an interesting shift that I also see in this kind of mini-game/casual gameplay layer that is an element in this genre. 

Jon Jordan: 4X is not the only genre that has been doing casualization. So, who else has been picking up on these ideas?

Teemu Palomäki: I'd say Pokemon is one that comes to mind. I think everyone has heard of Pokemon TCG Pocket right now. It's doing quite well. I look a lot at the Japanese market, and, it's spectacular. It's flat-lining that top spot; last month, there were only like, three dips to second place in either downloads or grossing.

So it's really dominating there. And it's interesting how it's a card battler, sure, but more than that, it's kind of a card collector. Did you play a lot of Pokemon card games with your friends when you were younger? 

Erno Kiiski: No, to be honest, that's actually the thing that I feel that they really cleverly tap into.

But at least, yeah, back in the day when I was like, we collected the cards, but we actually never even played with them. It was all about the collection. So they are definitely also like, that's the angle that they go for, and they have been going for it successfully at least the first month. 

Teemu Palomäki: My younger brother was close enough in age that when we collected those cards, we could play them. But for many people, it was just a collecting aspect. And that's kind of what the TCG pocket really excels in. So if you think about the Pokemon brand, it has these two major phrases that everyone likes to repeat; you know, there's the “gotta catch them all,” and then there's “I want to be the very best.”

 And this time, in the TGG pocket, they're focusing on the gotta catch them all. I want to collect them all. And that seems to be the winning strategy for Pokemon when they're going on mobile. If you think about Pokemon Go, it's all about collecting. Sure, there are battles, but that's not as engaging as the collecting aspects, that collecting is what you do most of the time.

Here in TCG Pocket, you're opening the packs. You come daily to open the packs, and it feels really good to collect the cards. That's where the emphasis is. Sure, you can play with them. In simplified matches, they are casualized, but the focus is on the gotta catch them all. Same with Japan. Pokemon Sleep is doing really well there.

There is not much you do except sleep, but you collect the Pokemons there. If we think about the battling Pokemon games, we have Pokemon Unite, Pokemon Masters X, and maybe Pokemon Quest. There was an earlier release, I think two years ago, Pokemon TCG Live, which was more focused on the battling aspect, with standard decks, the 60-card decks versus what we have in TCG Pocket with 20-card decks, really simplified and easy to access.

The battling ones are not doing that well. I think if you think about collecting something versus the kind of battling, collecting kind of never gets old. It gets maybe even more engaging the more you do it because you're getting closer to completion. Whereas with battling, it becomes repetitive, and sure you add more challenge, but that makes it even more tedious.

You need to think harder. The success we can see in Pokemon games comes through the collection aspect, and it's really interesting how they casualize that and focus on collecting. 

Jon Jordan: I guess also, if you're battling, then you're sort of showing the expertise of what's going on that then you need to put a lot of time into it, whereas how you say people now in professional life grew up with Pokemon, and you haven't got time to probably do the battling, but like digitally collecting the cards you had in your youth and some new ones plays well to a much sort of older audience. So it sort of plays to the legacy that Pokemon has. 

Erno Kiiski: And there's also like a lot of similarities to Marvel Snap’s launch in terms of like, again, like Marvel Snap is much, much more focused, of course, on the actual battles, but what they did also made it so much easier to approach because the biggest problem with CCGs for years has been that you know you start playing Magic [the Gathering] now and that entry barrier is so goddamn high or even like Hearthstone which already made it like a bit more casual than Magic but like even that I remember when I jumped into it some years ago, I was like, ah, like so many cards to figure out and learn.

And, you know, there's so much to learn to get into the game when these types of games make the whole genre so much more approachable. And then maybe the biggest question, at least for me, the Pokemon TCG Pocket is the sustainability in terms of, yes, they're going to bring new stuff to collect, but will it be able to sustain and engage players in the long run?

What is their plan for the long-term engagement? That is still a big question because it's still very early. at least the launch is super strong. 

Jon Jordan: Do you have some other genres that you feel have been casualized?

Erno Kiiski: Sure. One that I would like to maybe talk about again, if we keep on the topic of casualization in terms of mid-core genres; just recently, a new Habby game, Capybara Go, was released globally. 

It had already been in the Asian markets for a while and was doing very well there. It just launched in the Western markets globally, in the U.S. It is scaling at the moment, maybe not as explosively as some people expected, but of course, it's more towards hybrid casual games that scale over time a little bit more than necessarily like Pokemon TCG, where you can buy the decks as much as you want in the beginning.

And then, you know, it jumps to the top of the charts right away in terms of revenues, but they released a game called Capybara Go. The twist here is that it actually uses the same patterns, the same proven meta-gameplay mechanics that we have seen in every single Habby game.

So they have this meta-framework, this like light RPG meta-framework, which then they slap on top different core gameplays and try to make it work. Pretty much. That's the Habby strategy and the model. But the most interesting part about this new one, Capybara Go, is that if you think about Habby games, all of these games are very skill-based and very reaction-based skill, games in terms of their core gameplay.

But this new one, the Capybara Go, actually doesn't have skill at all. It's more this, like, you go on a journey, and there's like a little narrative bit, and then you make these roguelite choices, like all the Habby games, but there's not really this like reaction-based gameplay at all. So what then that does, of course, like if we think about stats, then it might be able to appeal to maybe a little bit wider audience.

We think about the biggest games in the market now, like Monopoly Go, there's zero skill involved. It's just basically pushing a button and seeing the numbers go up. So that's why we kind of like even talked about this game. It's kind of like a social casino RPG in that way, that it's basically this game's core gameplay is pushing a button.

Yes, here's a little bit of strategy in terms of you choosing the skills like in any roguelike game, but there's not that reaction-based gameplay at all, which has been part of all the other Habby games. So it might be able to open up to more wider audience than other Habby games have, which remains to be still seen.

Jon Jordan: And we have a final genre we're going to discuss in terms of casualization?

Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, I think it, we could be brief about this one, but like sort of the gender demographics, I think we've seen, Love in Deepspace, for example, kind of an interactive story, sure. But it has that RPG layer, which generally is kind of aimed at men, but that is kind of doing really well, a really exceptional performance. And that, like the dating aspect there, is definitely aimed at women, but there is a little bit of that crossing the traditional gender demographics.

The same goes for match three. We've seen it before, like Chrome Valley Customs, kind of match three for men, but then Truck Star this year is doing really well, kind of targeting that male audience in the match three space, which generally has been thought of as a women's area more than a men's area. 

Erno Kiiski: Definitely. And especially on the Truck Star, it's an interesting one because if you look at the game, it's very similar to Chrome Valley Customs and the same again; they want to expand the match three audience, but the game is coming from, actually, the company who made Whiteout Survival, so Century Games, so a totally different genre, but something that we can see is the number of resources that the company has because if we compare it to Chrome Valley Customs, Truck Star, in its live ops framework, it's pretty much competing against the very, very top, like your Royal Matches and your Playrix games and so on.

Already, even though it launched at the start of the year, it has been scaling its live ops like crazy, crazy, crazy. And that's totally another level that Chrome Valley Customs is, which has been a little bit on a decline. So, the amount of resources that they have been able to push that game, and it's been scaling ever since the launch.

Is it really able to sustain better than Chrome Valley Customs? I have a much more positive opinion because of the live event framework, which I always felt was a little bit lacking in Crow Valley Customs compared to what the market is nowadays in that genre, which needs so many live ops, and that's the standard.

But Truck Star is definitely able to tap into that. But I guess overall, this game and then the Love and Deepspace game, which is an interactive story plus RPG, this is like, we talked about a lot about casualization of the mid-core genres, and this is more like expanding the gender demographics from the usual genre archetype.

It's kind of a little bit on the different side. You have this casual-ish genre, like interactive stories, mainly female-driven audiences, usually super feature-lite. And now this new game comes in, attaches a little bit of RPG elements there, and increases the possible LTVs like crazy.

And then it's been doing super well also in the West. And that's the surprising thing because, like in the Asian markets, we have seen these types of games like Love and Deepspace before, but they never really do well in the West. But this is doing really, really surprisingly well in the West as well. It's a game that I feel that not that much is talked about in the industry, at least in the Western industry, even though if you look, go and look at the charts of the game, it's doing crazy well.

Jon Jordan: One of the takeaways from the podcast is to go and download Love and Deepspace and check it out. So we've been talking about sort of casualization of more core genres.

So what's been happening in sort of the more casual space? What are they up to? 

Erno Kiiski: Well, one thing, of the past year, definitely, hybrid-casual, it's the term talked about so much in the industry nowadays. And we talked about, kind of like, the casualization and it's kind of like a hybrid element there as well.

But of course, if we talk about hybrid-casual, it's more like moving from hyper-casual ad-monetized games to games to have a little bit more long-term engagement and IAP monetization. And traditionally, these hybrid casual games, like the original, like Archero, of course, back in the day, these type of games, usually the genres that they have been in, have been mainly these like, add some kind of like a power progression and so on.

And that's the way that they can add long term engagement and IAP monetization. But in the past year, we have definitely seen a lot of movement towards hybrid-casual puzzle games, actually. So three games, for example, that are nowadays close to like top 100 grossing apps in IAP revenue only.

In the Western markets, like Hexa Sort, crazy scaling of this year, Screw Jam coming from Rollic Games, scaling like crazy, Twisted Tangle, another Rollic game. And overall, Rollic Games has scaled multiple of these games in the past year. And if we then zoom out and think about, like, what is in common with these games, pretty much they use the best practices from you know, the IAP-driven casual puzzle games like match three games in terms of like live events. And then they add those on top of the different core gameplay, different kinds of puzzle experiences. And that's the kind of way that these puzzle games have been able to add IAP monetization.

So they used to be just like, okay, it's a hyper-casual puzzle game, just add monetization. But now it's like. It's kind of like a live ops machine, like almost, you know, the line between what is a casual puzzle game and what is a hybrid-casual puzzle game, it has, you know, dimmed. They are almost the same, but if you think about it, basically, it is all of these three, for example, the games that I mentioned, all of them have a different, new type of core gameplay compared to thousands of match three games, but all of these games, like Hexa Sort, has this kind of like a, you make these piles of piles of like, I don't know how do you call them?

Like slides or, it's a very interesting, core gameplay concept. Then, Screw Jam, it's this like, okay, you need to remove the screws. Twisted Tangle is when you have these ropes that you need to solve and figure out those puzzles like that. And all of these games, in the grand scheme of things, use the same kind of basic monetization of puzzle games; you know, you buy extra moves.

So if it's time-based, you buy extra time to complete the level, and so on. Then you have the boosters and stuff like that. But if we look at these on the production side, of course, they are adding levels, but another thing that I mentioned that they have been scaling is taking the best practices of live events, the live ops that we have seen in the top-performing puzzle games.

So different kinds of a, like a competition event, different kind of a collection event, different type of a loss aversion based win streak events, all that stuff. And they have been scaling like this. And then, as we talked about Habby having the RPG type of template, then we see these companies applying this kind of like the same mentality but on the puzzle side.

As I mentioned, Rollic Games has multiple hybrid-casual puzzle games, all with different core gameplay loops. Of course, they're testing out what works in terms of marketing and engagement, and then they start to build on top of that.

It's pretty much the same formula that they do with all of them. So they have that kind of like a template that, okay, then we land at these events and these events and these events, and they have this kind of like a template that they scale all of these puzzle games with. And that's been one big shift in the puzzle market in the past year that I feel that this type of like a new type of core gameplay plus with a little bit of an ad monetization intertwined. This has been scaling in the past. 

Jon Jordan: Just to add, Rollic is part of Zynga, which is obviously part of Take Two. So they have a sort of a big professional organization behind them. So they're not one of these small startups messing around. They're part of a big, serious business. Cool. That's good stuff. Is there anything else we want to talk about from the older games, or should we move on? 

Teemu Palomäki: I can briefly mention it because it's been a big story this year. Brawl Stars is doing really well. At the start of the year, they were already kind of scaling up thanks to maybe the return of the random element in star drops and hypercharge mechanics, sort of end-game skills for characters and Battle pass rework. 

So they had that kind of going on before the year started, but then this year, they've reworked their ranked PVP and really embraced the collaboration events. They had SpongeBob and the Godzilla event, which were really well received. And they've also been using these event-only boosts and skills for characters.

The most recent is the Angels and Demons event. So you can get these limited-time boosts to your characters and, I think, with mobile games, Sure, gachas are one big thing why people play those games. the randomness and the excitement that comes from it, but also the progression. So, what they have done with the embracing of these limited-time event boosts is that you get constant progression.

Before, it was maybe a little bit more stale. Granted, Supercell has been really good at sort of shuffling the meta a little bit, so the game feels kind of fresh when they adjust the characters. But they've been doing really good, and hats off to them for their performance this year.

Erno Kiiski: Yeah, I think they had just because the Angels and Demons event is, I think it's still ongoing, but I think they had their all-time high one-day revenue spike just recently. So it's very impressive. The whole turnaround, like not too many stories of this level of turnaround in terms of a game has been like scaling down, scaling down, scaling down, and then it goes through the roof, so to speak. 

Jon Jordan: Yeah, fellow Finns, so always good to talk about Supercell. But it is an interesting story where they were sort of the number one, certainly in the West. And then it seemed like a, not quite a terminal decline, but you couldn't really see how they were going to turn stuff around.

And obviously, internally, they've had quite a serious reshaping of how they're approaching stuff. So it's good to see that that's worked. They're always very smart in what they do. So it's good to say the old dog could reinvent itself.

So we're moving on from sort of specifically talking about games and genres to look at some sort of features that they've been happening. So what do you want to sort of highlight there in what we've seen in 2024? 

Erno Kiiski: Yeah, of course. It's also like many things we could talk about. We thought about two topics that we wanted to highlight that have been the clearest of shifts or trends that we have seen. One actually links to what Teemu talked about with the Angels and Demons event and having this limited-time progression vector for a month or so 

It's kind of like overarching umbrella events trends. It's a funny term, but let me explain it a little. So if we think about mobile games and most mobile games, and they are like live events, it's nothing new. And there are tons of events in all kinds of games all the time. Previously, not all of the games, at least, of course, some have been doing it better than the others, but many times, one big problem for, these events and this kind of short-term engagement of, okay, you have a three-day event, you have a four-day event, and then another comes in and so on and so on. 

But there's nothing really interconnecting those; of course, you get the rewards, you get better in the core gameplay, and stuff like that, but there are usually no progression vectors to interconnect these individual events in the event framework.

We have seen this trend across the market. So, if we think about Casual games, easily the trendiest way to execute this and do this in the casual market has been collectible albums. This is actually something that, for example, slot games, like casual casino slots games, have been doing for years.

Basically, you collect stickers or cards or whatever. And usually, the way to get these cards is through all these other, smaller events. Some of the casual games have already been doing this for a while. But the especially interesting thing is that every game has been moving towards a seasonal approach.

So you have two months, three months long seasons, and then after the three months, the album changes, and then, you know, you need to collect the cards again, and this is a feature that has been popping up in multiple games, I think, especially after Monopoly Go launched and they had this right from the get-go, I feel that in the casual market, so many games have tried to follow that same approach, if we think about Royal Match, for example, they used to have this as kind of like a permanent, progression vector, but they changed it to a limited time so now they have seasons there. And then we think about games like Gossip Harbor, one of those merge-two games from Microfun.

Also, games that have been scaling like crazy this year have added it, and many more examples have done it in the past year. So, basically, the main key takeaway and idea here is this feature to build that gives you a connecting progression vector for all of your other events.

So it gives this extra incentive to participate in this event and then get a progression here. And, especially in casual games, where there isn't that power progression or those other progression vectors that just go forward in the game.

But this is another progression vector, and many of these games intertwine social elements. You can send cards to one another and trade cards with each other. For example, Monopoly Go has been very, very active in pushing players to send cards to their friends and join communities to talk about which cards they need and so on.

So it's, there's that aspect as well. And then also in the mid-core, maybe a little bit different approaches, not so much this kind of like a collectable album, which has been kind of like a standard in the casual market, but in mid-core games like Clash Royale, I think it was last year already, but they changed their event format to season based that all the events to work like over the course of the season, you earn this event currency.

You are then using it on the season shop. So again, yes, you can be interested in one individual event, but now all the events are somehow interconnected. League of Legends Wild Rift launched the Arcane series; they had a massive event where there were multiple different pieces and different phases and different types of events, but what connects everything together on that longer event is like an overarching currency. For example, Call of Duty Mobile, also another one that has been overhauling this kind of like how we can interconnect individual events.

Other than that, of course, the battle pass is there, but we have so many more events on top of it. So how can we make this kind of a seasonal progression vector? They have been changing that over the years.

 

Jon Jordan: I guess this development is interesting. It's adding a complication, but we should engage some people; for other people, it's sort of, if you're a sort of a lighter user, you sort of get this current cause the way, you know, it's a new currency and you sort of maybe come into it a bit late or something.

It's sort of like, Oh, I'm too late. I can't be bothered with what's this other currency. It becomes quite difficult, I think, when you add in that level of sophistication, stickers sort of make more sense, yeah, I'm collecting stuff or, you know, that's sort of fun. But the currency stuff, I think, is a, it'd be interesting to see how that plays out because I think that's a much harder one to sort of land for your audience.

Erno Kiiski: So yeah, that's definitely been why, for example, the casual audiences and the casual games have been implementing the sticker one, probably because of the more complex mechanics that, you know, maybe the casual audiences are not, even though we cannot underestimate in terms of the casual audiences nowadays anymore, that more and more complex mechanics have been coming there and being received quite well, but overall the currency systems have been mainly towards the mid-core games, for sure. 

Jon Jordan: Cool. 

Erno Kiiski: Well, one other highlight is that, again, maybe leaning towards casual, but it's been such a big trend that we cannot leave it out. It's loss-aversion systems in puzzle games in the casual market that have levels. 

If we think about features nowadays, the market is kind of mature, and it's kind of rare to see features that really explode anymore. Battle Pass, for example, was not that common back in the day, but this year, I feel, especially in this genre, we have seen one feature that has been exploding like crazy.

And it's this feature. There's not really a standardized term for it yet, but let's use the name of the originator. So Royal Match implemented this feature called Super Light Ball back last year. So what is a Super Light Ball? Super Light Ball is basically a feature that opens up after you have completed about 300ish levels, and how it works is that you need to complete 10 levels.

You don't need to complete them in a row, but after you have completed 10 levels, then your light ball, which is, if you have played any of the match three games, it's always the one that destroys all the one specific color. Basically, the strongest power-up item in those games, that power is doubled.

So it gives you a big, big benefit. But the twist is here that if you lose even one level, you're going to lose that benefit. So that's where the win streak comes in. So you need to keep on the win streak, or otherwise, you're going to lose the benefit; then you need to grind again all the 10 levels to get that benefit.

So two things. So, of course, there's the grind of the 10 levels. It's not just like you complete one level and get it again. And the second, it's very, very powerful, the boost that you get. So it drives this very, very strong loss aversion. So when Royal Match implemented it, we could see it clearly, especially in puzzle games; it's very rare to see a clear correlation of anything added because like, usually, it's more like indirect and slowly scaling and so on. 

But with this one, we saw quite a clear correlation really soon after Toon Blast from Peak Games added the same feature same thing. I think Toon Blast added it at the end of last year.

This year has been the year of the super light ball in puzzle games. If we look at the market, 52% of all the top puzzle games in the top grossing 200, over half of those games have implemented it this year.

So this one feature has really spread like wildfire. It's very, very rare to see it nowadays in any genre, but now this year, it has been the case for the puzzle genre. 

A similar thing that taps into the win streaks and loss aversion in puzzle games are these win streak multipliers. So, usually, the win streak, how they have been implemented in the past, has been that, okay, you get a booster to start off the next level, and then if you lose, you are not getting a booster. Or it's a separate event where you can go through thresholds and get rewards and stuff like that.

But this year, or actually again, at the end of last year, this time, the trendsetter was Toon Blast. Basically, what they did was add these win streak multipliers to competitive events. So, if you have a win streak, you get more event scores for that event. So, basically, it means that if you want to be competitive, you really need to have a winning streak.

This is like a multiplier inside already existing events. It's another trend that we have seen. The first one was the Toon Blast at the end of last year. And now again, almost half of those games mentioned before have implemented it in some of their events.

Jon Jordan: That's good. Good highlights. And I guess they're sort of, as you say, they're sort of interlinked, but it sort of shows how, careful you have to be in how you use these things.

When you get something like that, and it works, it's in the right setting, it can work really well. But loss aversion, again, is something people, generally, most people are very loss averse. So they hate going through that process. So again, it could be, imagine if you just place it, you know, in the wrong sort of a part of your flow in your game, you could actually, it could be a negative to sort of retention.

Erno Kiiski: Oh yeah, definitely. One thing actually to highlight here, for example, with the super light ball that I talked about, it's not just, okay, hey, this works in another game, and I just slap it on top of mine. Actually, we have seen in a couple of games, for example, another game from Peak, Toy Blast, a different game; even though it has the same kind of core and everything, they saw the initial spike, at least on our data. And then it started to go down and then they actually experimented. 

They changed the benefit from it. It used to be the light ball, but now they changed it to the bomb or whatever, the second strongest one.

So probably they started to see that, oh no, this is like too powerful in this game in combination with all the other variables and so on. So definitely something that, you know, It's very specific to your game and all the other mechanics and events and, stuff that you have in your game.

So also that, and then also in terms of because the benefit makes levels easier. So it's also very important to think that you have enough horizontal content there. So like, if you know, sure, like people are maybe, more incentivized to buy the extra moves to keep the win streak. But if you don't have enough content and people chew through it instantly because of the easier level balancing, then that's a problem as well.

So there are many things to consider other than just like, this works in another game 

Jon Jordan: No, I think the conclusion from this podcast is just how sophisticated these sort of, you know, people think, oh, it's a mobile game, but even the seemingly simple hyper casual game is so much sort of sophistication has gone into how we build the product, how we build the marketing, how the two things connect and obviously everyone gets data all the time for all their different cohorts.

And that's really the secret sauce now in the industry. Thank you, Erno, and thank you, Teemu. That was a really brilliant roundup of everything we have seen in 2024. And, remember, our takeaway is to download Love and Deepspace if you haven't played that one.

So that's your homework. But, yeah, just thank Erno and Teemu and thanks to you guys for watching and listening to our end-of-year podcast. It's my favourite one, I do have to say, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't subscribe and get all our great episodes. Every time we look deeply into how the mobile game industry is changing, we hope we are helping you learn about the industry. See you next time! Next year, in fact!