Veteran game designers Steve Meretsky and Dave Rohrl kicked off GDC 2025’s live service game summit – formerly the mobile game summit – with a look at the big trends from the last twelve months. Here’s what they covered:
Why did Dream Games launch Royal Kingdom?
PeopleFun’s Steve Meretsky started the session with a game of ‘spot the difference’ between Dream Games’ Royal Match and its sequel, Royal Kingdom.
As we’ve noted previously, while there’s a danger Royal Kingdom could cannibalise predecessor Royal Match, the newer title has been made to feel suitably different, said Meretsky. It has a deeper meta, clearer sense of progression and ‘boss’ levels that borrow from midcore titles like Puzzle and Survival and Empires and Puzzles, and it has a richer set of decoration options and a similar wealth of live ops to its predecessor.
He also noted the many pop-ups that appear at the end of each level to direct players to these meta features, saying: “I have no freaking idea what’s going on but I don’t care, it feels great”.
Dream is following a similar path to King and Playrix, he said, which successfully launched and continue to run Candy Crush Saga, Soda Saga, Homescapes and Gardenscapes despite many similarities between the titles.
Meretsky concluded that if a game-maker can add a companion game to its portfolio have it earn even a third or half the ‘parent’ game, that still represents – in his words – “a fuckton of money”. So go for it.
Habby, Capybara Go and not having a core mechanic
Veteran designer Dave Rohrl took the stage next, to look at what’s been going on with one of his favourite developers, Habby.
He said that after scoring hits with Archero and Survivor.io, more casual fare like Sssnaker and Kinja Run have not performed as well as those earlier hits. The reason is perhaps those games’ more casual mechanics – as their names suggest, Sssnaker is a take on Snake, and Kinja Run is a runner.
And that led to a look at Habby’s newest title, Capybara Go – a title that appears no have no core mechanic at all, according to Rohrl. It’s effectively an auto-battler, he said, but also noted that the only decisions the player makes in the game is in how and where to upgrade characters, and in which live ops to engage with.
Habby’s famously deep meta is really the core mechanic in Capybara Go, he said – “a stunningly ornate set of armour with nothing inside,” according to Rohrl.
He concluded by saying that the idea had worked – Capybara Go is tracking ahead of original Habby hit Archero. “Having literally no core mechanic matching with your metagame is way better than having the wrong match of core mechanic and metagame,” he added.
Hexa Sort and hybridcasual’s blurring lines
Next, Meretsky had a look at the hyper and hybridcasual space, using Hexa Sort’s rewarded ad mechanics as an example of innovation in the space. The idea of having a button right on the central puzzle grid for players to watch a rewarded ad at any time was described as “evil and ingenious”, and Hexa Sort’s suite of live ops are as rich and deep as a casual game like Royal Match, he said.
The pioneering thing about Hexa Sort is in its industry-leading “speed of investment payback”, said Meretsky – it was acquiring players for hybridcasual-like costs, but seeing revenue returns more like a casual game.
Perhaps the lines between hybridcasual and casual are already blurred, said Meretsky, and it’s already too late to say hybridcasual is a rising, ‘blue ocean’ type market – though it remains a slightly easier space to enter and succeed in than casual, and is roughly a third of the size.
Duolingo and the power of “one big number”
Rohrl described the gamification techniques in Duolingo as some of the best he has seen anywhere, with constant reminders and celebration of each player’s streak.
Duolingo’s XP, competitive league and daily quests add to the mix, while its social features were described as a ‘mutual nudging society’ where players are entered into weekly partner quests with friends and other users with similar play patterns.
But most of all, Rohrl said Duolingo was a masterclass in the importance of clear, readable progress based on “one big number”. He added that the way Duolingo users talk about their respective streak lengths is something game designers can try and replicate.
Match Masters and slow-burn hits
Meretsky concluded with a brief talk on how testing, luck and iteration can produce hits like Roblox and Coin Master, which both took several years to build momentum and eventually succeed.
Candivore’s Match Masters is a more recent example, said Meretsky, which launched in 2017 but didn’t really generate meaningful revenue until late 2020, then really took off in January 2021.
He noted that the game’s innovations are in how its main monetisation vector is in buying ‘early unlocks’ of boosters, and its PvP approach to match-3 – though he seemed unconvinced these were real players, instead suggesting Candivore might be using bots to keep players engaged.
His working theory on why Match Masters suddenly took off in January 2021 is that the game’s equation of UA costs and lifetime value finally became positive, and UA spend was suddenly ramped up. But also, he concluded, “most hit games take both patience and luck” – and it’s actually extremely rare that companies launch a monster day one hit like Pokémon Go or Monopoly Go.
