UK publisher Kwalee has said it is ramping up its efforts in the growing ‘hybridcasual’ space, having previously made its name in hypercasual.
As a tricky marketing landscape continues to impact the entire mobile business, Kwalee joins firms like FunPlus and SayGames in publicly committing to making a lighter style of casual game.
“Like many mobile games operators, Kwalee has seen significant competition and evolving player habits in hypercasual games, making it an increasingly challenging genre to monetise, with higher CPIs and lower ECPMs becoming the rule rather than the exception,” the company said in a statement.
“The logical expansion for Kwalee was to target hybridcasual games to complement its other successful mobile games.”
The idea is to “bridge the gap” between Kwalee’s hypercasual division and its casual game team, which Kwalee told us last summer would be making Playrix-style games on mobile.
The company will now be looking to work with “hybridcasual game developers who have an exceptional product but lack the commercial or marketing capabilities to scale their games globally,” continued Kwalee’s statement.
It also stressed that it is not abandoning hypercasual completely, adding: “Kwalee’s perspective on the potential of mobile games has prevented it from completely dismissing hypercasual games, in contrast to other mobile game operators who have disregarded them entirely.”
