Mobile game veterans Steve Meretzky (PeopleFun) and Dave Rohrl (Mobile Game Doctor) kicked off GDC’s free to play summit with a fun look at the trends that have defined the last year in mobile games.
Starting with Monopoly Go, Meretsky suggested that where other “Coin Master imitators” have mostly failed, Scopely’s game has “sky-high production values”, a deeper feature set, growing network effects and, of course, a beloved IP. Those things combined made this one stick, he said.
“A lot of companies have tried to go up against Coin Master and not lived to tell the tale,” Meretsky continued. “But if you have an IP that’s as popular as Monopoly, if you have seven years to spend on development, if you have half a billion or more to dump into user acquisition, I’d say you should give it a try. Otherwise find places to look for greener pastures.”
Monopoly Go’s success is also testament to the virtue of patience, said Meretsky. Moon Active spent years working on Coin Master after it launched before it took off – and Scopely spent years and years pre-launch to get it right.
Rohrl then took to the stage to talk through how FirstFun’s LastWar has earned over $120m in the last six months.
It’s the canny combination of its hypercasual-style lane shooter hook plus the 4X meta that has made the game a hit, said Rohrl.
“So what can we learn from LastWar?” he concluded. “First of all, having seen only a couple of true hybridcasual hits from the same team [Habby], it’s nice to see that there’s more than one way to skin the hybridcasual cat – and more than one team capable of doing so.”
“Second, like many other genres, 4X games are evolving from being seen as one complete game to being just one component of a game to offer more variability in gameplay mechanics.”
Moving onto look at the merge category, Meretsky described the genre as having not fulfilled its potential, noting that former genre leader Merge Dragons has faded from a peak of earning around $20m per month to about $7.5m.
Evermerge (Big Fish), Mergical (Betta Games), Merge Magic (Gram) and Merge Fables (MicroFun) were also namechecked as being in gradual decline.
“Core merge gameplay is probably just too shallow to support long term engagement,” Meretsky suggested, though he did note that Metacore’s Merge Mansion has managed to maintain growth through its extensive meta. You need a meta with Playrix-style depth to sustain a merge game over the long term, Meretsky added.
“Merge games are not going to be the next match 3,” he concluded. “The gameplay is just too simple and too shallow to support long term engagement, unless you’re able to marry it with a pretty ambitious meta.”
Rohrl was next up to talk about Eggy Party, making the bold claim that Netease’s party platformer will soon “eat the world”.
He praised the game’s ambitious, full-featured hub world and its huge roster of live ops. “It has by far and away the most active live operations i’ve ever seen anywhere,” said Rohrl.
“At any given moment there at least half a dozen overlapping events with durations ranging from a few days to a month. And the form of those events varies widely, from additional rewards to limited edition cosmetic items to a full-on tap-through storybook adventure.”
He also talked through the game’s beefy UGC features, stating that 10m players have created over 100m total levels for the game to date, a stat sourced from our recent interview with general manager Kwan Cheng.
He added that he was confident the game would continue to attract a huge player base in its native China, and will increasingly make an impact in the west.
Next, Meretsky took a look at the growing match 3D genre, starting with the game that gave the subgenre its name: Loop Games’ Match 3D. He said that within six months of launch the game was making around $4m a month, and its follow-up, Match 3D Tiles, was an even bigger success. Both games were sold to Applovin, where they plateaued and then declined.
As similar hypercasual titles started to flood the market, Meretsky credited Boombox Games with making match 3D viable as an IAP business through Triple Match 3D, which has all of the meta and live ops features you’d expect in a casual game.
And now the big boys are moving in on match 3D too, he said, with Zynga-owned Peak releasing Match Factory in late 2023 and King having soft launched Candy Crush 3D.
“Will match 3D be the next big category or will it prove to be too simple and repetitious and fade like merge?” Meretsky asked. “My prediction is that for these games to hold on to their players long term they’ll need to develop robust metagames as we’re seeing with games like Merge Mansion.”
It’s only in “the blue ocean of very new genres” like match 3D that smaller studios can successfully compete before they get swamped by larger, better funded competitors, he concluded.
