6 trends in the mobile gaming market

In a recent interview with Gamasutra resource Ken Chiu (Ken Chiu) and Anil Dharni (Anil Dharni), who heads the US division of GREE, shared their vision of the future development of the mobile gaming industry. The original translation can be found on the App2Top.ru website.

Based on the conversation of representatives of the company with the editors of Gamasutra, there are 6 main points that characterize the main trends of mobile games according to the GREE version:

1. New genres
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GREE predicts the emergence of new gaming niches, focused, as a rule, on the hardcore and midkorny (from the English mid-core) audience. Proof of this - Clash of Clans - the most successful midkorny project recently.



Anil Darni believes that the more mature the market, the more diverse it is, which means that the games of new genres will soon join the strategic and gambling games in the box office tops.

“For example, five months ago such a genre as the battles did not exist in principle, but now the games of this category are successful on both platforms,” he explains. “I’m sure it’s not so soon that we will witness how new genres - like card games and RTS - will break out into midkorny and hardcore markets.”

Ken Chiu's position is even more categorical: in his opinion, users are already abandoning simple casual games in favor of midcore and hardcore games.

2. Social projects

According to the representatives of GREE, the market will soon be filled with truly social projects focused on a “group” game, whether it be joint passage of locations, the formation of groups or the struggle between them.

“The more the game is focused on interaction with social networks, the more chances to attract and retain the user. This is demonstrated by projects like SongPop and Paper Toss Friends. ”

3. The cost of development will increase.

The process is quite natural and is associated with high user demand for the quality of the product: complex gameplay, perfect graphics, marketing costs and promotion. The qualitative growth of mobile games each time only raises this bar for developers.

4. New gadgets empower developers

Developers can add more content to games. Support for LTE networks with new devices allows you to regularly update your applications without worrying about the limitations associated with downloads and the size of the distribution.

5. Game analytics are getting too much

Along with the growth of the market of statistics on the analysis of mobile applications is becoming more and more. Analyzing data is becoming increasingly difficult, both for experts and developers.



6. Expansion of functionality of stora

This is what it is time to do for app stores and what the developers have been dreaming about so long ago. From the moment the application is placed in the App Store or Google Play, each of the developers wonders if the user can find his application among the variety of content offered by the stores.

To improve the visibility and popularity of the application, according to Darni, there are two options: accessing social networks ( more and more applications users choose according to the advice of friends) and search (mechanisms in the App Store and Google Play are far from ideal).

Another necessary change in the work of stores is the expansion of their functionality. Alternatively, Darney advises to use the DAU indicator even before loading the game. Then the user will be able to immediately track how this or that game is a success, how many people play it at the moment, how many players have stated the whole.

In his interview, Darney also noted the need to change categories in the stories with a clearer reflection of the essence and the addition of a recommendation mechanism.