5 Steps to Building a Hypercasual Game Studio

There is no single recipe for success in entrepreneurship. Building a successful startup in creative industries such as gaming is even extra tricky, since things like creativity, trends and competitive advantages play vital roles to make the cut. Having said that, there are certain steps that need to be taken no matter what when it comes to launching a hypercasual startup.

1. Understand “why?”, make a decision and commit

First off, all of the co-founders need to understand that the timing is right to start a hypercasual game studio, and this is the main reason you are starting a journey now despite fierce competition. It is well-timed because the hypercasual industry offers unique opportunities such as low entry barriers, diverse funding options and easy access to know-how, not because it is what everyone else is doing, or worse, it is "easy". Hypercasual game development is anything but easy; "simple is hard". Once all of the co-founders are on the same page regarding why you are setting foot on this merciless foreign soil, it will be easier for you to sail through the intensely competitive market and keep your eyes on the prize at all times.

For all teammates, there shall not be a plan B, neither shall there be another job to do on the side or another genre to focus in parallel. If you cannot commit, don't start. Becoming a successful hypercasual studio is an all hands on deck problem.

2. Build a team of warriors

In entrepreneurship, two plus two sometimes equals five, or five hundred million, depending on the circumstances. Similarly, a "neutral element" may destroy the whole startup, rather than not making a difference. A highly-motivated duo can build an amazing hypercasual startup in just a few months, whereas a team of six experienced gaming professionals may fail to create even a mediocre one in a year, especially if a few of them underestimate the hardship and sophistication of hypercasual game development. You need to have the right people with the right mindset to face the same direction before you set sail. It is crucial that you get your ducks in a row before talking to investors or publishers.

Hypercasual is all about testing the prototypes you build around assumptions about the demand, and killing every single one of them until you find the one that works. Even if you get lucky and get positive market test results, you need to act unbelievably fast in order to take off. Surfing the wave you catch before everyone else will not be as easy as one may think. This is why you need a team of motivated fighters who can quickly get back up after falling, again and again, and put up a good fight when necessary. Creativity, skill sets and experience are essential values for your crew, but perseverance is the most important asset of all. 

3. Find a good strategic partner

Hypercasual landscape is constantly changing with unprecedented speed as it grows. It is very difficult to build a hypercasual gaming startup from scratch; there are lots of moving parts, the rules of the game change as you play and new competitors emerge every single day. This is why you may need backup when it comes to marketing, game design and live operations, let alone financing and technical support. 

It is possible to go solo and try to become a self-publishing studio, but then you will have to deal with the “two-headed dragon syndrome”, since you will need to have two main focuses as you will be fighting in two fronts: development and publishing, which are completely different areas of work. The main advantage of becoming a self-publishing studio is that you will get to keep %100 of your profit, but again, it comes with a hefty price; you will need to handle the marketing side of things as well. If your team possesses extensive knowledge in areas such as user acquisition, monetization and cash flow management, in addition to a strong marketing budget, self-publish your games by all means. However, if your marketing resources are limited in terms of funding, know-how and tools, self-publishing route may be a non-starter for you as a business proposition. After all, 100% of zero is zero.

Publishers, accelerator programs and investors can provide you with the necessary understanding, skill sets and funding to get you off the ground in exchange for equity, profit share or another form of compensation. Any relationship with aforementioned parties needs to be formed as a strategic partnership with a win-win structure that serves everyone involved. For example, if you sign an exclusive deal with a hypercasual publisher for a year, you need to make sure that you receive coaching regarding ideation, creative direction and development throughout your contract, not just a thumbs up or a rejection for the games you submit. Your strategic partner needs to have skin in the game and create unique values for you in addition to money.

Some hypercasual publishers notoriously create funnels which generate thousands of game prototypes for them to test in the market, just to kill 99% of them without any feedback or constructive supervision, so that they can launch one game that fits their metrics. This is a zero-sum game in which only the publisher wins the big bucks in the long run. In this type of arrangement, the vast majority of the partner studios end up with getting paid only for the prototypes they developed, as if they are publisher’s subcontractors for ideation and prototype development. You must avoid these kinds of schemes. Your goal is to make money from the games you launch, not from the advance payments you receive from your publisher. You must make sure that your partner invests in your professional growth as much as you invest in their production line. You are not a sweatshop, you are a gaming startup, and you need to be treated as one.

Good news is, there are several organizations in the hypercasual world who stand by your side throughout your contract as your strategic partner. As the world’s biggest mobile game development ecosystem, oFON is one of them. Equipped with steady financial, technical and entrepreneurial support mechanisms, oFON offers every single up-and-coming hypercasual studio an opportunity to become a member of a growing development community, without requesting any equity. You should consider applying especially if the main thing your team needs is the right kind of coaching in order to become a distinguished mobile gaming startup globally. 

4. The map is not the territory

Acknowledging that hypercasual is a very unique genre that generates revenue off of non-gamers, which is a blessing and a curse at the same, will help you zero in on building the right methodology that captures the market demand early on. It is all about perfecting ideation, creativity and development around what people want relentlessly, and finding ways to convert what you learn into a sustainable mechanism. 

Exhausting all of the online resources about hypercasual, getting coached by industry experts or playing all of the games in the top charts will not give you a clear idea about what you need to do to release the next hit. Failing to launch a game due to market volatility after working on it painstakingly for months will teach you a little bit about how to handle an opportunity the next time, though. This is why you need to make your peace with failure as soon as possible, learn how to get right back on your feet to work on the next idea, and be coachable along the way. “Never mistake knowledge for wisdom”. 

Develop and test as many high-quality prototypes as possible, so that you can accumulate necessary data and insight you have to have in order to develop your own wisdom. Prioritize action over research, teach yourself how to learn from mistakes, and build a strong muscle of perseverance.

5. Upgrade your game

There are a lot of valid question marks in regards to maintaining a fast and sustainable growth in the hypercasual industry. How do you plan to improve your team in terms of ideation, creativity and development? Who will need to join your team to boost the efficiency? How will you fund at least one year of a runway? What are the areas you need to get better at when it comes to coding, art and design? How will you build the systems you will use to optimize your development processes? What are the metrics you will use to define success? How will you measure them? What kind of milestones you need to hit in X weeks/months/years in order to make sure you are on the right track? How will you diagnose problems? Who will be responsible for fixing them? You will have plenty of questions like these, but not enough time to answer them. This is why you need to build a self-maintaining structure that enables constant growth, peer instruction and high motivation.

One last thing

You need to believe in yourself, and you need to make sure all team members believe in themselves and the company. It is going to be a bumpy ride with ups and downs, yet every single one of you will need to have confidence in your shared cause throughout the journey. It will all go down to persistence, hard work and meaning at the end. If you have all of those, you will succeed, one way or another. Welcome aboard!