Successful Operators of Hypercasual Games

Welcome to the third edition of the Hypercasual Games series. In this section, we will cover who are the key players in Hypercasual games. & what are some of the key strategies that worked for them?

I. Biggest Companies in the Space

The following are some of the most successful operators in the space. They demonstrate how lucrative the hypercasual genre can be.

1) Voodoo

Voodoo SAS (also referred to as Voodoo.io) is a French video game developer and publisher based in Paris. Voodoo's games, predominantly free-to-play "hyper-casual games", have been collectively downloaded 5 billion times as of May 2021.

2) Good Job Games

Good Job Games is a mobile game publisher which partners with leading game studios and indie game developers to deliver addictive mobile games to casual players worldwide. Their games have reached over 2.5 billion people.

3) Lion Studios

Lion Studios is a mobile gaming publishing studio with offices in San Francisco, Berlin, and Shanghai. They have driven over 2 billion downloads worldwide, and specialize in fun, easy-to-play puzzle, and hyper-casual games.

4) Playgendary

Playgendary Limited is an Android developer that has been active since 2018. The current app portfolio contains 15 games. In Google rankings, Playgendary Limited's apps appear in the top 100 in more than 10 countries. Two of the most important apps from Playgendary Limited are Kick the Buddy and Tomb of the Mask. Both of them are highly ranked on Google Play and have been installed more than 100 million times

5) Kwalee

Kwalee is a British video game developer and publisher. It is known for its hypercasual games for iOS and Android devices, with a large internal development studio helping the company to more than 800 million game downloads, and over 45 number one games.

6) Tastypill

Tastypill are a tech company focused on creating the most innovative casual games and publishing them to mobile markets. They work with talented game development teams from all around the world to produce hit games and scale them to the top of the charts. Their games have over 900 million downloads and 55 million monthly active users.?

7) GreenPanda

Greenpanda is a data-driven mobile games publisher specializing in idle and hyper-casual games. They have over 250 million downloads across platforms. They were acquired by Ubisoft in 2019.

8) Ketchapp

Launched in 2014, Ketchapp is one the pioneers in the hyper-casual segment. They have more than 1.5 billion downloads, and over 200 games published.

9) Rollic

Rollic is a game developer and publisher focused on free-to-play hyper-casual games for iOS and Android. Rollic has crossed over two billion lifetime downloads across its portfolio of hypercasual games.

II Case Studies

Some popular models in this space, and how they were validated by the market.

1) Frvr

FRVR is an HTML5 games publisher creating what it believes are engaging games that, once built, run in browsers with minimal load times and hardware requirements, and which they can port seamlessly to all platforms, channels, and app stores.?

Using a highly analytical and process-driven approach to game development, FRVR distributes games across a range of mobile, messaging, and browser-based platforms, including Meta Messenger, Apple’s App Store, Google Play Store, etc.

They raised $76mn this year, in a round led by Hiro Capital and participation from existing investors Accel and Makers Fund.

By the time of this raise (March), the platform had accumulated over 1.5 billion players and had DAU of over 2 million.

Key Strategy:?

The platform initially caught the public eye when it was shared across popular markets in Asia. While the game was being promoted by players on platforms like Sina Weibo and WeChat, the concurrent player users count shot up to 25,000.?

At this time, the main game - Hex was making around $1500 per day, primarily from advertisements.

To further amplify their reach, Frvr partnered with Meta and became one of the first 10 partners on Meta Instant Games, an HTML5 cross-platform gaming experience, on Messenger and Meta News Feed for both mobile and web. These new game experiences allowed people to easily discover, share, and play games without having to install new apps.

The partnership with Meta took them to a DAU of 550,000.

The crux of their approach has been remaining platform agnostic and optimizing discoverability to attract as many users as possible. Their HTML5 infrastructure allows them to adapt to new platforms with great ease.

Key Metrics:

MAU: 50-100 Million

Cumulative Gameplays: >500 Million

Revenue: Their marquee game - Basketball FRVR generated over 7 digits in ad revenue

DAU: 2 Million

DAU/MAU: 0.02

At the seed stage, FRVR had a catalog of 32 games designed for fast, casual in-app gaming by a broad audience, with another 19 titles currently in development. Their biggest game, Basketball FRVR, had 5.6 billion games played by users.

2) Playsimple

Playsimple is one of the leading global developers of free-to-play word games. They create diverse themed games that are engaging and accessible to people of all ages.

Daily Themed Crossword is their most successful title to date. Other titles include WordTrip, WordJam, WordWars, WordTrek, and Solitaire.

They were acquired by Modern Times Group in 2021 for $360,000,000.

The acquisition of PlaySimple is a perfect fit for MTG as it will significantly strengthen the company’s position in the casual games genre and enable access to the fast-growing word games genre.

Key Strategy: The maker of Daily Themed Crossword and WordWars focused on international markets from the very beginning, realizing that if it could build a successful product at an international scale, it could scale it up in India too. The output was clearly discernible: approximately 90% of PlaySimple’s players were US-based, and almost 80% were female.

A key part of their approach was developing best-in-class advertising infrastructure, providing opportunities for improved monetization, more efficient user acquisition, and cross-promotion.

Play simple worked with the team at Meta during a 3 months period in 2021 to further optimize its ad performance. The results from this were as follows:

1) 16% more incremental app installs

2) 13% higher day-7 retention

3) 85% more incremental purchases

4) 9.8% higher return on ad spend

Key Metrics (During Acquisition):

Cumulative Downloads: 75 Million

MAU: 7 Million

DAU: 1.9 Million

When they raised series A of $4mn, they had 2 titles and an annual revenue of USD 5 million.

Stay tuned for the next part where we talk about different monetization model that exists...

Written by Laksh Sharma