Mobile gaming is serious business, in fact, it is a phenomenon. The global gaming market is estimated to have reached over $152 billion, where 45% of that comes directly from mobile games. That’s over $68.5 billion!
Just last year in 2020, the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mobile gaming industry saw a spike of over $77.2 billion in revenue just in that year alone. Even though the pandemic has caused grave impact worldwide, destroying businesses across several industries, the gaming industry just keeps thriving and thriving.
Mobile games have accounted for over 33% of app downloads, 74% of consumer spend and over 10% of all time spent in-app. The mobile gaming industry is at its peak with no signs of slowing down. With the covid-19 pandemic causing an increase in smartphone penetration around the world, and network providers working around the clock to provide affordable data cost for easier access to mobile gaming, we are experiencing a massive increase in the number of mobile gamers across the globe.
Over 90% of millennials prefer smartphones over gaming PCs, laptops and other gaming devices. According to GameAnalytics, just in the first quarter of 2020, the number of mobile gamers grew from 1.2 billion people to 1.75 billion per month.
From casual games to the rise of hyper-casual games that are easy and quick to download, competitive and fun, mobile gaming is the rave even amongst older demographics. Today, the average age of a mobile gamer is 36.3 with one-third of all gamers are between the ages of 36-50 years old. Gender split is also now at 50% female and 50% male. The current demographic studies are definitely changing the traditional perception of gamers.
The choice of mobile games are abundant in the Google Play Store and iOS App Store, but according to App Annie, a popular App Analytics and App Market Data tool, casual games are leading the global download growth rankings, with over 45% year on year increase.
What is the real definition of casual games? Why and how does it become popular in the mobile gaming scene? Well, in short – casual games are designed for everyone and anyone. It has few rules with simpler game mechanics. There is a certain level of competition that appeals, either to beat their record or to advance the leaderboard amongst their circle of friends. The psychology of casual games also makes it addictive because it’s supposed to be easy and relaxing and provides a sense of accomplishment. The tendency for gamers to conquer the game then becomes personal.
Casual games rely on a free-to-play model that has numerous monetization strategies but mostly mobile developers and investors earn by monetizing through in-app purchases and in-game ads. For marketers, 2020 saw a significant drop in the cost to acquire new players – bringing down an average lead cost to $1.47 ( a 66% decrease from 2019). However, it is still expensive to acquire a paying user for casual games, which suggests that monetizing users through ads will still be a focus of many mobile app developers.
With the billions of U.S. dollars generated from revenues coming from mobile gaming, it is easy to perceive that entering the mobile gaming industry is lucrative and holds many opportunities to convert millions of gamers to be potential customers for your products and services. The recent rise in hyper-casual gaming that’s worth over $2 billion has introduced into the audience pool a massive 100 million new mobile players, and that’s rapidly increasing.
If you already have a live mobile app currently, is it wise (or let alone necessary) to set up a new team to create a branded game just so that you can tap into the mobile gaming market? If you do not have a mobile app just yet, does it mean that you ought to nose dive into creating a game app just so that you can grab a share of the pie? Well, it all depends on your resources really. While it is a mammoth of a project to undertake, it is not impossible, and it might even scale your business one way or another.
Luckily, our team at Goama have thought hard and well on this and through that our engagement platform was born which enables our partners to create, connect and engage with millions of gamers across the globe for your app and/or brand through casual eSports.
We offer our platform, which consists of a wide variety of highly curated casual games that are competitive, fun and addictive, to be hosted within your currently running app – which in turn allows you to re-engage with your dormant app users and provide them a new environment within your “own home”.
For brands who wish to have access to the audience pool of millions of mobile gamers, we offer an interactive and immersive brand campaign experience that allows you to interact with new and existing consumers. You can be certain that with Goama you are providing dynamic engagement at each step of the campaign where we provide the tools and flexibility for you to build a game with multiple levels of customisation and product placement opportunities, where players can compete to win rewards. You are also able to drive desired user behaviours post-game with attractive calls to actions.
The sky’s the limit with what you can achieve in the mobile gaming market. The question is, are you ready to get started?
Contact us at sales@goama.com to discuss on gamifying your app, or if you want to build a game for your brand.
You can find out more about how we can gamify your app here, or help you build a game here.
Edited by Tengku Wazir Aziz
Sources:
https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/mobile-games-market-engagement-revenues-covid-19-gaming/
https://www.businessofapps.com/insights/mobile-gaming-industry-statistics-and-trends-for-2021/
https://www.is.com/community/blog/mobile-gaming-trends/
https://www.blog.udonis.co/mobile-marketing/mobile-games/mobile-gaming-statistics