A behind-the-scenes look at the mobile gaming scene in Southeast Asia

It wasn’t long ago that talking about gaming meant only discussing the giants – Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo – and their respective consoles, or fancy computer rigs with water-cooled systems and flashing rainbow-colored lights.

The likes of Elden Ring, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and other triple-A entries will continue to capture the imagination of gamers. However, the disruptions to work processes and supply chains caused by Covid-19 have affected the industry, with the global console and PC gaming markets forecasted to fall by 8.9% and 2.8%, respectively, in 2021.

Stepping up to fill the gap are mobile games. The segment is estimated to grow by 4.4% in the same period – and in doing so, it will make up just over half of the global games market.

Southeast Asia is instrumental to this growth.

Keeping things casual

While mobile gaming in the region has seen solid growth over the past few years, thanks to a voracious appetite for the internet and mobile-first user preferences, things have accelerated in the past 18 months.

Thanks to lockdown measures caused by the pandemic, users have been turning to mobile gaming more than ever before. Sessions – the length of time a user plays a game in one sitting – for non-hyper casual games grew by 33% from 2019 to 2020 and are up another 6% so far this year. For hyper casual games, installs were up 66% from 2019 to 2020 and have seen a 49% growth this year so far.

“This exponential growth was no more pronounced than in Singapore, where hypercasual sessions increased by 108% last year,” says April Tayson, regional vice president for India, Southeast Asia, and Australia at Adjust, a mobile marketing analytics company. “There were also large increases in the number of sessions in Indonesia and Thailand.”

April Tayson, regional vice president for India, Southeast Asia, and Australia at Adjust / Photo credit: Adjust

Backed by ad-dependent or freemium business models, hypercasual games are defined by their accessibility, consisting of a simple premise and minimalist mechanics that a wide range of users can easily understand and enjoy. Examples include Crossy Road, in which the player taps and swipes their screen to help their character make it across busy highways, and the viral hit Flappy Bird, which garnered 50 million downloads before being taken down by its creator.

Simple games also mean that development is relatively quick and easy. While triple-A titles take years to make, hypercasual games could be developed in just a few months. However, while this allows developers of hypercasual games to avoid the slowdowns affecting triple-A game development, it also means that the market is highly saturated. Competing apps are aplenty, so standing out from various titles and retaining users are common challenges for developers.

Stay awhile and listen

Given that both complex strategy games and hypercasual games can reach and maintain large audiences, it’s not easy to pinpoint the mechanics or design principles that make for a successful game.

That said, there are a few common features that help keep players engaged. “Multiplayer capabilities, or mechanics that blur the boundaries between gaming and social media, are increasingly vital,” Tayson says.

Tayson brings up viral hit Among Us as an example of “social gaming.”“It’s hard to overstate how important the social aspect was to the game’s success,” she adds.

With players’ attention finite and competition high, it’s key to have a smart user acquisition strategy. “It’s vital that app marketers have an eye on the lifetime value of their current users and are able to link their most profitable users back to the marketing channel through which they were acquired,” advises Tayson.

Developers should also add features such as unlockable skins, leaderboards, or login rewards to make an app sticky, incentivizing users to keep coming back. Consistent content updates also help keep things fresh, and in-game tokens or points that accrue even when the user isn’t actively playing gives them something to return to. Put simply, the quality of the user experience is essential.

Nevertheless, these features might not be enough; hypercasual games are characterized by lower retention rates than other mobile apps. According to Adjust research, retention rates for these apps drop sharply from the third day after installation, with just 7.5% of users returning by the end of the first week. This compares poorly with the median rate of 15.2% across all app verticals.

With that in mind, the ability to respond quickly to data is of paramount importance.

“One of the most important strategies is to release new games very quickly, identify when one resonates well with players, and then scale up the marketing efforts accordingly,” Tayson says.

Getting to know all about you

Given the wide range of potential users, developers of hypercasual games also need to quickly identify the profile of the users downloading and enjoying a particular game. Having that intel helps them in refining their user acquisition strategies.

“This knowledge can be used to help you target the right users on the right channels. [It can also] inform ad creatives that showcase [about] aspects of your game that potential players will find the most enticing,” Tayson adds.

Understanding a game’s players also helps with improving the user experience. Knowing what causes users to stop playing, removing those barriers, and adding in features that encourage longer and more frequent sessions help with keeping an app sticky.

Photo credit: twinsterphoto / 123RF

All these steps are particularly important, given that the global mobile gaming market may face a contraction once Covid-19 vaccine rollouts are complete, Tayson says. Users who are no longer stuck at home might spend less time on mobile games, and the apps with poor retention strategies will be hit the hardest.

What’s next?

Whether a contraction occurs or not, the future of mobile games continues to look bright in Southeast Asia – the region’s mobile gaming industry is the fastest growing in the world. Increasing mobile penetration and improving network infrastructures will continue to expand the overall addressable market in the region, giving developers more opportunities to find new, diverse audiences. Additionally, while it is generally difficult to get mobile players to put money into free games, more than half of Southeast Asia’s online population spends on games.

Vietnam in particular has become something of a hotbed for games development, with Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis, Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen, and other developers such as Zego Studio hailing from the country.

Publishers such as Singapore-headquartered Storms are also contributing to the rise of hypercasual gaming. In addition to publishing games, Storms also has an internal development studio, and the company provides other mobile services such as ad revenue management and instant games platforms.

Bigger mobile game developers may also help boost the industry’s growth. The success of Genshin Impact, which was released on both mobile and gaming consoles, suggests there may be more cross-platform, triple A-level games coming. Additionally, more mobile games based on famous intellectual properties may arise – an Avatar game is on soft launch, and Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle has already earned over US$3 billion in lifetime revenue.

In the midst of these developments, Tayson emphasizes that understanding users is still the key to a long-lasting mobile game.

“There is no silver bullet for game developers that will guarantee success, and even the most unconventional of ideas can stick and find huge audiences,” she says. “The most important thing that developers can do is to employ a holistic approach that seeks to understand what engages their players and what causes them to churn, and then improve their app’s user experience based on those findings.”

Adjust is a mobile marketing analytics platform trusted by growth-driven marketers around the world, with solutions for measuring and optimizing campaigns and protecting user data. Adjust powers thousands of apps with built-in intelligence and automation, backed by responsive global customer support.

Adjust has gathered insights into the performance of mobile apps including fintech and ecommerce apps in the Asia-Pacific region. Find out more by downloading its Mobile App Trends 2021: A focus on APAC ebook.

This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.