Hypercasual games: how to improve retention for your mobile games in the East and West

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Monday 11th July 2022

The mobile games market offers potential for huge success. But, as the market has matured, it has become steadily more difficult to reach new players and retain existing ones.

Mobile is now home to dozens of different game experiences, from high-spec 3D action games to far simpler titles. It is these simpler experiences or hypercasual games that Pangle - TikTok for Business ad network - and industry analysts Newzoo have focused on with their latest report, which offers reliable insights for developers and publishers looking to better understand the state of the mobile game market in 2022.

The report examines the performance of hypercasual games using recent historic download data rather than in-app purchases (IAPs), as the biggest revenue stream for this segment tends to be in-game ads.

In this article, we've picked out some of the key findings from the report, including what publishers are doing to retain players, how this segment has been affected by data protection changes to mobile app stores (IDFA regulations) and the popularity of hypercasual games between the Western and Eeastern mobile markets.

If you'd like to learn more about hypercasual games, read the full report here: Hypercasual Genre Report: Comparing & Contrasting the Genre in Eastern and Western Markets

WHAT IS HYPERCASUAL?

Let's not get stuck in semantics. Pangle and Newzoo define hypercasual games as 'simple, minimal gameplay' often dependent on 'ad-based monetization.' Titles inspired by the arcade games of the '70s and '80s, one-button endless runners, and straightforward word games -- hypercasual games have incorporated all these genres and more.

By Pangle and Newzoo's metric, the hypercasual segment was the most