This talk is from the event 'The Arcade (R)Evolution: Making Hit Casual Games with a Focus on Hyper-Casual'. To see more details about our events, follow us on Meetup here: https://www.meetup.com/mobilegamesdev/ About this talk: Using data from our portfolio of 74,000+ mobile games, our CEO, Ioana Hreninciuc, kicked off this event with an industry update, sharing the freshest insights and KPIs for the hyper-casual category, as well as news about our upcoming features.

1. GameAnalytics
Trends in Hyper-Casual
Q2 2018 - Q1 2019
Ioana Hreninciuc - CEO @ GameAnalytics

2. Looking at:
1. Fresh benchmarks for casual and
hyper-casual games
2. Deep dive into retention metrics and
trends
3. Ideas for retaining and re-engaging
high-value players
3B+ 1 Year
Global
players
From Q2 2018
to Q1 2019
70K+
Games in 20
genres
Bringing you:

3. Hyper-Casual games,
Where are they, anyway?!
• Hyper-Casual is not (yet) an App Store
category, but most are classed as
arcade or casual.
• In this report we zoom in on these
two categories and how they perform
compared to others.

4. Fresh from the press:
The KPIs of Great
Mobile Games

5. Players
❤️ Arcade
• Arcade is the highest performing genre by
DAU with 3-4x higher traffic than most other
genres.
• There is a large gap between top and average
performing Arcade games. For most other
genres the gap is between 5-10x, but here
top performers have ~15x more traffic than
the average.
Casual
26K
Average DAU by Genre
Arcade 94K

6. The DAU of casual games has increased by 50% from early 2018 until now
Casual games are up 📈‼️
🎅
🏻
🐇 🌞
20K
38K
32K
DAU Trends in Casual Games

7. Arcade games have dropped ~20% in traffic in the same period
But arcade games are down 📉⁉️
108K
125K
84K 82K
🎅
🏻
🐇 🌞 DAU Trends in Arcade Games

8. Arcade still killing it tho’ 🔪
Is the hyper-casual boom settling?
🎅
🏻
🐇
30K
13K
AVG DAU (Casual Vs Arcade Vs All Genres)🌞

9. OK, lots of DAU, but…
is that all that
matters? 🤔

10. How addictive is
each genre? 😍
• Arcade games accumulate ~5x more
sessions than other genres.
• 167M sessions per year = 460K per day = ~5
sessions per DAU for top performing arcade
games.
• For casual it’s 4.5 sessions per DAU, a 10%
difference —> DAU volume is the main
differentiator but arcade still has more
average sessions per daily user.
Arcade 167M
Casual 43M
Session Count by Genre

11. Snackability or
commitment? ⚖️
• Arcade underperforms by 5x the top
genre, Casino.
• Casual outperforms arcade by 2x.
• Arcade is 19th out of 20 genres, the
only genre with lower session length
in top performers is Music.
Arcade 6’
Casual 19’
Average Session Length by Genre

12. You can't win
'em all, arcade 🤔
• Casual outperforms the industry with an 19:08
median session length.
• 14:30 is the median industry session length for
top performing games.
• 6:42 is the median for arcade.
125s
163s
333s
359s
1148s
861s
116s
196s
402s
AVG Session Length in Casual and Arcade
🥜

13. What have we learned so far?
• Casual and hyper-casual are very different
Casual is more in-line with the general industry and other genres, while hyper casual is
best represented by the arcade genre.
• Casual games are growing
We can see an YoY uplift of ~30% in median DAU for top performing games. Arcade
by comparison are decreasing as it’s becoming mainstream.
• To compete in arcade you need the $$$ in UA budgets.
DAU requirements for ranking with top performers in the App Store are high.

14. The main event:
Deep dive into
retention

15. The race for better
D1 retention
• The top genre by retention is Trivia, with
almost 50% D1 at the top.
• Trivia, Word, Casino, Card, Arcade are the
top 5 and >42%.
• For top genres even mid-level performance is
+30%.
• +40% D1 retention is critical for hyper-
casual success.
Arcade 42% Casual 40%
Retention Day 1

16. D7 is also highly
competitive
• Puzzle games overtake Arcade in the top 5 for
D7 retention.
• Word games overtake Trivia with 23% and lead
all genres.
• Arcade is in 10th place with 15% retention.
• D7 retention is essential for publishers but not
all hyper casual games deliver.
Casual
15%Arcade 15%
Retention Day 7

17. Retention in
hyper-casual
• Top performing genres all have +40% D1
retention & +15% D7 retention.
• Anything less than 35% D1 retention is
probably not worth investing in.
• Some games start out strong in D1 but lose
more players by D7 - gameplay fixes and
improving the core loop can help retain players
for longer.
42%
30%
16%
5%
2%
0%
2.8%
26%
15%
7%
3%
8%

18. Top Tips!
How to retain and
re-engage your
players

19. • Hyper-casual games are easily replaced by the
latest new thing. Make sure that when a player is
showing signs of churning, you transfer them to
your new title!
• Don’t know how to spot the signs? At
GameAnalytics we analyse nearly 1 billion players
per month… So we’re quick to spot the signs.
Make churn day
moving day!

20. Understand
player churn
Use Cohorts to see when
players are churning
• Cohorts will help you learn if your latest
build really improves retention, or if
something else is getting players to leave.
• Use advanced filtering to compare game
design elements and learn which are pros
and which cons.

21. The game they want,
just when they need it
At GameAnalytics we’re working on new products to allow
you super-fine retargeting:
💎 Behavioural Audiences: Allowing you to build player
segments based on their affinity with genres, game
elements, when they play, and more.
🔮 Predictions: We will predict player potential to engage
with ads, spend money, likelihood to churn… And make
them available to you.

22. Any Questions?
You can find all of these stats on our blog. Also, we’ll soon be releasing
an updated version of our benchmarks report (H1 2019), so keep your
eyes peeled for that.