A
Anon3x156
Guest
I have never seen anyone talking about this niche on the forum so I wanted to make this thread. This is a success story from Turkish Republic.
I also had a short story in this niche as a game developer, but didn't have any success, because of lack of patience and bad execution.
Here is the story:
The company is called Rollic Games. A Turkish mobile game publisher that focuses on hyper-casual games.
The founders of the company didn't have any past success or experience in the field. They weren't game developers or something, but they were digital marketers.
What is a hyper-casual game?
A hyper-casual game is a mobile video game which is easy-to-play, and usually free-to-play; they also feature very minimalistic user interfaces.
Hyper-casual games are only playable in portrait mode.
It usually takes between 1 and 2 weeks to develop the prototype of a hyper-casual game.
After the development of the prototype, developers record a 30-seconds raw gameplay footage, then send it to the publisher.
Publisher runs a mini ad campaign for testing of the prototype, to test 2 key metrics.
1-CPI (cost per install, how much money they pay for ads to buy 1 user.)
2-Retention (how long does the player play the game?, does the player come back tomorrow?, does the player come back next week?)
•hyper-casual games are free to play, so the publishers monetize the games by implementing ads. That's why retention is important for them.
95%+ of the prototypes fail(read the P.S) the tests.
Usually, it takes dozens of prototypes to publish a successful game. Very few developers succeed in their first games.
But you shouldn't forget that it takes 1 or 2 weeks to develop a prototype. But when you finally make the successful game, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even a few million dollars, if the game is really successful.
Before the company was founded in December 2018, small Turkish hyper-casual game studios were trying to publish their games with foreign publishers, like Voodoo Games from France. There were some problems with this. There was a language barrier and the publisher and the developer weren't in the same country. Also, Turkish studios were having hard times finding financial resources. These studios were usually founded by young college students, fresh graduates and even high-school students.
Rollic Games solved the language problem, even though it wasn't a big deal since everyone speaks English.
But they also solved the trust problem, that comes with being in different countries. And finally, they solved the money problems of studios.
They - as far as I heard - paid between $500-2000 (not sure) to studios per prototype, even if it failed, so they can keep developing new prototypes.
In Turkish Republic (TR), junior game developers at hyper-casual game studios earns around $400-600+ a month.
In TR, college is free but unemployment is high. Also salaries are low in USD. This situation allowed studio owners
(btw these studios are "studios" with 1-5+ employees, usually founded with 0 capital. They usually don't even have an office, everyone works remote.) to find cheap labor, and still keep the company alive even if their prototypes fail. So most of the studios in TR started working with Rollic Games.
After 20 months, they sold the %80 of the company to American giant Zynga, for $168M.
Zynga, also bought the Turkish mobile game developer Peak Games, for $1.8B (yes, billion).
Gaming industry is pretty profitable and I think it will keep growing in the next a few decades. It's definitely worth a look.
P.S: 95% of the prototypes actually doesn't "fail". They just can't pass the tests of big publishers. These publishers receive hundreds of prototypes a month from many studios , so they have the luxury to choose the "best" performing games.
Your game might not pass the test, but it doesn't mean that it's not profitable. I know a game studio, who self-published their "failed" game and the founder said the game generated enough income that can keep a medium-sized studio alive for the next few years, even though it didn't even make it to the top 10 (hyper-casual games that are published by big publishers make it to the top 10 most of the time).
That's it, I hope you enjoyed reading. Please feel free to ask your questions if you have any.
I also had a short story in this niche as a game developer, but didn't have any success, because of lack of patience and bad execution.
Here is the story:
The company is called Rollic Games. A Turkish mobile game publisher that focuses on hyper-casual games.
The founders of the company didn't have any past success or experience in the field. They weren't game developers or something, but they were digital marketers.
What is a hyper-casual game?
A hyper-casual game is a mobile video game which is easy-to-play, and usually free-to-play; they also feature very minimalistic user interfaces.
Hyper-casual games are only playable in portrait mode.
It usually takes between 1 and 2 weeks to develop the prototype of a hyper-casual game.
After the development of the prototype, developers record a 30-seconds raw gameplay footage, then send it to the publisher.
Publisher runs a mini ad campaign for testing of the prototype, to test 2 key metrics.
1-CPI (cost per install, how much money they pay for ads to buy 1 user.)
2-Retention (how long does the player play the game?, does the player come back tomorrow?, does the player come back next week?)
•hyper-casual games are free to play, so the publishers monetize the games by implementing ads. That's why retention is important for them.
95%+ of the prototypes fail(read the P.S) the tests.
Usually, it takes dozens of prototypes to publish a successful game. Very few developers succeed in their first games.
But you shouldn't forget that it takes 1 or 2 weeks to develop a prototype. But when you finally make the successful game, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even a few million dollars, if the game is really successful.
Before the company was founded in December 2018, small Turkish hyper-casual game studios were trying to publish their games with foreign publishers, like Voodoo Games from France. There were some problems with this. There was a language barrier and the publisher and the developer weren't in the same country. Also, Turkish studios were having hard times finding financial resources. These studios were usually founded by young college students, fresh graduates and even high-school students.
Rollic Games solved the language problem, even though it wasn't a big deal since everyone speaks English.
But they also solved the trust problem, that comes with being in different countries. And finally, they solved the money problems of studios.
They - as far as I heard - paid between $500-2000 (not sure) to studios per prototype, even if it failed, so they can keep developing new prototypes.
In Turkish Republic (TR), junior game developers at hyper-casual game studios earns around $400-600+ a month.
In TR, college is free but unemployment is high. Also salaries are low in USD. This situation allowed studio owners
(btw these studios are "studios" with 1-5+ employees, usually founded with 0 capital. They usually don't even have an office, everyone works remote.) to find cheap labor, and still keep the company alive even if their prototypes fail. So most of the studios in TR started working with Rollic Games.
After 20 months, they sold the %80 of the company to American giant Zynga, for $168M.
Zynga, also bought the Turkish mobile game developer Peak Games, for $1.8B (yes, billion).
Gaming industry is pretty profitable and I think it will keep growing in the next a few decades. It's definitely worth a look.
P.S: 95% of the prototypes actually doesn't "fail". They just can't pass the tests of big publishers. These publishers receive hundreds of prototypes a month from many studios , so they have the luxury to choose the "best" performing games.
Your game might not pass the test, but it doesn't mean that it's not profitable. I know a game studio, who self-published their "failed" game and the founder said the game generated enough income that can keep a medium-sized studio alive for the next few years, even though it didn't even make it to the top 10 (hyper-casual games that are published by big publishers make it to the top 10 most of the time).
That's it, I hope you enjoyed reading. Please feel free to ask your questions if you have any.
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