2021Predictions #1 Puzzle Games Becomes the Top Grossing Genre on Mobile
Summarizingan entire 2020 in the game industry against the ever-changing technological,political and economical backdrop of the average twelve months is a complexendeavor at the best of times. I think we can all agree that 2020 has been somewhatof a humdinger.
2020 was a very good year for mobile games. The numbers above show net revenues (platformcut taken away) in the Western markets (China, Japan, and Korea excluded).
Thisreport includes an overview of the performance of puzzle games over the lastyear, and some new predictions for the coming year of 2021. Grab a cup of yourfavorite coffee, let’s begin!
Casual games in the Western markets (China, Korea and Japan excluded) grew to nearly$10B. But the actual number is over 30% larger as the in-app-ad revenues inCasual games are very significant.
Hypercasualgames along peaked at $3B in ad revenue in 2020.
Puzzle Game in 2020
Puzzle,out of all the genres and mobile, is the largest one when looking at IAPs only.It made $5.1 billion in 2020, growing 29% compared to 2019. In casual gamesoverall, puzzles games account for just over 50% of all revenue for 2020.
Pleasenote that if in-app-ad revenues are counted, Puzzle games would generatebetween 10 to 20 percent more. And Hypercasual games would be on par with Slotsgames.
Within 2020, puzzle games experienced a 18%jump in revenue between Q1 and Q2, a jump larger than the Q1/Q2 increase of2019 mostly due to more time playing games, not necessarily more players. Theincrease in time playing is presumably due to the pandemic’s effects on userbehavior: various lockdowns cutting out other forms of entertainment along withan increase in down time (and honestly, the escapism games offer comes asrespite from what was a bleak reality for most). This increase, sliced bysubgenre, was driven mostly by Tile Blast and Puzzle &Decorate. Classic Match 3 games (think Sagas and games that don’t quite fitthe bill elsewhere), did contribute to the genre’s overall growth.
Before we jump into an analysis of the covetedMatch-3 and Merge games, let us highlight the growth in few other sub-genres:
Action Puzzle is known mainly for Angry Birds titles (Angry Birds 2 andAngry Birds Friends) that tend to dominate this relatively small sub-genre.Last year it grew significantly with the launch of Among Us that became to manythe lockdown game of the year. Other than that, the genre remained largelyunchanged.
Hidden Objectleaderboard remained largely the same: Wooga’s (Playtika) June’s Journey takes nearly50% of all sub-genre revenue. Seeker’s Note from Mytona is now a clear numbertwo in the sub-genre taking nearly 20% of revenues. Hidden City from G5 was asbig as Seeker’s Note in the beginning of the year but is now a clear secondwith a 10% market share. Rest of the titles have a fraction of the market spacecompared to the big three.
Word gamesremained largely the same. Scopely’s Scrabble Go was the largest growingtitle due to the global launch early in the year. Wordscapes, which is by farthe largest game in the sub-genre, was the biggest loser as its share droppedfrom nearly 30% to less than 25%.
Trivia Games is a small sub-genre in terms of IAPs. It grew largely dueto the launch of Trivia Star and massive growth of Drink Roulette, which ofcourse was the perfect fit for a World where both games and alcohol consumptiongrew exponentially.
The Solitaire sub-genre grew as we predicted last year. SolitaireGrand Harvest and Solitaire TriPeaks continued to dominate in the league oftheir own taking constantly 70% of all sub-genre revenues.
Other Puzzles grew significantly due tolots of games for kidssuch as Math Learner, World of Peppa Pig and Kiddopia being placed here in ourtaxonomy. It’s no wonder that kids games were among the biggest winners oflockdowns in terms of revenue and especially in terms of downloads.
Puzzle Publishers in 2020
With this large sum of revenue, who is taking home thebiggest share? While there is no specific formula to create a hit puzzle game, thereis a growing baseline of what’s required to make a revenue generating puzzlemachine. This past year, some companies seem to understand this better thanothers.
As predicted lastyear, Playrix unseated King from the throne in terms of volume of revenue for2020. To be clear, Playrix key titles have been on an absolute tear.Gardenscapes made nearly a billion growing 65% in 2020. Fishdom doubledrevenues making over 300M a year while Homescapes grew cool 20% and is nowmaking 700M annually. That’s how the king of the puzzle games is doing.
Meanwhile King’s overallrevenue trend nevertheless looks to be visibly declining while the rest of themarket growing. This is clearly due to the publishers』 inability to notonly innovate but keep up to the pace of the rest of its competitors.
Jam City, while showing stronger performance in 2018, has been slowlylosing revenue share since. Their latest game, Vineyard Valley, launched in2019, a Puzzle & Decorate (collapse core with narrative/decorate meta) didnot generate any comparable revenue to their stronger titles (Harry Potter:Hogwarts Mysteries, Disney Emoji Blitz, Disney Frozen Free Fall). To see animprovement in revenue share in 2021, they need to either grow their top gamesor launch a clone that’s a noticeable improvement from what exists today. We』dargue that Vineyard Valley is not a noticeable improvement from the notablePuzzle & Decorate forerunners.
In a first iteration of predictions, we toyedwith the idea of suggesting that Tactile would be acquired in 2021. We decided it wasunlikely that they would sell, but the rationale for the acquisition holdstrue: Tactile is the only top developer by revenue share without a parentcompany. That being said, this past year saw Lily’s Garden’s revenue grow towhat seems like a peak in September 2020. After which, it appears to be in aslow decline. Their latest release, Penny & Flo does not appear to bemaking up for that revenue despite user acquisition. In 2021, they will need tofind ways to further optimize both games if they hope to see growth.
AppLovin’s strategy seems to be casting a widepartnership/investment net. We are bullish on AppLovin’s partnership studios asFirecraft/Magic Tavern (Matchington Mansion, Project Makeover), RedemptionGames (Sweet Escapes) and Belka (Clockmaster) demonstrate a desire toexperiment with status quo for core/meta. That step is usually the firsttowards discovering a new crowd pleaser.
Rovio is also losing revenue share over time, despite launchingnew games. Before April 2020, their overall revenue was declining slowly,seemingly mitigated by a user acquisition push in Q3 2019. March/April 2020bumped them back up to 2018 revenue numbers. Despite the new games in 2020,Angry Birds 2 and Dream Blast have not lost their footing as their top twotitles. Small Town Murders, which launched around the start of 2020, wasRovio’s big gamble - New IP, new meta/core combination. It hasn’t yet lived upto the hype or, we imagine, it’s expectations yet, and will likely promptothers in the hidden object space to dabble with similar games.
There is a small pocket of games that lean intothe interior design element of the decorate meta. Storm8 adventured early into this meta and owned thesmall space, alongside fun-gi’s House Flip with Chip and Jo. March bolsteredFUN-GI’s title ahead of both of Storm8’s games by revenue and it continued tolose its place by Reworks (Redecor) and then dealt a final blow by Firecraft/MagicTavern’s Project Makeover. While Home Design Makeover and Property Brothers areStorm8’s highest earning titles, they have just under 70 games live - so theyare not lacking in either ideas or ability to produce. For Storm8 to see animprovement in 2021, they need to double down on their execution.
Supercell is a great game developer who has proven mastery of strategy andmultiplayer genres. Having said this, puzzle is a different beast entirely andthrough the release of Hay Day Pop it seems they learned this lesson the hardway. HDP was cancelled in late 2020 and the project post mortem wouldundoubtedly make fascinating reading. Supercell is unlikely to throw in thepuzzle towel just yet, but we don’t see them releasing another puzzle game in2021. The earliest would be 2022 and until then they』ll most likely scratch thepuzzle itch through investment in studios who specialize in puzzle.
Zynga started as the champion of simulations games, but hassomehow become the puzzle underdog, growing by acquisitions to tackle evenlarger foes. However, every acquisition usually provokes a few to leaveand while Zynga may be backfilling roles in Turkey, the magic that made Peakgreat might instead be found in Istanbul's burgeoning game startup scene (DreamGames』 Royal Match is one to watch in 2021). Zynga’s acquisition strategysuggests a desire for highly diversified revenue and a pipeline to ensure newgames launch as old ones retire. It is unlikely they will unseat King orPlayrix, next year or in years to come, but again, it doesn’t seem to be thegoal.
Future Prospects for PuzzleFor many new studios, the idea of breaking intothe puzzle market is a daunting one. Gone are the days where a reasonableattempt at a core mechanic and a saga map were all you needed for 6 figurerevenue. Indeed, if your ambition is to compete with the incumbent lords of thegenre then your work is cut out for you; you』ll need a topnotch marketing strategy, an innovative product, perfect timing, an efficientcontent pipeline, meticulous live op planning, production quality through theroof and the resources to scale the game if everything else goes right.
This is most certainly not easy and it’s nothard to see why the average time to market with new puzzle games is increasing.Having said this, the genre is not barren in terms of creative opportunity -the recent trend for merge games shows that new ideas can take hold.Ultimately, all it takes is the right team to come along at the right time toupset the apple cart.
Dream Games』 Royal Match is one to watch in2021. As is the whole Istanbul gaming ecosystem
Effects of the Pandemic and IDFA Deprecation
As well as an effect on the market, thepandemic also had its effect on the companies developing these games. Puzzlegames, that often look relatively simple to develop, require specialistknowledge and genre familiarity. These specialists are in short supply andhiring them can be tricky due to a variety of issues (relocation, visas, etc).The proliferation of remote working now presents new opportunities; studiosthat struggled to hire talent due to location can now import knowledge withoutrequiring someone to move. This means that employees can be offered autonomywithout the cost of a relocation package which in turn should see knowledge spreadacross a wider breadth of studios. While the future post-Covid is far fromcertain, even with widespread vaccinations, this momentary exile from acentralized office has taken us down a path to collectively ask the question ofwhat it really means to be a part of a company at all. A question that couldvery well lead us to a place where specialists are increasingly more likely tobecome guns-for-hire than exist as a part of a digital tribe.
Unrelated to the pandemic, Apple proposed a change toIDFA (Identifier for Advertisers), which was also a hot topic across mobilegaming. Advertisers use IDFA for more granular targeting (user characteristics)and campaign feedback while maintaining users』 privacy.
This entire process was once opt-out; the fundamentalchange being that in early 2021 iOS 14 will make this opt-in (with predictedopt-in rates of as low as 10%). As discussed at length on this blog and inTWIG, games need effective marketing to reach the highest echelons of prolongedsuccess. Once upon a time game developers could deploy highly optimized puzzlecreatives and campaigns based on seemingly surreal or misleading premises, allin the search of lower CPIs and higher CTRs, evenif the optimum campaigns misrepresented games and engendered distrust.Post IDFA, game creatives will have to take a more scattershot approach, withonly a vague sense of how various campaigns are performing.
While the ramifications are still hotlydebated, here are some effects we foresee:
Marketing for F2P games turns back the clock and relies more on the playbook of traditional advertising. This should lead to more of a focus on product USPs, theme and mechanic differentiation rather than the wild fever dreams that have been propagated during 2019/2020.
Puzzle is less likely to be harmed by the lack of ability to target VIP players compared to more hardcore games (4x/casino/RPG etc.) because of the lack of reliance on a very small percentage of extremely high spenders. Puzzle games also generally have a broader appeal which is easier to advertise in a traditional sense (see previous point)
While a good IP historically won’t save an underperforming game (especially in mobile F2P) the boosting effect it can have on UA for a high performing game will increase going forward.
Any developers that belong to a larger publishing network with broad portfolios and large captive audiences have the best shot of mitigating some of the sting from IDFA deprecation by using IDFV (Identifier for vendors) to leverage data from players within their network or by using traditional CRM outreach methods.
In the short term, puzzle publishers will all double down on advertising in the trusted sources of traffic, such as Word games. This will lead to increasing CPIs and acquisition of developers that have stable organic DAU that can be successfully promoted to puzzle games.
2021 Predictions
IDFA will throw a big ol』 monkey wrench at the top mobilepuzzle publishers. We expect that Playrix』 growth will slow down significantlyas the era of misleading ads comes to an end. At the same time, King havingfocused on building franchises instead of perfecting the latest trends ofperformance marketing, may just have its decline halted. Overall, games withlarge stable DAUs will be the winners as they know where to draw the trafficfrom and they can focus on CRM to boost already high retention rates. Newtitles and titles grown by misleading advertising are the ones that will betaking a hit.
2021 will be the year of acquisitions』 softlaunches specifically from Zynga (Peak) and Playrix(Zagrava, Plexonic) in H2 2021. By the end of 2021, companies that wereacquired in 2019, and early 2020, will have had roughly 2 years of runway torelease a game. We think there will be at least 1 new puzzle game from eitherPlayrix or Zynga that’s a product of their acquisitions.
Applovin and new smaller splinter studioswill continue to push the boundaries of the casual metagame. Expect the 『aspirational lifestyle mine』 tobe plundered mercilessly in 2021 - we can already see hints of this inApplovin’s Project Makeover - a game that takes the Puzzle & Decorateformula and adds elements of personal styling, fashion and opt-in narrative『drama』. Other themes we expect to see be popular in 2021 would be exoticinsta-style influencer travel and leisure pursuits which should be especiallypopular for an audience whose own freedom of movement continues to berestricted. The relative success of Belka Games』 Clockmaker demonstrates anappetite for different kinds of meta concepts, choosing to focus on resourcemanagement combined with a mystery narrative.
Merge games willrepresent the majority of new entrants to the puzzle market in 2021. From the moment Gram Games modernized and popularized thegenre in 2017 with Merge Dragons, they have dominated it. 2021 is the year whenthis will really change. The Merge mechanic has been unmasked to be a validalternative to classic puzzle cores like the popular switchers & collapse,which are too big an investment to break into for smaller studios due to King,Playrix and Tactile’s monopolization.
The merge sub-genre is quickly filling up withnew entrants rushing in. At the moment there’s only evolution of game systemsbetween the nearly identically looking games. Soon, we』ll see evolution inthemes as the marketability will become the name of the game. Just like itoccurred in match-games.
Finnish start-up Metacore (backed by Supercell) seems to havefound a solution that works with Merge Mansion, which is currently in SoftLaunch and has been for the majority of 2020. Combining the 『Puzzle &Decorate』 meta game we all know too well with the puzzle-like game board andits accessible merge-2 (instead of 3 or 5) seems to hit a lot of the rightnotes.
A big advantage of this strategy is itsscalability. There is no need for a seemingly endless chain of hyper-optimizedpuzzle levels but instead features a carefully balanced ecosystem of interwovenmerge chains. This offsets the missed monetization on e.g. extra moves, giventhe lack of a loss condition.
While the game is showing to have somechallenges to expand its board in the long term, numerous other studios arequickly catching up with their own version of this highly engaging loop. 2021will show who will come out victorious.
While Evermerge has been absolutely killing it byproving Gram Games』 is not the sole wielder of their traditional 『MergeDragons』 loop anymore, players are craving to merge more than ever and willcontinue to be until we are all allowed back outside. The industry willundoubtedly deliver by exploring combinations of the merge core and differentmetas in search of that golden combination.
Merge Game developers will be the targetsfor M&A. At the momentthe merge sub-genre is filled with merge titles that have nearly identicalthemes and that are aimed at exactly the same audience. This has led to asituation where only Zynga and Big Fish have been able to scale their titlesdue to their massive war chests that allow extended payback times and highCPIs. We see lots of smaller Western developers, such as Futureplay(Merge Gardens) and StarBerry Games (Merge Mayor) being picked upand scaled by companies like Playtika, SciPlay, Voodoo and Huuuge Games. Chinesemerge developers like Betta Games (Mergical) will remain out ofreach of Western publishers.
Pro Tip: MergeGames with more masculine themes will break the bank. Remember Merge Planes? They got 120M installs. How about TopWar? It’s a strategy game with a merge core that has crossed $100M in life-timerevenues. First three developers to ship these titles are the lucky ones.
There will be a trend in puzzle games in2021 to evolve 「elder game」 features.
Every year in puzzle the following thingshappen:
The audience matures and their expectations in terms of depth in the feature set increases
More and more puzzle games enter the market to vie for their attention, making it one of the most crowded spaces in F2P
Due to this, it is a necessity for gamedesigners to find ways to engage their most valuable players. The problem inany game that relies on a content treadmill is that the players who areengaging and spending the most will always end up at 『the end of content』counting down the days/weeks until the next content drop. What is supposed tooccupy these players in this limbo period? There is a clear opportunity here tofind a system to plug the gap, lest those players move on from your game. Presently,we』ve seen certain live op events work (as long as they introduce new content)but many of them essentially piggyback off of the primary level progression… Sowhat else can be done?
Toon Blast attempted to solve this challenge with a systemcalled 『Champions League』 - a kind of conditional event whereby playersautomatically get entered into a competition consisting of 20 other end ofcontent players. Levels are recycled for the duration of the event and playerscompete for position on a leaderboard, the top players earning the bestrewards. The league ends once new content drops and the entry point shifts upto the new end of content point - setting the cycle up afresh. Thisimplementation is sound but there’s still ahuge amount of room here to evolve features like this within puzzle games -ones that can tap even more effectively into highly engaged players』 motivations.
At least one breakthrough puzzle game in 2021will feature Puzzle Pass at its core. Puzzle Pass reared its head during 2020 withHomescapes’s 『Season of Wonders』 and Hay Day Pop’s 『Star River』. Whilst thishas been relatively successful for Playrix, the system was still introduced ontop of a 3 year old game. What’s really interesting is the opportunity forfuture games to have a Puzzle Pass forming an integral part of the core loop. Eventhough Hay Day Pop was cancelled, the amount of innovation has to be admired - the 『Star River』 and season concept beingarguably one of the most interesting ideas they brought to the puzzle table.While Battle Pass systems are great conversion points, they are typically seenas more of an engagement system than a monetisation system in hardcore games.With generally lower payer buckets in casual - we believe Puzzle Pass couldsoon become a playbook system for new companies in the space as long as theysolve the challenge of finding the reward layer that will really motivate theplayer base.