Top News

#1. China Approves 45 New Games

After nearly nine months of zero game approvals, China’s National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) announced 45 new game licenses (ISBNs). While this is certainly a positive for gaming companies and may signal more approvals to come, let’s take a look at the facts and broader context before coming to any conclusions.

For starters, 39 of the 45 games are mobile, all of the games are domestic, and most of the approvals are from relatively smaller companies. The titans, Tencent and NetEase, didn’t see a single approval. Of course, these two companies weathered the game approval winter better than most everyone else; not only did they still launch pre-approved games over the past few months, but almost 1,000 smaller Chinese gaming companies went out of business since the approval freeze began.

Let’s put the numbers in perspective. In 2021, the NPPA approved 679 games (not to mention ~1,300 in both 2019 and 2020) — all of which were approved before the freeze began in July. This means nearly 100 games were approved per month, which included domestic and imported games. In other words, the recent 45 game approval is a start but still a drop in the bucket compared to what was normal pre-freeze. That doesn’t mean it won’t ramp up, of course. It’s likely that the new batch of approvals signals that regulators think that studios and publishers (including the non-titans) are better complying with the tighter regulations around censorship and rules for minors. If so, we could see several batches approvals follow this one.

Approving domestic games is obviously China’s priority, but it’s also possible that certain import games get approved too. These approvals would operate on a lag (potentially a few weeks or months) and obviously would still have to be co-managed with a Chinese partner, but they are far more likely than they were a week ago now. If we extrapolate these numbers out, it’s very much in the realm of possibility that the NPPA approves roughly as many games in 2022 as it did in 2021. Not only would this be a positive for gamers, but it would be an enormous weight lifted for a bunch of Chinese gaming companies that have been surviving on limited revenue. Of course, expect many Chinese gaming companies to continue growing their international presences given they can’t rely on their home markets for sustainable long-term growth.

All in all, this is a positive development. However, it’s always worth keeping in mind that the rug could be pulled at any time. This approval freeze wasn’t the first (the last one took place only four years ago), and it very well may happen again, perhaps sooner than later. CCP policies, attitudes, and priorities can shift in a moment’s notice, the government clearly prioritizes other industries over gaming, and geopolitical events could trigger changes for imports at any time. Celebrate the moment, but lose sight that the CCP’s agenda almost definitely doesn’t match up with any gaming company’s.

#2. Miniclip Doubles Down on Mobile

A couple week’s ago (and as we covered on the podcast), Miniclip announced that it surpassed 4 billion mobile game downloads - an impressive achievement. This past week — marking the company’s 21st anniversary — Miniclip announced that it will be going all in on mobile and exiting the browser market that brought about its fame those many years ago. Although it marks the end of an era, it was also inevitable. After all, Miniclip now supports over 250M MAUs on mobile, and the old school browser gaming market continues to shrink. At some point this summer, Miniclip’s website (take your last look) will turn into a simple information site about the company.

The two exceptions are 8 Ball Pool (Miniclip’s most popular game with over 1B downloads) and Agar.io (a MMO strategy game where players try to control a petri dish); both of these games will remain cross-platform.

It’s also important to remember that Saad Choudri, who’s held a range of roles across gaming companies and worked at Miniclip for 11 years, was recently appointed as CEO. He likely accelerated this recent mobile transition. In the next phase of the company, we should expect more of the same that we’ve seen in recent years. On one hand, Miniclip and its subsidiary studios should continue to rake in downloads as its simple, attractive games continue to resonate with casual players. Plus, we should expect to see continued M&A. In 2020, Miniclip acquired Ilyon, the developers of Bubble Shooter, for $100M. And in 2021, the company acquired Gamebasics (Online Soccer Manager), Green Horse Games (Football Rivals) and Supersonic Software with its subsidiary AppyNation (traditional puzzle games). It’s hard to predict what M&A will come next, but to learn more about Choudri’s views on the current M&A climate and Miniclip’s preferences, watch this great interview (alongside Michael Metzger, Partner at Drake Star Partners, and Chris Petrovic, Chief Business Officer at FunPlus) on GameMakers. It’s only a matter of time before Miniclip, which is also majority owned by Tencent, makes more moves.

Game Launch Radar

#1: Worldscapes

• Publisher: PeopleFun, Inc. (AppLovin)
• State: Soft-launch
• Territories: Australia
• Classification: Casual - Puzzle - Match 3 Puzzle

• Quick thoughts:

  • This is PeopleFun’s continued attempt to better diversify its bread-and-butter word games portfolio, which includes games like Wordscapes and Word Stacks.
  • The core gameplay is a unique Tetris-style take on the tile blaster mechanic. The meta is currently quite light and involves discovering new global landmarks. See the gameplay video here.
  • While it will be interesting to see how PeopleFun harnesses AppLovin’s deep data insights around building and scaling top charting puzzle titles, the viability of this title will likely come down to the stickiness of PeopleFun’s innovative core mechanic.

#2: City Life - Town Builder

• Publisher: Zynga
• State: Soft-launch
• Territories: Indonesia, Philippines
• Classification: Casual - Simulation - Tycoon

• Quick thoughts:

  • Zynga is infusing some freshness into the simulation genre by soft-launching a tycoon-style city building game with a merge core. See the gameplay video here.
  • The soft-launched version of the game looks very polished. The core gameplay revolves around merging buildings in your city to generate money to merge even more buildings and create a sprawling city.

  • The soft-launched version is also sprinkled with a bunch of innovative features:

    • There is a light idle income earning mechanic layered onto the merge core to give it that extra early retention kick.
    • To curb merge-fatigue (too much merging, too fast), some buildings require building time, which is skippable for $$$, and this doubles up as a monetization hook.
    • The meta currently includes visiting friends in the neighborhood to play a host of mini-games in their cities and earn more money to reinvest into the player’s own city.
  • In typical Zynga style, this mostly feels like a technical + core mechanic soft-launch for now. We’d expect them to further flesh out the meta gameplay and monetization hooks over time. Also, let’s not forget that Zynga has deep in-house expertise in the merge genre (Gram Games / Merge Dragons) to harvest learnings and best practices from.

Other Game Announcements

• Merge Master - Dinosaur Fusion, a hypercasual merge game developed by Homa Games, was the most downloaded game of Q1, amassing 51.4M downloads. Link
• Ubisoft officially announced the development Rainbow 6 Mobile. Link
• Kingdom Hearts - Missing Link, an upcoming iOS/Android game, was announced by Square Enix and Disney alongside the announcement of Kingdom Hearts 4. A closed beta is planned for later this year. Link
• Neoverse, a strategic deck-building adventure game made by Korean studio Tino Games, released on Android. Link
• Pearl Abyss’ Black Desert Mobile China just began its open beta. Link
• CarX Street, an open world racing game made by CarX Technologies, began its open beta for iOS. Link
• Ace Racer, a NetEase-developed racing game, will start its North American Beta test on Google Play on April 26th. Link
• Darkbind, NetEase’s upcoming action MMORPG set in a dark fantasy world, launched the first phase of its closed beta in select regions (North America, Japan) on Android. Link
• Sumire, a premium story-based adventure game, is now available on iOS devices, and pre-registrations are now live on Android. Link
• One Piece: Dream Pointer, another manga-driven adventure game developed by Netmarble, is now open for pre-registrations in China. It’s uncertain if/when there will be a global release. Link
• Monster Train, the strategy and deck-building game that first successfully released on Steam, is coming to mobile (date TBD). Link
• War in Arms: Prime Forces, a shooter developed by Rank Up Games that many claim is similar to Rainbow Six Siege, is gearing up for its Android-specific alpha. Link

Company Announcements

• Take-Two Interactive is planning to sell $2.7B in senior notes to help fund the acquisition of Zynga. Link
• Miniclip is going all in on mobile. The company announced that it will exit the browser-based games market this summer. Link
• Amazon hired Kurt Sparkuhl (ex-Blizzard) to lead the company’s mobile games development. Tangential, the company is shutting down GameOn, its mobile games video capture app. Link
• Cocos Technology, which makes a “cross-platform interactive digital content development engine,” raised $50M in its Series B. Link
• Gadsme, an in-game ad platform, raised $8M in a seed round led by Galaxy Interactive. Link
• Legendary Play, which makes esport-themed mobile games (starting with manager games), raised $4M in a round co-led by BITKRAFT Ventures and MTG. Link
• Superbloom, a mobile studio making women-first lifestyle games, raised a $3M seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures. Link
• MAG Interactive announced its Q2 results, growing revenue 6% to $8.1M; DAUs decreased 23% year-over-year, but ARPDAU rose 23% year-over-year. Link
• Animoca Brands acquired Eden Games, the developers behind a number of racing games. Link
• Niantic acquired NZXR, a group of ex-Magic Leap developers tht will help make multiplayer AR experiences. Link
• Huuuge Games, the notable social casino publisher, is bringing on Rod Cousens (ex-Jagex, Codemasters, Activision, etc.) as its new co-CEO. Link
• Adjust, the Applovin-owned mobile analytics platform, launched its new solution Datascape, a dashboard tool that helps teams better measure and track their mobile ad campaigns. Link

Ecosystem Announcements

• PocketGamer’s Mobile Game Awards 2022 look place in London last week. Space Ape’s Beatstar won Game of the Year, and other games like Genshin Impact and Subway Surfers also won awards. Link
• On Monday, the Chinese government approved 45 new games, the first time in 9 months that a game has been approved in the country. Link
• In a step to protect users from downloading apps with outdated privacy features, Android announced team’s will need to update their apps within 2 years of the latest update in order to stay available to users. This will go into effect November 1st. Link
• Voodoo is launching its Voodoo Academy, an online learning platform that will help train existing partner studios in all things hyper-casual game development. Link

Content Worth Consuming

• How Wooga's Switchcraft Aced the Soft Launch! (Deconstructor of Fun): “Many of you know how to develop a game and are experienced in running live operations. However, only a few truly know how to launch a modern mobile game. In the rapidly evolving games market, best practices on how to successfully launch your game can change just as fast. To shed some light on the most recent best practices, I had the privilege of talking to Annelie Biernat (Game Director at Wooga) and Aaron Hiscox (Business Development Manager at Google Play). Annelie and her team recently released Switchcraft after going through a challenging soft launch. In our conversation below, we discuss key learnings from her experience and compare them to wider best practices observed by the Google Play team.“ Link
• Strategies for Successful Studios (Mastering Retention): “So, your new game has taken the world by storm. What do you next? How do you maintain momentum and how do you replicate your previous success? This week on “Mastering Retention,” Miikka Ahonen Co-founder of Lightheart Entertainment, creator of Mr. Autofire, joins Tom to discuss building and running a company, building successful games, as well as strategies for release and, of course, retention.” Link
• Mika Tammenkoski - Building Metacore (Elite Game Developers): “In this week's episode, I'm talking with Mika Tammenkoski, who is the co-founder and CEO of Metacore Games, the company that is well known for their hit game Merge Mansion. In this discussion with Mika, we talk about his long journey in gaming, what he has picked up on leadership and startups from all the projects he's been involved with, and what Mika thinks about building teams, pivoting, and increasing the likelihood of finding a hit game” Link
• Casual Gaming Trends Snapshot Report: March 2022 (GameRefinery): “To stay afloat in this competitive market, mobile game developers are having to get creative as they come up with new ways to keep players engaged and motivated. Mobile game players are constantly looking for new ways to play, and Casual game developers have responded with an explosion of innovative ideas, many of which are transforming how we see traditional Casual game genres. As an example, around 70% of the US top-100 grossing Match3 games feature meta elements, allowing players to move outside of the core gameplay and dive into exciting new gameplay mechanics, whether that’s platforming mini-games, collectibles, or even RPG features. Similarly, we’re seeing construction and renovation elements popping up in more Casual games, as developers craft new features that satisfy player motivations to complete milestones, customize and decorate. Finally, social features and communities in casual mobile games have surged in popularity since COVID, and we see no sign of this trend slowing down.” Link
• Hill Climb Racing 3 incoming as Fingersoft closes in on 2bn total installs (MobileGamer.biz): “Fingersoft and Hill Climb Racing turn 10 this year. To mark the milestone, we spoke to COO Ville Rauma as he revealed some fun things about the company and its biggest hit: 1) Fingersoft was receiving buyout offers “at least every two months or so” at one stage, but refused them all. 2) Hill Climb Racing 3 is coming, and could be unveiled by the end of the year. 3) The Hill Climb Racing games are on track to reach a combined 2 billion downloads by May” Link