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#1:  Rollic Games Exceeds 2 Billion Downloads Across Its Portfolio

Zynga’s Hypercasual segment, Rollic Games, recently announced that it had surpassed 2 billion downloads across its Hypercasual portfolio, which is no mean feat for the publisher that was founded just 4 years ago. With this milestone under its quiver, we thought it would be a good chance to take a look at how Rollic has risen from being a small Turkish startup to now being part of one of the largest game publishers in the world.

Rollic was started in December 2018 by Burak Vardal (current CEO), Deniz Başaran (current CFO), and Mehmet Can Yavuz. Prior to founding Rollic, all three co-founders were colleagues at AdColony, gaining experience that would have undoubtedly benefited their new venture.

The early history of Rollic was characterized by the release of games that were extremely similar in terms of mechanics and visuals to those by the leading publisher of the time, Voodoo. Rollic’s Overloaded!, Color Circles 3D, and Wood Shop were very comparable to Voodoo’s Commuters, Stack Merge 3D, and Wood Turning and released at almost the same time. While we cannot definitively say that Rollic was cloning games, the company was renowned within the Hypercasual development community for copying prototypes that were being tested by other publishers and then swiftly releasing its own version.

The practice of developers copying games is certainly not uncommon in the Hypercasual space, and it is arguably the osmosis of ideas that makes the genre so vibrant. Rollic may have overstepped its taking inspiration from other games when it was sued by Voodoo for plagiarizing features from Wood Turning and implementing them into Wood Shop. A Paris court ruled that Rollic was to remove Wood Shop from sale in the App and Play stores and pay Voodoo €125,000 in damages for “unfair competition and parasitism.” This ruling appears to have been enforced only in France as Wood Shop was removed from the French App Store in November 2020, but other than that nothing of consequence has been imposed.

Whatever you think of Rollic’s bootstrapping strategy, it ended 2019 after releasing 12 games with a combined 36 million downloads, Picker 3D being the standout, garnering 23 million downloads, and peaking in the US App Store as the most downloaded app in July. These numbers placed it as the 24th most downloaded Hypercasual publisher for the year, not exactly setting the scene alight, but that’s unsurprising given this was its first year of operation. To put its performance into perspective, the top publisher of 2019, Voodoo, ended the year with 1.1 billion downloads across its portfolio, with the megahit Aquapark.io claiming 150 million downloads on its own.

2020 saw Rollic beginning to implement more innovation in the games it published, with its biggest hit of the year, Tangle Master 3D, showcasing genuinely original mechanics. The company kept showing great progress as the year unfolded, increasing its portfolio by a factor of 4 to 85 games and getting 337 million downloads, climbing its way to being the 10th most downloaded Hypercasual publisher. Thus, when the news of Zynga acquiring Rollic broke, it completely made sense. It would expose Zynga to an entirely new genre of games and provide Rollic with financial resources to scale up. And scale up it did.

In 2021, Rollic doubled its portfolio to 85 games and managed to greatly scale up downloads with 761 million across all games. It also saw its first titles exceed the 100 million download threshold, with both Hair Challenge and High Heels! exceeding this milestone. The company also used its new stability to go on a studio shopping spree, acquiring studios Uncosoft for $12.5 million (responsible for its first bona fide hit, High Heels!), ByteTyper, Creasaur Entertainment, and ZeroSum (for a combined sum of $12.5 million), and most recently NanoTribe for $8.7 million. It wasn’t all one-sided though, as Rollic also contributed positively to Zynga’s bottom line, adding around $240 million of advertising revenue from its portfolio of games for FY2021.

Rollic’s explosive growth looks to have slowed down this year, only releasing an additional 17 games. A combination of post-pandemic normalization and the slow-down in the ad market is the likely culprit, making the ROAS balancing act a little trickier and resulting in only the games with the best metrics being released. Even so, Rollic has managed to climb to the position of 5th largest Hypercasual publisher in terms of downloads.

What’s next for Rollic moving forward? I think it’s well-placed to enter the next era of Hypercasual games, and that is the hybridization of Hypercasual monetization. With Zynga’s expertise and the financial backing of Take-Two Interactive, it will be able to create full-fat games that players will want to spend on as well as watch ads.

We’re already seeing this hybridization occur in Rollic’s games, resulting in a huge spike in IAP revenue this year from games like Blob Hero. This is exactly what CEO Burak Vardal alluded to in his interview with VentureBeat, where he said, “But our vision for mobile gaming–the differences between sub-genres like casual and hypercasual in the current market are very small. Games are becoming closer to each other. We’re creating more media around our games, more levels, more content.” Going from a small startup to the top 5 Hypercasual publisher in the world, it’s certainly been a rollicking ride, and we look forward to seeing how it will continue to grow under Take-Two.

Game Launch Radar

#1: The Walking Dead: All-Stars

• Publisher: Com2uS

• State: Hard Launch
• Territories: Global
• Classification: Mid-core – RPG – Idle RPG

• Quick thoughts:

  • Based on the acclaimed graphics novels, this Hero-collector/Idle RPG features gorgeous hand-drawn visuals reminiscent of its source material. Also keeping in line with the IP is its adult presentation, from the gore and blood of exploding zombie heads, f-bombs in dialogue, and mature themes (the introductive narrative sees your survivor band execute a family that they rescued because they’ve been bitten). In terms of gameplay, you take on story chapters with your roster of heroes, including iconic characters like Rick Grimes.
  • It includes a gacha-mechanic called Survivor Wish List which lets you increase the chances of pulling specific characters, making it easier to build the roster you want. Called “Player’s Choice Gacha” by GameRefinery, this is an innovation that we hope would spread to more gacha-based games.
  • Unlike in Com2uS’ recent release, Chromatic Souls: AFK Raid, it doesn’t appear that there are blockchain elements in the game at launch. That said, the publisher has recently introduced play-to-earn features in one of its existing games, Summoners War: Lost Centuria, so we could conceivably see this sort of integration in the future. Kyu Lee, President of Com2uS USA, has gone on record saying, “At Com2uS, we truly see blockchain gaming as the future of the industry.”

#2: PLAYHOUSE: Design Game

• Publisher: Robin Games
• State: Hard Launch
• Territories: Global
• Classification: Casual – Lifestyle – Customization

• Quick thoughts:

  • Playhouse is the first game from women-led gaming studio Robin Games. Founded by ex-Jam City SVP, Jill Wilson, Robin Games is honing on games within the Lifestyle subgenre. According to Crunchbase, Robin Games has raised $21 million in two funding rounds, including Tom Chapman, founder of MatchesFashion.com, which works well with Robin Games’ area of focus.
  • Gameplaywise, Playhouse is similar to other interior design games like Design Home or Redecor. Where it innovates is in the placement of customization items. Furniture and accessories are in full 3D, and players can rotate and move them whenever they wish, instead of having predefined placements like its competitors. This unlocks more potential for creative individuals to style a room, resulting in greater variety in a finished room. The other ace up its sleeve is that it has partnered with real-life brands for all of its customization items, and players are able to go from the game to the brand’s website to purchase said item. There may be some teething issues though as many of the links either didn’t work or took me to the wrong item.
  • The niche that Playhouse is entering is small, with two games already dominating the market – Design Home and Redecor. Will being able to rotate your furniture and having real-life brands be a unique and attractive enough proposition for players? My instinct tells me it’s going to be a tough sell.

Other Game Announcements

• PUBG Mobile announces a collaboration with Dragon Ball. Link
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang will better reward team play in its upcoming change to the ranking system. Link
• Nintendo removes gacha mechanic from Mario Kart Tour. Link
• Archero developer Habby’s new game, Survivor.io, hits number one in the US downloads charts. Link
• NetEase’s new cross-platform survival shooter, Lost Light, has now launched globally. Link
• Ys Online, a JRPG based on the Ys series of games, is now available on iOS and Android worldwide. Link
• League of Legends: Wild Rift has earned $750 million in revenue in the two years since launch. Link
• Laguna Games, developer of blockchain game Crypto Unicorns, announces four casual mobile titles being in development with strategic partners. While there are blockchain elements in the games, ownership of NFTs is not a requirement to play. Link
• Nintendo’s Dragalia Lost’s servers will be shut down on November 30th. Link

Company Announcements

• NetEase acquires Quantic Dream, the interactive story developer behind Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. Link
• SEA Limited shuts down its live-streaming platform and lays off staff in its gaming unit, Garena, following a quarterly loss of almost $1 billion. Link
• Rollic crosses 2 billion downloads across its portfolio. Link
• Roblox acquires virtual social platform TriplePlay for an undisclosed amount. Link
• Zynga announces a partnership with cosmetics giant Maybelline to host in-game playable ads in its Hypercasual titles Hair Challenge, High Heels, and Blob Runner. Link
• IO Interactive, the developer behind the Hitman series, is eyeing an entry into the mobile game market. Link
• WePlay Ventures and Lima Ventures exit their investment in Udo Games, selling their shares to TaleWorlds, the developer behind the Mount & Blade series. Link

Ecosystem Announcements

• The virtual concert collaboration between PUBG Mobile and BLACKPINK won the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Metaverse Performance. Link
• NetEase has been selected as part of the first round of US audit inspections. Link
• The NFL announces NFL Tuesday Night Gaming, which will see NFL players compete with gaming content creators during the ‘22-’23 football season. Link
• The Pokemon Company sues six Chinese mobile developers for copyright infringement in a game called Pocket Monster Reissue. Link
• The UK’s competition regulator calls for a review of the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard merger. Link
• Mobile game developer Lockwood, developer of Avakin Life, is laying off 15% of its workforce just 9 months after the previous round of layoffs. Link

Content Worth Consuming

• Xsolla: Apple and Google are “the grandpas that overstayed their welcome at Christmas” (MobileGamer.biz): “What Scopely is doing with its web stores through Xsolla is a prime example of what’s coming. Star Trek: Fleet Command, WWE Champions, and more are playable on PC as well as mobile, and if players sign up to a Scopely ID, they can explore bespoke, dynamic IAP offers not available on the App Store or Google Play (while Scopely dodges the 30% platform tax).” Link

• Your Core Game Isn’t Enough (Elite Game Developers): “Players haven’t felt a similar novel experience on mobile for years. Now it’s about being a core audience fan who sticks around because of social features or because your friends are playing the game. Even if you still have a new novel gaming experience, you might rely too heavily on early retention. Many developers fall into the trap of the core game progression, taking care of the player’s appetite to retain and monetize, which is usually fine until Day 30.” Link
• How To Build Your Next IAP Offer Part 2 (GameRefinery): “We featured LINE Bubble 2 already in our part one of building IAP offers, but we just can’t help sharing one more implementation from the game! In this offer, players are incentivized to engage with it by completing tasks. The more tasks players complete, the better the discount for a specific bundle. This is a great way to foster player engagement and link it to an IAP offer.” Link
• Global Gaming Deals Activity Report H1 2022 (Investgame): “M&A activity in H1’22 has been characterized by the decreasing number of deals (–21% YoY), with only 126 closed deals (vs. 159 deals in H1’21) and growing deal value (+36% YoY), which reached $31.1B, excluding the announced deals (e.g., the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft for $68.7. It should be noted, however, that almost 71% of the deal value in H1’22 was contributed by 5 mega-deals, including Zynga, Asmodee, Nintendo, Playtika, and Sumo Group.” Link