Publisher Voodoo releases one successful game after another. Hyper-casual games from Voodoo generate 100 million downloads per month. The secret lies in the great creative freedom that the publisher provides to its developers.
What are the realities of the hyper-casual games market and where are the pitfalls in their development, Voodoo Sales manager Alexander Shea told the Mobile Free To Play portal. And we present an extract from the interview.
Alexander Shi
Releasing four games a month, Voodoo makes sure that many of them (for example, Perfect Hit and Tenkyu) become real hits.
Voodoo has achieved such success by encouraging its developers to create innovative gameplay.
As in other creative industries, in the market of hyper-casual games, studios spy on each other especially successful mechanics, are inspired by them and produce similar projects. Voodoo is trying to keep developers from such practices, inspire them to create breakthrough games with an unusual concept that will stand out. And to do this, you need to let the studio focus entirely on what it knows best.
In order to create all the conditions for creativity for the developer, Voodoo has fully taken care of advertisers. At the same time, the publisher does not limit itself in the methods of promoting new games.
A tool created by Voodoo with an ever-growing database helped to establish contact between the publisher and the developer. With its help, any developer can submit their game for evaluation, and Voodoo will report within a few days whether the game is capable of becoming a hit or potentially failing.
The publisher monitors the entire development cycle of a new project and provides constructive criticism and recommendations even at the latest stages. Take Perfect Hit: initially, a good prototype gained popularity when fundamental changes were made to it at the suggestion of Voodoo. To do this, it was necessary to significantly redesign the gameplay and complement the game with new visual effects. After that, the retention of the seventh day increased from 9% to 22%, and the price per download was fixed at $ 0.15.
Over the past year, Voodoo has been analyzing key performance indicators for hyper-casual games. So, with a “soft” launch of a new product, the retention rate on the first day is usually above 50%, and on the seventh day it is above 20%. Strong long-term retention sometimes helps to achieve the mechanics that are used in idle games or clickers. But you need to integrate it into hyper-casual games with caution, since it is not suitable for all projects.
The download price at the start of the project should be low enough for users of different genders. Voodoo believes that it is not necessary to cut off half of the market by creating games with the expectation of only a male or only a female audience. When developing a game that is equally interesting to men and women, you need to consider two points:
- the choice of gameplay between meditative-contemplative and competitive;
- choosing a color scheme between neutral and very bright.
It is possible to achieve a balance in these things, but for this you need to study the indicators of already released games. And also rely on the average lifetime of projects in this genre. The problem is, explains Shin, that the hyper-casual games market is so young that it is not yet possible to identify centenarians among them. But it is already known that this market attracts more and more publishers, and competition in it is growing, as is the interest of players in hyper-casual projects.
Source: Mobile Free to Play