We continue to summarize the results of 2021 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones). Alexander Derkach, the company’s marketing director, told us about how the year went for Playrix.
How did 2021 go for the company?
It was a difficult year for the entire industry. This is clearly seen, for example, by the latest Google and Newzoo report. At the same time, the year was very interesting and productive.
All our launched projects continued to develop successfully and, despite the increased competition, confidently retain their places in the top. According to the results of the first half of 2021, we became the second company in the world in terms of user spending in games according to App Annie, and Homescapes became the most popular game among millennials in the United States and in several other major markets.
Around the same time, we crossed the milestone of a billion installations of games in our Scapes series. In the world of hyper-casual games, this will not surprise anyone. But for projects in other genres, this is a fantastic amount.
We also continued to expand to other platforms — HUAWEI AppGallery and Samsung Galaxy Store. At the end of the year, Gardenscapes received the Best Casual Game award at the Samsung 2021 Best of Galaxy Store Awards.
But the most important thing is that we continued to invest in the team with great focus and attention, accumulated smart and talented people in the company. We believe that this is the key to our success. During the year, we felt that we had become even stronger, that we could solve any problems, remain the best in any market. As a result, we are finishing this year in a great mood.
What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?
There are several key trends and events that seemed important to us:
This year, several casual projects have loudly declared themselves and become very successful at once. For us, this is a great signal that the genre has not exhausted itself. We see the untapped potential and believe that we can realize it.
The market continued to consolidate aggressively. Activity in M&A has grown strongly. We have done a good job in this direction, but now it seems that most of the transactions are becoming ineffective — the competition has become too high.
In marketing, everything remains unchanged — competition is constantly growing and, as a result, the cost of attracting players. But this year, a global privacy trend has also been added. Platforms are less willing to share data, which creates additional technical difficulties in performance marketing. As a result, the bar for entering the industry is growing, effective procurement requires stronger teams, as well as more complex and technological solutions. Looking at all these changes with healthy excitement, we are ready to fight and show cool results.
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?
We think that with the current level of competition in the industry, only an innovative game can become a hit, there is no place for others on the market anymore. Our advantage is long—term expertise and resources in order to constantly try new things, experiment. We have 20+ projects in development — we receive a lot of information, check, finalize, close unpromising and combine promising projects. With each iteration, our portfolio is getting stronger. We believe that this will inevitably lead us to release one or more hits, even in the current difficult market.
I would also like to note that by the end of the year, the trend with play-to-earn games gained great momentum. Someone believes that this model can become very popular. We are still cautiously exploring this direction.