Kabam spoke about the key audiences in the mobile market, as well as what distinguishes a hardcore player from a midcore one.
At Casual Connect Europe, Kabam Studios President Andrew Sheppard (you can read an interview with him here) gave a lecture on “How to learn a midcore game“. We bring to your attention a short version of the presentation.
To begin with, a few words about how Kabam positions itself. Speaking about its own successes, the American company highlights the following things.
- Kingdoms of Camelot – the highest-grossing app by the end of 2012
- Kingdoms of Camelot ranks first in the box office top in 50 countries around the world
- Kabam is among the top five mobile companies by revenue
- Kabam has 11 million registered users on Kabam.com
- over the past year, revenue has grown by 70%
So, everyone has a great idea of what a hardcore player looks like, as a causal one. But who is a midcore user? To find out, Sheppard analyzes existing audiences in detail.
Casual user is noticeably different from hardcore.
After that, Sheppard displays the image of a midcore player. He looks a lot like a casual. However, he has a lot in common with a hardcore user. By the way, all three audiences play primarily to kill time.
Midcore player likes:
- share your impressions of the game
- discover new in-game content
- collecting things and achievements
- interact with friends in the game
Midcore players versus hardcore players:
- 34% less likely to purchase items that are difficult to get
- 20% more likely to buy items that cannot otherwise be obtained
- 13% more likely to purchase what they need
- 4% more patient
The duration of sessions for midcore and casual players is very similar in many ways.
At the end of his speech, Sheppard, using the example of CSR Racing and Real Racing 2, spoke about the key differences between midcore and hardcore projects.
Already by this comparison, it is clear why Real Racing 2 is a project focused on the hardcore user. It is not free, the size of the distribution is almost 500 MB, the number of devices compatible with the application is probably not less, but this is unclear due to the lack of a complete list of gadgets.
The presence of quests, IAP, collections, advanced social integration, as well as simple and visual statistics is already a midcore approach that we can observe from CSR Racing.