Playliner: Which mechanics get into the box office top?

Many game developers often focus on the most commercially successful projects that are at the very top of the US grossing in GooglePlay and AppStore. Usually, the highest-grossing games from the top 20 are considered, as a result of which countless clones of Clash of Clans or Candy Crush are born. However, it should be borne in mind that games earn very well in the “deep” top, so our team decided to analyze more than 300 games by functional blocks to determine what exactly is there.

About game genres and mechanics

Any game can be characterized by a game genre or a combination of basic and additional game mechanics. For example, consider 2 genres – farm and citybuilder. In games of similar genres, you can usually build houses and harvest crops. They differ only in the ratio of the game mechanics of planting and harvesting, as well as the construction of buildings. In farms, the player’s main attention is paid to planting and harvesting, in citybuilders – the construction of buildings. From the point of view of game mechanics in farms, the main mechanic is a farm, an additional one is a citybuilder. Whereas in bodybuilders the opposite is true. Therefore, we decided to divide the games into game mechanics separately, without separating the totality of mechanics into genres. We tried to use the generally accepted names of game mechanics, but sometimes we gave certain mechanics subjective names.

More than half of the top box office games are RPG, slots and strategy

The chart shows the share of games in the top box office that have a certain basic game mechanics.

Let’s briefly list the main mechanics as they decrease.

Unit battle (28%) – a battle on the playing field between units and characters. It can be either card-based or not, with automatic combat or manually controlled, step-by-step or in real time. In general, RPG genre games have Unit battle as their main mechanics.
Most of all in the tops of such games. Yes, they are not in the first places, but their number suggests that it is quite possible to make this kind of game commercially successful.

Slots (12%) is a slot machine with slots. The main component of casino games. The share of slots in the top has hardly changed over the past 3 years. The top is occupied by almost all the same games that occupied it in 2013.

RPG adventure (7%) – the player explores the world (open or consisting of locations), meets characters, performs their quests, finds items. Very often games with this mechanics include Unit Battle battles.

Strategy map (6%) – training troops in the city, sending them to the enemy on the global map, after a while news comes about the result, for example, victory.

Match-3 (6%) – collecting three elements in a row. There are a lot of developer games King.com in the top, but there is no diversity of other publishers in the top box office with similar games.

Assault (5%) (translated as “siege”) is actually a tower offense mechanic. All Clash of Clans are similar games. Very few clones of Clash of Clans broke into the top and began to earn really well.

Breeding (4%) – the basis is the cultivation of characters for further crossing, obtaining new species and evolution. Almost all games with similar mechanics are about dragons.

Shooter (4%) – the basis of the gameplay is shooting at opponents in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. Both from small arms, and from tanks, bows, etc. One of the few mechanics, the share of games with which has actually grown from 1.5% to 4% over the past 3 years. All the others are either growing very slowly or falling.

City Builder (4%) – construction of buildings on the playing field and the formation of a settlement city. Previously, there were much more games in the City Builder genre in the tops than now.

Sim-life (4%) is a life simulator where the player controls the daily life of the characters. There are few games with similar mechanics in the tops, but each has its own publisher. At the same time, there is no major publisher that would capture all positions in the genre.

Poker (3%) – several players gather at the table and play a gambling game of poker.

Additional mechanics

Next, we analyzed all the games that have additional mechanics. Below is a diagram of the proportion of games with certain additional mechanics in relation to all games in total.


The lion’s share of intersections is occupied by two mini-games Wheel of Fortune and Guessing Prize (“guess the prize in the chest”), which are added to almost all games and have become a standard daily bonus. In fact, there are much more interesting varieties of the bonus, but they have not received such distribution.

About intersections of game mechanics

And finally, a table of intersections of specific game mechanics with each other:

The percentage of games with basic and additional mechanics is indicated. For example, 7% of games that have Match3 have additional City builder mechanics.

Some conclusions that can be drawn from this table:

• casinos live by themselves. There is no point in making a match-3 casino with slots;
• city builder is friends with almost all genres. Building your settlement in your Tower defense genre game will not be superfluous;
• you can and should advertise not only by the audience of games of your genre, but also in
  related genres with strong intersections of mechanics.

Thanks for your attention!