Getting started: why hyper casual games?
So, you want to get started doing hyper casual mobile games?
That is a very good idea! In fact hyper casual games are likely the best option for individual developers, school projects, inexperienced teams, or new studios.
These small and simple projects allow experimenting with new game mechanics quickly and getting feedback very early in their development cycle.
Maybe you are trying to experiment a crazy idea that you had for a game and really want to try doing it yourself? Or maybe you are trying to bring together a group of friends to develop a game you would want to play yourself? Another option is that you might be trying to get a job in mobile game development and are trying to learn new tools and build your own portfolio.
Hyper casual games are notorious for being very simple, developed very quickly, and should be easy to understand and play, too! The main point is that the interaction should be super simple (consider just tapping, or just swiping, for example), so that all players can start playing right away without lots of explaining!
If you are just starting with mobile game development, or maybe you are just curious about exploring the mobile platforms in the form of Android and iOS and their respective stores, make sure to simplify your ideas as much as possible, to make it easier to implement. You can always improve and expand them later!
Another side of hyper casual games, is that some bigger companies with experienced teams are now specialising in developing these. In this case, their business strategy involves lots of concurrent projects that are developed and launched very fast, in order to measure their results and performance constantly.
If these projects don’t meet the predefined successful criteria, they should be cancelled and abandoned, in order to free the team for the next project which might be more successful. On the other hand, if these projects have promising metrics, then they get more investment (often in the form of more people dedicated to it, or extra budget for marketing and infrastructure) in the hopes of scaling the game up, bringing in more users and broadcasting the game as much as possible.
For more mature companies, making a business based on hyper casual games can be (over)simplified into this deceptively simple formula: CPI < LTV
This can be translated as: the cost to acquire a new player (CPI - Cost Per Install) must be lower than the value the user generates to the developer during their total time playing the game (LTV - Lifetime Value).
In other words, advertising the game draws the attention of lots of players, some of which end up installing the game, and generating some revenue in the form of in-app purchases (IAPs) or being exposed to advertising. The total marketing costs need to be lower than the revenue generated by the game in order for it to be profitable to the company. Otherwise, a rather fun and successful game might just disappear as fast as it appeared on the stores to be downloaded!
Keep checking the blog for future posts, in order to learn everything about hyper casual games, including ideas to consider, what tools you can use, some tricks to accelerate your projects, how to create a business around them, and above all, having fun building awesome and exciting mobile games!
