Mobile Gaming Industry in 2024 - Opportunities

The mobile gaming market is extremely dynamic and keeps evolving rapidly. The landscape is marked by shifting user behaviours, economic pressures, and intense competition. Today we’ll go through what happened in 2024, and how the tools on Tezos ecosystem can help game devs think outside the box. We’ll explore direct solutions that can enhance game development, player engagement, and monetization, helping studios and game developers thrive in this environment.

Understanding the current mobile market #

The mobile gaming market is undergoing significant changes due to various factors:

1. Post-lockdown shifts: With more people spending time outdoors and engaging with social media and streaming platforms, mobile gaming engagement has seen a decline. People are touching grass!
2. Economic pressures: Inflation and higher interest rates are reducing disposable incomes, impacting consumer spending on games.
3. Geopolitical instability: Global tensions are influencing consumer spending patterns, further affecting the mobile gaming market in multiple geographies.

Despite these challenges, some game genres have shown strength. Puzzle games, for instance, have increased their in-app purchase (IAP) revenue by 10% by focusing on user retention through events and live operations. Hybridcasual games have also experienced a 30% revenue boost, blending casual gameplay with deeper monetization strategies.

It’s hard to say the same thing about most of the game genres though. Action, arcade and simulation games are struggling with a 16% decrease in user interest. Aside from top-tier companies with strong product teams and large marketing budgets, it’s really hard to compete in an already saturated space.

The problems are clear: marketing is bottlenecked and monetization models are already established. The market pushes indie developers and smaller game studios to think outside the box to create a stronger game that would be cheaper to acquire users, or easier to monetize. Today, we’re here to show you outside of the box.

How Tezos can help #

Tezos is a fast, extremely scalable, and efficient blockchain. Within its growing gaming ecosystem, there are free & open-source tools like the Tezos Unity SDK, where game developers can benefit from the Tezos tech stack to add new features to their games right away. There are infinite possibilities, and their creativity can truly empower your game, more easily than you think.

1. Player engagement #

The first thing comes to mind when using Tezos technology in games is that it allows players to own, trade, and sell in-game assets, creating a different, richer experience, and rewire the “value” of the game and the game’s assets themselves.

This feature has been proven to work, even without the use of the blockchain technology, on leading projects like Counter Strike and Dota 2. In mobile gaming, this is almost unheard of. This doesn’t mean that trading doesn’t happen, though. People constantly buy & sell game accounts in corky ways in many games, such as Clash of Clans, Monopoly GO cards, and more.

As a quick example, just imagine, for a game like Clash of Clans, allowing players to truly own their upgraded buildings or rare troops – a certain set of items that wouldn’t harm the game’s economy or primary sales revenue. These could be traded or sold within the game ecosystem, ensuring that every achievement has tangible value, and players would feel empowered by ownership. This is proven to drive further engagement, as seen on titles like Counter Strike, resulting in higher spend in games and increasing long-term retention.

2. Monetization #

Tezos technology offers new monetization avenues beyond traditional in-app purchases. For example, as mentioned above, enabling secondary markets for in-game assets creates ongoing revenue streams through transaction fees.

Once you deploy your game assets – items, skins, etc – or game currency to the Tezos blockchain, the opportunities are truly endless. This would mean that you, as the game developer, could set economic dynamics to benefit from your game’s living transactions. A careful approach is, of course, always important, ensuring that you set clear targets for your main source of revenue (primary sources versus secondary ones, like commissions or fees).

Think of “Genshin Impact,” where rare characters or weapons can be traded on a marketplace. Each trade could generate a small fee for the developer, providing continuous revenue beyond initial purchases, which is how Valve built its legacy.

3. User acquisition #

Traditional UA strategies often involve high costs due to the need for broad targeting and high CPIs. With Tezos, you can reduce these costs by directly engaging with potential users who have shown interest in similar games or genres, effectively lowering acquisition costs.

By rewarding users directly through blockchain-based incentives, you can both increase user retention, and have a better understanding of the greater trends across all games. In addition, players feel valued when they receive personalized rewards, which can translate to higher engagement and longer playtimes.

Imagine a scenario where you can see that a user frequently interacts with a competitor game and spends a considerable amount on in-game purchases. With Tezos, you can directly engage with this user by sending them a personalised airdrop or exclusive in-game items, thus encouraging further engagement – without the boundaries of the distribution platforms or ad networks.

One real-world example of great user acquisition in action is “Catizen,” a Telegram game that has achieved 1.5 million daily active users and over $10 million in revenue. Despite being sometimes dismissed as a simple clicker play-to-earn game, Catizen has effectively hacked distribution and monetization by rewarding players through gameplay, thus attracting more users.

4. Ease of integration #

The Tezos Unity SDK is designed to be developer-friendly, with clear documentation and support, making it accessible even for Unity developers that may be new to blockchain technology. It’s built in a modular way, while being completely open-sourced and free forever. In addition, the team that developed the SDK offers active and completely free technical support if you run into any issues or need help with integration.

Conclusion #

The Tezos Unity SDK offers game developers a powerful toolset to create engaging, innovative, and efficiently monetizable games. By integrating Tezos, game developers can unlock new potentials for player engagement, transactions, and sustainable revenue streams.

It’s not really about blindly following a trend; it’s about solving real problems and providing new opportunities for games and gaming products in the competitive gaming industry.

If you’re a game developer looking to enhance your games and explore new strategies, the Tezos Unity SDK might just be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Explore the possibilities, experiment with new features, and see how this technology can transform your game – take it for a spin today and open up the floodgates!

The future of gaming is here, and it’s powered by Tezos.