Hyper-Casual Trend Digest #3

HYPER NEWS 🗞

Major tech companies make a bid on the gaming business, and IAP is a major focus and challenge for mobile gaming. Coincidence?🕵️

1. 🔗 EU calls for greater players protection

The EU intends to control manipulative practices and addiction in video games. This decision could lead to control of loot boxes, user data, content, etc.

2. 🔗 Only 20 percent of mobile gamers are fully engaged when playing

Advertising platform LoopMe made a report examining the habits of mobile gamers in the US., UK., and Singapore. One of the highlights is that 52 percent of American, 48 percent of British, and 28 percent of Singaporean gamers watch TV while gaming.

3. 🔗 Apple prepares to allow alternative app stores in the EU

The era of App Store exclusivity for iPhones is about to finish. They will also lose the ability to profit from apps coming to the device from other routes.

4. 🔗 2022: The Games Market In Numbers

Newzoo estimate that the games market will have generated $184.4 billion in 2022 marking a fall of 4.3% year-on-year.

5. 🔗 Recap’22: FreePlay reviewed the HC major trends in 2022

Revenuzation of HC segment is an effect of a quality-focused shift in the segment as an answer to decreasing metrics – while traffic acquisition has become more difficult and installs are decreasing, revenue is stable. It comes from numerous experiments with genres, monetization strategies and in-game experiences. And transformation will intensify in 2023.

HYPER TRENDS 📱

The Second Life of YouTube

For a long time we didn’t see any sort of development in terms of relevant and cool trends on YouTube, but with the growth of Shorts, it’s like this platform got a second wind; bloggers started posting videos more often than before. The vertical format looks much more familiar and easier, and we can see that they are more active in launching mini-challenges.

Balloon Challenge

Does not have a clear concept, bloggers show different interactions with balloons.

Mini-challenge with the effect of tension and the scale of what is happening adds the number of pins.

Jesser, Josh Horton

Tic Tac Toe Challenge

The trend can be adapted to any idea: darts with balls, basketball, curling and more. Good recognition and popularity of the game and in the classic form.

Jojo Sim, JOKER X ANIME, Alex Presley

Wednesday — the trend that enriched 2022

Tim Burton’s series Wednesday has broken the record for views on Netflix.

The series has also gone viral on platforms: for example, on TikTok, people are filming dances, doing make-ups, and posting cuts from episodes. There is already an effect on both TikTok and Snapchat, and on Twitter people are just actively discussing the series and posting images/memes.

Wednesday has also made its way to YouTube: Troom Troom, Troom Troom Trick, State Artist, My PB and J Shorts, ASMR_Valvant, JULIA GISELLA, etc.

There have also been projects based on the Wednesday series, such as wednesday hand, Wednesday Run 3D, Outcast Girl, etc.

Trend projects — what else have been realized in the game format?

The clicker boom seems to have gone away, but that doesn’t cancel out the appearance of new interesting trend implementations. Let’s see some examples.

Chia Pet → Trend

Stairs Trickshot → Trend

Scrape Art → Trend