Episode 57: Mobile Gaming in 2024: A Mid-Year Deep Dive
Join us as we discuss the first half of 2024 and examine the trends dominating the mobile landscape so far. From Supercell’s comeback with Squad Busters to the emergence of hybrid casual and other core gameplay types, there are lots of lessons to learn from 2024 mobile trends.
Join our expert guests, Kalle Heikkinen, Chief Game Analyst, and Erno Kiiski, also a Chief Game Analyst at GameRefinery, a Liftoff Company, who bring their extensive knowledge and experience to share insights into what these trends mean for the future of mobile gaming, in order to help you stay ahead of the curve.
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Episode Transcript
Introduction
Jon Jordan: Welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook in association with Liftoff. Join us as we uncover the latest trends in user acquisition, monetization, and mobile game design. Hello and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers, and all of the latest trends. I’m your host, John Jordan. Joining me today is Kalle Heikkinen, Chief Game Analyst at Game Refinery by Liftoff. How’s it going, Kalle?
Kalle Heikkinen: Very good, how are you?
Jon Jordan: Yeah, not bad, not bad at all. And Erno, Chief Game Analyst at GameRefinery, a Liftoff Company. How’s it going, Erno?
Erno Kiiski: All good.
Jon Jordan: Good, good. So, we are over halfway through 2024. So time for some retrospective discussion on what’s been going on in the mobile game space, as well as plenty of trends and new games to discuss. So, who’s gonna kick us off? What are the big trends that you are seeing?
Supercell’s 2024 strategy shift
Erno Kiiski: Well, I was thinking maybe at first we could discuss a little bit about the games and, first of all, what are the trends in terms of genres and the new entries in the market? And what has been happening in the first six months before we go in any deeper on the game level feature level details or anything like that? But maybe let’s start off with mid-core stuff. To me, it’s definitely one of the biggest stories of 2024 so far. Supercell has never been out of the picture, of course, but they have made quite a big change of direction and have been scaling pretty much all of their games at the start of 2024. So now, naturally, they are pushing a lot with their live ops, adding a lot of live ops to their game.
Erno Kiiski: They used to be the whole kind of mentality of very tiny teams on these games and kind of like a light on live ops compared to many other competitors and markets, but still kicking ass, but now, especially, they have been ramping that up pretty much on all of their games. And that can also be seen in the performance, especially Brawl Stars, which is probably one game that has been covered most in the industry. So much talked about how they have turned the boat around and have been scaling like crazy, record numbers, record months, month after another.
Erno Kiiski: This game has been around for a while already. So why? Well, of course, I’m not going to tear down and go super deep into the game, but a lot of things are happening with its monetization, like how they overhauled their battle pass system and changed them. There was a lot of discussion when they removed the gacha system. Then there was a small, actual drop in late 2023, but now they figured out how to make that model work that they have. And, you know, how they overhaul their battle pass and, overall, how they are unlocking characters and the monetization. You could earn the currency back and buy the battle pass. But now I have to buy every season of the battle pass and so on. So, there are a lot of changes in terms of how the game works, how the game gets monetised, and especially then talk about the live-ops and how the whole live-ops and live-event framework is supporting the game.
Erno Kiiski: So, massive scaling. The same thing is true with Clash Royale. The game has been scaling, not as radically as Brawl Stars; we have to mention Squad Busters. I think Brawl Stars was Supercell’s last launch, so we finally have Squad Busters getting the game out there. And of course, I think, at least by their own quotes, it was like the biggest launch because it’s kind of like an effort for the launch of a game for Supercell than ever, massive marketing campaigns with all those Hollywood celebrities making the ads and pushing the game there.
Squad Busters: Launch and market reception
Erno Kiiski: Quite a solid start all the way to the top of the charts. But since the launch, I think they launched in May, end of May, it had declined a little bit around to kind of like a top 50 game or so on in the US charts. but now it seems to kind of stabilize around that area also with the download; it has, of course, gone down since the initial launch a little bit, but has stabilized. So now it’s an interesting part of the life cycle to see where the game goes. Are they able to do the same thing as Brawl Stars, add a lot of live events to the game, and support the game for the long run to sustain and stay at the top? That still remains to be a question.
Erno Kiiski: I remember one of our analysts who played that game very thoroughly saying that, at the moment, it’s a stable moment in the game, new content around the amount of live events is still quite light. So, where the game goes next will be a big topic in the latter half of 2024. My first highlight would definitely be the Supercell new game and all the game scaling.
Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. On Supercell, I have to say that, and when it comes to Squad Busters, specifically, like Erno said, this is the interesting phase where It’s still early to say anything definite yet. We definitely need more time to see how the game forms. But at the moment, I actually have more questions than answers. One of them has always been: How much is this game actually cannibalizing Brawl Stars? Even though it has that more PVE focus, there’s still quite a lot of overlap when it comes to the nature of the games. That’s always been in my mind.
Kalle Heikkinen: And then the other one, is that when it comes to this record-breaking pre-registrations, I think a lot of it was driven by players wanting to get the free skin that they could get out of by clicking that pre-registration button. So I’m just wondering how many of those players did that? Just because of getting that skin. so that showed up, of course, the downloads, but how are they gonna, you know, are they going to stay in the game or go back to the other Supercell portfolio games?
Supercell’s China strategy and Hay Day relaunch
Kalle Heikkinen: And then another thing that is more of a broad, Supercell, notion, which is actually not that much discussed, I feel is that in addition to all these, It’s like, for example, Brawl Stars breaking records with their performance and, and some other titles they’re doing extremely well. Supercell has also been active in releasing games in China. Just a couple of months back, they re-released Hay Day. Nowadays, if you want to do a China launch, you need to partner up with a local entity. Supercell has also had to take back its games and then relaunch them. They’ve been doing that gradually. The latest one is Hay Day, which has been able to sustain itself in China.
Jon Jordan: I guess one of the interesting things with Supercell is, or one of the arguments would be, the sort of the scale aspect. I’m sure they’ve done it in their own Supercell way, but to me, a lot of that is just them catching up to what the industry has been doing for the last three years. And they, they’ve always been, we’re gonna do it our way and have these, you know, super sales, very small teams and not have producers and all this sort, and to a degree, as I say, I’m sure they’ve done it with their own style, I think it’s them finally having to admit this is how the market is these days. And we can’t just be an exception. so they basically copy the best practices of a lot of these things that they haven’t been doing. So, I mean, it’s good to see. So it’s not a criticism, but I think the differentiation companies have now to sort of do their own thing and stand out is sort of now almost impossible. People know how the industry works and you sort of have to get with the industry. If you’re going To be successful. And it sort of shows actually, you know, that They make great products. So you’d almost expect them to use best practices of the industry. They’re going to get that extra sort of boost because they really know their games.
Jon Jordan: So it’s good to see. Is it a good point on Squad Busters? I guess there’s so much going on there that they’re not. It’s good to get the launch out, but they can now take a much sort of longer term perspective on these things and sort of run them as a portfolio. And there’s not so much pressure on one particular game now.
Supercell’s IP and interconnectedness
Erno Kiiski: It’ll be interesting to see because, like the whole Squad Busters, the idea of the game is this connection of the, all the Supercell IPs, will there be more actual interconnection, other than just, of course, the IPs Start to do more of this like portfolio interconnection, especially most likely there are a lot of overlap with the players of Specific games in like Supercell portfolio, but at the moment it’s been of course the IP same characters but will there be more actually like Even more interconnection between those games. Of course, they have the Supercell IP and all that stuff. So Very interesting to see if there will be something like that.
Kalle Heikkinen: Will they go deeper to the characters and to the lore of the Supercell IPs because I feel that, like, Okay, I’m not the biggest Supercell player out there, but I do feel that it’s not the most, I wouldn’t describe the characters or the background lore of these games being the deepest when it comes to different IPs and stuff like that. So interesting to see if they’re gonna, dig deeper into that, part and expand the lore and background of the characters.
Jon Jordan: You mentioned Kalle there about cannibalization and how they place everything within their portfolio if you want to think of it that way, and I guess over time now, we’re just looking at, not many companies had the experience of running successful games over 10 years. And you realize how you run games and how you push things in certain ways. There is a sort of rhythm to that, and how you place games within those rhythms is probably pretty complicated. But equally, yeah, that inter-sort of connectedness, almost like a, not quite a meta-layer, that’s probably putting it to a complex point, but having games that fit into where other games are moving away from will be fascinating over the next few years to see how they play that out.
Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, I guess in a way this is like a test to the Supercell IP, that how strong is it I’m not gonna say that, let’s say if Squad Busters is not gonna perform as well as everyone is predicting. I’m not saying that means that the Supercell IPs or the IPs of the different games are failing or anything like that.
Jon Jordan: It’s interesting as a company that their IPs, maybe with the exception of Hay Day, do feel like a very connected sort of selection of, Games and characters, and you know, I think that’s slightly accidental. They have tried other things in the past, but they have ended up with a game world, a Nintendo-type game world, where everything fits together. And not many companies in the world have that because it’s quite hard to do. So that’s another thing to look at on the IP side. Okay. But the mobile game industry is not just Supercell. So, should we break out of that and move on?
Asian publishers’ growing RPG presence in Western markets
Erno Kiiski: All right. maybe next, if we stick with the more, like, mid-core-ish titles, one thing that we have noticed, which is kind of interesting, knowing where the market is and how hard it is to scale, especially like this mid-core, hardcore type of games, is that if we look at like especially the U.S. market or the Western markets and look at the games that have been able to enter that top, top rankings for example, top 200 in the U. S. games that have been launching this year. So new games. So on, in 2024, there’s actually. many RPGs out there, considering the market situation at the moment. So, of course, AFK journey has a spin-off slash sequel to the highly successful AFK arena, an idle RPG with even higher production values, a bit of a different twist. They launched at the end of March. It has had a strong launch but has been going down a little bit, also not being able to sustain on the top, but still out there on the top 50 rankings. So doing okay, but maybe not as explosive a launch as somebody could have expected from AFK arena, especially what it was back in the day. So a little bit on a downward trend, let’s see, are they able to turn that one around. Then, there are other RPGs from Netmarble, who are pushing out so many turn-based RPGs, and especially with this kind of anime feel.
Erno Kiiski: If I understand correctly, there was this game called Solo Leveling: Arise, which is apparently an IP from a Korean webtoon. And that launched, I think, in May. Very strong launch, very kind of like a classic, what we see in the Western markets with this type of action RPG that has that huge spike. And then usually after the launch spike of this kind of like a niche audience they get that everybody’s all this is a game in the market, but it usually declines very quickly. But with this game, what is exceptional, at least at this point, is that it hasn’t gone down so radically, it is still able to sustain okay rankings, it has gone down. Yes, definitely. But it’s still able to sustain itself there. I’m in the top 50 and top 80 among the top-grossing games. So, it’s very interesting to see. Is it able to sustain itself for any longer term? It’s only been a month, but often, in these games, the initial launch spike has gone much more radically down in terms of performance. It remains to be seen, but at least so far, it has been able to sustain a bit better than your average similar type of anime-based action RPG in the West.
Erno Kiiski: And then there is the third one in the same category, Wuthering Waves, which is this kind of a cross-platform from PC mobile type of action RPG, again, anime-themed, pretty much a straight-up competitor against Genshin Impact. So open world, character collector, RPG, the differences in the combat, if I understood correctly, I haven’t played the game myself, this type of action RPG where you’re collecting characters, super high production values in Genshin Impact style, open world and all that stuff. Again, it had a quite strong launch, all the way to the top 10 and very top, but it had declined a little bit. But now again, when they brought the first, bigger content batch, at the end of June, a couple of days ago, if you look at Genshin Impact’s revenue graph, there is always a massive spike again when they bring new characters, back to the top, the same with Wuthering Waves. So, at least at the moment, let’s see where the baseline will find itself, but we’re doing quite well. We’re doing quite well, especially considering, again, it’s a game that’s cross-play. A lot of the players will be moving or will possibly play on a PC. PC with a bit of a better control for that kind of a game, but still doing quite solidly, after about a month, over a month of launch, in mobile. Overall, interesting to see that there are quite a few of these RPGs that have been able to sustain at least, over a month, in the market; a month is a short time. So what’s the long-term sustainability, but at least, some fresh blood on that section?
Kalle Heikkinen: And we have the, what? Zenless zone zero is coming, I guess. Yes.
Erno Kiiski: Yeah, Thursday, I think it’s 4th of July, a new game from miHoYo, so most likely will be on the very, very top again, like, you know, same as with Genshin, same as with Honkai, so definitely probably one of the biggest mobile launches of the year coming like in a couple of days.
Kalle Heikkinen: So, listening to what you just said, I feel like one of the trends of this year is most likely the anime-themed games, or at least anime-themed RPGs. Looks like we’ve had quite many of those. And I think one thing that links all these is also the fact that these all come from Asian publishers, right? So, I guess we can throw that out there as an example. I’m not saying that it’s been a trend for the last six months, but let’s maybe label it as an ongoing trend that the Asian publishers are just growing their presence in the Western markets.
Call of Duty Warzone Mobile: Cross-progression challenges
Erno Kiiski: Then if we move on from the RPGs, maybe the last that I would like to highlight in 2024 on the mid-core side, I would highlight Call of Duty Warzone, One of the biggest games on the PC and console side that there is, and the mobile version launched with cross-progression, which is also an interesting trend. We have been talking about cross-platform, and it’s, one of the trends that a lot of people talk about, actually cross-platform games and having the mobile version of the same game, But the difference with Warzone was that it wasn’t actually the same game in that way that you were not able to play against PC players or mobile players couldn’t play against the PC players and so on, but they had cross-progression. So there, you know, your progress vectors in the game that you’re collecting the weapons and progressing in the shared battle pass. So if you play on a mobile, and then hop onto the PC, that’s the same progression. So you are sharing that progression and, you know, can do the grinding on either platform.
Erno Kiiski: But then, if we hop onto the performance of the game, it’s not been very good. It’s struggling quite a bit. Of course, when it launched, it spiked there, but then it got down quite heavily. And nowadays, it’s not even among the top 200, like crossing games in the US. Compared to when Tencent published or developed Call of Duty mobile, it is still in the top 10,, still struggling. How are they able to get it? Players out of that mobile SKU that, you know, they have their players, they have their tons of skins already, haven’t been able to really pull off players from there. Not different enough. And also, if you compare it to like live ops machine, Tencent is able to kind of like push out on a weekly basis compared to what the Warsaw mobile is doing with the live event. It’s much slower, much more, and less content than Call of Duty mobile. So we’ll be interested to see what Activision is actually gonna, you know, keep the game alive, for a long term, because, at least in terms of performance, it’s not really, really doing it. But of course, there are the kind of like, might be, I don’t know how it has affected, for example, the PC side or like, are some of the PC players like, yeah, playing there, but all the monetization is happening on the chest of the PC client, for example, what’s that? So there’s that. It’s not visible on mobile performance, but yeah, to be honest, there’s no competition against Call of Duty Mobile.
Kalle Heikkinen: The only sensible thesis behind that is that they want to have the kind of mobile extension of the game so that people can also use it. Something related to Warzone, even when they’re not on their PCs. But other than that, as you said, it doesn’t look too good. But Erno, you forgot to talk about Love and Deepspace. So I want to mention this, of course, not maybe the biggest explosion when it came to long-term success. Nevertheless, this was one of the most interesting titles to hit the market, in my opinion. This is a hybrid dating simulator for anyone who doesn’t know what Love and Deepspace is. There are a lot of interactive story elements in the game, but interestingly enough, it also has an action RPG layer where you upgrade characters, and that’s a big part of the gameplay as well. In terms of performance, it is interesting that this was a successful game in multiple markets. So, in Japan, in China, and when it also launched in the U.S., I just looked at the data, and now it’s only peaking to inside the top 200 grossing, so it’s not sustaining there anymore. This was an interesting case and super high production values, by the way. The game looks absolutely phenomenal. So that was interesting and obviously comes from, I believe from China. So the publisher’s info Infold, I would assume that it’s from China, Hong Kong, or something like that.
Erno Kiiski: Yeah, when the game launched, it was at least, I don’t know how much of these types of games have been buried in Asian markets, but a game that was able to do okay in terms of launch of this type of. Pretty much an interactive story game, but with kind of like a depth of an RPG meta-system, which was very, very, usually you don’t see these games do anything in the West, but now it’s for a month or two, it was doing surprisingly well. So yeah, good highlight. All right. Should we hop on to the casual side?
Hybrid casual trends
Erno Kiiski: Maybe first we could talk a little bit about hybrid casual. And that’s also one of the trends, of course, hybrid casual, companies struggling with the hybrid casual model, moving to hybrid casual. And then also, these different types of, hybrid monetization models of different genres, adding ad monetization into the play and trying to get that Low CPIs in terms of gameplay to be very easily digestible, easy to get into, but then actually building it. So of course, it’s not like a new thing in 2024, but we have seen even more new games, different types of games in this, that could be categorized as hybrid as well. So, I would put these in two buckets. Are these real simple hybrid casuals, which have been mostly like puzzle games recently? If you look at IAP charts, as these are hybrid casuals, the whole point is that it’s hybrid monetization—there are ads, and they are IAPs. But even with just the IAP revenue, there have been multiple, different kinds of Hybrid monetized, hybrid casual puzzle games entering also the top charts with IAPs. And what is very interesting there is that there are a lot of different types of core gameplay involved. So there are games like Screw Jam, which is the game where you’re Screwing, screwing these jams and, you know, trying to figure out which screws you need to remove to remove this like block wooden blocks type of a puzzle game. Then there is another very similar game called Wood and Nuts, very well compared to those two games in that kind of core gameplay. Then there is a Twisted Tangle from Rollick Games, so from Zynga. Basically, these, like, you have these different ropes, tangled between each other and you need to solve that puzzle. A game called Hexasword, I think it was from Lion Studios if I’m correct, Basically this type of, different blocks of, piles of blocks that you need to move around and then figure out the same colors and stuff like that, but anyways, different types of core gameplay is like, if you think about the puzzle market or the traditional casual puzzle market, it’s very. There are specific types of core gameplay. It’s max three there. It’s merge or so on and so on, or like hidden objects and so on. And it’s always almost the same type of core gameplay. So what is interesting with this trend that we have seen with the hybrid monetization models and these types of games, there is a lot of, Variety in terms of like core gameplay, but what is common between these is, of course, a lot of them have like similar type of a monetization things for the IAP. So, you know, the usual puzzle things like a puzzle, like the boosters and the extra time or move or depending a little bit on what the core is like. Also, if you look at, you know, what makes them this hybrid casual, not hyper casual puzzle game is that they are adding more content, so more levels, on a specific cadence. And also, of course, it’s the live events and kind of like the live event framework that supports that core gameplay. So if you look at any of these types of games, the events that they are pushing on top of the game to give that kind of like more incentives to, for players to, you know, purchase things and play the game, engage players more into the playing the game. It is actually very similar to any type of puzzle game. So, that is very common, no matter what the core gameplay is or the event types and so on that support it. Across any type of puzzle game, whether it’s Royal Match, Match Three, Garden Scapes, or these hybrid casual puzzle games, many similar event types and event frameworks are used to push players for the core gameplay. So this is definitely one kind of a clear genre, these hybrid casual puzzle games with different types of core gameplay. How do you actually play those puzzles and solve those puzzles?
Erno Kiiski: And then the second bucket that I wanted to mention is this. What people still call hybrid casual, which is this Survivor IO type of game or Archer type of game. Both of these genres are commonly called hybrid casual in the industry, but they are very, very different in that way. If you play Survivor IO, for example, yes, it starts simple. The whole idea is that you can make very appealing, easy-to-understand games. ads and so on. But then when you play for it for a week, for example, then the game actually has the depth of any mid-core RPG in terms of features, in terms of different ways that they are monetizing those meta-features and so on. So this is like a different bucket of a hybrid casual. So yes, they are also monetizing hybrids. Insane amount of depth, in terms of its features, once you get deeper and deeper into the game, and there have been a couple of games, for example, this quite recent game, has been scaling goals. Some zombie.io, which has been, it’s basically a survivor IO type of a game, but it has a lot of innovative features. You put even more effort into a character collection and build a team, and then that affects the core gameplay. They have tons of depth into the game. It has 10 different progression vectors. So different ways that you can get stronger. And then, when you start the game, it’s like, ah, this is nice and easy to get into, but it is like a crazy amount of depth. And then of course, everything is almost monetized, both with ads, both with, you know, IAP. So there’s also a crazy amount of spend depth over there. So, one game in that category has been scaling and doing some innovative stuff. Over there, to follow.
Kalle Heikkinen: Okay, I have to say, you kind of stole my thunder when it comes to the hybrid casual stuff, that was really thorough, going through all the highlights of what is going on there. But I’m just trying to think of what I could add to that. And I guess I’ve always struggled with the definition of hybrid casual. Sometimes, it feels like if you have a game that monetizes both on IAA and IAP, that’s a hybrid casual. And if that’s the case, then you can. That’s a pretty vague definition. And then on the other hand, some people defined it as being like a combination of. mid-core, even hardcore elements in game mechanics-wise, but then combining that with a very casual, let’s say, art style or something like that. And there are other ways to think about it as well. So, I always struggle a bit with the definition, but nevertheless, I think the last six months have really proven that these hybrid casual games are able to not only break into the top 200 grossing but also sustain themselves there. So, for example, some of the games that Erno mentioned, like Twisted Dangle, that was released last December, and It’s still in the top 200 grossing, so, the formula has been kind of proven now. It’s not only about Archero anymore. a couple of years back when people asked, for example, for us, more analysis on hybrid casual games. We were like, well, there’s Archero and what else is out there? But now the market has definitely expanded.
Jon Jordan: So it sounds like it is interesting where you have the very casual starting experience to sort of encourage many people. And then you’re sort of filtering through that. And I guess at an original point, we would think when people play those games, some are going to monetize through adverts, and some are going to go through in-app purchases, but maybe as they get more complicated, the split between the monetization changes as people get further into the game. So you want to have those deep retention mechanics, you know, towards the end, simple at the start. And then, that’s sort of how that genre is expanding. But maybe some homework, come up with a new definition while you’re, Do a stamp on the industry.
Jon Jordan: I’ll make a note. There is lots of stuff going on there. It is funny how much of it comes back to thinking about LiveOps. That always springs out to me as you’re talking about these games, and the whole industry is always getting more and more deeply into live ops and even into what we might call casual experiences. And anything else that we have to add to this?
Microfun and merge games
Erno Kiiski: I think Kalle knows the company better, but I would if we talk about the more mid-core. I’ve talked about Supercell, but maybe you could talk a little bit about Microfun.
Kalle Heikkinen: Yes. So, Merge Two is definitely one of the genres that has been doing extremely well this year. It is mostly driven by games like Travel Town. Then we have Gossip Harbor and Seaside Escape from Microfun. That company’s interest comes from China, and they clearly have this portfolio strategy. They do in-game cross-promotion, so you have these events going on where they advertise the other games in the portfolio so that if you download those games and engage with them, you get rewards in the app where you downloaded those games. That’s obviously a very clever way to move players around. Some studies have shown that People often have more than one merge game on their phones when it comes to the merge genre. So it makes total sense to advertise that they have, for example, merge three games also in their portfolio. So I have kind of a couple of different Takes on the merge and advertising them, pushing them to certain players can be very effective and for Seaside Escape and Gossip Harbor, that has been very beneficial. And also, on the product side, they’ve been constantly updating these titles; for example, Gossip Harbor, they added a race event just a couple of months back, which was, of course, interesting. We haven’t seen those much in the. Merge to side and, in general, in non-level-based games, not so much. For example, this was, I think, already from last year, but they have this, like a relationship, progression mechanic there where you can build your relationship with some of the in-game characters and, Have a progression vector attached to that not only Someone could say that Gossip Harper is very much inspired by Love and Pies but you could also make the argument that they have been trying to innovate and Add, new things to the game and also to the merge to genre in general.
Erno Kiiski: It’s kind of interesting in that way. I feel that it’s a company that hasn’t been talked about that much yet because, but, like, if you look at any of these games, like Gossip Harbor, it’s basically been doing bigger month, bigger month, bigger month in terms of revenue one after another. It’s a game that has been scaling constantly. And then, you know, nowadays it’s like among the travel town, which are advertised like moon active, I guess, nowadays owns the game and they’re advertising the game like crazy. But Gossip Harbor is a game that’s basically clear number two now in the merge two category; there’s Travel Down there’s Gossip Harbor. The second release, Seaside Escape, is another game from the same genre and company. It’s now also been scaling a lot. So, they are becoming a very interesting company in that genre. Gossip Harbor was, very much like Love and Pies, but they have been, again, Gossip Harbor has been pushing so much LiveOps into the game compared to maybe their competitors like Love and Pies, So a lot of, different types of events, not all of them, have been super innovative in that way that, you know, there are proven mechanics seen in the other genres, you know, like, for example, I think they just added this kind of like a Potion event that, I think Royal Match brought the end of last year or so and now Gossip Harbour brought it. But that was the first time in the Merge Two genre. So they are scaling a lot with the live events and a very interesting company that, yeah, is not talked about a lot, and it’s not very out there. I think it’s China-based, right, Kalle? So there is not a lot of information about the company out there, but in that genre, it is very much a scaling one.
Jon Jordan: LiveOps again. We keep coming back to it, but that’s sort of what it is, isn’t it? I mean, it’s always been that thing with mobile games. People have it on their phones. It’s always there. They always want something new. It’s hard to move people from one game to another. So you want to keep them in your game. If even Supercell doubles down on LiveOps, that’s the thing. Cool. Good. Well, that was a very good overview. Thank you, very much to Erno and Kele for their expertise.
Kalle Heikkinen and Erno Kiiski: Thank you.
Jon Jordan: Plenty of games to be checking out there. I haven’t heard of a few, so maybe the homework for everyone is to check out some new games and see how you get on with them. But thanks for listening to the podcast. Every episode, we discuss what’s going on in the world of mobile games. So don’t miss out, do subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.
