How Rollic hit 2B downloads for its hypercasual video games

Rollic has crossed two billion lifetime downloads throughout its portfolio of hypercasual video games, or accessible titles which you could play in a minute or much less.

Whereas hypercasual video games have had a difficult time up to now 12 months, Istanbul-based Rollic was in a position to enhance its viewers and engagement with extra use of reside operations, on-line leaderboards, seasonal occasions and customizable characters. Rollic has now launched 19 video games which have hit No. 1 or No. 2 within the U.S. App Retailer.

I talked with Rollic CEO Burak Vardal, who cofounded the corporate in 2018. Zynga acquired the corporate in October 2020 for $168 million, after which Zynga itself was acquired by Take-Two Interactive this 12 months.

Rollic started including reside providers to its titles in 2021 with the launch of the first-ever reside on-line leaderboard in Hair Problem, the rewarded advert “Undertake a Pet” function in Excessive Heels, and seasonal vacation occasions throughout six of its video games.

To this point in 2022, Rollic has debuted 14 video games which have ranked within the top-10 most downloaded video games within the U.S. App Retailer, together with Automobile Lot Administration, Espresso Stack, Colours Runners, Hoard Grasp, Crowd Evolution, and Fill The Fridge.

Right here’s an edited transcript of our interview with Vardal.

GamesBeat: Inform me extra about your historical past at Rollic, and the historical past of Rollic as nicely.

Burak Vardal: We co-founded Rollic, two companions and I, again in December 2018. It’s fairly a younger firm. We began as a hypercasual sport writer, and we’re nonetheless a hypercasual writer and developer. Because the starting we’ve launched greater than 200 titles in complete. The newest information is Rollic passing 2 billion downloads worldwide in July. We’ve launched greater than 15 titles that reached first place in the USA app retailer and worldwide app retailer.

GamesBeat: How many individuals are on the workforce now?

Vardal: Proper now we’re 165 individuals. The entire workforce is in Istanbul. However in fact we work with a number of third social gathering builders as a writer. We now have many product managers, sport managers, who work on the ideation and manufacturing of video games. Then we have now builders, artists, and different conventional sport firm divisions.

GamesBeat: How a lot of your portfolio is inside versus exterior improvement?

Vardal: Our exterior improvement community is big. Proper now about 90 p.c of our manufacturing is coming from our third social gathering developer companions.

GamesBeat: Did an excellent deal change for you after the Zynga acquisition? What’s totally different?

Vardal: Hypercasual is a completely totally different world. Once we joined Zynga, they didn’t have a hypercasual division. We joined as a brand new sub-genre of cellular video games, which is usually a bonus when becoming a member of an enormous like Zynga. However our imaginative and prescient for cellular gaming–the variations between sub-genres like informal and hypercasual within the present market are very small. Video games have gotten nearer to one another. We’re creating extra media round our video games, extra ranges, extra content material. Informal firms are looking for scalable ideas like hypercasual does.

Becoming a member of Zynga was an enormous benefit for us. We now have the tradition of all the time producing one thing new in an ongoing approach. Zynga has this franchise tradition, which is immediately reverse, associated to managing reside video games for a really very long time and constructing a lifetime of greater than 5 years for his or her titles. That was one thing we didn’t have. Our approach of conceptualizing video games and doing scale assessments was a brand new factor for Zynga. The mixing was a giant win for each firms. Rollic’s scale is greater than 3 times greater now in comparison with after we joined Zynga. I can say that it’s all gone nicely.

GamesBeat: Hypercasual — I hear individuals say some hyperbolic issues about it lately. I bear in mind Frank Gibeau saying that one of many issues about Rollic that’s useful to Zynga is that it brings a special sort of consumer in entrance of them that they weren’t in any other case aware of. They weren’t reaching that sort of consumer. That grew to become crucial at a time when there was much less visibility due to Apple’s IDFA adjustments. Whenever you don’t know the place you’ll be capable of supply customers, having an excellent funnel for customers by hypercasual is essential. That helped shield the corporate. It regarded like that typically labored. However Zynga did face an impression that it talked about in a while from IDFA. Ultimately it offered to Take-Two, which assured a extra secure surroundings through which to function.

I’ve heard different individuals say that hypercasual can be affected in some methods by IDFA, which to me didn’t all the time make sense. Some individuals say that hypercasual is dying due to IDFA. That reasoning doesn’t sound correct. However I suppose the query is, what are a few of the macro traits affecting hypercasual? How have you ever seen this a part of the business change?

Vardal: Being within the kitchen of these items, on our facet issues look a bit totally different. I’d say completely reverse. To begin with, hypercasual as a style is the results of the consuming habits of the world proper now. Individuals are consuming issues very quick. Their consideration span is decrease than at any time earlier than. Individuals are searching for totally different, however enjoyable mechanics and leisure for 10-Quarter-hour a day, after which they wish to transfer on to a brand new factor. In the event you analyze TikTok, that is what TikTok is, proper? You spend a number of seconds on a video, have enjoyable, and transfer on to a brand new one. You don’t spend 50 minutes on it.

That’s an important level. For a sport style to succeed on a mass scale, it ought to characterize the consuming habits of the world. Subsequently, I believe hypercasual won’t ever die, as a result of these consuming habits gained’t change. The second factor is, since hypercasual video games are being performed by actually everybody, the impact of audience-related focusing on measurements is way decrease on the hypercasual scale. We’re not searching for a selected viewers. We’re searching for everybody. Subsequently, in our world, we don’t have a lot depth to our viewers evaluation. When you have got 2 billion downloads, how particular can the viewers be? It’s everybody. You possibly can’t section that viewers. Our totally different video games appeal to totally different individuals, however within the complete funnel, hypercasual is a residing organism that’s nonetheless rising. The primary purpose is that large scale primarily based on the consuming habits of the world.

GamesBeat: Is advert income in hypercasual being affected by any main traits?

Vardal: There are results, in fact, however typically it’s primarily based on seasonality. The great thing about advert income in gaming, although, is that it’s all the time optimizable. In the event you see a softness over a few days, it’s very straightforward to get out of that and create new programs behind your sport. It’s primarily based on CPMs. It’s primarily based on different firms paying for it, not people. The supply of advert income is coming from the advertising spend from different firms, whereas in-app purchases come from particular person spending. That’s the primary distinction. The pattern variations in advert income are a lot decrease than in different monetization programs.

At Rollic we’re all advert income. We adore it. Within the present normal financial construction of the world, advert income could have extra benefits as a result of, once more, it’s indirectly affected by what’s within the pockets of people. I believe advert income in gaming will proceed to develop sooner or later, each within the brief time period and long run.

GamesBeat: I’ve been enjoying this Idle Siege sport from Gameloft obsessively for some time. It reveals me advertisements each time I wish to do one thing – if I wish to pace up gaining a degree, I can select to see the advert or spend in-game foreign money. I don’t know whether or not selecting the advert makes me a superb buyer or a horrible buyer. I haven’t spent any cash on the sport to this point. However I’m all the time clicking the advertisements.

Vardal: I believe the query is for you. Would you wish to spend 4 {dollars}, or would you want to observe an advert? Each consumer is totally different. The long run lies in giving customers the prospect to decide on. That’s beautiful, as a result of you’ll be able to both spend money or you’ll be able to watch advertisements. Some wish to spend cash and a few wish to spend time watching advertisements. Our job as sport firms is to foretell which makes the larger LTV, predict that you simply’re a non-spender, and optimize the advertisements we serve you accordingly. That’s most likely what they’re doing, and it’s what we do. If the consumer is just not prepared to purchase one thing, we perceive that in a short time, so we begin providing them advert alternatives to earn extra within the sport. That’s a win-win for each events.

GamesBeat: You don’t thoughts being profitable someway.

Vardal: After all. It’s higher than not monetizing you in any respect. With the present CPMs, we’re seeing a optimistic pattern after IDFA. Advert income LTVs have gotten a lot larger. I think that in some unspecified time in the future they’ll be competing immediately with in-app buy LTVs, which is nice. There are some customers watching greater than 500 advertisements in our video games per thirty days. They adore it. The entire LTV could be very near an in-app spender. It’s all about monetizing correctly with out having a adverse impression on the consumer expertise. It’s finest to offer the consumer the prospect to decide on.

GamesBeat: Are there predictions you may make going ahead, whether or not for the remainder of the 12 months or in 2023? What do you see occurring with hypercasual at an business degree?

Vardal: On the highest degree, a number of consolidation is going on. Take-Two, Zynga. You possibly can see this happening within the gaming world. However different huge firms that aren’t in hypercasual but are nonetheless attempting to grasp it. In the meantime, firms like Zynga that have already got a hypercasual division, they’ve the benefit when it comes to scale. The key phrase for the long run in hypercasual, it’s nonetheless rising. I can see an inexpensive proportion development in hypercasual companies. However the trick behind that development alternative is hypercasual sport firms turning into higher sport designers and creating higher video games.

That is nonetheless gaming. When it’s not console or huge informal titles or MMORPGs, I believe typically individuals go away apart the significance of making a greater sport. Nevertheless it’s the identical for hypercasual. If you would like development, it is advisable to make higher updates, extra options, greater daring beats, extra scalable ideas with higher long-term retention. Within the present world, for Rollic, with the quantity of ideas we take a look at and analyze each month, I believe we have now the largest benefit in creating higher video games in comparison with different firms. That’s the largest issue proper now. We now have an enormous quantity of expertise to grasp what to provide subsequent. That’s a number of leverage that solely hypercasual firms have proper now.

The expansion, particularly in cellular gaming, lies in how rapidly and efficiently we are able to use our knowledge and our expertise to create higher video games. We will’t do it with the video games we produced three years in the past. We have to enhance ourselves yearly. The long run lies in merging the tradition of latest in hypercasual with the tradition of reside to make higher video games. That’s how I see the way forward for cellular video games on my facet.

GamesBeat: Did you ever make use of any Zynga IP? Do you suppose it’s potential that you might make use of Take-Two IP going ahead?

Vardal: For the hypercasual enterprise, it’s not essentially related. We’re doing a number of very fast prototyping and fast testing with new ideas each month. Within the short-term future for Rollic and hypercasual, IP mergers aren’t trying very related to our enterprise. However in complete with Zynga and Take-Two, it makes a number of sense.

GamesBeat: What’s Turkey like in relation to the studio neighborhood there? Is there nonetheless a number of startup exercise?

Vardal: Rollic was one of many fundamental freewheels of the Turkish gaming startup ecosystem. Once we began as a sport writer in 2018, early 2019, there have been a couple of studios in Turkey making video games. They had been attempting to publish their video games with international publishers, and their success price at that was very low. Earlier than Rollic, there have been solely two video games launched by a Turkish studio by a worldwide writer. We launched greater than 200 titles with greater than 80 totally different Turkish studios within the final three years.

After all, with out expertise it’s unattainable, however I believe the gaming tradition in Turkey is an ideal match for founding gaming startups. Nearly all of Rollic’s present manufacturing is in Turkey. We’re nonetheless shifting ahead with our Turkish studio companions, who we’ve identified since their foundations and labored with very carefully. A few of them are pc engineers. A few of them come from PC sport firms. A few of them come from international console sport firms. However they’ve all come to create a brand new Turkish sport firm, on the extent of a startup with 5 – 6 individuals, and that’s sufficient for hypercasual. I really feel like hypercasual offers the muse of the Turkish gaming ecosystem, after which we’ve seen a number of profitable sport firms arising with extra funding. The Turkish gaming ecosystem will proceed to develop sooner or later.