Diversifying Play, Dollars, and Reality — What Gamedev Should Know
Wish you a great new year 2024 🎉
Here are some predictions that I forecast, we will revisit them in 2025 Jan and reflect.
UA channel
- The fingerprinting world will be void. Be prepared. Never settle with just ONE channel for UA. If you’re someone (like us) who depends on AppLovin (FP) as a prime channel for UA, it’s high time for you to test other channels, as Apple will nuke the fingerprinting process in 2024.
- Everyone is an Ad network. Ad network here, ad network there. Everyone will join the race, and they want a piece. Expect Microsoft to try and explore the mobile ad network space with their current traction from Bing + AI.
- SKAN5 will become one of our go-to tools. It will help us track re-engagement/retargeting.
Subscription as a monetization:
- Studios will lean towards and move away from in-game subscription economics. Subscription as a monetization is not for everyone; it didn’t take off as expected in 2023.
- On the other hand, game bundles as a part of a subscription will see a spike. Gamers will cherish Netflix games. GamePass will kill Indies. I see a non-IAP-driven T2 market like India where players are playing the Netflix games. This will lead to a decline in IAP, and LiveOps as Netflix is taking away my T1 paying users away from other games. Isn’t Netflix pushing the players towards non-LiveOps games?
Funds vs layoff:
- 2024 will focus on Profit over Revenue.
- Investment and fundraising will be a challenge. AI-generated content will evolve. It will not be welcomed by the operations team in studios to reduce the operational cost versus the creative team. Balancing AI will become a task for Tech Artists. The creative versus operational cost debate will intensify.
- Embracer will lead to more layoffs.
More fake ads and More mini-games:
- More fake ads and eventually more mini-games around it. To cope with player expectations and retention, studios must make at least mini-games for famous fake ads.
- In a way, hypercasual game genres/trends may find new life as mini-games rather than standalone experiences.
AR, VR, and XR
- AR is nowhere, and the VR future will depend on Apple’s Vision Pro release. More studios will give up on VR; the closure of studios like First Contact Entertainment underscores the harsh reality.
- Vision Pro will go through the same cycle as Oculus. Released at a high price (rumored to be at least $2500), with no demand/poor sales, followed by a re-release of a cheaper version. This will make the VR-focused devs’ lives more complex — an amazing tech with poor sales (in the initial release).
More Webshops: Sideload IAP will be possible with iOS 17.2. More studios (T1) will push gamers to their Webshops. These webshops will be more of a platform than a purchase cart — they will have social systems, bundles…
Anime game themes will become new trends.
Netflix is already pushing lots of content; MoCo (from Supercell) is leading the experiment.
More Alt store:
- More Droid stores; users will get familiarized with more Droid stores. PhonePe (an entity from Walmart) is planning to open an Android store in India, which has no store tax and allows real-money games. More prominent players will release more stores in emerging markets.
More UGC contents: Roblox, UEFN — Epic will extend UGC as a creative mode in all its games. They have released creative mode in Fall Guys too.
Production fees for the games will spike; premium games will take a huge budget to produce.
- More IP-based games will be on the top chart like Monopoly, Marvel Snap…
- Talking about IPs, the crossover from games to movies will increase — all credits to Mario Bros.
Unity Run-Time Fee vs. Switching Cost? It is a very true fact that there are not many options out there. From the perspective of a work-for-hire studio, we observe that Unreal developers’ pay is significantly higher compared to Unity developers. Over time, I believe this difference will diminish, but as of now, the switching cost is high.
With Love, Cartic P
/ @iCartic
