“Global Gaming Market is a staggering business with about $170-180bn revenue that is segmented into different areas e.g. AI industry with $60bn and the movie and film market about $40-50bn worth,” says Babar Ahmed, Head of Strategy & Technology at Lion Studios & CEO Mindstorm Studios. He was one of the keynote speakers at the Game X Conference 2021, organized by Epiphany.
There are various components within a gaming industry that includes tablet games, console games, smartphone games, etc. which itself is a huge business. “Breaking into any of the non-mobile gaming segment is a daunting task that requires a lot of capital and overcoming high entry barriers compared to mobile gaming business” quotes Babar. The mobile gaming market consists of sub-segments such as core games, arcade, casual, mid-core games, etc. that require large teams and intense collaborative efforts.
He further narrowed down the interesting topic by highlighting “How can we find an inroad into the gaming system and make an impact” and mentioned Mindstorm studios amongst other companies who have previously entered successfully. He discussed at length how “the hypercasual games (HCGs) can be a solution for breaking into the mobile gaming industry, especially for an emerging economy like Pakistan”
In nutshell, he explained the reasons why creating HCGs is an effective strategy to enter the industry by mentioning some of it benefits. It’s a lightweight game requiring low capital, a small team (1-3 people) and monetizes quickly with an estimated revenue of $1M to $10M per successful product. How cool is that? Needless to say that investors, marketers, and developers would be super interested in producing and investing in such a game that has a high ROI, however, he expounded in detail that the HCG market is a saturated one making it a huge challenge for newcomers.
He highlighted how big competitors are revolutionizing the market with new emerging games such as Netflix Games, AAA mobile games, NFT gaming on the rise, esports etc. Giving the audience a smile and hope he says “ You have to be a lot crazy and passionate to start something new, so don’t worry about the market saturation as long as your game is different it’ll be a hit!”
“Turkey is the new Silicon Valley of Game Development” – says Babar mentioning the game-changing moments that led to a peaked success in Turkey. Keeping it concise Zynga, a game developer company acquired 3 mega-companies in Turkey and attained game rights of Gram Games, Peak Games, and Rollic for $1.8Bn.
Lastly, he mentioned the importance of game events like Game X Conference 2021 that can enable Pakistan to develop a momentum and pool of funds to actually elevate and mobilize the game industry.
Want to know more about the inside-out of the global games market and how we can build a gaming ecosystem?
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