The Rise of the Hypercasuals

While mobile gaming is still frequently looked down upon by console and PC players, it has fast become the most important video game segment in terms of revenue and barrier to entry. In 2022, 51 percent of the projected $203 billion revenue with games will allegedly come from smartphones or tablets according to data aggregated by Newzoo. Among those games, one type in particular has seen a big push in its popularity and user base over the last couple of years.

As the market research firm specializing in video games points out in a recent report, hypercasual games have attracted more and more players since 2018. Back then, only 14 apps from this category, which are defined as being simplistic in terms of design and mechanics, free-to-play and often aim at short but frequent play sessions, made it into the top 100 downloaded programs on Apple's and Google's mobile app stores. Four years later, this number has risen to 36, an increase of 157 percent. Notable examples of this type of game include Flappy Bird, which was released in 2013 and is cited by some sources to be the first real hypercasual game, Helix Jump or Crossy Road.

In 2020, the most lucrative mobile gaming genres were RPG, strategy and puzzle with estimated revenues of $22 billion, $15 billion and $9 billion, respectively. The total number of mobile gamers was estimated at 2.7 billion in 2021 by DFC Intelligence, with 1.3 billion people playing on their smartphones and tablets in Asian countries alone.