Ohayoo News — May 2021

6 min readMay 31, 2021

Chinese Market Updates🗓

The casual gaming market is still in the slack season, there are still no newly released games on this month’s ranking list, and the overall market download is going down. Due to it being the holiday season this month, the ranking is dominated by existing board and card games, as they are more suitable for family gatherings.

Game Trends🔥

Innovative Gameplay of Hyper-Casual Games

Among the top 20 hyper-casual games in the US, 9 of them contain parkour elements in their gameplay. The number one game “Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!” has given birth to a new model of parkour game with micro-transactions. “Happy Printer” has integrated both puzzle and casual elements. “Hybrid hyper-casual” may become 2021’s keyword of hyper-casual games. It is worth mentioning that “Shoe Race” has integrated the characteristics of “High Heels!”, such as character looks and the choice of shoes, but with a different core element of gameplay. In the fast-growing casual gaming market, using innovative ideas from popular games is worth a try.

Understand the ACG Trend and Break into the Japanese Market

Japan has a mature ACG industry chain, and ACG culture is an important component of its social culture. This characteristic has been reflected on the mobile game market. Most players prefer ACG mobile games and most ACG games fall into the RPG and Simulation categories. App Annie data shows that in Japan’s top 100 ranking list of iOS mobile games, more than 50 are RPG; among the top 30 mobile games, 17 are RPG mobile games, which demonstrates the superiority of this game category. Simulation is the second largest category, with 14% in the top 100 mobile games. Although Japanese local publishers have the advantage of developing ACG RPG and Simulation games, Chinese publishers have gradually penetrated into the largest category of the Japanese mobile gaming market, which is driven by the growth of the Chinese ACG culture, breakthroughs in the technologies of game publishers, and innovative content and gameplays.

Overview of Each Game Genre’s eCPM📊

When publishing a game, the publisher often lacks back-end monetization data to cover the high traffic purchase cost due to low eCPM, which affects the game’s income flow. Ohayoo News has gathered historical eCPM data for each genre of published games, providing information to help developers make project initialization decisions.

Notes:
- There are many factors which influence the eCPM, including gameplay, theme, art style, traffic purchasing channel, time, and market advertisers’ budget. In this update, the summarized eCPM data is only a representation of historical data (activation ads and Pangle data) and for game developers’ reference, not for data conclusion.
- Some of the users in the 31–40 age group are primary school students using their parents’ mobile phones, which may cause low eCPM.
- High eCPM’s gameplay or themes may have a higher unit price, whereas low eCPM’s gameplay or themes may have a lower unit price. Therefore, we do not recommend using the theme’s eCPM as the only criterion for project initialization.
- Data categories: low eCPM (eCPM < 200); medium eCPM (eCPM = 200–300); high eCPM (eCPM = 300+).
- Currency unit: RMB

Genre 1: Simulation and Idle

High eCPM themes: Paladin, Fantasy, Fishing, Magnate Simulation, Jade, Car Racing, and Doomsday
Low eCPM themes: Pets, Female Weight Loss, Animals, Travel, Plants, Farming, Hairdresser, Cinema, Canteen, and Subway

Genre 2: Hyper-Casual

There are many hyper-casual themes and the gameplay heavily affects the back-end data. Details will not be listed here. Developers who are interested in a specific gameplay or theme can contact Ohayoo’s BD team for more information.

High eCPM themes: Shooting, Sports Simulation (Soccer, Pool, Tennis), Weapons, Cars, Felling and Cleaning.
Low eCPM themes: Puzzle-related themes are quite low, but they also have low unit prices.

Genre 3: Shooting

High eCPM themes: Zombies and Police
Low eCPM themes: First-person Military War, First-person Realism, and Third-person Martial Arts

Genre 4: Tower Defense

High eCPM themes: Science Fiction, Corps, and Minimalistic UI
Low eCPM themes: Fruits and Memes

Genre 5: Music

Relatively high eCPM themes: Guns, Science Fiction, and Cyberpunk
Low eCPM themes: Animals and Hyper-casual

Genre 6: Action

High eCPM themes: Martial Arts, Animals (more support data needed), and SNK
The eCPM of Journey to the West has a relatively large fluctuation.

Genre 7: Racing

Car racing has a relatively high eCPM, whereas motorcycle themed eCPM is relatively low, but its unit price is also lower.

Gameplay Tips💡

Gameplay Prototype Recommendations

Log Thrower

1. Gameplay Characteristics

This is an integrated hyper-casual game. The game has two core modules: sharpening and throwing.

Players first sand the different logs they have collected. Once the logs are sharpened into an arrow, players will enter the throwing phase. The score is based on how many layers of defense the log has penetrated.

2. Gameplay Reference Point

Precise operation is at the core of the two gameplays. The sharpening part requires accuracy control and it will affect the following throwing base number. While the throwing part in different game levels has strength and angle operations, it also has gameplays such as collection, operation and construction. Players can collect a wide range of differently shaped logs, and the peculiar and unorthodox logs will come with certain spoof attributes.

3. Game Project Initiation Advice — Idea Elaboration

The game has two main gameplays: bullet sharpening and shooting. The sharpening and breakthrough parts have a variety of art forms. The scene of a perfectly shaped bullet shooting breaking down all the obstacles can give players a great sense of stress relief and achievement. Sharpening the bullets into peculiar shapes or scenes where not all the obstacles are broken can trigger obsessive-compulsive disorder, which boosts game conversion and spreading.

*From left to right: sharpening success scene, shooting success scene, sharpening failure scene, and shooting failure scene*

Apart from the core gameplays (sharpening and shooting), the game also has other gameplays and theme scene changes. For example, from left to right respectively are target shooting, strike lottery, and prize wheel. The diversity of the scenes benefits the creation of game content and materials, so that the game can have a wider user base and reach more audience.