Supercent’s Recipe for Success in a Competitive Market — Part 2
Breaking the Mold: How Supercent continues to grow in the difficult market
Welcome back :)
In Part 1(LINK HERE), we discussed the challenges that developers face in finding new hits this year that the proportion of “new” hypercasual games ranking on the top charts each year is steadily decreasing. However, the potential of the hypercasual market has not decreased at all. Then WHY is this happening? I’m trying to provide answer to this situation based on what Supercent has done throughout the recent years.
Part 2 unravels the intricacies of Supercent’s approach, from our emphasis on insights and innovation to our unique CPI recipe for trend-driven development.
Clear Interpretation of Current Market Landscape
In the challenging market environment of making new releases successful, major publishers are increasingly spending more on marketing and Live Ops for games launched two or three years ago.
So, while the market size remains unchanged, developers are struggling to create new games that capture user attention. On the other hand, hypercasual publisher, Supercent has achieved continuous growth every quarter, charting numerous new releases since its establishment in 2021 to today.
Among the games released this year, “Burger Please!” by Supercent not only holds the top position but also ranks third among all newly launched mobile apps, amassing an impressive 70 million downloads within eight months of its release. Supercent has proven its ability to read the market trends admid the challenging task of discovering new titles.
Continued Growth potential — Outlets Rush!
Supercent’s latest release, Outlets Rush, has achieved the remarkable feat of securing the #1 spot in the iOS all games category and #2 in iOS in the United States in Dec 9th. By Dec 10th, it became the most downloaded game in Unified Market, demonstrating faster upscaling than the initial launch of “Burger Please!" Even higher market penetration is anticipated, especially noteworthy as dominating the competitive iOS market is more challenging than achieving downloads in the AOS.
Diversified Revenue Streams Ahead
In addition to the success of “Outlets Rush,” Supercent has several upcoming games poised to climb the charts after early testing. Supercent already puts up 4 games in the Top 100 charts, along with the impressive result of ‘Outlets Rush’.
With four games already in the Top 100 charts, Supercent is strategically positioned for further success. Despite market challenges, we firmly believe that each obstacle presents an opportunity to be seized. In the following discussion, I will provide key insights into how Supercent navigated and found breakthroughs in this demanding market.
Finding a Breakthrough in a Challenging Market
1) Supercent’s Approach: Insights and Innovation
Despite the widespread belief that hypercasual gaming is over, we believed in our insights. While many publishers decide to kill prototypes based solely on numbers, we evaluate games based on insights that penetrate the essence of the game. We continuously refine and polish the core loop to create satisfying game play without compromising on key performance indicators like D1 retention of 50%.
Our ability to achieve this is rooted in being a publisher with a developer DNA. Despite being a publisher, we have an in-house development studio. Insights and lessons from Game Producers and Art Directors who have actually produced hit games and experienced the market are constantly shared across the company, including our partners, through various internal channels, seminars, and meet-ups.
As the market for discovering new titles is challenging, every member of Supercent always keeps our senses open to ‘properly’ analyze market trends. We are living in a media-saturated world. With more short-form content and shorter attention spans, games need to be more hooking and engaging. Draw inspiration from everything around you. People like what’s familiar to them, but at the same time, it also has to be interesting. You need to find attractive themes from the pile of contents around you. Make sure these themes/items are loved by mass consumers and blend them into your game.
2) Supercent’s CPI Recipe
Unlike other genres, the hyper-casual game market is a fast-moving one. To create marketable games, Supercent invests heavily in trend analysis and material/theme discovery. Powered by market insights and confidence, Supercent’s publishing team propose and guide our in-house/partner studios to focus more on titles that have good market potential, even from the ideation stage. As a result, 80% of the time we are able to find CPIs below $1. As we incubate our in-house development team, we highly value the resources of our partner development studios. We acknowledge that even a few rounds of prototyping can be a significant opportunity cost for small studios. Supercent boldly drops titles with low success potential and provides precise step-by-step KPIs and practical feedback to elevate the game production quality of titles with high success potential.
In addition, the creative capabilities of Supercent product team can reduce the CPI of a game by more than 50% on average. <Snake Clash!> is a prime example of this, as it went from a CPI of $0.7 in the initial test to a CPI of $0.3 after the second iteration. Before killing your prototype, ask yourselves if this prototype is expressing its maximal potential. Define what is the core fun mechanism in this game and how to improve the interactivity and satisfaction. This is how Supercent continues to find games with low CPIs even in difficult market environments.
3) Deeper Gameplay
In a market where it’s becoming increasingly difficult for new games to enter the top charts, maintaining a low CPI (Cost Per Install) is just the first step towards successful game development. Along with maintaining a low CPI through popular themes, it’s crucial to deliver a deeper gameplay experience. To provide this, it’s essential to define the core objectives of the game and offer various growth routes through a meta-layer system. Additionally, level design and economic balancing are vital to control the sense of progression in individual meta-layers. To capitalize on the hyper-casual genre, you should organize your core loop with popular themes and use strategies to increase LTV by creating a more immersive gameplay environment to players.
In conclusion…
The success of “Burger Please” underscores its significance in a market characterized by increasing difficulty in discovering new hit titles. While many assert that finding such titles is challenging, Supercent persists in learning from the trends, analyzing market tastes with our insight.
Today’s hypercasual marketplace isn’t easy, which is why you need a more sophisticated publishing strategy. Supercent’s publishing team understands the market, suggests and directs development teams to create high-market potential titles from the ideation stage. We try to maintain accuracy in recognizing market trends and dedicate ourselves to a transparent knowledge sharing process, which we believe increases the rate of success.
The hypercasual market is always open to those who continue to challenge themselves. Our years of publishing experience have given us insights that others may not see. We are looking for excellent development teams to challenge together, and we openly share all our inspiration and insights with our premium partners.
Join forces with Supercent and let us embark on a journey of growth and success together.
[Contact]
- E-mail: help@supercent.io
- Website: en.supercent.io
