Facebook and GameRefinery launch mobile gaming report: 'Genre and great games - Understanding Audiences and Designing Better Mobile Games'

Facebook Gaming's new report, created in partnership with GameRefinery and Facebook IQ, provides genre level insight for mobile games across four major markets focusing on genre fulfilment, community, monetisation and ad preferences

HELSINKI, Aug. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Facebook Gaming, in partnership with Facebook IQ and mobile game insight and analytics specialist GameRefinery, today announced the launch of a new mobile gaming report: 'Genre and great games - Understanding Audiences and Designing Better Mobile Games'. Based on a survey of over 13k mobile gamers, the report provides detailed genre-level insight into the top four mobile game genres: Strategy, RPG, Puzzle and Hyper-Casual across four major markets- US, UK, South Korea and Japan. The report takes a deep dive into how mobile games perform for each of the four genres in terms of genre fulfilment, community features, monetisation and ad preferences.

The report has been created specifically around genre-level data following a previous study from Facebook IQ and Accenture in which 49% of people surveyed considered genre as the main deciding factor when picking a new game to play. Aimed at both new and sophisticated game developers as well as marketers, the report is designed to be read by genre, providing extensive insight into key areas across the four markets. Insights include detailed demographics profiles, why people play, why they stray from a game, game features players value the most, types of community events and monetization and advertising preferences.

Some highlights from the report include:

• Puzzle players are more likely to be female (e.g. nearly 75% of Matching Puzzle players in the UK and US) and over the age of 35 (e.g. 6 in 10 in the UK and US). Since these female players typically enjoy mobile games in between doing other things, they prefer games that can be played in short increments rather than in longer, more involved sessions (e.g. over 7 in 10 players prefer shorter sessions).
• There's an appetite for more social activity within Hyper- Casual games with 67% of players in the UK and 74% of players in the US expressing interest in activities such as communicating with gaming companies and other players online about. Hyper-Casual games and checking out other players' high scores on a leaderboard.
• In Japan and South Korea, RPG is the top genre in which players make in-app purchases. Compared to other markets, players in these countries are also more likely to make a monthly purchase with 10.9% in South Korea and 9.3% in Japan having done so (compared to 5.4% of RPG players in the UK).
• From an ad preferences' perspective, over 6 in 10 Strategy players across the US, UK, South Korea and Japan are willing to take the time to learn how to play a new game if an advertisement showcases the main gameplay and the characters/storyline.

"While insight and data points can be very interesting, they don't mean much if developers can't connect them to specific types of actions and map customer behaviour," said Markus Råmark, Co-Founder and CEO at GameRefinery. "That's why we provide detailed feature analysis in the report, with practical implementation examples from the top 20% of games from each genre. Aimed at both developers and marketers, the research equips them with a broad scope of data to better understand their players, bring back lapsed ones, grow their user acquisition and hopefully create even better game."

"With this genre report, we sought to understand people's motivations for downloading a specific game, what role community plays in mobile gaming and how gamers respond to ads," said Rick Kelley, Vice President of Global Gaming, Facebook. "By truly understanding these factors, mobile game marketers and developers can equip themselves with the knowledge they need to continue to generate revenue, as well as create engaging, useful content for their target audiences."

The report has been designed as a practical resource for game developers and marketers to understand players better, reactivate lapsed ones, grow user acquisition and develop more engaging games overall. The report is available for download at fb.gg/genre2020 and https://www.gamerefinery.com/genre-and-great-games-report

The media kit which includes the full report can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1ZQiQrmtLoSqv7cKs-o-rRyYYo-8ArIyX

For further information, please contact:

Olivia Baker
Big Ideas Machine
Email: olivia@bigideasmachine.com
Tel: +44 (0) 7805 166 798

About GameRefinery

Based in Finland, GameRefinery is the leading provider of feature-level data in the mobile games market, with an ever-growing database covering hundreds of thousands of games. GameRefinery's customers include leading mobile games companies such as Zynga, SquareEnix, King, and Rovio.

The GameRefinery platform uses unique algorithms and a team of expert analysts to help developers, investors and publishers delve into the very building blocks of mobile games to uncover the drivers behind success, to understand why games are successful and how to achieve the same from pre-production to LiveOps.