Dated: 2022.05.12.
This article's information has been translated from the original article: link
"We want to turn non-gamers into gamers, just like 'Anipang' did”
In a recent interview, Gong Jun-sik, CEO of Supercent, said the company hopes to generate 20 billion won in sales this year. The company plans to test 120 games this year to boost its performance. Last year, its first year in business, the company was profitable and has a solid foundation for growth.
"We are thinking of testing at least 120 hyper casual games this year and earning 20 billion won in sales," said Gong. "We want to become a company that turns non-gamers into gamers by providing games that are easily accessible to everyone."
Supercent is a subsidiary of 111 Percent, known for ‘Random Dice’. It was founded in April last year to target the hyper-casual game market, which is rapidly growing in the global gaming market. The company's CEO, Gong Jun-sik, is credited with successfully adapting the ad revenue model to the "Anipang" series at SundayToz (now Wemadeplay). He aims to use his experience to turn non-gamers into gamers in the global market.
"With the growth of so many media, users have less and less time to enjoy them," said Mr. Gong, "so services with lighter and shorter consumption patterns, such as TikTok, are exploding, and hypercasual games are showing similar growth."
Hypercasual games are characterized by extremely short play times of one minute or less. It is difficult to categorize them as a traditional game genre and the content is simple. The revenue model is mostly based on advertising. It is a somewhat unfamiliar genre in the domestic market, which is centered on core genres such as RPG and strategy.
However, the global market is different. It has been growing rapidly every year, with 12 billion downloads in 2020 and 15 billion last year. It accounts for 30% of all app downloads. That means there's a lot of public response.
"It's an area that hasn't gotten much attention in Korea, but companies like Tencent and Zynga have been investing in it at a high valuation for the past two years," he said.
Gong sees the hypercasual gaming market continuing to grow. "It is similar to the short-form content favored by Generation Z, and unlike traditional games, it has a very new and trendy gameplay, which attracts younger users. In addition, it has a popular gameplay that anyone can immediately understand and enjoy without much thought.
"Short-form content is expected to be enjoyed by at least 3 billion people by 2025, and we believe that hypercasual games will follow suit," said Gong. "The hypercasual game market has a very broad base of non-core gamers, so we have the advantage of being able to tap into this broad market."
Because of their simplicity, hypercasual games seem to be accessible to everyone. Gong is wary of this approach. Having good download and user metrics is one thing, but translating them into actual revenue is another.
Gong emphasizes that three things are important for hypercasual games to succeed. Three things are crucial to the success of hypercasual games: finding material that appeals to the masses, the ability to quickly develop, test, and move to commercialization, and ad management expertise to monetize. If any of these are lacking, it is difficult to guarantee success, especially in the case of ad operations expertise, which is why it is necessary to work with a professional publisher. This is also one of Supercent's strengths, according to Gong.
"There are not many people in Korea with ad revenue-based game service capabilities, but we have a group of members who quickly introduced the ad revenue model to the casual game user base and advanced it with about four years of experience," says Gong. "It's not just that we've done it before, but that we played a leading role in introducing the experience in Japan and the United States, and we have the capabilities that anyone can trust."
He also offered advice for maximizing ad revenue. Finding the sweet spot, localizing ads, and introducing different ad formats.