Technologies and Trends of Mobile Game Development: Reshaping the Future of the Gaming Industry

The mobile gaming industry’s worth in 2019 was a staggering $68.5 billion. This amount is now 45% of the total worth of the entire gaming industry, which now stands at $152 billion.

This has made the mobile gaming industry a juggernaut growing at an impressive rate of 10.2% per annum, and this has not gone without notice. Many big global corporations are now heavily investing in the mobile gaming industry and acquiring everything from promising gaming startups to proven developers aggressively.

But this is not where it stopped. The worth of the mobile gaming industry’s revenues was expected to touch $77.2 billion by 2020. Now the recorded growth from 2019 to 2020 stood at 13.2%.

Recording a 13.2% increase from 2019, the mobile gaming industry is slated to earn more than $77.2 billion by the end of 2020.

Just before August 2018, the previous 18 months generated investments worth a whopping $9.6 billion in the global gaming industry.

The advent of mobile gaming is now slated to be the single biggest turning point in the history of both, app monetization and game monetization.

Now, the dizzying growth and the gigantic revenues mobile games are bringing in is undoubtedly, the biggest trend in the mobile gaming industry for 2020 and beyond.

If you’ve not been living under a rock in the decade that just went by, you must know just how big of a phenomenon mobile gaming has become.

From PUBG to Pokemon Go, the 2010s was filled with some incredible games that gained massive popularity on a truly global scale.

But despite such a rise, this was not entirely unexpected. Games have always been in vogue, powered on by a dedicated community of gamers that just latches on to the best the industry has to offer.

Even till the past year, PewDiePie was the top subscribed YouTube channel. The man just offered gameplay videos with some controversial commentary, but his popularity soared exponentially, underpinning the influence this industry has on the overall scheme of things in today’s world.

So what exactly lies in store for this unique niche? How will it progress and which technologies will it utilize to power new experiences? These are some questions that require an in-depth analysis.

To better understand the direction the future of mobile game development is headed, let’s look at some of the technologies and trends within mobile games that have the potential to reshape the industry.

The impact of AI on mobile game development

AI technology has been revolutionary in the mobile app development space, including gaming apps. AI has enabled game developers to analyze the behavior of players and incorporate advanced systems in mobile gaming apps. With the help of AI, game designers can customize the experience of each player based on how they interact with the game. One of the most popular games by Telltale Games, Game of Thrones, is an excellent example of this cutting-edge technology. The game presented how different player’s choices vary within the game.

Source: Stream Community

Mobile game developers can use the same concept and completely change how gamers have been experiencing games. For example, developers can identify when a particular player is getting frustrated at a specific point in the game or level. The game can dynamically provide hints to help the player clear the level without taking away from their satisfaction of winning. This application of AI can replace the idea of having different difficulty levels, as the game can adapt and reach to each player’s skill.

Moreover, mobile game developers can also use AI-powered tools to create an algorithm that detects the ideal point for a player for showing in-app purchase options or advertisements. By evaluating the in-game behavior of players, AI can allow developers to optimize revenue without affecting the gaming experience of players.

The superpower of the gaming industry: AR & VR

Whether it’s AR or VR, supplemented reality is a niche that you will see more of in the incoming decade, that’s for sure. And the reasons for this are quite obvious.

One of the more recent AR-powered mobile games that broke all records was Pokémon Go. To think over this, this was a game that used the mobile’s camera to concatenate the real and imagined world. What can be better than this? It’s a world filled with incredible and mind numbing possibilities.

Being one of the most successful mobile games ever, Pokémon Go made the record of making $100 million and most downloads within the first month of its release. It used AR mechanics to integrate computer-generated elements within the physical environment of the players, bringing virtual creatures in the real world.

If one spends a decent amount of time with a VR headset, they will usually end up believing that it is going to reshape the future of the gaming industry. Offering immersive, VR gaming experiences, Asgard’s Wrath, The Under Presents, Abode 2, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, and Acron: Attack of the Squirrels, are the best five from Top 50 VR Games of 2019, covered by Forbes.

AR and VR technology help developers offer a more high-end gaming quality by enabling players to experience a real or utterly fictional world virtually. Creating the feel of modernity, this technology has opened up a lot of opportunities for developers to bring more elegance and sophistication into their games.

Expand the target market

Within a decade, the mobile gaming market has expanded from being the smallest represented section in 2012, to become a 100 billion dollar industry in 2021. One of the reasons for such rapid growth in mobile games is due to targeting all age groups and generations.

Source: NewZoo

Utilizing mobile as a source channel, games can be made available to the largest demographic groups possible, which means a target market of 3.5 billion smartphone users in the world. Mobile game developers can’t limit themselves with children. Using advanced technologies and various genres, developers can target everyone, from millennial to Gen Z, with incredible ease.

Games with multiplayer feature

Usually, people prefer to play games with other actual human beings, whether they may know them or not. This happens to be one of the explanations as to why the multiplayer features are enjoying a higher demand in the industry.

To develop a multiplayer game, developers have to keep the particular functionality of the games under consideration at every step of the way.

A relatively recent and successful example of multiplayer, ‘battle royale’ genre is Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, more popularly known as PUBG. In 2019, the PUBG Mobile was known to have 400 million users, with 50 million people playing the game every day. Giving an intense competition to another very similar global phenomena called Fortnite.

Another benefit of building a multiplayer game is that it allows people to engage with other players, therefore facilitating a more immersive gameplay experience. A lot of these apps also enable players to converse with each other via interactive mobile sessions as they play the game.

Integrate with social media channels

These days you cannot build an active community and not have social media behind it. People are obsessed with social media and a lot of them can only be found there. One of the high potential segments with respect to mobile games in this regard is integration with social media, majorly targeting people who enjoy playing games with their friends and family.

Mobile games that allow players to invite other people to play the game with them through social media platforms have a better opportunity to grow their user base faster.

Hence, mobile game development with social media integration can attract a large number of people by allowing players to invite, share and engage with their friends or followers. This feature increases the usability and accessibility of the game while feeding people’s fascination with social media.

One of the best examples of mobile games that provide social media integration options is Clash Royale. In the month of its launch, the game made more than $80 million in revenue across iOS and Android, excluding the Google and Apple app store’s 30% cut.

Wrapping up

With fantastic growth scope in mobile game development, the industry also has faced many challenges as companies need to continually upgrade the features and experience they offer in accordance with the modern application of technologies. Hence, mobile game developers need to use the market demands and trends and integrate advanced tech platforms in unique combinations and functionalities that deliver exciting and fantastic game features catering to gamers’ changing expectations. However, the tech world needs to be open for more robust solutions, appealing technologies and new strategies that continue unfolding the future of the gaming industry.