French mobile game maker Voodoo shifted its business model to focus on the hybridcasual genre in 2022, and this shift has proven successful, the company have announced today.
The shift away from the company’s traditional hypercasual base began last year, in an effort to maximise user engagement, play time, and player retention. All of the hypercasual games Voodoo published in 2022 which proved successful were in fact previously published titles, rather than new games, leading to head of publishing Alex Shea to infamously announce “hypercasual is dead” at Pocket Gamer Connects London.
After the change in focus it appears that the company’s hybridcasual games have gone from strength to strength, with a portfolio of 10 hybridcasual games proving more resilient, generating between $20 and $100 million a year. The publisher is now building a portfolio of titles which it claims have even stronger potential, with some expected to exceed $100 million in annual revenue.
As part of this continued shift, the company is building a ‘casual team’ to work on the games with the strongest potential to increase retention rates and maximise monetisation opportunities.
“The casual team within Voodoo was built among experts in the area. They are in charge of ensuring that today’s batch of hybrid games remain successful and relevant for the next five or 10 years to come,” said Voodoo vice president of casual games Alvaro Duarte.
Spellbinding games
Voodoo’s new approach is supported by a pool of both internal and external studios working on new games. After games are launched, teams with expertise in casual gaming will work on meta features help take the games to the next level to maximise engagement and user experience. Voodoo states that this strategy is optimised for making resilient games with massive earning potential, and leaves it poised to become the go-to partner for development studios aiming to create the next big hit.
“With this new approach and Voodoo’s unique capacity to make mega-hits that are resilient over time, we believe there are huge success opportunities for mobile game development studios that are partnering with us,” said Voodoo VP Core Charles Andréani.
We listed Voodoo as one of the top 50 mobile game makers of 2022.