Over half of the Augmented Reality market is gaming and entertainment, but the number of AR games is still far from what we see in non-AR gaming categories.
Looking at non-AR app stores, the new game charts in every country are full of casual or even hyper casual games. However, most of top grossing apps include more challenging mechanics. There are games in very different genres, from match-three games like Homescapes to battle royale games like PUBG or Fortnite, but you’ll notice that almost any given app from this chart shares a common characteristic — they are social. That can include various social mechanics, from groups and achievements to playing with your friends. Why is that? In truth, developers get much more money from social titles. The reason is that users become far more engaged with such games; they spend more time playing and invite their friends to join them. In short, players have many reasons to return — competition with friends and others, rewards and lots of quests. Such games become part of their daily life, and the game world becomes another place they look forward to meeting their friends.
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More formally speaking, the main reasons why are games with social mechanics generate more money are:
- Engagement
- Retention
- More predictable organic growth and virality
- Time spent in the app
- Sometimes UGC
- LTV
At the same time, these socially-enhanced apps are often more difficult to develop, especially when it comes to ones that include true multiplayer. This is somewhat ameliorated for non-AR developers by the fact that multiplayer is an understood proposition in the mobile space, with a range of tools available that help developers turn their ideas into working multiplayer apps.
Developers really want multiplayer. I even found a few games that were faking multiplayer. These apps simulated a shared session and even required an internet connection — but once you turn off LTE and Wi-Fi, the only thing that changes is that you no longer see ads! That’s an interesting example of the “fake it till you make it” approach. In any case, I don’t recommend that you fake multiplayer. Even if you did it successfully, you will miss the most important thing — allowing users to actually play with their friends.
Mobile games market in Augmented Reality
Let’s get back to AR and look at the situation here. In general, there are far fewer apps. In the App Store you will only find a distinction between AR apps and games; there are no specific genres like strategy, multiplayer or match-three. You can find a few multiplayer games but all of them are collaborative, where users must be in the same physical location to play. And of course, these games are not popular. So why is that? It’s simply because most developers have yet to make the jump to AR. There are multiple factors for this. First, indie developers don’t know how to deal with AR on a technical level. In developer communities I often find interesting ideas, but developers just don’t know how to implement them. Secondly, there’s a lack of tools. Most developers have limited resources and don’t want to build features from scratch that’ll only be used for a single game. What developers want is out-of-the-box solutions that let them bring their ideas to life quickly. And third, it’s not yet clear to many developers just how to make money with AR. I don’t think that AR is a suitable technology for hyper casual games. After all, the tech lets you play with the real world around you. There are so many mechanics that can be invented to engage your users — and the main feature that is going to boost user engagement in AR is multiplayer.
Time to build AR
Right now is the time to build AR, even if you’ve never tried it before. It’s probable that your company has already experimented with AR, but perhaps the results were uncertain. It’s also possible that you had ideas for an AR game, but you never tried to build it for certain reasons — maybe the lack of tools. However, you shouldn’t consider these challenges insurmountable, and the AR market is actually a massive untapped opportunity. There are over one billion AR users who are currently offline. Keeping in mind that top-grossing non-AR apps are multiplayer, you can see where I’m going with this. True multiplayer AR games should allow users to be anywhere and still play with their friends. Such games were not possible — or let’s say too complicated to develop — until now. At ARnDAI, we’ve built the tech that will help you to make your ideas live. You’ll be able to create any type of multiplayer app, where the users’ environment can become a central part of gameplay. What’s more, these players will no longer be alone. As with non-AR apps, they can invite friends to join them or compete with strangers. The main bonus for you here is that you don’t need to compete with the crowded non-AR market. AR games are different, with a new approach to user entertainment. At the same time, the AR market itself doesn’t have tons of apps or games, so it’s easier to get noticed by players. Augmented Reality is not rocket science, especially as we are going with you.
I’m so excited to think about what we can build together! Request a demo right now and bring your AR multiplayer games to life. Of course, you can ask me anything and I’ll be happy to help!
Our website: https://arnd.ai
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vodolazovvladislav/
