The Istanbul Mobile Game Event, organized by Google for the first time in Turkey in cooperation with Deconstructor of Fun, took place both physically and online.
Yesterday, Google signed an important game event that will spread almost all day. The Istanbul Mobile Game Event, organized by the company in cooperation with Deconstructor of Fun, took place both physically and online. In this event, important statistics about the mobile game market and games were shared, as well as important details about marketing and management for game developers.
If you are a game developer, industry employee or interested in this process, we recommend you to watch this presentation, which you can find below. Deconstructor of Fun Founder Michail Katkoff, Google Turkey Games, Applications & Initiatives Sector Leader Sencer Kutluğ, Eric Seufert, Javier Barnes, Matej Loncaric and Nimrod Levy made the following statement for the event where names such as;
Google and Deconstructor of Fun brought the game world together in Istanbul
Deconstructor of Fun Founder Michail Katkoff, who was the speaker of the opening session of the event, which took place with 8 sessions and 17 speakers, started his speech by mentioning the potential of Istanbul. Pointing out that Istanbul is increasing its position in the game ecosystem day by day, Katkoff made the following statements on the developments in the mobile game world: “Mobile games account for 52 percent of total game revenues. Not only that, the mobile gaming ecosystem continues to grow, evolve and mature. When we look at the mobile game world of 2021, the biggest share in the number of downloads is in casual games with 80 percent. In the second place is mid-core games with 13 percent. When it comes to reaching the top, it is possible to say that the trend here has changed in recent years. Games in the top 100 now receive a larger share of total revenue. In 2022, 65 percent of mobile game revenues went to the top 100 games. In addition, the average time for a game to reach the top 100 decreased from 9 months in 2021 to 6 months in 2022. While 22 new games managed to enter the top 100 in 2021, this number increased to 30 in 2022. In reaching the summit, four important factors stand out: Marketing strength, product excellence, genre expertise and having a diversified portfolio. It seems that the mobile game world will continue to increase its growth rate in the coming period.”
“Istanbul is becoming a game center”
Google Turkey Games, Applications & Initiatives Sector Leader Sencer Kutluğ, who started his speech by saying that the last two years, especially with the pandemic, have changed the perceptions about the game world, said the following on the changing ecosystem and the reflections of this situation on the game industry: “With the effect of the pandemic, the socialization aspect has come to the fore. In the mobile gaming world, searches for multiplayer games increased by 300 percent. Also, 65 percent of people said they started playing more games during the pandemic period. 52% of the $ 180 thousand revenue generated by the gaming world in 2021 comes from mobile games. Turkey’s share in the mobile world continues to increase day by day. In the last 2 years, 200 game companies were established in Turkey, which increases the number of active game companies in Turkey to 500. While 16 investment agreements were made in 2020, this number increased to 56 in 2021, and it is expected to exceed this figure this year. As it can be understood from here, Istanbul is becoming a game center like Tel Aviv and Helsinki.”
Google Turkey Continues to Contribute to the Growing Gaming Ecosystem
Sencer Kutluğ also mentioned the rising mobile game trends in the recent period and underlined that game companies that want to keep up with the trends should invest in multiple technologies, give importance to modeling and adapt to innovations. Touching on the expectations of both the players and the industry for the future of the mobile game world, Sencer gave place to Google’s contributions to the game ecosystem in the last part of his speech. Explaining that he supports 35 game startups with the Gaming Growth Lab, which helps to accelerate the growth of game developer companies, Sencer also mentioned the incubation programs supported by Google to continue to feed the ecosystem by supporting the growth of startups, and the talent training camps it organized to close the talent gap in the industry.