Video games are more popular than ever, in fact the industry as a whole is now by far the largest distinct media market in the world.
The scale of modern triple-A titles can be hard to wrap your head around, with major releases like Red Dead Redemption 2 costing over $500 million to produce, and everyone’s favorite action series – Call of Duty, commanding revenues larger than Hollywood’s entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Suffice to say, gaming has come of age in the 2020s. But you may be surprised to discover that these titles – culturally significant as they are – are not the driving force behind the game industry’s $300bn a year revenues.
Rather, to find the economic engine of the modern games industry we must look in the unlikely direction of smartphone gaming.
Since smartphones became popular in the early 2010s, they have increasingly come to occupy a central place in people’s lives.
Nowadays, over 86% of the entire global population owns one, and many of those people had never thought to play a video game before the ability to do so was made available with the tap of a button in an app store.
Most people still think that mobile games are like those early casual hits – think Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja and of course Angry Birds. And while the successors to those titles still occupy an important place in the wider smartphone gaming market, the platform has also quietly become a credible venue in its own right for top tier titles.
But what are the most popular types of games people are playing on smartphones today? Let’s unpack this below.
Browser Gaming
Before apps, we had browser games – historically also referred to as minigames. These lightweight titles are the true precursors to the casual app titles that became so popular in the early 2010s. Historically these typically ran on Macromedia Flash, a since discontinued codec. Now, people can still access top-tier browser games that run on HTML5.
There are a huge array of gaming portals out there, from legacy sites like Newgrounds – still going strong after nearly 30 years – to modern directories such as Facebook’s Instant Games service.
Browser games also encompass the huge array of iGaming titles that have developed outside the strictures of the official iOS and Google Play Stores. As such, it’s the best way to access all that the modern online casino gaming sector has to offer mobile players today.
While you may lack the integration of the app store when conducting your search for quality casino titles, there are a growing number of dedicated platforms like VegasSlotsOnline that provide competitive casino bonus and other welcome offers to table gamers looking for a good deal.
Today, browser casino gaming is among the fastest growing game genres on mobile, thanks to its lightweight optimizations, compelling sign-up deals and enduring appeal.
Mobile Esports
The esports boom is taking the world by storm, and mobile platforms are no exception. While the best known esports in the world today remain those played primarily on the PC platform – like League of Legends, Counter-Strike Global Offensive and VALORANT – a new generation of mobile esports are giving them a run for their money.
Much of the success of mobile esports can be attributed to their relative accessibility. After all, mobile gamers needn’t invest in special hardware in order to play their chosen competitive title.
In East Asia – arguably the home of the modern esports phenomenon – mobile titles have already supplanted PC ones in popularity, and this trend is steadily taking hold around the globe.
This can be seen in evidence by, for example, the prize pool and viewer figures for PUBG being displaced by PUBG Mobile, or the fact that Garena’s popular battle royale, Free Fire, broke all existing records for concurrent viewers for an esports event in its 2021 World Series final. There, a staggering 5.4 million people tuned in – to watch people play a mobile game!
Other mobile esports, like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, has sought to take the popular appeal of MOBA games like Dota 2 and League of Legends and distill it into a format that will work on small screens and touch inputs. In doing so, they’re further refining esports as a product to give it wider mainstream appeal.
