It's a younger, more male audience, but not everyone's looking down the barrel of that gun.
Hong Kong/US start up Frenzoo is taking a positively different stance. It's all about making 3D mobile games for women.
Strike a pose
Pivoted from a business operating a browser-based 3D chat and fashion world, CEO Simon Newstead argues that women provide a much more compelling mainstream opportunity.
"I think 90 percent of developers are still focused on male players," he points out.
And the developer is already proving its case. It launched a skunk project - published using a different company name - on Android a couple of months ago to refine its approach.
Without any marketing, the free-to-play game got over 500,000 downloads. This experience has since been rolled up into Frenzoo's formal debut Style Me Girl.
Accessorise
Released on iOS and Android, including Kindle Fire, the first in the ongoing Style Me story universe has gained over a million downloads within its first two weeks.
Making the most of its flexibility as a scrappy start up, Frenzoo surprisingly released it in the RPG and strategy categories on the Apple App Store.
But despite its female orientation being displayed in its title and icon, and being listed alongside the usual fantasy anime games found in the category, the ploy worked and it hit the #1 position in the US for free RPGs.
"We're very focused on things like A/B testing," Newstead says of the 8-man team's flexible approach to development and deployment.
"We heavily tested elements such as the title and icon. We tested 64 versions of the icon."
Doors wide open
In terms of breaking down the audience, Newstead says that although Style Me Girl has more of a younger, anime visual style, its shopping focus means a wider demographic plays it.
"Around 60 percent of players are teens or younger, while the majority of paying players are mid-20s and older," he reveals.
"Shopping and an interest in fashion never go away."
Building out
Frenzoo's next Me Girl game will take a different art style, so perhaps not skew as young, but Newstead's keeping tight lipped about the details.
Instead, he's thinking as much as about platforms and geography.
Style Me Girl currently has more downloads on iOS than Android, partly due to its earlier release there, and partly due to some marketing.
"You have to spend to get attention on the App Store, but we were heavily ROI focused," he states.
He says Android is more of a slow burn, although the ARPU difference between the two platforms is less than he imagined, especially taking into account the positive nature of the Kindle Fire market where the game also hit the #1 free position.
Going global
Geography-wise, the US makes up the majority of players, although despite not yet being localised, the game has gained some attention in Korea, China and Japan, where it was featured on leading operator NTT DoCoMo's Android deck.
So things are progressing well, but despite Frenzoo raising $1 million in its seed round, Newstead says he's happy to take things steadily.
"We have an experienced core technology team and we'll hire two or three more people, but we're not going to go crazy," he says.
You can check out what Frenzoo gets up to via its website.
