From short-term to sustainable mobile game design in a shifting market

• Industry experts share their insights prior to Pocket Gamer Connects Summit San Francisco on March 9th.
• “Gaming has become more mainstream than ever, transcending traditional entertainment, media, consumer products, and nearly every other industry”, says Nørvig.
• “The opportunity lies in hybrid-casual games that evolve over time, blending simple entry points with deeper systems," says Vieira.

With the mobile games market more crowded and UA more expensive than ever, how games are built, launched, scaled and sustained is changing.

Ahead of Pocket Gamer Connects Summit San Francisco on March 9th, we spoke with the CEO of mobile games studio Sybo, Mathias Gredal Nørvig, and the CEO and co-founder of hybridcasual game developer Izyplay Game Studio, Everton Baumgarten Vieira, for their views on the big challenges facing the industry.

Both leaders are among the speakers sharing their insights at PG Connects Summit San Francisco.

Although framed slightly differently, the CEOs pinpoint market saturation as the main challenge for today’s studios. While tools like AI have made game creation faster and more accessible than ever, visibility has become the defining bottleneck.

Depth vs. accessibility

“Discoverability is becoming increasingly challenging,” says Nørvig. “Particularly when launching new games, it can be a highly competitive mobile landscape, especially for smaller studios and emerging developers.”

In a similar vein, Vieira highlights “high acquisition costs” and players being “more selective”, making it harder to stand out in a crowded market. To complete such a quest, he thinks a stronger focus on deeper mechanics is required. 

“A shift away from short-term optimisation toward more sustainable game design, where retention and player trust matter as much as low CPI and early metrics.”

But building for the long-term is a challenge in itself, as Vieira puts it: “Building depth without losing accessibility has become increasingly difficult.”

His own games studio, Izyplay, tries to strike this balance through hybridcasual games that combine “data-driven decision-making with fast prototyping and strong core loops".

Significantly, the developers sees platform expansion as a core opportunity for accessible games with long-term progression. Working across mobile, web and PC, Izyplay is expanding some of its “strongest concepts into more scalable, cross-platform experiences”.

“The opportunity lies in hybridcasual games that evolve over time, blending simple entry points with deeper systems that support long-term engagement and cross-platform expansion," says Vieira.

Sybo sees new growth opportunities

Meanwhile, Sybo, the creator of Subway Surfers - one of the most downloaded mobile games of all time - is looking to expand elsewhere. 

Currently preparing for the upcoming launch of Subway Surfers City, Nørvig agrees with Vieira that expansion is a key opportunity for new growth, especially emphasising IP expansion, partnerships and a new generation of players.

“Gaming has become more mainstream than ever, transcending traditional entertainment, media, consumer products, and nearly every other industry - offering immense opportunities for IP expansion, new partnerships and growth. 

“The original generation of native gamers are also starting to become parents, which provides additional opportunities to reach new audiences.”

To harness this momentum, he would like to see more “new mobile games that usher in another generation of iconic mobile games like Subway Surfers, Pokémon Go and Clash Royale - more launches that push boundaries on things like gameplay mechanics and unexpected features".

AI as an accelerator

While their studios operate at different scales, both leaders see AI impacting development workflows, although to varying degrees.

Nørvig sees a clear role of AI tools in enabling developers, especially in the early stages.

“AI can be incredibly helpful for early ideation processes, including prototyping, concepting, and testing”, he says. 

Leveraging it more as an active element in production, Vieira says Izyplay uses AI to “support prototyping, content iteration, and internal workflows, rather than creative production iterations”.

He adds that it will “soon be used to analyse players’ behaviour".

Nørvig and  Vieira will be among the speakers sharing their insights at PG Connects Summit San Francisco on March 9th, alongside many other industry leaders in mobile games.

Tickets are available now from the official website.