The world’s biggest mobile game publisher, Voodoo, has recently passed an impressive milestone with its Academy program. Since April 2022, over 2,000 participants have taken part in the Voodoo Academy, which has resulted in the creation of a community of over 100 new hyper-casual studios.
Following the announcement that Voodoo surpassed six billion game downloads at the beginning of the year, the education program launched in April 2022, reaching this impressive toll of admissions in less than a year.
Created to ensure the continued success, growth and diversity of Voodoo’s offering, the launch was spearheaded by Stanislas Marchand, Core Studios Lead at Voodoo. The learning program was designed to inspire and support the next generation of developers to build, test and improve hyper-casual mobile games.
From launch it has been open to game development students, recent graduates & newcomers to the hypercasual industry and admission to the program remains open to those that fit these criteria. In addition, the Academy is now open to those looking to develop hybridcasual games, in line with Voodoo’s publishing strategy for 2023 and beyond, inspired by recent successes such as Mob Control.
Excitingly, Voodoo is also unrolling a dedicated learning path for game artists, to help them to master art in hyper and hybridcasual games, and find partners to help them succeed in the industry.
Since the launch, there has been a steady stream of engaging educational activity for students beyond core training modules. There are bi-monthly live streams where the community can engage and collaborate as well as incentivised game competitions. The current competition, which runs until mid-December, offers a prize of $8,000 to games in the following categories: Best Puzzle, Best Battler, Best Incremental and Best Playtime Metrics.
Our goal is to keep training talent and create 100 new hybridcasual studios in 2023!Stanislas Marchand
The Voodoo team has worked hard to ensure the onboarding journey for new studios is as smooth and inspiring as possible. They receive coaching, tools, features and assets from the get go as they build their first game, with support throughout to ensure they’re set up for success.
In some instances, the program has also been extended to full-time onsite immersion, combining training and practice, such as in Serbia (Novi Sad) in partnership with Tummy Games or in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh) in partnership with GameFounders.
A particular focus for the program is to help participants build their teams, then train them to create deep engaging gameplay experiences in genres such as puzzle and battle games - with the ultimate goal of delivering strong performance metrics for the first iteration.
Commenting upon the programme launch, Stanislas Marchand said: “After helping to create 100 new hypercasual studios around the world in 2022 and welcoming 2,000 participants to the program, we’re incredibly proud of the amazing initial success of the Voodoo Academy.
"We’re dedicated to continuing this success and providing the best possible training for new studios to enter the exciting hypercasual and hybridcasual space. Our goal is to keep training talent and create 100 new hybridcasual studios in 2023!”
If you’re interested in hearing more, or potentially joining the program, visit here for more information and details on how to apply.
