Distimo publication may 2014 - en

Distimo ©2014, some rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.Distimo ©2014, some rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
The New Game Genres
on Google Play
Publication - May 2014
By Christel Schoger, Analyst at Distimo
Solving the App-Puzzle

Distimo ©2014, some rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
ALL DATA IN THIS REPORT IS A PRODUCT
OF DISTIMO APPIQ - THE MOST ACCURATE
MARKET DATA, GLOBALLY.
AppIQ provides daily download and revenue
estimates for any app, globally.
Distimo AppIQ

The New Game Genres on Google Play
In October 2013 we shared a detailed overview of the Games category as a whole relative to the other categories.
The trend of the markets continued in line with the findings from that analysis: The Games category is still the most
popular category across the mobile app stores, showing the highest share of both, downloads and revenue.
In March 2014, Google Play expanded the genres within the Games category to cover a broader variety of different
kinds of games. On this occasion, the following analysis presents a more micro perspective, exploring the different
genres within Google’s Games category.
In this month’s publication we analyze the new game genres in terms of the market share based on installs and
revenue relative to the whole Games category. With the complete data of April 2014, we take a detailed look at the
Google Play Store and provide valuable insights from analyzing opportunities and impacts of this change. What kind of
apps gained an advantage from this update? And how can developers benefit from this analysis in their app strategy?
This publication focuses on data for the Google Play Store in the game genre on a globally aggregated level.
All data is directly extracted from Distimo AppIQ, which provides insights on estimated downloads and revenues of all
apps in the most important app stores on a daily basis.
Major Findings
Google Play now features three times as many Game genres as before, in total 18.
Google retires the Arcade & Action, Brain & Puzzle and Cards & Casino sub-categories, and keeps Casual, Racing, Sports, as
well as Live Wallpaper and Widgets.
The top Games sub-category in terms of device installs changed hands from Arcade & Action to Casual in April 2014.
The top Games sub-category in terms of revenue went from Arcade & Action to Role Playing in April 2014.
Nearly all the apps in the top 10 of the new Family genre in April 2014 came from the Casual genre.
The examples in this report show that a significant increase in ranks is possible, when new game genres are chosen wisely.
Some games were able to increase their ranking with a similar level or even less device installs, just by moving to a new genre.
Shadow Fight 2 by Nekki. generated over 70 times more device installs after switching from Arcade & Action to Role Playing.
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The Changes on Google Play
On March 18th
2014, Google Play expanded their game genres to cover a broader variety of games*
.
Before this change, the Games category on Google Play featured six sub-categories:
Arcade & Action, Brain & Puzzle, Cards & Casino, Casual, Racing and Sports, along with two more general
groups, Widgets and Live Wallpapers. While some of these categories remained in place, some became obsolete
and other new categories were created in addition.
Continued Sub-Categories
Discontinued Sub-Categories
With the update of the game genres, three categories were ‘discontinued’ in their initial form:
Arcade & Action, Brain & Puzzle, Cards & Casino.
Developers had the chance to update their app’s store listing prior to the change in March 2014 to the new
categories. If no other new category was chosen by the developer, new categories for these three obsolete
categories were automatically assigned based on this overview:
Arcade & Action updated to Arcade
Brain & Puzzle updated to Puzzle
Cards & Casino updated to Card
As shown in the second paragraph, the initial categories were not completely discontinued, they were rather split
up, to be less vague. Hence, some of these genres are not completely novel, just more confined. In addition, other
new and more specific genres were added:
Arcade Action Adventure Board Card
Casino Educational Family Music Puzzle
Role Playing Simulation Strategy Trivia Word
Therefore Google Play features now 18 game genres (precisely 20 - when including Live Wallpapers and Widgets).
New Sub-Categories
Casual Racing Sports Live Wallpaper Widgets
Casual, Racing, and Sports remain as active genres on Google Play. Live Wallpaper and Widgets are categories
that the developer does not actively chose on Google Play. They are assigned based on the features of the app.
In the following analysis we will not focus on these two sub-categories.
* The update was announced at the GDC Developer Day, read more details about the genre changes here.

The Impact on Market Shares
How did these changes influence the share of each sub-genre relative to the total Games category?
As the update occurred in mid-March, we looked at the complete months of February and April 2014,
comparing the category shares in terms of device installs and revenue.*
30%
28%
19%
10%
7% 6%
Arcade & Action Casual Brain & Puzzle Racing Sports Cards & Casino
GAME SUB-CATEGORIES INSTALL SHARE BEFORE THE UPDATE
Google Play, Device Install Market Share, Globally Aggregated, February 2014
18%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6% 5% 4.3% 4% 3.6% 3.3% 3% 2.3% 2% 1.5% 1.4% 1.2% 0.8%
NEW GAME SUB-CATEGORIES INSTALL SHARE
Google Play, Device Install Market Share, Globally Aggregated, April 2014
In February 2014, Arcade & Action, Casual, and Brain & Puzzle were the top three categories with the highest share
in device installs of all Games categories on Google Play.
In April 2014, being the first complete month of having the category update in place, we found three times as many
genres as before. Arcade & Action was leading with 30 percent in February, but after the update, games listed in
this category moved to different labels. These moves brought the Casual genre to the top. The continued sub-
category scored 18 percent of all global device installs, while it was ranked second with a 28 percent install share in
February 2014. The April overview after the update shows clearly, that the install volume is more spread out across
the new genres. Half of the now 18 game genres showed a device install share of less than 4 percent.
Device Install Market Share
* The sub-categories Live Wallpaper and Widgets are excluded from this analysis.

GAME SUB-CATEGORIES REVENUE SHARE BEFORE THE UPDATE
Google Play, Revenue Market Share, Globally Aggregated, February 2014
NEW GAME SUB-CATEGORIES REVENUE SHARE
Google Play, Revenue Market Share, Globally Aggregated, April 2014
Arcade & Action, Casual and Brain & Puzzle were the most revenue generating genres.
Compared to device installs, Cards & Casino reached a higher market share in terms of revenue.
Revenue Market Share
The revenue market shares from February 2014 showed a similar top three as the device installs.*
41%
29%
15%
10%
4.5%
1.5%
Arcade & Action Casual Brain & Puzzle Cards & Casino Sports Racing
The update, though, brought a new category to the top in terms of revenue share. In April 2014, the most revenue
was generated from the Role Playing genre, a category that did not exist before the update. Top games in this
genre showed a high volume of Korean Kakao based games, as well as Japanese RPG games.
The Casual game genre, which had the highest share in terms of device installs, showed the second-highest
revenue share with more than 13 percent. Similar to device installs, the revenue shares were also more spread
across the new genres. Ten out of the 18 genres showed a revenue share of less than 5 percent.
20%
13.3% 13% 12%
8%
6% 6% 5% 4.5% 4%
2.4% 2% 1.4% 1% 0.8% 0.3% 0.2%0.19%
* The sub-categories Live Wallpaper and Widgets are excluded from this analysis.

Looking at Google Play’s Games revenue, we see a positive overall trend. March 2014 in specific showed a steeper
increase, right after the update was put in place. When comparing February 2014 relative to April 2014, Google
Play’s game revenue increased by over 15 percent, implying that the update had a positive revenue impact overall:
REVENUE INCREASE IN THE GAMES CATEGORY
Google Play, Globally Aggregated, January 2013 - April 2014
Revenue Development in the Games Category
+15 %
A similar revenue increase was last seen in around the holidays in December 2013. The top revenue driving countries
were Japan, the United States and South Korea. As mentioned above, the Role Playing genre showed the largest
revenue share after Google’s genre update.
In addition to some apps moving to the Role Playing category, also newly released apps of the recent months, e.g.
Kakao based games such as 세븐나이츠 for Kakao or 불멸의 전사 for Kakao, contributed to the overall revenue
increase in the Games category.
Benefits of the Move to a New Game Genre
The following section sheds some light on the apps behind the shown development.
Our data gives insights on developers who were on track with Google’s change and sensed an opportunity of a
possibly more fitting category to place their apps in. Below, we show examples of apps that benefited from a
category update, e.g. in form of a boost in rankings.
As indicated above, games from the obsolete categories Arcade & Action, Brain & Puzzle, and Cards & Casino,
were automatically assigned to Arcade, Puzzle, or Card.
We first analyzed the updates of apps that used to be listed in these categories.

Apps previously listed in the Arcade & Action genre switched mostly to the five categories indicated below:
From Arcade & Action...
Arcade
Action
Role Playing
Strategy
Adventure
Arcade & Action
It was clearly visible that more games changed to Arcade than to Action:
Over 50 percent of the games that were listed in Arcade & Action before,
were listed under Arcade during April 2014, while only about 18 percent
switched to Action.
This might also imply that more developers were more or less in
agreement with the automated assignment and did not change the
category manually.
Apart from this more obvious split, a lot of other games were updated to
be listed in one of the new genres, outside of Arcade or Action.
A few examples of apps that found a new home in other categories are
shown in our analysis below.
The following table shows the impact of a category move for some
examples, comparing the global rank in the month of March 2014 (before
the update on March 18th
2014) with the monthly global rank in April 2014.
Application Publisher
Previous
Category
March Rank
(global, free)
Update
Category
April Rank
(global, free)
Shadow Fight 2 Nekki. Arcade & Action 222 Role Playing 2
Throne Rush NEXTERS LIMITED Arcade & Action 124 Strategy 5
Monster Warlord GAMEVIL Inc. Arcade & Action 302 Adventure 8

Shadow Fight 2 is an app that has been around since October 2013, constantly listed in the Arcade & Action
category, where it competed with top apps such as Subway Surfers or Temple Run 2. Russia-based developer
Nekki., which can be translated as “inspiration” from Japanese, must have seen an inspiration in Google’s category
update and listed their fight game in Role Playing. While the game was on global free rank 222 in March 2014, it
found a new home in the Role playing category and reached with this move global free rank number 2 in April
2014. Nekki. could celebrate this success, reaching over 70 times more device installs. In addition, the free game
was also successful in monetizing through in-app purchases. Most installs and revenue were generated in Russia.
... to Role Playing
Throne Rush has also been available since October 2013 and developer NEXTERS LIMITED decided that Strategy
would be a more suitable category for their game, which ranked 124th
in the discontinued Arcade & Action category.
Unfortunately Supercell had a similar idea for Clash of Clans, so that this switch still resulted in having a relatively
large competitor ahead.
Nevertheless, Throne Rush doubled its device installs from the previous month and ranked not too far behind the
top game Clash of Clans in the global free charts in the Strategy genre at rank number 5.
...to Strategy
GAMEVIL Inc., placed their game Monster Warlord out of the Arcade & Action category and found a spot with the
Adventure genre instead. This turned out to be a successful move, as the monthly device installs increased by
over 400 percent relative to March. In company of mostly newly released games, such as Family Guy The Quest
for Stuff or LEGO® Juniors Quest, the monster collecting battle game reached global free rank number 8 in April
2014, after being ranked in the 300s previously.
...to Adventure
All these apps are examples of games that achieved a significantly higher rank in the new category relative to the
initial one. As this higher rank increases visibility, the device installs and revenue volume can also increase as a
result from this switch. In April, this effect was visible for some apps, though not for all. A clearer conclusion on
the impact on organic installs can be drawn in the coming months.

Similar to Arcade and Action, the old category Brain & Puzzle also split into several new game genres:
From Brain & Puzzle...
The majority of the ranked apps of March in this discontinued
category, about 70 percent were found in the Puzzle genre in
April.
This change is also in line with the automatic assignment from
‘Brain & Puzzle’ to ‘Puzzle‘.
Trivia and Word games definitely benefited from this update, as
they could increase their visibility in more confined categories, in a
more fair competition of their own class. This means for example
that they do not have to weigh against larger Puzzle hits such as
the free 2048 Number puzzle game or even Puzzle & Dragons
anymore.
Furthermore, a number of games moved to Educational and Board,
two more genres that did not exist before.
Application Publisher
Previous
Category March Rank
Update
Category April Rank
Trivia Crack Etermax Brain & Puzzle 77 (free) Trivia 1 (free)
Scramble With
Friends Free Zynga Brain & Puzzle 70 (gross) Word 3 (gross)
Kids Educational
Game Free
pescAPPs Brain & Puzzle 325 (free) Educational 19 (free)
Chess Free Al Factory Limited Brain & Puzzle 24 (free) Board 1 (free)
Puzzle
Trivia
Word
Educational
Board
Brain & Puzzle

After Puzzle, Trivia was the genre that most apps switched to from Brain & Puzzle, with developer Etermax
leading the way. The genre update for their app Trivia Crack truly cracked the new genre, reaching global free rank
number 1 due to the switch. While the app ranked 77th, competing with all kind of different puzzle, board, and
word games in the more general Brain & Puzzle category, it now conquered its home genre Trivia, with four times
more installs and over five times more revenue. During April 2014, the largest fan base came from Argentina.
... to Trivia
Kids Games Free - Education showed one of the highest gains in ranks. The game has been around since December
2012, but the new Education genre seems to finally be in an environment, where it can thrive.
While it was ranked below rank 300 behind lots of puzzle, word, and trivia games, the Educational genre gave it
more exposure on global free rank 19. Most installs were generated in Brazil during April.
...to Educational
Scramble With Friends Free marks one of the examples of true word games that found their new favorite spots.
With this example, we also wanted to show an increase in grossing ranks. While the global number one spot
was taken by LOTUM’s 4 Pics 1 Word, Zynga could place both of its top Word games Word With Friends Free and
Scramble With Friends Free on rank 2 and 3. LOTUM and Zynga were the top publisher within this genre during
April 2014.
...to Word
Chess Free conquered the new Board genre on rank 1 from a previous rank 24. Most installs for the chess game
came from India. While this does not sound as impressive as a gain of several 100 ranks, this update is interesting
in a different way: A remarkable note about this change is that the chess game actually did not even have a higher
install volume compared to March. The game therefore shows that it is possible to increase in ranks with a similar
level or even less installs, just by moving to a different genre. It will be interesting to analyze if the visibility from
the current rank 1 in the new Board genre, will contribute to an increase in installs in the next months.
...to Board

From Cards & Casino...
Cards & Casino housed a wide range of games from gambling to
card battle to memory games, and was probably one of the most
difficult ones to search through for one’s favorite card game.
This category mainly split up into Card and Casino,
with Card (also being the set as the automated update)
taking the major chunk of over 70 percent of the games.
It wasn’t surprising that most of the remaining games chose to
update to Casino. This left less room for other changes, even
though a lot of developers still chose genres outside of these two.
Card
Casino
Board
Strategy
Simulation
Cards & Casino
One example of a successful genre transition was Rummi Plus by Peak Games, which was updated to the Board
genre. This move increased its grossing rank from 408 in the Cards & Casino category to rank 37 in the Board
genre during April 2014. Along with this update came also an increase in revenue by over 20 percent, mainly
generated from the United Kingdom.
...to Board

Apart from these ‘discontinued’ categories, where an update was ‘mandatory’, we also analyzed if there were any
changes in the continuing categories: Casual, Racing and Sports.
Some games that used to be listed in the Casual category changed their territory, even though the Casual category
was one of the few that continued. With the availability of new game genres some developers switched in the
hope to find a more suitable environment for their content.
While most apps (more than 60 percent) continued within the Casual genre, the most popular genre to switch to
was Family.
From Casual...
...to Family
2
1
259
2
55
3
125
4
167
5
179
6
214
7
209
9
210
10
1
10
100
March 2014, Casual April 2014, Family
Rank
Hay Day
FarmVille 2: Country Escape
DragonVale
Odd Socks
Littlest Pet Shop
Fish Live
Peter Rabbit's Garden
Fairy Farm
Diner Dash
GENRE UPDATE FROM CASUAL TO FAMILY
Global Grossing Rank Change from March to April 2014, Google Play
As the graph above indicates, almost the entire top 10 of the new Family genre in the grossing charts was listed
in the Casual genre before, with exception of rank number 8. This was reached by Clumsy Ninja, which picked the
new genre Family as its starting genre of choice for the Google Play release in the end of March 2014.
Zynga’s FarmVille 2: Country Escape made one of the biggest moves in ranks from rank 259 in March to rank 2 in
April. To be fair, we need to mention that this app was relatively new compared to the competing games, which of
course might contribute to the higher rank. Nevertheless, Zynga spotted the opportunity in the Family genre and it
seems like its newest game found itself in good company during April.
A lot of the top games in the Family genre showed farm and animal themed games.

The apps of the other continuing genres Racing and Sports, mostly stayed within their genre as well,
but if there was an update than the most popular category to update to was Simulation.
The examples shown in this analysis show that a significant increase in ranks is possible, when new game genres
are chosen wisely.
TOP GROSSING GAMES IN CASUAL
Distimo AppIQ, Monthly Global Grossing Ranks March/ April 2014, Google Play
On the other hand, some developers did not update to a new game genre.
Developer King, for example, decided to stay in the Casual genre. In April this decision paid out as other games
switched to another genre:
As shown above, Hay Day made room by moving to Family and クイズRPG 魔法使いと黒猫のウィズ conquered
the Role Playing Category instead, as its name implies.
Accordingly, King reigned in the Casual genre with four apps from its Saga series in the top five grossing charts of
the Casual game genre, without any update:
From Casual...to Casual

While most sub-categories are aligned, Apple is the only app store that lists a specific Dice genre.
Similar dice games are mostly present in the Board and Casino genre in the two other app stores.
On the other hand, Apple does not offer a Casual genre in contrast to both the Amazon Appstore and Google
Play. The most prominent representative of this genre on Google Play is certainly King’s Saga series. King’s three
Saga games are listed under Casual on Google Play, in the Apple App Store though, they can be found under the
Arcade or Puzzle genre.
Other than these main differences, Apple and Google Play are showing the same genres after Google’s update.
In addition to this, developers can chose up to two sub-genres for their games to be listed under simultaneously
in the Apple App Store. On Google Play and Amazon only one genre at a time is possible.
The Amazon App Store shows similar categories to Apple and Google Play, while there are fewer genres offered.
Amazon does not feature a specific Simulation and Word genre and joined Puzzles & Trivia together.
Games listed under Simulation and Word in the other stores can still be found in Amazon, mainly under Role
Playing or Puzzles & Trivia. One small name difference is Kids instead of Family Games.
In contrast to both the Apple App Store and Google Play, Amazon offers a Multiplayer genre, presenting games
from a variety of genres that offer this community feature. Similar games to those listed here are also available
on Google Play and the Apple App Store, but there is no such specific collection, yet.*
* The Google Play specific sub-categories Live Wallpaper and Widgets are excluded from this analysis. A detailed overview of
the available categories can be found in the related app store: Apple App Store - Google Play - Amazon Appstore
Apple App Store Google Play Amazon Appstore
Action = Action = Action
Adventure = Adventure = Adventure
Arcade = Arcade = Arcade
Board = Board = Board
Card = Card = Cards
Casino = Casino = Casino
Dice ≠ Casual = Casual
Educational = Educational = Educational
Family = Family = Kids
Music = Music = Music
Puzzle = Puzzle = Puzzles & Trivia
Racing = Racing = Racing
Role Playing = Role Playing = Role Playing
Simulation = Simulation
Sports = Sports = Sports
Strategy = Strategy = Strategy
Trivia = Trivia Multiplayer
Word = Word
Games Genres in the other App Stores
With this update, Google Play is now more in line with the Apple App Store as well as the Amazon Appstore. Below
is an overview of the current Games sub-categories available in the different app stores:
The Main Differences

“We have updated the Game categories in the Google Play Store with 18 new genres,
and that helps people find the games they love in a genre they care about.“
- This was Google’s statement at the GDC Developer Day in March 2014.*
Switching from the old selection of only six game genres to an expanded list of 18
more detailed genres definitely adds a benefit to both Google Play developers and
also the users. Searching for a specific game type has become easier on the one
hand, while on the other hand visibility has increased for apps that might have been
buried under more successful apps in a broader, more general category.
Mobile gamers are now presented a more comprehensive selection to discover games in their favorite genres.
At the same time, Android game developers have the opportunity to stress their game’s features and stand out on
Google Play in the optimal category. Another advantage from Google Play’s update is the increased unity of the app
stores. With almost similar game genres, it is now easier for users of different platforms to find and compare games
across all different app stores.
With the new genres, it’s a whole new ball game. The key take away from this analysis is to see which game genres
offer a chance to reach visibility at the top of the charts, to benefit from the opportunities of Google’s recent update.
This overview shows a global picture and may of course differ across countries or can also change over time. But
game developers can take these results as a starting point to analyze their key market and study the impact of the
new categories to identify the best possible spot to have their own games listed in.
Recap
Contact us
For sales inquiries, please contact us at sales@distimo.com
or call +31 30 82 00 567
For press inquiries please contact Mindy M. Hull at mindy@mercuryglobalpartners.com
or call +31 62 504 7680 (The Netherlands) or +1 415 889 9977 (San Francisco, United States)
Publication - May 2014 Christel Schoger
Webinar
If you want to know more about the opportunities of the new Game genres on Google Play, and the insights you
can gain from Distimo’s AppIQ, please register for our free webinar on Wednesday, June 4th
2014 at 6:00 PM
CET/9:00 AM PST.
We would like to invite you to send us your questions related to the topics covered in this publication.
We will try to include some answers in the webinar, so please send your questions in advance.
* Statement to the Games Category update at the GDC Developer Day in the section “Growth Hacking with Play Games“

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