How to conquer the farming games market? Minigames FTW. Implement or die by Matej Lancaric!

farming markets it around like 70% IPs to 30% ads.

On the other hand, Felix would disagree

and would say this should be way more.

On the other hand, I would say this should be a little bit less.

Farming games, I don't see a lot of placements,

opportunities in the farming game genre or the sub-genre.

That's why I think this is never going to be 50-50 hybrid split. This is a no-bullshit gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail, powered by our ad monetization, game design, and user acquisition triple threat expertise.
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Hello everyone, welcome. This is a new segment which I'm going to call ASMR Insights because I had this idea about us sharing different topics and it's going to be me and only me today.
In the next session, it's going to be someone else. Yeah, I will keep you posted for sure.
So in this episode, I'm going to talk about how to conquer farming games market because there's millions of players worldwide and nobody's talking about it. And I'm going to also show how I play Archer 2 on the screen while I'm going to talk.
So for us, our YouTube listeners and watchers, you can actually check it out and obviously

listen to what I'm going to say.

So the farming games market presents both significant opportunities and formidable challenges.

With the steadily growth and the growing audience over the past decade, this genre continues to captivate millions of players worldwide. We have multiple games in this genre.
I'm going to talk about a few best performers and the top ones. And when we're talking about the market share, obviously we can't skip talking about Hay Day, Township, Cologne, Idle Lumber Empire, and we have some others like Dragonscapes adventure from our friends from Century Games.
So in this episode, I'm going to talk about the current market state, the highlight key trends, and offer actionable insights for developers and marketers looking to enter or expand their presence in this very competitive space. So, what are the market growths and dynamics? The farming games market has experienced consistent growth over the last eight years, with major markets like United States, Japan, Germany, and United Kingdom driving this expansion.
So we're looking at US on the first spot. I'm talking about, let's say, Q1 this year, which is Q1 2024.
If you're looking at US, Japan, Germany, UK, Canada, South Korea, France, Australia, and maybe China and other markets, the US is basically just bringing almost 70% of the whole revenue, maybe 50% is a better statement. I'm looking at Q1 overall of the games I mentioned.
It's $300 million in terms of the revenue. $150 million is coming from the US.
Only $27 million coming from Japan. And then we have Germany with 22 million United Kingdom with 14 million and then the rest is not that meaningful.
It's already going down. According to market research the global gaming market is projected to reach 270 billion by 2025.
the simulation and farming subgenres accounting for a significant portion of this growth specifically the farming games market is expected to grow at 6.3% annual growth rate, which is from 2020 to 2025.

So titles like Township and Hay Day continue to dominate the genre

with millions of active users.

So looking at Township and with the monthly active users.

You know what?

Let's call this weekly.

We can talk about monthly as well afterwards

in the later stages of this episode.

We're going to look at weekly

and this kind of monthly as well afterwards.

So back to the numbers.

TimeShip is actually looking at 8 million weekly active users. That's quite a lot of players.
And that's only on Android. On iOS, it's another 2.5 million.
So altogether, it's like 10. So if we look at other graphs in the sensor tower for Township and check the real monthly active users, we are going to get slightly different number.
So if we look at MAU in the last so you're looking at 23 million monthly active users for Township which is incredible and if we combine compare that to heyday we are looking at for heyday we are looking at actually the same almost the same number so you're looking at 22 million monthly active users for heyday we are looking at 22 million monthly active users for Township. And in some of the months during this year, they actually had more monthly active users than Township.
If we look at the revenue, on the other hand, Township is doing way, way better, which is interesting. We are looking at the same amount of monthly active users, but honestly, October last, well, actually last month, Township reached 40 million revenues in one month, while Hay Day only 12.
Oof. That's very impressive and honestly last month was the best month in terms of the Township revenue you know Township bought launched in September well no in June 2013 It was a soft launch, obviously, but now it's the all-time high.
That's just wow. That's why I'm actually talking about this, because these games are killing it on the downloads and revenue side, especially Township.
So Township alone was downloaded over 100 million times on the Google Play, which is definitely reflecting the massive region and influence of this game. So these evergreen titles have succeeded by continuously evolving their gameplay, adding new features, engaging their audience with regular updates and events,

obviously.

If you look at Township in 2011 or 2013 versus Township 2023, those are two completely different games, different game loops. They added so many different things into the mix.
I wonder if or when Hay Day starts to push more money or more budgets into their UA, what would happen? Because Township is definitely running a significant amount of money on a monthly basis into the UA. So when I'm looking at farming games and the market benchmarks look at the the games dimension there's township versus heyday family island we have clone dyke as well and dragon scapes and i kind of put sin city build it in this category as well but it's more like simulation rather than farming or kind of simulation game so let's call it simulation if we are comparing the Township versus Heide which I already did we have a big gap in terms of the rest of the market Family Island kind of on the third spot or Clone Diike on the on the other side on the fourth spot as well so it's it's kind of clear that if you look at our house we are looking at township looking at 54 cents arab dow dragons capes adventure which is many two.02 on iOS, and then we have Idle Lumber with $0.15, or then we have Hay Day, which is $0.05.
Interesting. In terms of the retention, if we look at Hay Day versus Township and compare it versus Colondike and Family Island.
Hay Day is the best retention profile. Interestingly enough, not the highest revenue.
So as we always say, retention doesn't really pay bills. You can't really come and pay lunch, come to the restaurant and pay lunch with retention.

The waiter will look,

well, yeah,

look will be very interesting.

Hello, can I pay my lunch with retention?

Unfortunately, no.

Anyway, so we are looking at

heyday 60% day one retention,

37% day seven retention.

And this is getting interesting because day 30 retention is 20%, which is incredible. But, and we have day 60, which is basically 12%.
I mean, I'm looking at the data in the sensor tower. So this might be a little inflated and the real retention is, but still.
In terms of the comparison, it kind of does the job. So we're looking at Township, which is day one, 48%.
Day seven, which is 25%. And day 30, which is 12%.
Comparing day 60 to Hay Day, day 60, Township is 8%. And then the rest of the game is Klondike.
It's all over, obviously, so it's not even close. I mean, kind of close, but it's the 41% Day 1, 16% Day 7, 8% Day 30, and 6% Day 60.
Family Island, 45% Day one. Day seven is 30%.

Well, that was obviously not correct.

Day seven is 18%.

Day 30 is 7% with day 64%.

So with all of these different numbers,

and if we look at day 90,

which Supercell, they know what they're doing, obviously.

The heyday is at 9%. Day 99% is incredible.
Township is 6.5%. Then we have Family Island with 3% and Cologne Dike with 4.4%.
So again, genre is dominated by old games. These two games, they are super old and still make a lot of money and township made 40 million last month which is the best month until like till this date since they global launched evergreen games right so they're evolving the feature set staying ahead of the competition because i guess they are because of stable player base.
Township evolved into a new game to increase the engagement and conquer the market share. So players' expectations are super high.
You must watch the genre leaders feature set and then kind of get inspired. The older female audience drives the genre, which requires product-led UA.
And kind of implementation of the minigames tied to UA will be mandatory from now on. And you won't be able to survive in the current gaming market if you like this.
And this is not only going to be applied to simulation of farming games, it's actually across the board. You look at how Kingdom Guard or Whiteout Survival or Last War is actually killing it on not only the UA side, but also downloads and revenue side.
Forex strategy games are able to drive hundreds of thousands of installs per day

and making free or 2.5 or 3 million a day in revenues.

That's incredible.

So you definitely need to think about this.

And also our friends from TotalBattle,

from ScoreWarrior that we often mention on the podcast,

Thank you. about this and our also friends from total battle that we from score your score warrior that we often mention on the podcast they were trying to find the best possible solution for implementation of the mini games for quite a while and then after seven years now they're the only non-chinese 4x game in the top charts.
Again, you won't survive in the current gaming market if you are not thinking about minigames or at least, you know, trying to implement them quite quickly and quite soon. So what are the key trends that are shaping the market in terms of the farming so social integration and community building so social features become increasingly crucial in farming games i mean i guess you remember farm wheel uh from back on back in the days when you opened facebook and anything that you you were able to see there was just millions of notifications from Frontville.
Some games that allow players to interact, compete, or collaborate with others see higher engagement and retention rates. For example, Firemill 3 introduced new social mechanics that have helped stay relevant in the crowded market.
On the other hand, it didn't help that much. Zynga moved operations to India because of cost reasons, I would assume.
But based on the revenues, it's still kind of viable business. It makes 40k per day, maybe less, maybe more in different days.

But it's not interesting enough for companies like Zynga. Let's get back to trends.
So, diverse demographics. The farming game audience is predominantly female, with a significant portion of players age 35 and older.
This demographic is drawn to the genre, relaxing and nurturing gameplay, and often shows strong loyalty to games that meet their expectations. If we look at the actual demographics, it's 25, 35, until 55 basically.

There are some younger gamers in this category,

but mostly, like the most revenue is coming from 35 plus.

Funnily enough, I've already kind of become the main target audience for a lot of games

that are targeting 35 plus.

On the other hand, I'm not a female, but still now I understand that I'm the main audience for a lot of people and gaming companies. Okay, back to the trends.
Again, monetization strategies, you know, successful games in this genre often rely on a combination of in-app purchases and ads on average the revenue split in top performing farming markets around like 70 percent iips to 30 percent ads on the other hand felix would disagree uh and would say this should be way more on the other hand i would say this should be a little bit less farming games i don't see the the lot of placements opportunities in the farming game genre or the sub-genre why that's why i think this is never gonna be 50 50 hybrid split developers who optimize their monetization strategies can see strong results obviously by targeting targeting high-value payers and kind of optimizing that placement for maximum impact. As I mentioned, there's not that many options there, but if you try to optimize the maximum impact, you can squeeze a little bit more out of players.
And the latest trend, I would say the biggest one, the emergence of minigames. And this is quite important.
So what Township did? Incorporating minigames within the main gameplay loop has proven to be a very effective strategy for enhancing engagement and obviously winning on the UA front. So minigames offer variety of minigames offer variety and help maintain players interest over long term you know you know how township did it so i think you see township ads maybe every day either facebook or in any other game that you play and you see all these idle minigames and playables that they use so I started playing Township just because why not I played Township a while ago and now when I started playing it I played for tutorial and then suddenly, wait a second.

There is one thing in the tutorial

that says you can get reward by simply solving the puzzles.

That reminds me something. Let's play play so obviously I clicked play and voila I was in the fucking mini game well in the playable that I'm seeing every day on Facebook or oh not play labels on Facebook, but the play was on any other UA channels.
So this, I think, was quite helpful in terms of the growing user base, downloads, and revenue afterwards. And the key trends in the game market could be around creative advertising and UA strategies.
So as mentioned, Township is running a lot of playables, but this remains critical for success. So the combination of mini games and UA and playables and creatives.
So playables as an interactive end cards allow potential players to try the game before downloading. Obviously very effective in this genre and with others as well.
Coupled with aggressive and creative refresh cycles, these strategies can significantly improve the campaign performance and ROAS. So as I mentioned, look guys, there are so many different trends in the farming and in general in games.
We have freezing families or kind of families that Family Island is using. Township uses a lot of idle mechanics and stacking mechanics from the hyper-casual genre and a lot of different things this narrative story driven adds.
But these games are getting inspiration from one genre and one genre only and mainly from this. Yep, you got it right.
It's Idle Games. It's Township is drawing inspiration, a lot of inspiration from idle games, especially from

idle lumber.

But as I discovered recently, because I was checking the creative approach of both games

Township and idle lumber, and I found out there is one creative that they kind of shared,

and it was an exact one-to-one copy, I found player is actually bought um a stake in up quantum which is

the developer behind idlumber so yes idle games for other games as well as are as an inspiration so what are the new opportunities for new games to enter this market breaking into farming games market requires innovation and deep understanding of genre dynamics. New games must offer something unique to capture the attention of the well-established player base.
So let's see, here are some actionable strategies. Focus on niche markets.
So consider targeting underserved markets or introducing features that appeal to specific sub-demographic within the broader audience. For example, integrating mental wellness elements into the gameplay could attract players seeking more meaningful experience.
L leverage data driven ua obviously using data analytics to optimize ua campaigns focusing on the early early indicators which is day one day three day seven retention rates to adjust strategies in real time i mean this should lead to set benchmarks for day one, day three, day seven ROAS as well to achieve long term positive campaigns and ROAS in, let's say, day 120, 180, 360. these games as we discussed with the retention rates

have different, well not different

but quite good long-term retention curve. So you could potentially leverage this in the UA operations.
Experiment with social and multiplayer features with enhancing social interactions can significantly boost player retention and lifetime value so consider also incorporating multiple multiplayer elements or cooperative challenges to integrate increase engagement this could be quite tough but also how many different games with multiplayer are there in terms of farming not that much right, right? Invest in high-quality creative production. So in market dominated by visually appealing and engaging games and also the evergreen ones with Hay Day on one side, which uses a lot of high-production Supercell-ish creatives, which is oriented on brand.
On the other hand, Township using everything they can to decrease the CPIs. So anything from misleading creatives to idle and altered gameplay, and then most recently, giant chickens and things.
Investing in top-tier creatives is just non-negotiable.

Regular refresh creatives to stay ahead of you at the competition.

So what are the final thoughts?

The farming games market is pretty big

and there are definitely opportunities

for those who can navigate those challenges.

The audience is still growing,

but the player expectations are definitely

the opportunities for those who can navigate those challenges. The audience is still growing, but the player expectations are definitely evolving and with significant revenue potential, I think there has never been a better time to invest in this genre.
However, success will require commitment to continuous UA, innovation and data-driven decision-making, and deep understanding of your target audience. And also, the creatives approach will be absolutely crucial for you with the combination of minigames.
Whatever works on the UA side, implementing it into the game as a standalone loop or as a minigame in tutorial will be absolutely mandatory.

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