In 2025, the mobile gaming market is rewarding agility more than ever. Rising CPIs, shifting player behavior, and genre fatigue are forcing studios to rethink how they build, monetize, and scale. Gökhan Uzmez, mobile growth expert and game design consultant, shares why “old-school” fundamentals still outperform flashy strategies and how smart studios can adapt before it’s too late.
AppSamurai: You’ve pointed out that some genres are collapsing in 2025 due to high user acquisition costs, weak retention of new players, and saturated monetization channels — while others are rising thanks to lower UA costs and sticky gameplay. How should studios adapt their strategies to stay ahead of these shifts?
Gokhan Uzmez: You have to watch the market in terms of monetization and UA all the time, catch the change ahead of time and adapt. This applies to design, UA budget, ROAS expectations etc. What’s applicable back in 2020 still applies today. Nothing fancy will help you out. Old school works the best.
Different networks prioritize different things, Hybrid campaigns may not work well for everyone while ad driven games still leave a lot of profit for many studios. Also there are certain publishers holding corners, and they are not easily letting those go. For example Match3 was held back for long time until this past summer, now that “power publishers” can’t deal with rising CPIs, they are letting it go and new players entering the market.
AppSamurai: From the “10 brutally true tips” you mentioned in one of your posts, one point that stands out is that creativity is often the least rewarded aspect of building successful mobile games. Why do you think this happens, and how can studios balance data-driven decisions with creative risk-taking?
Gokhan Uzmez: I agree to a certain point with Mr. Faisal’s tips. Data driven decision making is taking place on both creative and data driven decisions. 70-20-10 works the best. You have to offer 70% of an original target point to point then you can only apply “creative” decisions to other places. Otherwise the whole thing collapses. Happens 95% of the games.
Some games just set the standards on those markets and players and you either follow or you fall. Many can’t even see the “fall” side because they can’t climb. Many new games that make big revenue per day are lightly iterated versions of other games on top. Rarely (but still possible) we see new games that are COMPLETELY unique, and make it to the top revenue makers list.
AppSamurai: You’ve shared how poor level design during early prototyping kills retention before day one. What practical steps can studios take to design levels that drive stronger early engagement and more reliable test results?
Gokhan Uzmez: Creating bucketed level design. I have an educational consultancy series on this one. It really makes the entire difference and can not be copycatted. That’s the best thing about it. There are many hidden player insights in your game and with each test, more reveals, so you can tweak it more.
At the end, there is usually a unique level funnel created that is why it can be copied. The majority of the cloned games fail due to this fact.
AppSamurai: You’ve advised new studios to prioritize “creative, data-driven design” over chasing monetization or ignoring market signals. What tools, processes, or metrics should early-stage teams focus on to make smarter, faster decisions?
Gokhan Uzmez: Basic Firebase and spread sheets work. Create custom events and instead of making A/B tests, try other modern methods. Many LTV prediction tools are out there, but I think the “thing” is still on the UA side and how creative you can get. You don’t want to attract wrong players, it costs you more in the long run and right players may not be cheap to acquire. The balance is in the Growth Team’s hand. Both UA manager and Monetization manager (sometimes it could be one person doing both) can really set your game’s destiny if you can keep your CPI as low as possible therefore more room for profit!
