AppSamurai: A recent report you shared shows a 10% jump in in-game events in just one quarter. How do you see this acceleration shaping player engagement, and is there a tipping point where LiveOps becomes too much?
Ömer Yakabağı:
The 10% jump in LiveOps isn’t just a stat, it’s proof that mobile gaming has fully embraced “Games as a service.” Events are no longer seasonal bonuses; they are now the core engagement loop.
Here’s the catch: more LiveOps doesn’t automatically mean more engagement.
There’s a tipping point where events become noise. If you’re spamming players with time-limited grinds, you burn them out. The winners are the teams treating LiveOps as co-creation with the community: using cohorts, heatmaps, and behavior data to shape events that feel personal, not just scheduled.
The real levers today:
- Time as currency. Players pay to save time, not to win. Good LiveOps designs around progress, not shortcuts.
- Cultural nuance. What feels exciting in North America might flop in Southeast Asia. Regional LiveOps isn’t just about time zones, it’s about cultural rhythm.
- Economy discipline. Blow up your economy with deep discounts, and players will never pay full price again. Smart pacing keeps LTV healthy.
- Flow design. Runners show how difficulty scaling can be tuned so every event keeps players in “flow,” not frustration.
So yes, there’s absolutely a “too much” line.
LiveOps should be a conversation, not a content dump. The studios that respect that, building events with their players instead of at them, will keep engagement sustainable. Everyone else will just add noise to an already crowded calendar.
AppSamurai: Ad creatives are more data-driven than ever, with teams constantly testing new ideas and formats. Do you think it’s the creatives that really make a game stand out, or is it still all about the gameplay? And what’s the most exciting creative approach you’ve seen lately?
Ömer Yakabağı:
Creatives win the install, gameplay wins the retention.
You don’t scale a weak loop with flashy ads, but you also don’t get discovered without them. In today’s mobile market, the ad is often the first level or minigame of your game.
The wild part is how formulaic it’s become: “Save the Character,” “Freezing People,” endless clones of Royal Match’s king. It’s cynical, repetitive, even cringey, but it works, because algorithms reward volume, not originality. That’s why even the biggest titles keep recycling the same concepts.
The exciting shift? High-quality packs like Match Villains raising the production bar with near-cinematic animations, and playables evolving from hypercasual gimmicks into full UA engines. Add UGC on top, cheap, weird, raw, and AI-amplified, and you see the future forming: ads that feel less like ads, more like entertainment.
Gameplay builds the brand, but creatives decide who gets a shot at scale. Ignore that at your own risk.
AppSamurai: With so much new content and features being added to games, the lines between genres are starting to blur. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s truly casual, what’s hybridcasual, and so on. How would you break down the main genres today?
Ömer Yakabağı:
Genres today exist more for publishers, investors, and analysts than for players.
“Casual, hypercasual, hybrid, midcore, hardcore” are convenient boxes we use in pitch decks and market reports. But ask the players, I’d argue that over 70% of them have never even heard these terms. For them, there’s only 1 category: “I’m just bored, I want to play something.”
A game might be listed as casual in the store, but acquired through a hypercasual-style playable ad, kept alive with RPG-like progression, and monetized via a midcore battle pass. So which genre is it? For us, it’s a debate. For players, it’s just an icon they tap, really. Reality?
Genre lines blur → Players don’t care. What shapes trends isn’t how we label genres, but what players download and spend on.
Discovery has shifted. Not App Store charts, but TikTok, YouTube, and playables drive installs. In that moment, the only filter is emotion: “Does this look fun right now?”
Monetization loops redefine genres. Hypercasual funnels often evolve into hybrid retention and midcore-style IAP. Genres today are more about monetization and retention strategy than player perception.
On my 7-y.o Nephew’s phone, Hole.io (hypercasual), Alien Invasion (hybrid), Last War: Survival (4X), and Brawl Stars (midcore) all sit next to each other. He plays them daily. No boundaries in his mind. No idea, basically.
Basically, segmentations still matter internally, for UA strategy, roadmaps, investor decks. But the $60B mobile gaming audience doesn’t care about casual vs. hybridcasual vs. midcore.
The only thing they care about is: “Does this game relieve my boredom and keep me engaged?”
AppSamurai: VC funding is still hard to come by, so more studios are turning to UA financing. For smaller teams already putting a big chunk of their revenue into marketing, how do you see this changing the way they grow?
Ömer Yakabağı:
There’s a wrong assumption hidden in this question: “If you can’t raise VC, just go for UA financing.” That’s not how it works. Any studio that proves profitability and vision can raise VC. The real trade-off is totally different:
- UA financing = keep your equity, pay interest.
- VC funding = no interest, but give up ownership + a seat at the table.
So the real question for smaller studios isn’t “VC is closed, should we try UA financing?” but rather “Which price do you want to pay for growth, INTEREST or EQUITY?”
If a project is profitable and shows traction, money will come from somewhere, UA loans, publishers, angels, even founders’ own assets if they truly believe in it. But no amount of UA financing can turn a weak product into a hit. Borrowed money only scales what already works.
And that’s the harsh truth of mobile gaming today: just like in US-style capitalism, money flows to make the big players even bigger. For smaller studios, UA financing with debt and interest is a serious risk. Imho, without a proven game loop, it’s not growth, it’s just carrying water to a broken mill.
