SMART THINKING
Adam Smart, Director of Product at AppsFlyer, explains why why mobile gaming’s charts reflect endurance, and not just hits
O
nce upon a time, mobile gaming was the fastest innovation cycle in entertainment. A quirky concept like
Flappy Bird could skyrocket to the top of the App Store overnight. That era is gone. Look at today’s U.S. top-grossing charts and you’ll see a different reality. Most titles are years old, with some, like Candy Crush Saga, Clash of Clans, and Summoners War, entrenched for half a decade or more.
At first glance, this looks like stagnation. But games today aren’t “hits” in the sense of music singles. They are platforms designed to evolve. Through live ops and expansions, successful games grow with their players. The problem isn’t that old games still thrive, it’s that the system around them makes it nearly impossible for new ones to emerge.
THE ELUSIVE SECOND BREAKOUT Every developer dreams of repeating success. But building a second breakout is nearly impossible, even for well-resourced studios. The reasons are structural: ● Marketing spend is table stakes. UA costs have soared. Without a war chest, scale is out of reach. Organic discovery has all but disappeared.
● Charts measure revenue, not reach. A title with efficient monetisation dominates rankings, even if a newer game is building traction.
● Genres favour incumbents. Idle RPGs, 4X strategy, and casual genres like match-3 or merge, are proven pathways into the top 500. But incumbents defend them fiercely. ● Player investment. Hours of play and money
42 | MCV/DEVELOP October/November 2025
spent make it hard for players to abandon existing favorites, creating powerful inertia. In short: the ecosystem rewards endurance, not emergence.
THE CHART PARADOX This stability creates a paradox. On one hand, longevity signals maturity. Players benefit from polished, feature-rich titles, while developers enjoy predictable revenue streams that support live ops and content pipelines.
On the other hand, the same stability may hold the market back. If discovery is closed off and UA costs remain sky-high, fresh ideas never get a fair shot. Games thrive, but the ecosystem risks stunting its own growth.
REDEFINING SUCCESS One way forward is to challenge our definition of success. For a global publisher, success may mean staying in the top 10 for years. For a small studio, it might mean building a sustainable audience of 50,000 paying players. Both are valid.
Revenue is the ultimate measure of sustainability, but downloads once had meaning. Breaking into the top 100 used to deliver a powerful “organic bump” − free installs generated by visibility. That bump has shrunk as discovery shifts to TikTok, YouTube, and Discord.
Which raises the question: if downloads no longer provide momentum, and revenue is tracked outside the charts, what purpose do the rankings even serve? The obsession with the “top 100” obscures more nuanced definitions of success. Real success should be
measured proportionally, taking a studio’s size, resources, and goals into deeper consideration.
WHAT COULD SHAKE THINGS UP Despite the barriers, there are bright spots if studios and platforms think differently: ● Alternative discovery. TikTok, Discord, Twitch, and YouTube are now where players discover games. One viral moment can spark more momentum than a chart listing.
● Emerging markets. Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East offer less saturated ecosystems where new entrants can still grow.
● Hybrid monetisation. Blending ads, IAPs, and subscriptions creates sustainable models beyond whale spending.
● Innovation in format. Rethinking loops, social mechanics, or cross-platform play still offers paths to stand out.
SO IT’S BUILT TO LAST – WHAT’S NEXT? It’s worth celebrating that mobile games are no longer disposable. The best are built to last, growing richer with every expansion and event. That’s a remarkable evolution of the medium. But if the industry wants to keep growing, it needs to balance endurance with discovery. Platforms should open more space for new ideas. Studios should redefine success in proportion to their ambitions. Marketers should look beyond the charts to nurture audiences. The breakout era may be over, but innovation isn’t. The challenge now is to create a system where the next generation of games has a fighting chance to join the hall of fame, not just watch from the sidelines.
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