As 2023 comes to a close, we’ll uncover the latest trends dominating mobile games and driving changes within the industry in this episode. We’ll explore the innovative ways games differentiate themselves in the market and elevate player engagement and reflect on the standout moments in the mobile gaming industry in 2023.
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Join industry experts Teemu Palomäki, Chief Game Analyst, and Inka Reinola, Game Analyst at GameRefinery, a Liftoff Company, as they reflect on the industry’s standout moments and challenges in 2023, including the revival of iconic franchises on mobile platforms, the decline in hypercasual games, and the rise of merge gaming.
You can also watch the episode on YouTube:
Topics we will cover in this episode:
- Introduction
- Shifting to hybrid-casual games
- Making games deeper
- Engagement trends and market findings
- Challenges in launching games
- Mobile gaming trends in Japan
- Location-based gaming in Japan
- Rise of merge gaming
- Narrative and AI in gaming
- IP-based games
- The success of Monopoly GO
Read transcript
Introduction
[00:00:00] Jon Jordan: Hello and welcome to the mobile games playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is the podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers, and all of the latest trends. I am your host, Jon Jordan, and are joining me today to discuss what happened in 2023. We have Teemu Palomäki, who is the chief games analyst at Game Refinery by Liftoff, and also Inka Reinola, who is a game analyst also at Game Refinery by Liftoff. How are you guys doing?
[00:00:33] Teemu Palomäki: Been great!
[00:00:34] Inka Reinola: Great. Thanks.
[00:00:34] Jon Jordan: Good, good, good. Nice and snowy in Helsinki. I was just there earlier this week. So it was very, very Christmasy. Good. So we’re going to be looking at what happened over the last 12 months as ever shot past. So, there are plenty of trends and plenty to talk about in specific genres. I guess it’s interesting that after some really big years in mobile gaming and rising sales and everything, this year’s been a bit harder, I guess. And I guess we’ll talk a bit about that and see how the overall atmosphere in mobile games is playing out in terms of what games are working well. But I guess a big one that’s been happening for a while but is definitely accelerating is what’s going on with hyper-casual games, which over the years have been a big driver to the industry, certainly a driver of downloads. Even now, a lot of the downloads we see are hyper-casual. But Inka, you’re going to kick us off with this one. What’s been going on with hyper-casual? What are we seeing in that sector?
Shifting to hybrid-casual games
[00:01:35] Inka Reinola: We have definitely seen this shift to more hybrid-casual games rather than hyper-casual games. The reason for that is, of course, the IDFA, which is the identifier for advertisers. So Apple requires now the user’s device to have this like personalized number that the advertisers can’t get their hands into without having the user accept that they have to be okay with the advertisers to track their device with the ATT prompt. They have to first select that they’re okay with that. So after that, there has been, of course, a need to shift more from this in-app advertising to an in-app purchase approach. hyper-casuals have been reliant on this advertising income. But now there has to be more income from the in-app purchases. And therefore, hybrid-casual games like this are coming up. For example, My Little Universe is one of these. It’s like, you can see that it has this hyper-casual feel, but it’s actually a bit more in-depth from the hyper-casuals, they’re like, you open the game, and then you play it for like a while, and then you’re already like grasp what’s going on there. But for example, in My Little Universe, which is this kind of, you explore this world, and you try to collect materials, and you try to build the world and try to kill the enemies, and there’s like many different types of things you actually do rather than just like run a straight line.
[00:03:34] Jon Jordan: Yeah.
[00:03:35] Inka Reinola: And it actually combines these like both advertisement and the in-app purchases. So you can get the equipment items for the island by watching an ad, or you can get the cool skin for your character by purchasing the skin. So, yeah, the shift is more towards mixing these two types of systems together.
Making games deeper
[00:04:00] Teemu Palomäki: Maybe that helps to kind of make the games deeper in a way that instead of just having the players be excited enough to try the game and see a couple of ads in the process to generate revenue, you actually need to make it appealing enough for them to make purchases. So maybe gameplay-wise, this is good for these more simple games.
[00:04:32] Inka Reinola: Yeah, it’s much nicer to have a nice skin if you use it more, and it’s more in-depth.
[00:04:38] Jon Jordan: Hmm. Now, I think it is interesting that when hyper-casuals started, it was basically just incredible. Just the amount of downloads, you know, suddenly you had, it wasn’t surprising for games to get, you know, millions of downloads even. It, I guess, at that point, getting, you know, just more people to download more and more stuff was the flywheel. That was what everyone was trying to do. But then you get to this situation where if you’ve got someone to download your game, then actually you want to keep them in it. You want to keep them in that experience for longer, not just downloading maybe another of your games or possibly someone else’s games because there’s so many hyper-casual publishers now. I guess, although you said the IDFA changes from Apple have accelerated this trend. I guess it probably would be something that would happen anyway because what tends to happen is as new game genres come out. Then, the experiences get deeper over time because that’s just what game developers and designers are doing. I can put more stuff in there and that will keep people in there for longer. So I guess it has been accelerated by changes to add stuff, but it probably would have happened anyway. Is hyper-casual even a thing anymore? I mean, obviously it is because I see people still downloading and playing those games, but is that just legacy now? Or do we think there is still some value in those disposable experiences?
[00:06:07] Inka Reinola: Well, at least the bigger trend, as you said, is that, in general, the games have more diversity, and they add different kinds of game modes and everything. Even the most casual game has to have a narrative or some social elements. So yeah, I guess the bigger trend is that. Definitely, there are still some hyper-casuals, but it’s really hard to say if they have anything to add.
[00:06:35] Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, I think maybe hyper-casual is also getting a little bit damaged by the mini-game trend that we see in bigger games. So before like hyper-casuals where you’re going for that quick experience, that viral hit something. And now, through the mini-games and the fake ads and what’s on out there, the bigger players are also kind of entering the competition for players. So I think hyper-casuals in that sense might be a bit of a struggle, but there’s always room for these quick implementations of nice creative ideas, so I think there’s still going to be some room for that.
[00:07:24] Jon Jordan: Hmm. And I guess it’s probably still an easy place for game developers to experiment with concepts. Obviously, you know, as you’ve been saying there, Inka, that as the games get and become this more hybridized experience, then they become much, much more expensive to build out. And you’re not building them out in a week. You’re building that, and it’s probably taking months, so there’s more risk compared to reward there. So I guess there still is the opportunity for people to mess around with concepts and, you know, obviously see whether things are appealing to people. Obviously, that’s a lot of ad creativity and testing around that, and often that I’ve got games just come from a good ad, don’t they mean it’s often you hear people talk, okay, but we could add and then we made a game from it. But I guess if you are getting good downloads from a hyper-casual game, then the natural thing is just to add more things to it. So, so it becomes an inspirational point to make out some bigger games. So, are there any other trends in terms of engagement and findings from the market?
Engagement trends and market findings
[00:08:32] Inka Reinola: Yeah, so relating to that, there’s a much more mix and match of games and things have to be either more complex or not complex at all, but diversified. One big trend that has been occurring is hybridization. So games mix different kinds of genres together, for example, Fiona’s Farm, which has a match-3. But then it also has this game of tycoon crafting and then it also has adventure elements like this exploration. There’s a mini-game where there’s fog and you have to go through the fog to find some materials and all those different elements in this game enhance each other, and they enhance the monetization too. So it just gives many more opportunities for monetization and engagement. For example, you have to go through the exploration parts and then you need something from there for the core gameplay, the match three, and then they all just loop with each other. So this diversified experience is much more common. And it’s also seen in those mini-game trends. So you have more things to do and then they enhance each other. And also another thing that we can see is the innovative core gameplay. So games differentiate by having something a bit different and new, like, for example, Triple Match 3D, which was one of the first that mixed this match 3Ds item pile. You have a pile of stuff where you have to pick three different items for your match bar. This match bar was taken from 10-match. So this is one way to innovate and then differentiate from the competitors. So all this kind of mix and match and new ideas.
[00:10:38] Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, it’s really… We see a lot of games bring something that is different from the core. For example, I think the State of Survival is a 4X game, but it has this rogue-like survivor.io style of gameplay. We have an Idler game, I think. Idlebank Tycoon has a match-three aspect as part of the character development system in there. So games are really trying to be more diverse in their content, and they need to be. Like, you’re going for retention, it’s becoming more and more important. It’s been a trend now for the past year, and I think it will continue to be because If you want your players to stay in your game, you have to have things in the game otherwise, players would move and go for something else that they would consider a viral hit. So if other games are advertising some interesting merge elements, maybe you should consider adding them to your game as well in some form so they can spend that time within your game instead of the competitors, which might distract them and lead you.
[00:12:04] Jon Jordan: I mean, it’s interesting that the mobile games space has always been very focused on the KPIs, particularly, you know, retention and day, day one, day 30, all that stuff. But, I guess in the, as we’ve seen over the last year when it becomes when you have when the game companies have so little information now about their users compared to what they had before, then that also reinforces the fact that once you’ve managed to get someone to download your game. Then you really want to spend a lot more time keeping them in there because it’s not a simple case of just, oh, we just spend some more money and go and find out, you know, go and find a whole bunch of other people. So the whole hybridization thing is playing into a general market trend around. It is harder to find good players and retain them. And I think that there isn’t so much as a trend, but something that we’ve seen this year is, that some big companies have said we’re not really launching new games because it’s so problematic for them to launch games at the scale that they could have done before just by spending money. So there’s quite a lot of structural changes happening in the game, in the mobile game space. And I guess one way of dealing with that is just once you have got someone, make sure you can keep them for as long as possible. And having different modes in there is a way to do it. Although I guess it makes it harder because if you have a whole bunch of sub-genres, there are probably hundreds of sub-genres, which four do you want to put together? And obviously some wouldn’t make any sense at all, but how you do that as a game designer, I imagine, is probably quite a challenging thing.
Challenges in launching games
[00:13:44] Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, there are ways you can alternate between different modes. So like, for example, Playrix and Fishtum that I have experienced, and what they do is they have merge mode and exploration mode kind of alternating as a big event going on in there. So there are ways, but I think something we have seen is also when these developers launch new big games, they have them packed with stuff at the launch. And then the live-op side is forgotten. And if you’re doing a game as a service, it needs to have the service. You need to keep the content creation going on. So we’ve seen, I think, we look at live ops these days quite closely in GameRefinery. So what we’ve seen is there is a lot of stuff going on in the successful ones. And some bigger titles that launched this year with big IPs, Street Fighter Duel, and I think, Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, could also fall into this. But what they did is they had a whole lot of stuff packed at the launch. But then there’s just not much coming in later. So there are these console IP games. When brought to mobile, they tend to kind of go the console-like approach there. And it’s just not the way for mobile. So you need to really pay attention to how you keep the game running.
[00:15:33] Jon Jordan: Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s still, that’s still how mobile is. Has all led the way that’s on top of MLRPG has always had that, but then, just the level of constant updates you need now in a big successful mobile game is staggering. Obviously, at this stage, the live ops teams are as big as the original development teams, and that’s a weird structure for a console company to have, and I guess we’ve even seen it. Some of the big ones are stepping back from that and saying, we were not a year ago on the console side saying they were going to do a lot of live ops. I think Sony, oh, and now maybe saying, maybe not gonna do so much because you suddenly realize just the, the constant size of these teams that you need to be banging out this stuff.
Mobile gaming trends in Japan
[00:16:18] Teemu Palomäki: Especially in mid-core. Maybe in casual, you can do something simpler, but in mid-core, it’s all about core having lots of stuff to play, so there it’s really important.
[00:16:27] Jon Jordan: Yep. So I guess inherently, what we’ve been talking about a little bit is more the Western markets, but always good to dip into other markets. And Teemu, you’re gonna talk a bit about what’s going on in Japan this year.
[00:16:42] Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, one notable thing in there is the AR market, which here in the West, you think of location-based gaming, and you’re like, okay, it’s just Pokemon Go and rest are going to fail. But in Japan, the numbers are really different. You have a lot of different games and a lot of really successful ones. They’re really high in the ranking. So what we have here, launched that last this year, we have the Monster Hunter Now, which also launched in the West. In the West, it’s not doing so well right now, but in Japan, the last time I checked, it was in grossing rank 8. So it’s really the best-performing AR game in Japan. And then followed after that there’s the Dragon Quest Walk, which I think they’ve been running for maybe five years or so now, and then there’s Pokemon Go, but it doesn’t stop there there’s a new game that launched around the same time as the Monster Hunter Now there’s a Nobunaga’s Ambition brand game, and that’s doing really well we’re still in the top 50s with these so we have already like four games in the top 50s in Japan. And then rest there’s Pikmin Bloom and then Eki Memo, which is anime girl collector, girls are trains thing. And there’s a new one also coming like from Square, the next year Kingdom Hearts, where you can kind of explore locations, you can travel without moving yourself. And these are all aimed at different kinds of people.
So you have the action RPG in Monster Hunter Now, and then you have Dragon Quest Walk, which is a turn-based RPG. Pokemon Go is, well, Pokemon, and it is its own genre pretty much. And Nobunaga’s Ambition is, well, it’s a 4X. Didn’t think that was going to be a thing on location-based gaming, but it is, and Pikmin Bloom for casual, Ekimemo for anime girl collectors. So you really have this variety and it works really well in Japan. And that is because there’s, the lifestyle factor. Their lifestyle is more like, you’re not going by your own car to places so much. So you’re traveling on foot or by train. So you have idle hands to play these kinds of games. Whereas in the USA, you might be travelling solo on more occasions. You hop out of your house, you go into your car, and the next time you get out of your car, you’re at your work location or whatever. So there’s not that much room to play. So, in Japan, AR gaming is really big. And if you want to see any trends in that space, definitely look there. And it’s not just like whole games in AR. It’s that they have these side modes. I think it was Puzzle and Dragons or Monster Strike that had this AR side mode in it. So that’s something to consider when going to Japan.
[00:20:15] Jon Jordan: And I guess it’s maybe one of the reasons is all those games, or most of them, are well-known game genres that have been going on for decades in Japan. So, in any game that comes out from Dragon Quest or Monster Hunter, there’s a fan base who are just like, right, this is what I’ve been playing, so check it out. So, it’s not to say that’s going to make it succeed, but that’s going to give it a good starting point.
Location-based gaming in Japan
[00:20:46] Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, definitely. IP plays a big part there. Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, Pokemon, and Pikmin also have a big fan following. So that also plays a big part.
[00:20:15] Jon Jordan: But I guess, as you say, there is also some interesting when it comes to the location-based side of things, that is a very difficult market from, uh, yeah. Getting people to move around from a general point of view. So it may be interesting that the Japanese, just the way they move around Japan, may make that market good where it wouldn’t be elsewhere.
[00:21:21] Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, but I think we might be seeing some innovation in that sense. I’m really interested in what the Kingdom Hearts missing link is going to be like because they have a closed beta going on currently. And from some of the videos that I’ve seen, you can run on top of these buildings. It’s this Google Maps-style area like you see in Pokemon Go. But the buildings have a tallness in them. You can run around, you can control the character. I don’t know if it’s limited, but if you can, just from where I am in Finland, play some location in Japan. But if you have some freedom, say you have like a 20-kilometer radius around you that you can move freely around in, I think that would definitely help, especially up in the north where these kinds of games are really difficult to play during winter time, especially in Finland, it’s really cold. You don’t wanna take out your phone while on a walk outside. So something like that could kind of help these games in the West as well.
[00:22:42] Jon Jordan: Good, okay, another genre Inka, you’re going to talk about is Merge Gaming. So again, that’s now a big staple of the, of the, I guess it’s casual-ish, but it has some mid-core elements as well. So, what’s been going on with Merge?
Rise of merge gaming
[00:22:56] Inka Reinola: Yeah, so I think Merge is quite interesting because, of course, it’s not like this year’s thing, but I think that there has been some stuff happening there this year, at least. And well, first of all, Merge two games, there have been some new ones coming to the top-grossing list, and I would probably point out two games that are like the most successful ones right now, at least and quite interesting. There’s this Gossip Harbour which has a lot of narrative in it, so the game has this story where the character is renovating the restaurant, and there’s this whole scandal that you want to learn more about, and then you merge items in the restaurant to continue in the story. And it was like at the start, it had much fewer features, but it has been like adding more and more these new kind of event types, new kind of features. For example, right now, it has Battle Pass, which has narrative-like rewards, and it has a decoration event that has a narrative, like so many narrative kinds of stuff. There is also a relationship system with the characters of the story, and you can learn more about them by unlocking some levels there. And yeah, and it has a lot of looping events, a lot of recurring events that come every three days or so. Or, like every three days or so, there is something going on. There’s always something going on in that game, and like there has been more and more stuff there. So that’s interesting.
Another interesting Merge-2 game is Travel Town, which apparently was the company that was purchased by Moonactive, which also makes Coinmaster. After that, it clearly changed its UI more into this Coinmaster type of game, or it looks a bit more like Coinmaster, even though it’s a very different genre. And some of the events or the reward stuff in there, it’s like copied from Coinmaster. So that’s interesting, and it is also like adding more content in the Merge 2 game. It’s like, at the beginning, there was not that much. It’s also this game where there’s quite a lot of narrative, not as much as in Gossip Harbor, but at least some level of narrative, and yeah, so, Merge Two games have been adding more content, and this is also related to the wider trend of casual games adding more content and players may be requiring more content. Also, this is a bit older trend, but it’s still going on, and I think there are more of these games. So the mid-core games also like to have this merge mechanic in there. Earlier, there were Top War and Kingdom Guard, at least, which are both like 4X games that also use a merge in some part of their gameplay. And now there is this new game Top Troops, which is a bit similar to Top War so it’s like but not a 4x but there’s like troops that you upgrade by merging and then you go to some battles, and yeah so like mid-core games, to use this merge mechanic also. Merge is very hot, so to speak.
[00:26:29] Jon Jordan: Merge is just a very nice genre to play, I think when people just have time on their phones, it’s all, it’s not, you know, like, match-three sometimes can be very complex about, did I get the right one? Or, you know, which is obviously a strong thing. It’s why there are so many match-three games out there. But Merge just has that much more like, oh, just do this, do that. You know, it’s not, at least when I play, I don’t feel like. I must optimize my strategy. I just, oh, I just merged some stuff together. So it’s a nice way of breaking up some other genres, maybe.
[00:27:04] Inka Reinola: Yeah, it’s nice to add that on top of everything. It’s very cozy and chill.
[00:27:07] Jon Jordan: Yeah, yeah. One thing we actually haven’t mentioned, I wonder, is you spoke so much about narrative there. I wonder, probably wouldn’t have seen it so much so far, but with the rise of stuff like Gen.AI (Generative Artificial Intelligence), you just wonder whether obviously narrative or, that’s what, certain elements of content become basically free now. So, you can imagine that certainly, for some, the genres where that fits in, you’re gonna get a lot more narrative because you can just basically generate as much narrative as you want for free, and if the audience wants narrative you can just give them more narrative.
Narrative and AI in gaming
[00:27:38] Inka Reinola: Yeah, and I have to add here, related to AI, there’s this new MMORPG in China called Nishui Han. It translates to Justice or something like that in English, I think. And there’s this new type of way you can interact with the NPCs that they’re like AI-generated discussions. And so it’s a much more personalized experience with the NPCs. And it’s quite interesting if we are going to see something like this in some other games too.
[00:28:10] Teemu Palomäki: I don’t know. Do we come to some point in a situation where just having a ton of content is… Like, instead of quantity, we want quality. So I think there’s definitely going to be a quantity of AI-generated content. No problem there. But to make it happen with quality for these kinds of interactions to build into something. I think that’s going to be important, especially I think on more narrative-driven games, maybe on console more because on mobile, the narrative goes on forever. It’s not really progressing that much. You have this interesting hook, like what is this mystery and this mystery, a merge game or something, and you never get an answer to that. You’re going around it, but you’re never getting it, so AI-generated content might be more fitting for this kind of never-ending narrative. If you’re going for a story that goes into something, that builds into something, then I don’t know how well that will work.
[00:29:35] Jon Jordan: Yeah. No, I guess that’d be really sweet. It’s a big trend for next year to see how people, how something’s built, how developers use something that’s so new. Obviously, there’ll be novel products arising from that, but then it’s a question of how that novelty is laid into the well-known game development strategies that we’ve been talking about, it’s probably not strong AI isn’t strong enough to be its own genre, but clearly it’s a massively important additional. So it’s tall for some dramas. We’ll see.
Okay, so we talk a little bit more about IP. We mentioned a little bit in the past How are we seeing? More maybe more in the West IP coming through, and the value of that in the mobile space.
IP-based games
[00:30:29] Teemu Palomäki: I think we see a lot of these IP-based games, be it console games or some other IPs. We had a Harry Potter game, The Magic Awakened, that was doing quite well in China when it launched. I think that launched in the West, but it was forgotten very quickly. It dropped out of the top 200 within a month. We’ve had bigger titles, you know, Monopoly Go, which was the massive game from 2023, launched in April, and then by July, it had become the top-grossing game in the US. So it’s been dominating since then. Having tried it out, I can see why. I think it’s doing really well with getting new users. There are a lot of these user acquisition trends we’ve seen previously, particularly the function of inviting your friends. It’s like the older Facebook games where it’s just invite friends, invite friends, invite friends. I think we haven’t seen that too much in the games in recent years, but Monopoly Go does it really well, and it’s a brand that is easy for people to hop into.
And we’ve seen Warcraft Rumble launch it. I think it did quite well. But what, well, if we look at the console game IPs, we have Street Fighter, we have Final Fantasy, we have Warcraft. I think maybe Monster Hunter in the West, in Japan, is doing well, but they fall off quite quickly. So the players are the things that they are expecting from the IP are different from what mobile games tend to be. So I think, well, in Japan, a lot of these games are doing much better. Final Fantasy Ever Crisis, it’s still in the top 50 in there. But they are built kind of like a console game, but then they lack the strengths of the mobile game and the player base just expects something a little bit different. There are a lot of things to kind of work on if you want to make the IP work. fantasy that the audience has with the original source material. If it’s not there, like, I mean, the Harry Potter game, it’s a card game. Is that something you remember from Harry Potter, or is it the one battle? I think Hogwarts Legacy did that well. That’s why it got huge sales in part because of that. So, if you’re fulfilling the same core fantasy that the source material has, then you’re more likely to succeed.
[00:33:57] Jon Jordan: Yeah, I think going back to Monopoly GO, that was interesting because it was, in many ways, didn’t innovate really. There’s been quite a lot of those. I think the first one was a Korean game, wasn’t it? I think that basic to move around a board and then attack other people. I know I played a few mobile games that have that mechanic. I mean, Monopoly obviously has that core theme of competing against each other, so you feel it a bit more. But it just seemed a bit more familiar because you’ve got all the Monopoly-type stuff in there, which plays really well for a Western audience, and it was very polished as a title you could just get that real feeling. But I guess the other interesting thing there was with the publisher Scopely, who are pretty well funded, got bought out this year, so as well as there’s lots of there’s no one thing where you can point to, I think with Monopoly Go say this that’s the reason, but there’s quite a lot of strong factors that stack up together to make it really one of the standout games of the year.
The success of Monopoly GO
[00:34:54] Teemu Palomäki: Yeah, they do their UI really well. So they get a lot of players to download it. And then they have the casual audience. They have a lot of low price point offers popping up. Like every time I open the Monopoly Go, before I get to play anything, I get at least two pop-up offers. Something like purchase this for two euros or something. And it’s, if you get these often enough, then you just might go for them. And it’s, I think, there is the audience for just casino-type gameplay where things are just happening. You’re getting excited because you see flashy animations, and it gives the reward feeling. And it’s something easy to pick up. Things happen, it’s exciting. You’re doing things, and inviting your friends, having the social pressure there, I think that helps. So there’s a lot of things that are really working well for them.
[00:36:07] Jon Jordan: Yeah, yeah. And actually, as you pointed out there, Inka, it did remind me actually a little bit of Coinmaster, and Coinmaster really popularized the layout of how you have those games and a lot of the social attacks things. And, you know, it did feel very much to me, at least like, you know, this is a building on top of those now very well-known mechanics. And then maybe, you know, with you saying that the Harbour Travel Town, that was, you know, the reason that they’re making that game more like Coinmaster is obviously they can then cross-market to the people who now really know how that UI works, it feels very familiar to them. But yeah, wrapping things up. Inka, is there any game that you particularly enjoyed this year that you’d like to highlight?
[00:36:47] Inka Reinola: This year, well, I really like merge games. I think they’re like chill and relaxing. So, that narrative, like a lot of narratives, is a nice thing to have. So I think Gossip Barber is pretty good.
[00:37:01] Jon Jordan: Yeah, yeah, good, good. Excellent. Well, thank you to Teemu and Inka Reinola for going back and looking at some of the key trends of the year. I guess maybe what we see as a slightly quieter year, I guess than maybe some other years for various reasons. I don’t know. I don’t want to downplay the year. But I think what’s interesting is when we do this time next year, I’m sure some of the trends we’ve talked about today will have fed through to some more significant things happening. I guess every year can’t be a ‘knock it out of the park year’. You have to have some ups and downs. So anyway, thank you for talking us through some of those trends.
[00:37:41] Inka Reinola: Thanks, Jon.
[00:37:42] Teemu Palomäki: Thank you.
[00:37:43] Jon Jordan: And thanks to you for watching and listening, however, you are consuming the podcast. Every episode, we are talking about what’s going on in the world of mobile gaming, the biggest part of gaming as it has been for a number of years now. So I hope you are finding these interesting. Please subscribe, and we’ll see you next time. Bye bye.