App Market Insight: Challenge of TV and Movie IP-Based Mobile Games

Are you one of the millions of viewers hooked on the Netflix series Squid Game? Well then, we've got a treat in store for you as the thrilling series has its own game.

Many of the world’s top intellectual properties (IPs) are increasingly being leveraged in the mobile games space, originating from sectors including film, comic books, and video games. Useful as a marketing tool, IP may become more important in a post-IDFA landscape where granular targeting is impossible. 

Utilizing the new IP classification types found in the Game Intelligence platform, our report delves into the licensing world to analyze the top-performing franchises and how the performance of licensed titles compares to that of non-IP games.

The TV and movie IP are rising these years, it becoming the most popular topic people all over the world, with this trend, the mobile games based on these IPs are also attracted lots of attention by players. It is also a great opportunity for the app developers and marketers to get their app to the top align with the trends.

Market Share of the TV-based IP games

Games based on established franchises (IP-based games) are on the rise. As we predicted, this rise is now especially apparent on mobile—owing to the platform’s lower barriers to entry (compared to console and PC). There’s a reason why 2.7 billion people play on mobile.

In 2021, 23 per cent of overall mobile game player spending in the U.S. was generated by IP-based titles. The market share for downloads was slightly smaller, making up 17 percent of all installs. The overall market share of IP games, however, is outsized compared to the number of licensed titles.

While only 9 per cent of games used an IP, they accounted for nearly a quarter of player spending. As well as taking up a notable market share, the growth of IP games also matches and exceeds that of non-licensed titles.

The Changing Mobile Landscape Is Making Publishers Pay More Attention to IP-Based Games

Mobile gaming, its audience, and the revenues it generates are undeniably huge. However, the removal of Apple’s Advertising Identifier (IDFA) is a sweeping change that will ripple throughout the mobile ecosystem (more on that in our free 2021 Trends to Watch report).

IP-based games will have a vital role to play in a post-IDFA mobile market, as publishers are increasingly looking to diversify the ways they organically acquire users.

At the same time, mobile’s impressive revenue and audience growth have caught the attention of big entertainment companies. This was amplified by the pandemic, which put many brands’ ad spend in flux.

Simply put, entertainment companies are keen to inject their IP into mobile games, and mobile games are keen to use it. But the top three IP game franchises globally might surprise you.

Revenues: Mobile’s Top Game Franchises Based on Film, TV, and Books

Between January 1 2015 and March 15 2021, the top three IP-based game franchises worldwide by revenue were:

• Journey to the West (famous Chinese literature dating back to the 16th century) with $5.4 billion in net revenues.
• Marvel (a globally popular superhero franchise) with $2.2 billion.
• And Onmyoji (originally a Japanese novel published in 1988) with $1.1 billion.

The overwhelming majority (99%) of Journey to the West’s mobile game revenues came from China. What’s more, around 90% of the franchise’s IAP (in-app purchases) revenues came from two MMORPGs from NetEase: Fantasy Westward Journey and Westward Journey.

Historically, the biggest Marvel title on mobile is Kabam's Marvel Contest of Champions, a 3D fighting game first published in 2014. Lifetime revenue for Contest of Champions currently sits at around $1.3 billion, with the U.S. being its biggest market (accounting for 56% of all revenue).

Despite being based on Japanese literature, Onmyoji is most successful in China, where NetEase launched a turn-based mobile RPG named after the property in 2016. This Onmyoji game accounts for 95% of all revenues generated from the Onmyoji IP.

NetEase has since tried to recapture Onmyoji’s success for the Japanese market, but localization challenges stopped this from happening. The company subsequently launched three more Onmyoji (in 2017, 2019, and 2020), but none of them reached the same heights as NetEase’s original.

While the top IP franchises by revenues are diverse and trace their origins from different regions, downloads tell a completely different story.

Why Are IP Based Mobile Games So Popular?

Marvel Contest of Champions generated lifetime revenues of over $700 million in the U.S., making it the market’s biggest IP-based game on mobile. But what makes it such a revenue success (beyond its recognizable brand name)?

A steady and consistent flow of content contributes to the game’s ongoing triumphs and recurring revenues. New characters and story elements keep the players engaged.

In 2017, new characters were released every two weeks. The Marvel IP is huge and features multiple characters, meaning Kabam has a practically endless pool of content to pull from. The game boasted 150 characters as of 2019.

Every time the developer releases a new event or character, the game promotes the additions with high-production YouTube trailers. These videos often feature high-profile YouTubers and influencers, bringing in diverse engagement from specific target audiences.

Marvel Strike Force (launched in 2018) is a rising star in the U.S. mobile game market. The game eclipsed Marvel Contest of Champions in 2020 with $90.5 million IAP revenues, making Strike Force the country's top-grossing Marvel mobile game in 2020.

IP-Based Games on Mobile Are Here to Stay

In the East and West alike, we expect to see even more entertainment-based IP games coming to mobile. The reverse is also true: entertainment companies are utilizing game IP for film and TV. The Last of Us, Castlevania, Fallout, Dota 2, Borderlands, and AFK Arena are just a few examples of game IP coming to other mediums.

The biggest game and entertainment companies are already building giant IP powerhouses around gaming, movies, TV, and more. This is increasingly happening via in-house creation, but also via acquisitions and investments.

As we predicted in last year’s Global Mobile Market Report, companies signed an increasing number of IP licensing deals in 2021. And we expect that they’ll continue to do so amid the removal of the IDFA—as well as raising privacy concerns across mobile.

Publishers can lean on IP-based games to generate hype and attention for their mobile games, especially if there is something else going on within a franchise. Cross-promotion is vital.

When games are released in time with movies or other relevant IP launches, publishers can expect more organic traffic and therefore a larger number of downloads and engagement. This is something we saw with games like Marvel Contest of Champions and Jurassic World: The Game.

It’s also something we expect to see even more of. And if executed correctly, IP-based games—and IP injections into games (Marvel in Fortnite, for example)—can be a truly effective tool for license holders and game makers alike. 

The Rise of the Geek

The internet era has also surfaced the strength of (the poorly-named) “nerd culture”. More specifically, we’ve learned that almost everyone—including the most “educated” and “successful” among us—is obsessed with geeky fantasy worlds. This was far from consensus even ten years ago, despite the success of “Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, and “Spider-Man”.

Sure, audiences liked the occasional epic sci-fi blockbuster, the thinking went, but this was limited to adaptations of the very most successful IP of the modern era and there was little audience demand for much more of this content, let alone year-round. 

To this end, almost no one believed “Game of Thrones” or “The Walking Dead” would work. And yet “The Walking Dead” has spent eight of its ten seasons to date as the most-watched scripted show among 18–49 year-olds on basic cable, and five seasons as the biggest scripted show on television overall. And when “The Walking Dead” wasn’t the biggest show on cable, that title was held by “Game of Thrones”. This (surprising) success has a direct connection to the belief that weird titles like “Diablo” or “Sonic” might work on film.

Gaming’s Growing Cultural Impact

At the same time, recognizing the plausible appeal of gaming IP is not a sufficient explanation for Hollywood’s growing interest in the medium. Over the past decade, the cultural influence of gaming has grown considerably - and not just because of the overall expansion in the number of gamers. 

Much of this advance stems from underlying technological advances that have improved fidelity (including performance/motion capture by professional actors), enabled immersive storytelling experiences (Hollywood composers regularly produce game-specific scores), and allow players to do far more than jump, move right or shoot. 

Each of this help, but their ability to come together to create unmistakably magic art is crucial to the legitimization of all types of games—just as the creative achievements of Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Bill Sienkiewicz with their 1980s comics signalled a new maturity to the medium.

Similarly, gaming has shown a disproportionate ability to create culturally resonant content, IP and stars. Beyond the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most of the best-selling and most repeatedly successful franchises since 1990 have been games like “Call of Duty“,“ Grand Theft Auto“, and “Legend of Zelda“. The highest-grossing franchise of all time is now “Pokémon”.

Two of the biggest celebrities of the past decade, PewDiePie and Ninja, built their brands almost exclusively based on video gaming. And, not for nothing, the outsized success of Sony’s “Jumanji” reboot was based around the tropes, experience, and aesthetics of video gaming.

More broadly, the last few years have seen Hollywood fundamentally reconsider the role of gaming for its IP. Historically, tie-in games and licenses were seen as little more than additional “monetization” opportunities. To this end, most of these video game titles were substandard experiences that sold only because of their IP, rather than for their quality, and represented a “brand withdrawal” rather than a “brand deposit”.

In recent years, however, this disposition has evolved. Video games are increasingly seen as a medium through which “real” stories can be told and fan love can be grown. Warner Bros. Interactive’s “Batman“ games, for example, have been substantially better received (and are more repeatedly successful) than any of Warner Bros.’ DC feature films. Similarly, Sony Interactive achieved much greater heights with the 2017 video game title “Spider-Man” than with either of its “Incredible Spider-Man” films. 

Every “Star Wars” film released since 1980 has struggled to appease fans. Yet, the franchise has seen some half-dozen games released to wide acclaim (and typically from an even “nerdier” and “obsessive” set of fans). And given the franchise’s need for a narrative reset and source material to draw from, it would be of little surprise if Lucasfilm decides to adapt a game like “Knights of the Old Republic” or “Jedi: Fallen Order” to the screen. 

In a similar vein, many studios are now using video games as a key promotional channel for their IP. Based on press reports, the studios behind Marvel, Star Wars, DC, and John Wick offered their IP to “Fortnite” at no fee. 

Nothing else could more clearly demonstrate Hollywood’s mindset shift. IP-based businesses live and die by "affinity". If Hollywood now believe that games are a critical path to growing affinity for TV/film IP, it’s logical that they now see the potential in IP native to the medium.