#anipang

Originally written for Startup Tree

It seems Korean mobile game players are getting tired of lining up chicks, monkeys and rabbits in one of Korea’s most popular apps “Anipang” and moving to a more social game designed with the feel and look of good old Monopoly – “Everybody’s Marble”.

Last week, ET News published their weekly update on app ranking heralding the emergence of the game; this week The Korea Economic Daily ran an article on it as well. Essentially, both publications were astounded by the phenomenal success of the game, evident in its DAU (Daily Active Users) figures. According to ET News, the DAU of “Everybody’s Marble for Kakao” now stands at 4.25 million, compared to Anipang’s at 2.58 million and its predecessor, “Cookie Run” at 1.7 million. The article also emphasized that a combined DAU for both Anipang and Cookie Run would still place it lower than Everybody’s Marble.

Amount of Time Spent on Anipang vs. Everybody’s Marble

The Korea Economic Daily provided a more in-depth analysis with graphs from AppRanker, which exhibited that not only is the DAU of Everybody’s Marble twice that of Anipang’s, but also the amount of time spent playing the game. The time measured in the second week of June was 1 hour and 6 minutes for Everybody’s Marble compared to 33 minutes for Anipang. However, just over two weeks, the difference has started narrowing with the amount of game-playing time for Everybody’s Marble which has dropped by 16 minutes to 50 minutes of engagement. On the other hand, the amount of time spent on Anipang has remained consistent albeit decreasing only slightly. Therefore, it is probable that Everybody’s Marble is experiencing a temporary hike in both DAU and game-playing time; it would be interesting to monitor the developments in terms of growth of these game apps.

Everybody’s Marble Thailand

The success of Everybody’s Marble rides on nostalgia and users’ familiarity with the interface modeled after Monopoly, as well as the enablement of real-time play among friends. The game, produced by Taipei based-JoyBomb Entertainment Technology Co., is also available in Thai. To date, it has amassed close to 600,000 likes on its Facebook page and a dedicated website built underNetmarble, a subsidiary of Joybomb’s parent company, CJ Entertainment. In September last year, Korea’s CJ Entertainment and Taiwan’s Cayenne Entertainment Technology Co. came together to establish Joybomb, with the former contributing $4 million, 60 percent of the initial capital invested.

Yet, what is more interesting is the channel or platform through which these games are being played. Based on the top 10 game rankings in Google Play alone, 7 out of 10 games played are hosted on Kakao, with developers building casual games on the mobile messaging application platform and integrating them with users’ contact lists. This results in an enhanced gaming experience involving interaction with real friends, as opposed to “in-game friends”. Given the growing popularity of these games, it is evident that people enjoy gaming with a familiar group of people; whether this preference translates to more hardcore games however, remains to be seen.