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December 20, 2021

The Pandemic’s Impact on Mobile Gaming – Tamatem Takeaways For The Future

Over a year into lockdowns and social distancing, the pandemic has made its mark on everyone. COVID-19 has fatally affected individuals and families, near and far. 

Many industries have suffered complete shutdowns, resulting in huge financial losses as well as staggering unemployment rates. COVID-19, with its imposing implications, has driven the downfall of once impenetrable industries. But on the flip side, markets such as mobile gaming have shown stability, growth and even expansion in the face of the pandemic. 

This article will assess COVID-19’s impact on mobile gaming. We’ll cover what we’ve learned at Tamatem during this time and explore how our learnings can be applied moving forward. 

COVID-19 & The Mobile Gaming Industry

Mobile gaming has demonstrated continued growth since the onset of the pandemic. With a huge virtual shift, everything from work, education, and even socializing, has become screen-facilitated. The world’s online presence has never been bigger. That, combined with the spike in time spent at home, has led people to dip into mobile gaming more and more. 

Veteran mobile gamers have shown longer playtime and higher spending since the pandemic. The industry has also seen more newcomers tapping in, with mobile game installs increasing by a reported 45% during this time. Purchasing willingness has increased too, with a reported 67% rise in IAR (in-app revenue) during the first half of 2020. Needless to say, mobile games are providing people with much-needed entertainment and escapism during this time.

Tamatem Throughout The Pandemic: Lessons We’ve Learned

Navigating through the pandemic, Tamatem faced a crucial responsibility to all our stakeholders. We wanted zero layoffs for our employees as well as high-quality service and support for our gamers. We were also adamant about maintaining a positive ROI for our partners and developers.

The MENA region was already a high growth market for mobile games. Once the pandemic hit, Tamatem experienced multiplied growth and increased traffic. The start of lockdowns meant more free time at home, so our downloads and engagement rates started to climb. 

Being in the mobile games industry, we were fortunate enough to be dealing with growth rather than loss during COVID. Yet, we had to make a conscious effort to steer the Tamatem ship through the storm with as much agility as possible. We knew that to navigate the high growth high-pressure period, we needed to support our team before anything. We reassured Tamatem employees that their job was here to stay and that we were in this together. We focused on change management to make the transition to work-from-home feel as seamless as possible.  

As we were experiencing high growth, we had to make sure that we were performing just as high too. Seeing many other industries being forced into let-go’s and layoffs, we capitalized on our growth and poured resources into hiring more talent. Growing our team meant that we could operate better and continue delivering to our customers. It also meant that we could work on more partnerships and make plans for new releases, to take our growth further into 2021. 

Where We Go From Here

Although many things remain uncertain due to COVID, now is the time to plan for post-pandemic recovery. As we continue to take Tamatem to the next level, our growth during this challenging time has taught us some key takeaways for the future:

  • Agility is always essential, no matter what industry you’re in
  • Maintaining growth during tough times takes teamwork and hard work
  • The time to pivot careers and investments towards mobile gaming is now
  • It’s important to learn from resilient industries in order to readjust and succeed 
  • The future of entertainment is mobile

In order to rebuild, we must apply our learnings to our future decision-making. Our best bet is to learn from and tap into industries, such as mobile gaming, that have proven resilient during this time. If there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that the mobile gaming industry is as resilient as they come.

The future trajectory for mobile gaming is screaming “onward and upward!”, especially in the MENA region. If you’ve lost your job due to the pandemic, don’t be afraid to be agile. Pivoting into a career in mobile gaming is possible, even without previous experience in mobile games. If you’re looking for new investment opportunities to recover incurred losses, MENA mobile gaming is a winning hand. With a projected valuation upwards of $4 billion by 2022, the MENA mobile gaming market is where you should set your sight for the future. 

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