Gaming's Next Big Bet: Why 'Hybrid Core' is Disrupting Mobile!

Good morning. I'm Amy Shapiro, journalist at CEK. We're here today at Calculus Gaming Conference 2025. We're joined by Matan Fetson. He's the CEO of Hoopo Studios. Matan, thank you so much for joining us today. >> Thank you for hosting me, Amy. >> It's a pleasure to have you. Of course. Um, to start off with, Matan, can you tell us a bit about what Hoopo Studios does, what it is that you're developing?

>> Of course. Sure. So, Hoopo is a mobile gaming studio with a unique approach to how to build midcore titles. Today, the greatest challenges of Midcore is to drive this long-term retention and to have a healthy game economy and we see many midcore titles that are struggling in hitting those metrics. We think it's mostly because they have poor meta systems and that's why we are building a new category which we love to call hybrid core. It's a combination of midcore gameplay with casual meta. And the title that now we are working on is called Jet Brothers. It's a battle royale dog fight games. Not dogs that are fighting each other, but planes fighting each other. It's a very fun, chaotic, characterdriven game, but with a twist of base building meta. And this title actually demonstrates the concept of hybrid core, and we hope it will also prove its viability. >> Fantastic. And I'd love to get into the kind of specifics of the genre in a second, but first, like, can you give us

a bit of an overview of what you uh how you see the state of mobile genre games uh mobile game genres today? >> Yeah, of course. So the user acquisition costs are still very very high and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon and so that's why we're seeing a lot of for example IP licensings and brand collaboration in order to lower down these costs and so the hybrid casual is driving under this condition and casual is still doing okay but under pressure because of this cost but as for midcore we see some very strongest

fundamental trends such as for example there is a great revenue spike a growth in revenue which means the user spend more in the games but on the other hand the user spend less time in the games and the session times are getting much shorter. But there is one very great and strong trend in the midco that we think that may actually disrupt this entire

category which is an exhaustion and burnout of common meta and monetization mechanics. You can see for example the battle pass fatigue. Just open up Reddit and find thousands of posts of users that are complaining about how frustrated they are about the system. it doesn't give them anything good enough and satisfying in reward. And so

basically the pie may get bigger but now it's harder than ever to take a bite out of it. So even though the market is moving forward and we think these shifts are definitely creating new opportunities for studios who will be able to adapt. >> Mhm. And so let's go back to this new genre that you you've kind of created this uh casual meta with midc. >> Exactly. >> Am I getting that right? You're doing this perfectly. >> Yeah. Tell tell us a bit more about that. So I think we saw the great

success of hybrid casual because it took the hyper casual gameplay that has a big audience match the taste of big audiences and combine it with proven casual metas that can engage and sustain players for a long period of time. Now I think that if we see um for example a lot of these midcourse titles they have

a a a broken core loop which means you match you compete in a match and you progress through levels. You maybe upgrade your character unlock a new level but that's it. There is a lack of a deeper emotional attachment that casual metals and just mastered. So now that's why we think it's the best time for Midcore to go through the same process that Hyper Casual did when it transformed into hybrid which means to

take this skill-based midcore like heavier gameplay that has huge demand for and combine it with very accessible meta that even can be standalone and be the main reason why to come back and play. And we think this combination can not only lead to great games but also to games that can be profitable and sustainable under the not easy market condition that we are currently in. >> And what are if any advantages are there

in developing this new genre here in Israel? >> So it may actually sound like a cliche but I think it's true. Eventually it's all about talent. I think there are two main reasons why Israel is the best place to pioneer this category from. And the first one is that in Israel we have a very deep business expertise of how to build those exact engaging and hooking meta systems. And on the other hand there is an untapped pool of very very creative talented developers and artists who are currently working on indie projects or maybe in one of those big corps that are just looking for the opportunity to work on midcore and more heavier projects which are not so common to work on from Israel. So I think this combination of creativity with deep business expertise is the reason why Israel is the best place to pioneer the hybrid core category for me. >> Fantastic. Well, it sounds like there's a lot of exciting stuff going on at Hoopo Studios. Matan, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much, Amy, for having me. It's been a pleasure. Yeah.