Jason Ng, the Vice President of Strategic Partners at Garena, was interviewed by PocketGamer. Talking about the Mobile Gaming Industry in 2020, but also reviewing his year of 2019.
2019 in review
A lot has happened in 2019, new games came out as well as updates and performance improvements. Garena focused a lot on enhancing the gaming experience for their community of gamers from all around the world. But they also kept them engaged with more and new dedicated esports events.
Free Fire, a game by Garena themselves is a battle royale game.
“A group of people from different background and classes were brought to an isolated island by a mysterious organization called “FF”. They were told only 1 people can leave this island alive. Some of them were kidnapped by FF, some of them were attracted by FF’s bounty game FF treats everybody as a tester, hypnotize them, brainwash them and genetically modified them. These testers have lost most of their memories and only a few pieces remained. However, these are not important. There is only one target for all of them: stay alive!”
Is their own description of the game, a great game with great content. And according to App Annie, it was the most downloaded mobile game in 2019.
Jason Ng says “If I had to choose one milestone that I’m most proud of, it would be the scale at which we grew our global Free Fire community at in 2019, achieving new record audiences for our esports events in the process”.
The Free Fire World Series 2019 had peaked with over two million viewers online, a record in mobile esports history so far.
Jason Ng himself is also a big fan of Free Fire, being a game he plays frequently. A lot of updates with new content for it, it was something that draws him towards it. Clash Squad started as an experimental game mode, but with tons of positive feedback from the community, they decided to simply implement it into the core game.
What could be the biggest trends in 2020?
“I expect this type of collaboration to become only more common in the future, as games continue to garner ever-larger audiences across broader spectrums of society,” says Jason Ng to PocketGamer.
There will be more and exciting things for mobile games. Popular artists will collaborate more with mobile game developers and publishers. Just like DJ Alok, who worked for Garena in Free Fire.
He also thinks that players will engage more with mobile gaming, whether it’s through the game itself or through other media, like video content. It could be live streaming or dedicated content, like guides and tips.
Read – Free Fire Co-Founder Gang Ye emerged as a Billionaire
Hopes and wishes for the mobile game industry by Jason Ng
It used to be that mobile games were simple in regards to gameplay and functionality, but this has since changed. He hopes for more in-depth content by the game creators, to push their limits and experiment more.
There are already great games that push the limitations people are used to, like Free Fire or Arena of Valor. Mobile gaming can be just as gameplay heavy like a PC or console game, creators just have to aim for it.
What do you think the Mobile Gaming Industry in 2020 will bring? Leave a comment below or join our Discord.
