ByteDance is currently testing offering games through the TikTok app, with a view to engaging a wide range of demographics, including those currently under-represented in the social media app's user base. TikTok is not a stranger to native games, as the app’s Chinese counterpart, Douyin, has featured playable games since 2019. Elsewhere in the world users could play Garden of Good, a casual farming game that raised funds for Feeding America, for one year from 6 June 2021. And Zynga developed Disco Loco 3D, an HTML5 game that launched on TikTok in the US as a custom filter.

Testing is reported to be underway in Vietnam, a country where around 70% of the population is under 35, with rollout planned for wider Southeast Asia. Implementation is said to start with casual mini-games drawn from ByteDance’s pre-existing slew of titles. Casual games appeal to a broad audience but are particularly popular among gamers aged over 35 (Ampere Games Consumer, 12 markets, Q4 2021). This demographic is underrepresented in TikTok’s user base, so casual titles may help in growing engagement in this age group. However, Ampere Games consumer research indicates that gamers who use TikTok display a preference for core, creative experiences. This suggests that a casual title or mini-game may fail to fully captivate TikTok’s audience of gamers. With 1bn monthly active users (Source: TikTok) there will be a variety of demographics to engage and ByteDance is expected to bring more complex titles to the app in the future to suit a cross-section of audiences.

TikTok can leverage its app and audience to successfully bring more native games to the platform. Creating virality on the app by integrating games into the TikTok social loop will inevitably translate into new players. Such has been the case for titles in the past, even for ByteDance’s free-to-play Combat of Heroes. The title launched in December 2019 but saw a boom in popularity in March 2020 when it became the most downloaded game on iOS for four consecutive days in Japan and ranked in the top 10 in mainland China and Korea (Source: App Annie). Its success can be attributed to advertising campaigns on TikTok and partnerships with other social media platforms like Facebook.

TikTok users more likely to enjoy creating content in-game 

Across the 12 markets surveyed, gamers who used TikTok in Q4 2021 were 2% more likely than the average gamer to state that Sandbox was their favourite genre. Sandbox games are categorised by their focus on creativity and player-driven gameplay. From a list of around 30 pre-defined popular titles, Minecraft (Microsoft) was the most popular title among TikTok gamers, with 34% stating that they had played the game in the last three months. This coincides with the finding that 56% of gamers who use TikTok agreed that content creation in a game is important to them, 17% more than the average across all gamers surveyed by Ampere.

Candy Crush Saga (Activision Blizzard) was the most popular title played in the last three months by gamers surveyed by Ampere, but the title dropped to second place when looking at TikTok gamers (Ampere Games Consumer, 12 markets, Q4 2021). Compared to all gamers surveyed, 5% fewer gamers who used TikTok said Puzzle was their favourite genre and 3% fewer said they enjoy it at all. Diminished interest in the genre may be linked to TikTok’s demographic: It has a larger share of users aged between 13 and 34 than the total gaming audience surveyed by Ampere and Puzzle is the most popular genre with those aged over 35.

22% of gamers use TikTok to watch games-related video

Social media is a powerful tool for users to discover new content and for businesses to expand their audiences. The games industry is no exception to this, with Ampere Games consumer data indicating that, across 12 markets covered, 41% of gamers used social media to discover new games in Q4 2021, up from 37% in Q4 2020. ByteDance’s TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms, with the top 100 gaming-related hashtags on TikTok receiving more than 40bn views per month on the platform (Source: TikTok).

Ampere Games consumer data also found that in Q4 2021, across 12 markets, TikTok was the third most popular platform gamers used to watch games-related video (22%). The platform was beaten by YouTube (57%) and Instagram (27%) but did rank above Twitch (20%) in popularity. TikTok users are most likely to use the platform to watch hints and tips (33%), but also enjoy watching game reviews (32%), news (32%), and feeling part of a community (30%). TikTok’s audience differs from live streaming platforms used to watch games-related video as the viewers spend less time watching/interacting with streamers and more time directly engaging with game-centric content.