CAN'T STOP ROLLING

MOBILE GAME MAKER SCOPELY TOOK IN $2 BILLION IN JUST 10 MONTHS FROM ITS HIT GAME MONOPOLY GO. PLAYERS, IT SEEMS, ARE ADDICTED TO THE FUN.

- BURT HELM

WALTER DRIVER WOULD LIKE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE.

AS THE COFOUNDER AND CO-CEO OF SCOPELY, THE MOBILE GAMES COMPANY BEHIND SUCH FREE-TO-PLAY HITS AS MONOPOLY GO!, SCRABBLE GO, MARVEL STRIKE FORCE, AND STAR TREK FLEET COMMAND, HE KNOWS YOUR TIME IS PRECIOUS. THAT'S WHY HIS GAMES NEVER DEMAND MUCH MORE THAN A MINUTE OR TWO TO PLAY-UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU CHOOSE TO KEEP GOING. BETTER TO LURE USERS IN WITH LITTLE NOTIFICATIONS THAT INSPIRE A MINUTE OF PLAY HERE, A FEW SECONDS THERE, SLIPPING INTO THE NEVER-ENDING RHYTHM OF SMARTPHONE PICKUPS A USER MAKES THROUGHOUT THE DAY.

Those minutes add up. In the past year, Scopely's 500 million users have played its games for 5 billion hours. That equates to approximately 570,000 years' worth of human attention.

Scopely doesn't simply captivate users' time, though. It captures their money, in similarly small increments. Powerups, skins, boosts, spins, dice rolls, and other virtual items priced from $1.99 to $60 or more-add up, too: Users spend an average of $90 every month, and the company is nearing $10 billion in lifetime revenue since its launch in 2011. At a time when the rest of the mobile games market is stagnant-global revenue declined 2% overall, to $107.3 billion, in 2023-the Los Angeles-based company is rocketing ahead. In 2024, it be came the top U.S. game maker in both the iOS and Google Play app stores by revenue, and the fourth-largest mobile games company in the world.

"They are masters of engagement and retention," says Brian Ward, CEO of Savvy Games Group, the Saudi Arabia backed holding company that spent $4.9 billion to acquire Scopely in July 2023. Ward, a veteran video game executive, has a mandate to invest heavily in the industry to position the nation for the future, as part of its Vision 2030 initiative to diversify away from oil and gas.