Are minigames back?

The afterthought of the industry is facing a reworked and powerful future

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Minigames—the category few of us proactively think about—are coming back into focus. The term “minigame” is sort of a loosely defined concept, so bear with me here, but I’m referring to games that tend to be casual with short sessions and are typically embedded inside of another game, platform, or app. Minigames are pretty old: some of the earliest examples were in the first Final Fantasy in 1987 (i.e. my birth year). In general, these are not titles that require a lot from developers or players, but they can offer a lot of benefits to each and—with improving technology—they’re getting more sophisticated than ever. 

OG minigames 

In traditional gaming, minigames were an interesting way for developers to add mechanics or experiences that were separate for the general world or play of the game, but perhaps thematically related. While not “embedded” in the way minigames often are, some more immersive recent examples have been in titles like Red Dead Redemption II, which allows gamers to play poker and other cowboy games. It doesn’t influence the general game or story (other than maybe earning some money), and the story and broader game don’t influence the minigame (no saloon shootout will disrupt your poker game).

Minigames let developers offer an additional or adjacent experience, or even take chances with styling and gameplay that would otherwise feel out of place in the core game. And the benefit is obvious: you’re keeping a player in the game for longer. The end of a game session is an opportunity for players to leave, having satisfied one loop of the game or simply fatiguing the gameplay. Minigames offer a bite-sized way to “refresh the palate” with something different, and can even buy more playtime for the core loop itself. More play time normally means better retention and higher lifetime value. All good news. 

Minigames are also valuable ways for developers to experiment with new types of mechanics, testing different modes that can be built into a more full-fledged part of the game without risking too much development time or player backlash. 

Historically, some “games” have been little more than a compendium of minigames cobbled together under one room (think JackBox Party). 

Platform games 

Minigames are only as good as the platform they’re hosted on because they’re an experience within an experience. So the first step is always enticing users to the primary experience. Social and streaming platforms command a lot of eyeballs and a lot of usage hours as consumers browse lots of different content. Facebook became a mainstay of the early digital games ecosystem because users were there in droves for the social networking. As social games as we called them came onto the platform (not necessarily minigames, per se), users began to spend more and more time on Facebook, as well as using the games to find new ways to interact with their connections (Words with Friends, anyone?). Social games rocked the casual games landscape because titles could leverage the existing Facebook audience (and ad network) without requiring anyone to leave the platform for another browser or game launcher. Ultimately, the casual games space opened an entire new category of gamer (older, more female), made billions of dollars a year, and served as the precursor to mobile gaming later on. 

In short, social games proved that giving small, accessible games to audiences that were embedded in another primary experience could be massively lucrative. Game devs won handsomely by tapping into a large ecosystem that Facebook brought to the table, solving the distribution issue. Facebook took its cut while also keeping users on the platform—offering up their data—for longer periods of time. Users got a streamlined experience. Everybody won. 

This tried and true model is a reason why platforms like YouTube started to eye minigames, too. YouTube announced its Playables program in 2023, but we’ve seen little movement on it since, and the recent firing of much of YouTube’s dedicated gaming team doesn’t augur a bright future. The reasoning behind the interest, however, was clear. People spend an average of 48 minutes per person watching (or listening) to YouTube videos each day. And since gaming is the second most-watched category, YouTube knows that its audience is heavily focused on games. So, why not give them games to play while they remain on YouTube? 

Netflix, likewise, has established a growing gaming strategy over the past couple years. Currently, Netflix games are all separate apps and experiences (more on why this could change below) that require users to leave Netflix, download the game, and then use their Netflix account to access the title. Not ideal. Minigames present a way for Netflix to keep users embedded in the Netflix world for longer, reinforcing their core content and not simply having people bop out for unrelated games elsewhere. 

More sophisticated minigames, particularly on mobile devices, have been limited by a couple things:

1. App store policies. Up until recently, Apple didn’t like the idea of people being able to offer minigames in their apps for fear that they’d miss out on their platform fees if, for example, a game publisher could offer access to 50 minigames for the price of one app or subscription. Changes to Apple’s store policies following a few of its antitrust cases now let developers build in separately-monetizable minigames. For a platform like YouTube or Netflix, this means the ability to present a catalog of experiences under one umbrella. 

2. Game streaming. Bigger games take up a lot of space and are computationally intensive, and many apps won’t want to burden users with hefty downloads or slower performance for the sake of a bunch of minigames the user might never even use. Cloud gaming or game streaming has often been a solution in pursuit of a problem, but could find its niche in powering embedded games.  

Minigames as ads

Minigames don’t always need to be complete experiences, nor do they need to be made or run by the primary experience creator. This opens the door to minigames as ads, sometimes for other games, and sometimes for other consumer products. 

Like the social network game example, game developers are always looking for a bastion of existing eyeballs that they can swing toward their game. Distribution is hard and user acquisition is costly, especially when doing traditional, static ads. Games are burdened with the need to engage users early, to make the game feel tangible and like something people want to play. Compared to a consumer product where you can get by with just a static image, games are impossible to conceptualize without at least a trailer. Minigames go one step further since they let people get hands-on with the game instantly, which increases engagement and the likelihood of conversion. It’s another scenario with a lot of winners: the publisher of the ad/minigame gets its ad revenue and keeps the user on their platform for longer, the game gets a new player, and the user gets to easily discover something new and fun. 

With increasingly sophisticated minigames, it’s possible for players to enjoy longer and more robust experiences—including buying in-game items—without ever leaving the platform where they discovered them in the first place. 

Minigames in web3

Now for the new kid on the block. The blockchain increases the ability for unrelated entities—say a platform on one side and a game developer on the other—to coordinate around integrations like those that minigames offer. Attribution, revenue sharing, user data and profiles; all of it becomes more transferable using a universal ledger that doesn’t require the two sides to sit down and connect a bunch of disparate web2 infrastructure. This means that a platform can more easily open itself to allowing third party games to access its users while ensuring it gets its cut of any spend, and it means the developers aren’t as restricted by the whims of that platform. The blockchain also lets platform and game developer more easily leverage each other's users and their owned and bought assets, making for some really interesting cross-selling and loyalty structures. 

The blockchain can even, apparently, make it easier for a platform to integrate the minigame in the first place. A recent trend on the social network protocol Farcaster (which is a blockchain-based standard for social posts, like an on-chain Twitter) has developers experimenting with embedded experiences. Called Frames, the structure lets developers easily pull from one place an experience (for example, a game) and publish it as seamlessly as any other post on the platform. 

My friends at Spindl detailed how this works and some other use cases beyond gaming, but it’s another example of where blockchain technology will allow for the acceleration of trends that we’re seeing in gaming generally, unlocking the potential for more entities to participate, and more games to reach more users. 

Combined with AI and UGC—trends that will increase the ability for more people to develop games—web3 and its implications for minigames can open new categories for novel play experiences and gaming ecosystems. 

Minigames have been relegated to an afterthought of the games industry for a long time. I couldn’t find any data on usage, and certainly nothing about revenue and performance. But they’ve persisted for over 37 years as a category, demonstrating that they engage users and benefit creators and platforms. With advancements ranging from game streaming to web3 to UGC, I think minigames will be a formidable fixture of the next wave of the space.