Breaking the convention that game development begins with planners, one company achieved success by letting marketers lead the charge, using data to target the market. That game is 'Pazzinyang' by ActionFit. Seo Hye-kang, Marketing and PM Team Lead at ActionFit, spoke at MGS2026 to share the detailed development process behind the company's hit title.

A New Approach: Marketers as Product Managers

Team Leader Seo introduced ActionFit, saying, "Founded in 2020, ActionFit is a mobile casual game developer with about 50 employees. We began investing resources into in-house development in earnest two years ago, and we have seen a clear average annual growth rate of 50%, with a revenue target of ₩10 billion for this year."

They attributed this success to marketers who act as trendsetters, rapid production speeds, and strict cutoff criteria. Choi Hye-rin, a team leader at AB180 who co-hosted the session, remarked, "Countless casual mobile games bloom and fade these days. I've seen so many ads for room-decorating games lately that I think I've played over ten of them. That just goes to show how important it is to stand out." Team Leader Seo agreed, adding, "Exactly. That’s why you have to quickly identify promising genres, develop games, and rapidly determine whether they can lead to revenue generation."

Seo explained that ActionFit employs a 'fast follower' strategy, churning out 200 titles a year. They are currently developing 100 to 200 titles this year, testing them on the Android Meta platform in the U.S. market, and ruthlessly dropping projects if they fail to meet CPI (cost per install) targets.

In practice, as Seo described, once a marketer proposes a benchmark game, a prototype is created within one to two weeks, followed by three to four weeks of additional development to refine the details. Even with this process, only one or two titles become successes, and 'Pazzinyang' is one of those rare hits.

Pazzinyang is generating stable revenue in the U.S., Korea, and Japan. Seo explained that the reason this worked was that they initially used AppLovin to operate with integrated countries and creatives for scale-up, and once they determined that scaling had stabilized, they separated campaigns and ROAS by country.

Ultimately, 'Standing Out' is Key.

Seo identified 'exposure' as the core element for casual game success. She stressed that even if ROAS or retention is lacking, a game can still have staying power if its exposure is strong. She mentioned that in such cases, one can optimize by boldly lowering ROAS targets and improving eCPM by increasing CTR and CVR.

However, she also warned against relying too heavily on data, as there have been failures. She cited an example of a title that had initial metrics similar to their hit 'Pazzinyang' and was scaled up accordingly, only to fail due to poor exposure and a downward trend later on. She added that ActionFit now sets higher standards for new titles compared to competitors to overcome uncontrollable external variables like market conditions and genre trends.

Success is a matter of luck, but you must be prepared to seize it.

At the end of the session, Team Leader Seo asserted that there is no clear-cut answer to distinguish between games that will succeed and those that will fail. Citing the failure of a game similar to "Pajinyang," he added, "Ultimately, a game's success is so dependent on external variables that it’s close to luck."

Nevertheless, Seo identified 'direction and speed' as the secret to getting a little closer to that luck. He explained, "Even if the success rate is low, new trends emerge in the market every two to three months. If you maintain a clear direction and experiment with various titles at a fast pace, you will eventually be able to create a hit."

True to her word, ActionFit is continuously testing six to eight new titles simultaneously. Seo concluded the presentation by saying, "We are currently scaling up titles in the merge genre, which has become a mainstream trend in the casual game market. We plan to continue our high-speed approach based on thorough data from a marketer's perspective. I hope to have another opportunity to share our results if we achieve good outcomes."