What Counts as a Winning TikTok for a Mobile Game?

Short answer: A winning mobile game TikTok beats its own account's usual views by a wide multiple and earns saves and shares, not just views. Handler measures the multiple as the Outlier Score (views divided by the account's own median views) and the reaction it caused as the Pull Score.

Key points

• Outlier Score is a post's views divided by the account's baseline, the median of its recent views. Handler's calculator uses the last 10 to 30 posts.
• Raw views mislead. A post with 12M views scored 12,813x and a post with 14M views scored 904x, because their accounts normally reached 913 and 15K views.
• Pull Score is a 1 to 5 rating of how hard a post moved people to save, share and comment. Saves and shares count most.
• Across 96 games outliers on Handler's hub, the median Outlier Score was 107x and 47% of posts scored 200x or more.
• Handler's own bars: 5x is the outlier cutoff, about 10x is a strong outlier and 100x is a monster.

What is an Outlier Score?

An Outlier Score is a video's views divided by the account's typical views, so it shows how far one post beat the account that made it.

The typical figure is the median, not the average. One big hit drags the average up and makes every other video look weak. Handler's outlier calculator gives this example: with a median of 4,000 views, a 60,000-view video scores 15x. Use the average (10,600) instead and the same video scores only 5.7x.

A real post shows the idea at scale. The account behind the 12,813x Silent UGC post normally reaches 913 views, and that one video reached about 12M.

Handler shows the score as bolts:

• Under 5x: 1 bolt, around normal
• 5x to 10x: 2 bolts, a solid outlier
• 10x to 100x: 3 bolts, a strong outlier
• 100x to 200x: 4 bolts, a monster outlier
• 200x and up: 5 bolts

The score does not predict future views. It describes one post against one account.

Why do raw views mislead for a mobile game TikTok?

Raw views mostly measure how big the account already is, so two posts can have very different views and the same score, or the reverse.

Fewer views, higher score. The 12,813x post reached 12M views. The 904x post reached 14M. The 14M post had more views and a score about 14 times lower, because its account normally reaches 15K views and the other account normally reaches 913.

Similar score, very different views. On the games hub, one post scored 963x on 1.2M views and another scored 1,108x on 27M. The second has about 22 times the views and a similar multiple, because the first account normally reaches about 1.2K views and the second reaches 24K.

This is why a small studio should not judge a post against a big account's view counts. A 200,000-view post on an account that normally reaches 1,000 views is a 200x post. The same 200,000 views on an account that normally reaches 100,000 is 2x, a normal good day.

What is a Pull Score, and why is it the quality gate?

A Pull Score is a 1 to 5 rating of how hard a post moved people to save, share and comment. It is the quality check on the Outlier Score.

Saves and shares count most, because they are the actions that carry a post into more feeds. Handler reads Pull as the intent side of a post and tracks it separately from reach, since a post can collect millions of views and still move few people to act.

Two posts from the games hub show the difference:

• The 12,813x post has a Pull Score of 5/5, with 326K shares and 354K saves on 12M views. Its Pull ranks in the top 6% of the games outliers Handler tracks.
• The 904x post has a Pull Score of 3/5, with 15K shares and 26K saves on 14M views.

Both passed 10M views. They did not move people to the same degree. Read the two scores together:

• High Outlier, high Pull: the strongest signal. Rebuild this one first.
• High Outlier, low Pull: wide reach, less intent. Worth testing, with less confidence.
• Low Outlier, high Pull: a small win with a strong reaction. Worth a second look.
• Low Outlier, low Pull: skip it.

How do you find your own account's baseline?

Take the median view count of your account's recent posts, then divide a new post's views by it. Handler's calculator describes the by-hand method in five steps.

1. List recent posts. Write down the view counts of your last 10 to 30 posts.
2. Remove unfinished and tiny posts. The calculator suggests skipping videos under 10,000 views or under two days old, because those have not finished their run.
3. Take the middle number. Use the median, not the average. Ignore any freak hit or flop when you pick it.
4. Divide. A new video's views divided by that median is its Outlier Score.
5. Pick one cutoff and keep it. The calculator says there is no standard line. Choose one and use it the same way across every account you compare.

Handler's outlier calculator does the division and the bolt rating once you enter your baseline. To skip the by-hand work, Handler's free Chrome extension adds an Outlier badge to each post in a creator's grid on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube, using the account's median recent views as the baseline.

What Outlier Score should a mobile game aim for?

There is no universal line, so measure against your own account and use Handler's bars as a guide: 5x is the outlier cutoff, about 10x is a strong outlier and 100x is a monster.

The games library shows how high the top end runs. Across the 96 posts analyzed, the median Outlier Score was 107x, and the scores spread like this:

• 5x to 9x: 16 posts (17%)
• 10x to 99x: 32 posts (33%)
• 100x to 199x: 3 posts (3%)
• 200x and up: 45 posts (47%)

No post in the set scored under 5x. These are posts Handler selected because they beat their accounts, so the spread shows what an outlier looks like, not what a normal post does.

Treat the biggest numbers with care. Many sit on accounts that normally reach under 1,000 views, where a single good post produces a huge multiple. For your own account, a steady run of 10x posts tells you more than one 1,000x outlier.

What this does not tell you

The Outlier Score and Pull Score describe how a post performed against its own account. They do not show what drove installs.

• Views are not installs. Neither score measures downloads or revenue.
• The score does not predict future views. A strong post can be a one-off.
• A small baseline makes big ratios easy. A tiny account can post a huge multiple on modest views.
• The spread above comes from one library. It covers 96 posts Handler scored, mostly from a few game genres, and the hub does not show posting dates.
• Pull is a rating. This post uses it to compare two examples, not to set a target.

See the scores for your own niche

Handler (gethandler.ai) is a research-first content engine for mobile app makers. Its TikSpy research function pulls the outlier TikToks winning in your niche and scores each one by Outlier Score and Pull Score, so you can see which posts beat their own accounts and moved people. Handler published this post and sells the tool described here. Your first 6 outlier picks are free, no card.

How we measured this

• Score spread and median: 96 of the 142 outlier posts on Handler's games hub, read on 14 October 2026. The hub lists posts from December 2020 to October 2026. The figures use the multiples shown on the hub.
• Featured posts: baselines, views, shares, saves and Pull Scores come from each post's own library page.
• Two posts in the "similar score" example: baselines and views come from each post's own library page.
• Definitions: the median baseline, the by-hand method and the bolt scale come from Handler's outlier calculator and Chrome extension pages.

Related

• Which TikTok Formats Break Out for Mobile Games?: the format breakdown behind these scores
• Games outlier library: every post mentioned here, with scores and breakdowns
• Handler for mobile games
• TikTok outlier calculator