Nokia N-Gage: Clunky

A long while back I was asked on my thoughts around gaming on the mobile phone. At the time I replied that there was no simple answer, that there were a number of scenarios that made being able to design strategies and methods for achieving success in these markets very difficult. Problems ranging from device compatibility through to user experience all contributed to make the platform unappealing. Compared to the familiar and well-used processes used to support traditional video games, the mobile phone was treated as a niche platform. A couple of attempts were made to crack the mechanism – Nokia’s N-Gage phones were one such example – but ultimately they failed to gain a foothold in the marketplace due to only offering a limited range of games. So what’s changed since then? In a word, everything.

Apple's App Store

Back in July 2008, Apple launched their App Store, offering 500 applications that customers could download direct to their iPhone. In the weekend since it was launched over 10 million applications were downloaded, with those chosen being a mix of free and paid content. Since then, estimates have put the amount of revenue the App Store at $1 billion with Apple keeping 30% and passing the rest on to developers. Fast forward to late January and Apple are now saying that there’s been 500 million downloads from a catalogue that’s expanded to 15,000 applications. By far the largest category of applications on the App Store is games, although it’s impossible to quantify how many of those are ‘limited feature’ free versions in order to tempt players into forking out for the full blown version. Suffice it to say, games have been a huge success on the iPhone. It’s no wonder that traditional games developers are taking a keen interest in the platform for future titles. Not only that, but Microsoft, Palm, RIM’s Blackberry, Google’s Android, Samsung and Nokia are all working on having their own app store catering for paid applications shortly. It’s unclear if any of these other stores Will be as successful, as Apple already has a billing relationship with their customers via iTunes and used their close relationship with the existing OS X developer community to ensure a selection of applications was available at launch.

That’s not to say that the Cupertino crew have had things all their own way – commentators feel that being reliably able to search for games or get auto-recommended a list of titles to try would be a huge welcome, as would being able to look for top rated games in particular genres.  The shop storefronts also feel a little static, with little scope for uploading a youtube video of the app running or audio commentary from the developer. That said, there’s also the question of what the App Store as a concept will introduce for desktop software. For desktop videogames at least, an online shop has been kicking around for some time, either in the form of Steam or Direct2Drive. With all of this laid out in front of them, surely it must represent some kind of Golden Age for developers and publishers to connect smoothly with customers? Well, not quite.

The trouble with developing videogames is that they cost money. In the case of PC and console videogames it can be a as much as $30 million, while customers are increasingly concerned about the value they get from the games they buy. Conventional industry wisdom states that for a game with top flight production values, a publisher will need to shift about 1 to 2 million units in order to break even, due to the complexity of the latest consoles and the relative cost of developing for them. Compare that with the iPhone, where a nine year-old can write code that will run on the platform. But a shallower platform, where users are becoming accustomed to a low price-point in games brings it’s own problems, and although indie developers can crank out a game relatively easily, they find they have to keep producing rapidly in order to sustain that income. There are already development tools that can make the process a little more streamlined, but largely speaking it’s still a new area. Even then, there’s always the complication about developing a game for all of the emerging app stores – which ones you pick, how you spread development, what maximum technology level you develop for. It’s always a risk that you’ll start developing for a platform that falls out of favour, leaving you with a game but no market to sell it to.

Aurora Feint: Asynchronous

So, is there an alternative? Well, it just so happens that there might be. One relatively unexplored area of videogame development on the mobile platform is the MMO. Currently, there are some tentative steps into this area through titles such as Aurora Feint, but these tend to be asynchronous experiences where the player can chat with others using an IRC style interface and use ghosting (competing against another player’s saved session) in order to provide the multiplayer experience. Parallel Kingdom allows players to play alongside each other using GPS, but relies on a solid data connection to maintain gameplay continuity. In a realm where data connections aren’t always present, it’s important to either allow action to take place at a slower place so that every player gets a chance to take part in the action, or allow portions of the game to be carried out offline. Luckily, the concept of turn-based games has been around for a fair while, with their ‘tick’ based variants such as OGame being particularly suited for massively multiplayer gaming. From there, it’s a matter of developing a sequence of game mechanics and content, as well as the clients that run on the various mobile devices that are available. The wonderful thing about developing the infrastructure in the first place is that it can be recycled – the same mechanisms could be used to facilitate a football team management game as much as one revolving around tribal warfare.

There are, of course, some sticking points. How do you get people to pay for the thing? Traditionally web or browser-based MMOs have relied upon advertising for funding, while client-server variants have used either a subscription based mechanism or a microtransaction system where in-game items are sold for real currency. Either are possible with a mobile-based MMO, with transactions being possible in real-time via Premium SMS, or by charging an in-game allowance using facilities such as PayPal. There’s enough flexibility to even employ different charging approaches for different games released.

But what about that niggling doubt about developing mobile clients for all those different devices? Well, recently I had the luck of catching up with Paul Golding, who is somewhat of an expert in the field of mobile web technologies. It may be that one option is to open up the infrastructure and allow users, fans and so on to develop their own clients. Provide a standard interface for players to get a feel for the game and perhaps a client or two for a couple of major platforms, but otherwise keep it open and allow others to generate their own frontends to the game.  After all, players are already tweaking their games to create custom interfaces, so why not go the whole hog and allow them to create the client? It mimics the approach of Twitter, a fully web-based app that took off once others started developing clients and offshoot services to integrate with it. By allowing others to hook into the game’s exposed services, you increase the potential to promote it purely by word of mouth as well as avoiding funding development for a multitude of clients. And as long as you keep getting subscriptions, transactions or advertising eyeballs, you only stand to make more from your original concept.

So, while mobile gaming has come a long way already, we’re still only at the first step. By intertwining the data connection and payment relationship already in most mobile phones with compelling games that hook into a player’s other social services, it’s possible to really move forward. This amalgam of old and new ideas might just do the trick.