The scary thing about the Mobile Game Industry is that they seem no more sure of its ability to succeed than the gamer who reacts apathetically to it. I was curious about the real deal, so I checked out a seminar today called "Are We Having Fun Yet?" The name itself gave me the giggles, so I thought it might be worth it to see if the developers themselves could explain to me why I should be playing mobile titles.
Our host was Mark Stephen Pierce, CEO of Super Happy Fun Fun (got to love any company with the nuts to use a little meth addict face for the logo). They put out an award winning game called 3D Tilt-A-Whirl where you actually tilt the phone in your hand to control the pinball. Kind of a neat concept, right? So why is all of America clamoring to buy a Wii to go bowling, but less than 10 percent of gamers can be bothered to download any mobile game that isn't Tetris?
Per Mr. Pierce, in 2004 the top mobile games were Tetris, Bejeweled and Pac-Man. Fast forward three years later. The three top mobile games of 2007? Tetris, Bejeweled and Pac-Man. Wow. It's grown by leaps and bounds, hasn't it? According to the numbers, 7 million people play a game on their cell phones once a week. It makes me curious as to who these people are, because I don't know one gamer who plays anything other than Tetris on their bus or subway trips. Do you?
Mobile developers are aiming for a very simple customer with a short attention span. There's nothing wrong with that, but the very same consumer likely to be attracted to these games is likely to forget about them 5 minutes later. How to capture and keep the attention of this demographic is anyone's guess, and it looks like the developers themselves are still trying to get their finger on it.
For now, mobile games are the equivalent of staging a musical in a graveyard. They're trying hard to make it happen, but it seems to always be struggling to get to the next level. Do any of you actually play mobile games? If so, what games are so much fun that you actually want to play them more than once? Most importantly of all, do any of you think that mobile games can overcome the crappy medium of a cellular screen?
Contest:
4:24 PM on 03.06.2007
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Also, Anderatti Racing (sp?) which was a decent F1 game. (it sucked)
NO ONE [u]WANTS[/u] TO PLAY GAMES ON THEIR PHONE!
Just because this market seems viable in Asian territories doesn't mean the America's (and possibly Europe, but really I have no idea what they want) want anything to do with it!
I have argued similar points before. Companies just need to make cell phones a really good phone. I would fucking love it if my cell phone had a really nice speaker and microphone. That would be amazing if i could actually talk to people on a cell phone. But they are focusing way too much time on cell phones games and other shit.
I think any developer that is putting effort into cell phone games is a fucking tool and should be slapped. Cell phones are not of any significance in the game market. they need to spend their time working on DS titles or something else.
HA! Fooled you! It wasn't me!
The more processor-intensive mobile games can only run on a fraction of handsets anyway (ngage anyone?), and I think that's why Tetris, Bejeweled, and Pac-man always end up on top.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12993
Apple's starting to do it too on their iPods and of course, the iPhone, but until there's some kind of real standard, we're just going to see more Tetris and Bejeweled.
super happy fun fun is the only company to really move outside of that realm, and i'm honestly dissapointed 3d tilt a world isn't available on verizon.
cell gaming will never replace the console experience, but with increased storage, higher resolution screens, and more effort put in to graphic processing in every generation of phones, there's no reason the cell phone can't replace your handheld.
When I'm on the train, subway, or in the airport waiting for my plane, I notice a significant amount of business gurus meddling their stodgy fingers all over their cellphone key pad, playing (guess what) Tetris, Bejeweled, or Pacman. I doubt the developers of mobile games are actually aiming for 'hardcore gamers'. I can only assume they're looking to attract the bored chumps who would much rather play a mindless game on their cellphone than, oh, i don't know, read a book. These are most likely the same folks that make 'classic hits' like Solitaire and Mindsweeper continually show up as default games on computers. These 7 million people, naturally, cannot be addressed as 'gamers' by any means.
Anyway...just a thought.
Heard you talking about this article :P
i'm fuckin tight 8)
Also, its a booming market by shear numbers, as people have said. Mobile games industry isn't thinking about the hardcore gamer, and probably wont, since they have to realize they all have handhelds.
Plus, there are some good *ideas* on cell phone. Like the multiplayer Pirates game that came out and like 5 people played. Cool idea (pickup and play multiplayer shootout on boats), but not supported by the current technology (many networks just aren't fast enough to handle that much data?). Its a mater of getting them to work right.
And even, on top of that, mobile gaming media is a joke. When IGN is the best source for mobile gaming reviews, thats a sign that your industry is failing to garner a hardcore fanbase. not that its important or anything.
But also, no one's come in and really made the experience legit. Like Nintendo. If Nintendo dedicated time into a cell phone game, hyped it approrpiately, and made it work nice on any platform, then we'd have ourselves a viable "console" in mobile gaming.
And finally, Tetris works, Pacman and Bejeweled work on the crappiest phones, with the crappiest screensize, and the crappiest sound. From a design standpoint, they win. To make a confusing profound statement, Mobile Gaming doesn't have its Tetris yet.
Didn't they die with the N-Gage?
Geeez, mobile games suck just for the fact that cellphones have no dedicated joypads....
So yes, I still ask the question who plays these games, apparently only about 10-15% of the people out there do. But is growing darn fast.
I guarantee you that once the industry gets big, you'll see some new games up in the top 10. Even some console games gone mobile.