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Opinions on The Future of Mobile
Gamasutra's usual weekly Q&A has industry responses about the future of mobile gaming. From the article: "The interesting thing about the prospects for cell phone gaming is that we as an industry do not yet exist in the hearts and minds of the consumer. When asked about mobile games, the average person on the street does not yet know they can play games on their phone, and the ones that do confess to playing 'a few card games or something like that'. There have been early successes and anomalous successes in mobile, but hardly anyone has done anything of sustainable consequence to the consumer, or the marketplace. -John Szeder, Mofactor, Inc"
I know I may be the minority but I am very aware of they types of games that are available to me on my cell phone. I am just not interested. I am an avid gamer and have been for the past 15 years, but when I am at home I'd rather play my PS2 or XBox, and when I'm out, if I am by myself and bored, I'd sooner read a book or a newspaper than play a game on my cell phone. It may sound shallow but as a working professional, I think I'd actually be embaressed to whip out my Gameboy Advanced on my lunch break.
you can drop a week's paycheck on a PSP. What scares me is the kids I see playing these things. But then I just look at their designer clothes and shoes and it all makes sense.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I stopped developing for PDAs for the love of the larger games that could be written for desktop systems. Some smart folks will develop a decent games-accessible interface for mobile systems. So, what happens when we can start writing the big games for tiny systems?
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I dont think there will be a market for cell phone gaming, ever. There may be that tiny market for those card and old NES ripoff games for when your sitting in a park and you forgot your portable console. There will however alwase be a market for the psp/ds/gameboy sp/gameboy mini. There is NO market for cellphones and they shouldnt even think about putting games on cellphones, theres already too many things that get bogged down on a cellphone.
Sure, some features of cell phones are good, some aren't, but I think that people are trying too hard to just add features to be different. I mean, do we really need cell phones that can take pictures, play music and games, and surf the Internet? Especially when such features are usually of low quality?
If I want mobile gaming, I'll grab the latest handheld from Nintendo. Their games are much better than anything I've ever seen on a cell phone, not to mention that they won't drain the batteries on my cell phone, causing me to miss a vital call when the batteries run out.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Cell phone gaming HAS taken off. Just not in the US. Take a look at some of the stuff they get over in Japan. I think a large part of it is the fact that US phones basically suck. The only good game I ever played on one was before the advent of color screens and it was a Roguelike. Over there they have Final Fantasy 7: Before Crisis, Shining Force, and, although I don't have links for them, Dragon Quest/Warrior and a bunch of other REAL games. Many of them are sold in chapters or installments, typically for around 500 yen. When I see crappy half-assed pinball games going on US phones for $5, the distance between the two standards really starts to show. I'D pay $5 for a FF7 prequel I could play on my phone when I'm not busy doing anything else. I'd pay $5 for Shining Force! But we don't have those. I really wish we did, or at least things LIKE them. Not until then will cell gaming really take off.
Honestly, I hope this industry fails, dies out, disappears, etc. I know that my cell phone is as powerful as a Gameboy Advance, but I really, really don't want to be playing games on it. A numberpad is a poor interface for gaming, and if you try to add gaming controls then you just end up adding a lot of clutter that interferes with silly, non-gaming activities like dialing numbers or talking to people.
Frankly I'd prefer manufacturers to spend their time making cheaper, more durable phones with longer battery lives. A smaller environmental footprint would be nice, too!
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What happened to the "good old days" of cell phones doing just one thing is that they are the engine for a revolution. The personal computer of sci-fi, a little box that connects you to everything and that you keep on your person, is here, now. It's the cell phone. What PDAs strived to be, cell phones ARE. They are a ubiquitous mobile computing platform, an indespensible part of people's lives, and their integration of new technologies will only grow.
Granted, at this point in time, I think it's a poor idea to add games to cell phones in general. There are certainly exceptions, though. I have Puzzle Bobble and Boggle on mine just in case I'm ever bored and don't have or don't want to whip out my Nintendo DS.
But look at what cell phones are, at their base. Originally, they were just a communications tool. Now they are also a personal organizer. They're on the verge of becoming an internet appliance.
Mark my words, cell phones will drive the adoption of personal mobile computing to the masses. Hell, they're already more powerful than some of the first PCs. They might even surpass PCs one day for Joe Average, who might just get a docking station to plug his phone into when he's at home for a larger display and full-size input.
It seems the market for mobile gaming is about the same (virtually zero) as the market for mobile video. Gaming is worse, too, in that it sucks up more of your attention than would passively viewing video. Yeah, you'll get a few anti-social kids and gadget hounds, but what's really the point of getting out into the world if you're only going to stuff your eyes and ears right back into the technology? You'd be better off developing for the Mac as a second platform than most any mobile device.
But also spot on:
p hone-games-any-good-yet.html
http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2005/06/are-mobile-
MOG IT!
Suttree, a weblog about casual games development
I think it is more of a cultural thing then a technology thing. The power is there and the average cell phone screen is about the size of the gameboy micro if not bigger.
Microsoft is avoiding going into the portable game business because they think cellphones are the future. On one of their channel 9 videos they said high end cell phones where nearing the power of playstation 2 (might be playstation 1, foggy memory).
My biggest grip with cell phones is the number pad just isn't that good of a control, some kind of innovation is needed.
Okay, so plenty are mentioning the general lack of interest in playing games on cellphones, and the poor interfaces for doing so. Here are some other problems to overcome:
A) Battery life. With the rush to "Small Form Factor" (aka microscopic physical size), they've shrunk the battery too. It seems that someone somewhere has decided that recharging yer phone every 2 days is acceptable. Playing games uses a lot of juice, and if that thirty minutes of messing around at lunchtime means your battery may die before you get home, then you've got a "feature" that inhibits the primary mission of the cellphone. In other words: people don't like recharging batteries.
B) Hardware issues. How many different cellphone OSs are out there? And within those OSs, how many different versions does your game software need to support? Games are playing to a serious weakness of the mobile phones: multiple platforms and hardware issues within the same platform. Cellphones are where PCs were in the late 1980s in terms of hardware configuration issues, only, as Nokia has shown, nobody buys a cellphone for games.
C) The joys of the vertical integration (aka "Vendor Lockin"). Mobile phone companies are making their stuff so the telcom companies can sell the hardware directly to the customer, tying in a fancy contract, turning off the features they don't like and nickle-and-diming the clients for every added "feature". So to sell a game, you need to develop it for a bunch of platforms, then negotiate with the telecom companies to deliver it to the customer at an inflated cost, with the end result that development costs are high and end-user interest is pretty darn low.
D) Negative user experience. Many phones come preloaded with games. The two I've bought in the past year came with 3 games each. All six of them suck. I mean, they _really_ suck. How are you going to sell a product to a group of people when every bit of experience they've had has been negative? "Well, every game I've ever seen for a mobile phone sucks, but this one I know will be good!" For that matter, when you stumble across some freak playing a mobile phone game, observe closely: is that person showing it to friends, or passers-by? Is anybody trying to look at it? No. Mobile phone games are extremely personal, like the phone itself, and generally aren't passed around. So the only effective way to expose someone to mobile phone games is to put them on the phone when that person buys them. And right now, the best thing out there is Nokia's Snake. woop-de-doo
1. Most are truly unplayable with the cell phone (See Madden Football)
2. The developers and publishers don't really care if the games are unplayable, since to try them out, you have to buy them, and then it is already too late. Just try to get a refund. And better yet, if you signed up for a subscription instead of buying, you will probably forget to unsubscribe and then have a $5 charge added to your bill each month. This is what they hope for.
3. Phone companies are generally evil. (See your phone bill)
4. If you buy 10 games, and then get a new phone, you got no games.
5. It is a closed market. Unlike the internet, there is only one source for phone games - your service provider. It is like only being able to buy games from comcast if you use comcast internet.
6. Sick of hearing about how cell phone games are the 'next big thing' for the past 5 years.
7. Sick of hearing how cell phone games are 'huge' in asia.
8. I like my Game Boy Advance.
Feel free to add 9 and 10 if i missed anything.
It seems to me that all this talk about mobile gaming being the next big thing is an attempt at creating a self-fullfiling prophecy. Over the past few years I have read a lot of articles about mobile gaming going mainstream and how it's gonna be the next big cash cow. I just dont see it happening, and I don't see where the predictions are coming from.
The only way i would see that cell phone games have actualy succeded is by seeing there ripped roms actualy being succesfull on the internet.
I can't speak for the Treo, but the Samsung i730 (pocket pc phone) has a couple great games. Warfare inc (C&C clone), age of empires, and skyforce, are all decent enough so that I don't have to carry around a gameboy. Plus I have some pinball and sports games that are decent.
Although I did wish it had better games. FF or a D&D game would be perfect.