MobHappy

Nokia Gives More Details On New Gaming Strategy

When Nokia confirmed it wouldn't be making any more N-Gage models a little while ago, the surprise was, well, surprising, given it had announced the plans at E3 in May to make the N-Gage a gaming platform and extend it across multiple devices, and reiterated it a couple months ago in Barcelona. But then again, blogs can have awfully short memories. In any case, Nokia's shared some more details of the plan with developers, and it still sounds to be the right idea.

It's been pretty clear for a long time that having a single games device when there were plenty of other handsets capable of running the games wasn't the best idea. Too much of the plan's success hung on the success of the N-Gage, and when it didn't sell, the whole strategy tanked.

The idea now is yes, you can play these great games on any of these devices -- but maybe it would be better on a dedicated device, if that's what you want, or with a special gaming accessory. That sort of open, additive strategy is far better than one that says, no, you can't play that game -- it doesn't matter that you've got hardware technically capable of running it, it's just not the "game phone".

The N-Gage and its games were but one example of these sorts of closed strategies that run rampant in mobile. Far too many products and services are available to a limited number of users, whether it's for technical, financial or other reasons. Part of the promise of mobility is the huge number of mobile users in the world -- but when your product's available to only a very tiny subset of them, you're putting limits on your success. (It strikes me as I write this that ShoZu, which I posted about a few minutes ago is an example of this. Cognima Snap is a great product, but it's only sold to carriers -- but ShoZu's an analog that's open to anybody. Well, anybody with a compatible handset. But nobody's perfect :D)

(Image from sidetalkin.com)

Sony Pays Lip Service over Parental Control

Sony is the latest console maker to announce parental controls for its platform, according to CNN. The new PS3 will join models from rivals Microsoft and Nintendo that allow parents to veto the machines' ability to play rated video or games.

While the big three need to show that they're doing something to avoid Government legislation or even law suits by parents whose kids have been "corrupted" by this material, I can't help feeling that for most people, this is merely paying lip service to the problem. The vast majority of parents simply won't understand how to activate the controls, even if they know about them in the first place. And I bet that someone somewhere finds a way to hack round the controls and the solution will be all over the net within a few months or weeks.

Even if that weren't true, the kids will find ways to access material if they want to badly enough. I know my son plays GTA at friends' houses, which we won't allow him to own himself, as he's only just 13. It's not that we're down on GTA especially, it's just that there's plenty of material of a similar rating that I do think he's too young for. GTA is the thin end of the wedge.

All you can really do as a parent is keep the home free of this kind of stuff, by monitoring casually what they're watching and playing and hope that this does the trick. But controls like Sony's seem pointless apart from a few geeks who double as parents.

Sony's not getting great press from bloggers, what with one thing and another, are they?

@Austin Games Conference - Towards The True Mobile Game

Mobile game guru Greg Costikyan, formerly with Nokia Research but now head of Manifesto Games, highlighted a number of problems facing the mobile games industry, and developers in particular.

- The mobile gaming business model impedes innovation, because consumers buy games based on one line of text, and therefore are drawn to recognized brands (Tetris, licensed games, console titles, etc).
- Games are content, media are containers. There's lots of game media, and this medium is mobile. So does the mobile game have to be a subset of "the video game"? Probably not.
- Different game styles are suited for different media. Mobile device will always be an inferior video game platform because of the small screen and controls that are designed for telephony, not gaming.
- So how do we bring about the mobile game? It's not a technological problem -- what games are suited to the device?
- A true mobile game style would provide a collection of game mechanics that together produce pleasing player experiences. Some would depend on the unique characteristics of the mobile devices, some exist in a current medium.
- What makes mobile different as a medium? It's voice-centric, highly personal, it contains a slew of the user's own information, it's networked, it's ubiquitous (both always on and always with the user), it's usable anywhere and it almost always now has a camera.
- But, almost none of the above characteristics can be used by mobile games. No simultaneous voice and data connections, and J2ME (for good reason) can't access phone and date book information.
- The phone is networked, but it's hard to use because of high latency, the JAR model makes it hard to add new levels and content to a game on the fly, and it's also hard to connect services without a server.
- Location-based services still really don't work well. Cell-based locating is too inaccurate, and GPS is too slow and doesn't work in dense urban areas.
- APIs for cameras that are useful to games developers are few and far between.
- To enable mobile true mobile games, technology providers must figure out how to let developers use the features already available on devices, how to use them better and to make sure they're as widely developed -- and as standardized across manufacturers -- as possible.
- Voice is the biggest example. Player communication is vital to every multiplayer game, from cards to MMOGs. Online services in the 80s noticed that just adding text chat to classic board games spurred usage.
- "Single-player games are a wast of devices built for human communication." (A quote from my former colleague Justin Hall on TheFeature)
- How to make voice a reality? Ensure deployment of OMA PoC as soon as possible, and further examine VoIP in the context of gaming.
- People should be able to use their phone books, which is their "buddy list". Shouldn't have to create a new list for gaming. Create ways to for people to play their friends (ie sending an SMS if they're not online), and to make people they've met online "friends" out of game.
- It's in everybody's interest to make superdistribution a reality. If someone wants to send a game to their friend, and their friend wants to buy it, it should happen -- regardless of if they're on different carriers or using devices from different vendors.
- Networking has to improve, and much of that is dependent on operators' configurations -- reducing latency isn't a high priority because gaming is one of the only applications that needs it.
- Developers should have easy ways to both add new content to games (new levels etc) and pull content from a user's phone (say they have a personal avatar).
- The success of mobile games has been based on cross-vendor, cross-operator solutions, like J2ME. But technology doesn't yet let developers take advantage of the things about mobile devices that make them different from any other platform.
- Presumably, the ideal mobile game will be one that won't translate well to other platforms.

@Austin Game Conference - Mobile Keynote

Jason Ford, the general manager of games and entertainment for Sprint Nextel gave the mobile keynote this morning at the Austin Game Conference. Here are some notes from his presentation:

- All this talk about the "third screen" -- the mobile phone is more like the 4th or 5th screen for gamers.
- Who is the gaming customer? 51% male, average age of 30 (compared to 44 for general wireless subscribers), ethnic minorities "over-index" for mobile game purchasing. But the next wave of mobile gamers is more mainstream: the average age of people intending to buy games in the next year is 35.
- New gaming demographics, such as the "hard-off" player: hardcore mobile gamers off their normal platform, and are more than twice as likely as average consumer to buy a mobile game.
- Casual games are the most popular for mobile, leading to the "cardcore" player: hardcore casual games players. Sprint's top Bejeweled player has logged 44,171 games in 2,025 hours, and the average of top 100 players is 750 hours. For the World Poker Tour game Sprint offers, players start with $2000. 17 people already have over $10 billion, 61 have over $1 billion, and 675 have over $1 million.
- The market is immature, so it's important to exceed customer expectations with great games and a complete experience so they'll both play again and tell their friends.
- 8 pillars of mobile gaming business: quality, partners, , attract, pricing, carrier, but the three most important are exceed (exceeding customer's expectations), megarg (acronym for make every gamer a repeat gamer), buzz (what happens when you succeed on exceed and megarg)..
- Exceed: games must exceed customers' expectations, which are the bar by which they judge everything. For example, Sprint offers two very similar tennis games. One is branded with a famous player's name, and the second is not. The unbranded game ranks 88 places higher in user ratings, and the branded version is next to last.
- In-fusio's VP of game design says "the definition of a fun game is the one that is able to tap into the emotion of the player so that he/she is compelled to automatically press 'start' again. There is some new hook (and it can be simple) that keeps me coming back. The two biggest reasons people stop playing mobile games is lack of interest and poor overall quality of game play.
- Megarg: Make Every Gamer A Repeat Gamer. New customers are great, but let's keep the ones we have. Look to the customer for feedback and direction. For one game, Sprint's ratings partner had rated a game 8.6, whereas the average customer feedback from 400 votes was 6.1. Evaluate games from the player point of view, not just employees, people in the office, and professional reviewers. To that end, Sprint has a review board of 10-15 customers to look at games. The focus needs to be on what customers feel about a game. Do they feel cool? wowed? happiness? warmth?
- Buzz: Consumers will spread the word about good games if we give them the opportunity. People don't buy games because of brands or technology -- they buy them because they're fun. Customers become "mini-evangelists" if the focus is on great games. 21% of mobile game customers heard about a game from a friend (74% heard about it from a carrier). The highest rated games in Sprint's game lobby have the lowest churn.
- Sprint did a study by geographic area of games downloads, and it could see tiny pockets with high download rates, a phenomenon they put down to people spreading games among their friends.
- Carriers don't always understand what has to happen in developers' business for them to be successful. Conversely, developers don't always understand carriers' business -- these misunderstandings cause much of the conflict between the two. For instance, games are just one thing carriers market to customers, not the only thing.

From the Q&A:
- Multiplayer is being used increasingly as an aspect of mobile games, rather than their top characteristic.
- The "predominant" force behind deck placement decisions for Sprint is customer feedback.
- Sprint wants to see the industry grow through alternate distribution channels (premium SMS, etc), but wants to make sure they're done in the right manner and don't alienate customers through things like unclear subscription plans.
- Sprint's policy is that for a game to be billed on a subscription basis, it has to have a service element -- no monthly payments simply to keep the ability to play a game.
- The phone's biggest advantage over portable devices like the PSP and DS are that people have their phone with them all the time.

How Not To Do Mobile Gaming?

I posted last week about how Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins -- previously the founder of gaming giant EA -- believes in mobile games with a strong social element, rather than flashy versions of console games ported to mobile, or games based solely around hot graphics. I saw today the news that mobile game publisher In-Fusio has secured the Halo franchise for mobile, and will develop mobile applications based on it. I'm not a hardcore gamer by any stretch, but Halo's pretty cool. That doesn't mean it's going to work on mobile, far from it. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of something worse to put on a phone than a console first-person shooter known for its rich graphics and intensive gameplay.

Halo does have a strong community of online players attached to it, though -- and it's that community that Halo mobile must be built around to succeed. But it's doubtful that's what the company has in mind. Part of the problem with porting console franchises to mobile is the inflated expectations people have of them, and it's doubtful a Halo game on a phone could measure up.

Take a look at the top-selling mobile games in the UK for August: the only console retreads on there are versions of simple, old-school games like Tetris and Breakout, and then football management and golf games. Everything on there is a simple, casual game, not an involved shoot-em-up. When it comes to mobile games, simple sells. It's the same thing as on richer platforms: all the flashy graphics in the world don't do any good if the basic gameplay is poor -- and gameplay on a mobile is fundamentally different than on a console or PC.