Company Spotlight #2: Mobile Amusements
Two weeks have passed since we tried out the first company spotlight here at the Mobile Games And Gaming Blog. As we had great feedback on it and noticed many people read it. We decided to speed up the number of spotlights we place to about 2 each month. This second company spotlight is devoted to a much younger developer called Mobile Amusements and spoke to their CEO, head of coding, head of sales etc etc Adrian Cummings.
[Arjan] Looking at your portfolio, we see a big history in console development. Why did you start in the mobile industry?
[Adrian] Yes, I had been active for many years prior to the mobile industry as a 3rd party developer for many larger developers. After around 15 years, development things came to a bit of a sticky end around 2004 when the games industry in the UK at least was starting to fail and many studios went under. Over this time period it was very difficult to get work and I made the ultimate decision to enter the mobile games industry from the very bottom with very little left from my halcyon days as a developer.
[Arjan] Did you face many problems in the transition to mobile?
[Adrian] There were many obstacles to overcome in my very early days of mobile development for which I was in the most part almost totally unaware, these included device fragmentation, midp1 against midp2 development and path to market and publication, these were all areas that I had to overcome in order to get started as a mobile developer.
[Arjan] What do you see as the biggest problem in the industry and how would you solve it?
[Adrian] There seems to be a lot of content aggregators in this business all wanting a piece of the action which in turn confuses things greatly when publishing a title in terms of regions and territories allowed etc. Previously (years ago!) I would work with a games publisher and they would do the rest whereas now it is a case of dealing with many people just to get a title to global market for the consumer to eventually buy. Ultimately it is far to complex and I would love to see a shift to a simpler system of getting titles to global market with less people in the valuechain taking a slice of the cash pie.
[Arjan] Karl Woods recently said that consumers should get a free ride to persuade them for buying mobile games. How does this reflect to the business model within Mobile Amusements?
[Adrian] It would be good to offer free demos of mobile titles perhaps but then again when you are charging the consumer approx 5.00 Euro a title of which the developer gets only say 15-20% if lucky, then I have to state that the problem is not of the developers making, moreover the problem is part of the high costs involved delivering the title to the target device and consumer. The mobile delivery mechanism has to change I would say as these costs are not really fair to pass onto the consumer at this level. If I could give the games away for free I would but we all have to have a slice of that cash pie in the end to survive. The consumer is not too bad off in reality as 5.00 Euro for a mobile game title is not a lot, and lot less than you would be expected to pay for say and Nintendo DS or PSP title for example. Many mobile titles are of course charged at even less than 5.00 Euro.
[Arjan] You have recently participated in our Flash Lite open discussion where you displayed your opinion. Now a month after the discussion, what is your opinion and will flash lite fit in the focus for Mobile Amusements in 2007?
[Adrian] I think Flash Lite mobile development will come alongside j2me as a development platform for games and entertainment in the not too distant future. Some I have spoken to in the industry do not agree of course as j2me is so embedded now and many aggregators survive from just j2me titles. Some of the early findings here regards Flash Lite look promising and I must admit I can see Mobile Amusements switching over to Flash Lite entirely as is becomes more prominent on more devices. There are things you can do in Flash Lite that are just not really feasible in j2me and this in turn leads to more original game design on mobile devices. Some of the demos I have seen are not overly impressive I admit, but it is only the beginning and certainly no worse than what j2me developers were doing in the late 90's anyway when j2me games started to appear.
[Arjan] As a small developer and publisher, you have to compete with several big players. How do you think you can win this match?
[Adrian] It is important to say that I cannot win in reality of course, but it is possible to make my own development 'space', which I feel I have done to date. I have been given a fair few criticisms since I began and I find that given the ever increasing size of the mobile games industry that some of my critics should realise that there is probably much more room for others in this growing space than even they can imagine. If all games in this world were developed but just a few big players then ultimately games design would become stifled and creativity lost. It is the small, medium and large amongst us that make the ingredients in he development mixing pot more interesting in my opinion not the just the weight of the big hitters. Besides all things must begin from one point only and no person is bigger than the 'game' itself as they say - anybody who thinks otherwise is mistaken.
[Arjan] We are just a few months away from the IMGA Awards. You entered them last year and scored pretty high on graphics. Do you have any plans for entering again?
[Adrian] What a fantastic question!... The IMG Awards were an outside runner for Mobile Amusements last year that proved initially to be a great idea to enter as a contestant... To cut a long story very short... Mobile Amusements made it through to the top20 finals and then somehow managed to snag a place as 4th, 5th or 6th place winner just under Monkey Pole Climb etc. This was much better than expected as the going was tough of course. As this was not an 'official' win of sorts I was contacted several times about many options that then presented themselves for publication of my title 'Heli-Rescue' only to end up with nothing really after many, many months of waiting?. I guess one of the sponsors that nominated me 'sponsor shall remain nameless' got itchy feet and backed out... I just don't know to this day!?. Many things that were then promised failed to happen and I got bored with it all to be honest and moved on with my business. I have been contacted several times this year to enter again but unfortunately because of this incident I have lost the will to compete again in this contest, but I do wish them very well indeed and hope that the IMG Awards become a showcase of great new talent that is out there that is above and beyond my own of course.
[Arjan] Besides growing your company, is there any special goal you have set for your company?
[Adrian] Always the goal is just to survive, as I have written and developed games for most of my life, If I can continue to do just that I will die a happy man. I don't wish to own the planet though it has to be said that I do love money to an almost perverted degree - you can never get enough of it; it seems :) Money is not the only thing in life of course but without it you are probably no going to survive as a developer or go anywhere special in particular.
[Arjan] Can you shed a bit of light on your roadmap for 2007?
[Adrian] Yes I am going to risk going against the grain and start to drop midp1 devices and most likely anything under 176x204 screen resolution at the end of this year. This will be my personal attempt to at least move along a little with development and deliver better titles now that devices like Nokia N80 352x416 are starting to appear. I have read many times that it is our fault as the developers that we often release sub-par titles... well my answer to that is what do you expect when I've only just got done with Nokia S30 3510i - you can't get a lot of good game in that device can you! :)
It is time for all of us to move on and inform the public with old handsets 'hey buy a newer one' :)
[Arjan] You have created a lot of new games we haven't seen clones of in mobile so far. Which one of those do you like most and why do you think that's the best game to date?
[Adrian] Yes well that all has to do with constraints placed upon me by the devices themselves. Given that the max jar size that an aggregator, operator will even tolerate is about 200Kb then you have to understand that many of the games I have written in the past just won't fit on a mobile phone and look and play as good as say and old Amiga/Atari ST title for example. Two gamea I have wanted to do of my own are Cyberpunks and Doodlebug (both older Amiga/ST I.P. of mine) just can't be done byte for byte - it is currently impossible on what we have now from S40 to S60. Therefore until we switch up a gear with hardware even a little more it is not going to happen. Currently having developed a few Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance titles also, I hear many saying that mobiles are as good? - well no there not for reasons of storage memory (max jar size permitted ota) and of course the dodgy input 4 way controls on most common devices. LG KG800 Chocolate is nice phone for a phone as is the trusty V3 RAZR but they are phones not games consoles at the end of the day, so I'm not really sure what people expect for their 5.00 Euro?. Phone games are simple affairs usually for play on a bus, short journey or whatever not hardcore gamers. As devices get better and we learn to move on as an industry then things will improve, but that day is not here just yet (trust me as a developer I've been waiting!).
[Arjan] As on the blog, we want to stimulate the family feeling in mobile, I would like to conclude by asking you what your favourite game is from a competing company and why you think it's the best out there.
[Adrian] I love the look and feel of the upcoming 'Rock'n'Roll' by TAG Games though I have only seen a demo movie of it and my favourite mobile game to date is can you believe 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' as it's very addictive to actually play. Plus Porn Manager from Handy Games, though in the later case they beat me to it as I had lined up 'Prawn Star' the tongue in cheek adventure for mobiles which has now been shelved here - basically they did it better I hate to say before it even got out of design stage with it! :)
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Hi Michael,
Thanks for your mail and comments.
I'm not sure from which premise you assume that actual GBA and Amiga games are feasible on mobile at this time?.
Having programmed quite a few Amiga and GBA titles in the past as compared to mobile titles more recently in the last few years,
I came to the informed conclusion that some of my titles would not be possible on the current range of best selling devices
such as K800 Chocolate and Moto RAZR V3 as an example of what is current.
Given that these devices are nice phones as I said I, would find it difficult to believe that in j2me you could create a byte for byte
copy (i.e. the whole game) on one of these devices let alone actually play it in the same fashion.
I mention that joypad, scroll and fps on these devices (if not all of them upto Nokia N80 at least) are just not upto it in j2me as of yet.
I did not include Symbian in this as regards fps etc. but certainly even then I fail to see how you would squeeze an already
heavily data compressed Amiga or GBA title into one of these devices and still end up with the same depth of gameplay given that
most larger aggregators/operators/carriers only allow around 200Kb max jar size also?.
Anyway you are of course entitled to you own opinion of course, but those are my personal opinions on this matter at least :)
Best regards,
Adrian.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael
Sent: 18 September 2006 13:24
Subject: Enquiry via Mobile Amusements website...
Hey Adrian !
I am Michael ELBAKI, a tiny game (and more) developer on mobile
platforms, targetting native applications only.
I recently took part in the cheeky forum, it was great to read something
which confirmed what I thought of this industry :) I come from financial
software development backgrounds, have been as a hobbyist in the game
development, and because the hobby stuff was growing more and more, I
left the big bucks I was making to enter the pool of sharks :). I read your interviews with Arjan and I wanted to point out that the
part where you compare mobile games to Amiga and GBA is partially wrong
:) Would you like me to elaborate on the subject or is this something
you are not interested in ?
Anyway, great stuff you are doing and keep up the good work !
Kind regards,
Michael