Why Does The Mobile Gaming Industry Ignore The Gamers?

Monday, 12 March 2007

Earlier this month, Markus Kassulke has voiced his arguments against mobile games going mostly casual in article „Casual Games Slow Down Innovation and Growth of Mobile Games Market!“
While this may seemingly go against what the majority of mobile titles out there is about, it is a very precise description of what is going on. Earlier this year similar voices arose during the panel discussion at the Osney Media Mobile Games Forum. Where Gamespot editor Phil Elliot said he never came across a mobile game that would engage him. Perhaps it is about time that the key industry players started to reflect on these statements, including operators.

The main advantage of a mobile phone, compared to a PC is it´s mobility. The fact you can take it with you anywhere you go. For now, let us omit the fact that this defines handheld consoles as well as these are not suffering from a lack of gamer-oriented titles.

I can still vividly remember the time when there were no mobile phones to carry around and I was wishing, when encountered with an title that featured an addictive gameplay, I could continue to play the game on a bus, while traveling to my destination and in other many short moments of leisure. This specifically is what I perceive to be a major strength of a mobile phone as a gaming device – the ability to provide a sustained and continual audiovisual experience regardless (or independetly) the circumstances. However,  such strength will never be utilized by casual titles with minutes of gameplay time. Or did the lenghty game titles got obsolete with mobiles? Hardly, books never got obsolete just because there are all these magazines nowadays to list through. These two both target a different audience or better put, depending on the circumstances we either reach for one or the other.

Another point is that both magazines and books are intended for people who actively want to read them. Casual mobile titles on the other hand seem to be often defined as games that are intended for people who play games seldom or not at all. So far this is all OK. But here the statement comes in, that perhaps the majority of mobile titles nowadays consist of casual gameplay.
Now if you do your math this must seem pretty strange: Majority of development budgets and time in the industry is spent to make games for people who are not really into gaming? What if instead the effort was spent on making all these gamers we inherited from PC and consoles attracted to mobile gaming?

Strong brands should play a lead role in this. When you have a very solid brand that already has over million of players, there is seemingly very little to lose. You start the development, put out some PR for public and publishers and, once the game is out, it sells well, because the expectations, of course, are high. So it all goes well so far. But the major problem happens after the customer has played the game. He has bought all the franchise titles on a PC, he has spent endless hours playing the game. He has challenged all the difficulty levels and has enjoyed the game to it´s maximum, thus getting a fair and solid value for his money. Afterwards he buys the mobile version of his favourite game and regretfully, finds it way too easy (I dare say simplistic) and finishes it in about 15 minutes time. And the lesson he learns from this? Don´t ever buy a mobile game again.
This way, we are literally sacrificing customers who actually do buy games on a regular basis and who are keen on gaming for somebody who buys a few games a month (unless these are too complicated which will turn him off the next time).

We often talk about how advanced mobiles are and how good and complex games they can run. What we don´t say too often is that most of the old GameBoy black and white titles will beat about any mobile game with hands bound behind their backs and blindfolded. Why? As they are tailored for gamers. Meaning that they have short learning curve, they reward players regularly, but also they present a challenge.

This challenge word is very important and has to be stressed. Sometimes it seems that mobile casual titles are all about rewarding the player but there is no challenge. There is nothing to achieve, no skill to be gained, in other words, perhaps this is the lack of engaging elements that Phil Elliot was referring to. Lack of challenge is actually the worst thing that can happen to a game. It´s like having a book which is exceptionally well written in terms of form but lacks any real content. No emotion, no story, no beginning and no ending.

Despite what was written, mobile games market works pretty well today. There is money invested and money made. The question is whether we want to continue with the positive discrimination of casual gamers, while completely ignoring a very large group of people who have made the gaming industry the mammoth mass market it is today.

It is often brand recognition that leads a PC or console gamer to the purchase of a mobile game. It is that branded title which is often referred to when he will make another purchase. Due to the nature of mobile, it may be easy to convert a platformer to mobile but extremely difficult to convert a real-time strategy (most branded games inspired by real-time strategy games are made turn-based on mobiles). Here, mobile game makers (both developers and publishers alike) should always have in mind the idea of mobile phone as a device that enables the player to experience his favorite game even when away from computer.

This editorial was sent by

Miklos Csemy
Product Manager
www.impossible.cz

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