MOBILE GAME
DEVELOPMENT
PART-4
Wikitechy
Interactive Marketing in Location-Based Gaming
Environment
• The advantages of mobile devices allow highly targeted, flexible, and dynamic
wireless advertisings
• Location-aware technologies such as Cell Identification and GPS (Global
Positioning System) have inspired to develop location-based games.
• Wireless gaming offers opportunities for local or customized ads and the ability to
pinpoint the target market audience by placing the brand within a relavant game.
• The location-based games may also drive people to stores in progress of the
game.
• This form of marketing is private, flexible and context-aware.
Subscription Model
• Subscription model is the alternative to paying a flat fee
• The researcher is suggesting that generally speaking, from the game developer’s
point of view, subscription is a billing model, not a business model, unless game
developers are selling the game as a service directly to consumers as in the case
of some online role-playing games on PC.
• In-game per play/time/level payment business model model can be categorized
as selling software as a service.
• The business model could attract game developers’ interest since there would be direct
billing through mobile payment systems, and no payment through carriers.
Business Models: Developer and User-generated
Content
• Users pay for game items
• The researcher suggests that hand-helds could be another channel to
existing PC RPG games, but taking into account the current limitations
of hand-helds, this is not going to happen soon.
• However, RPG specifically developed for mobile multiplaying in which users
are paying for in-game content could be a working business model even
today.
About Business Models in General
• Examining all the current and potential business models above, one
can see that most of them are more or less familiar from the PC
space.
• As last but not least, the researcher suggests trying to downsize any
concept that has worked or even failed in the PC or console space to
mobile phones and hoping that it will fly.
About Value Chains in General
• To drive usage, the features of mobile gaming products have to be clearly advertised and
marketed to a wide audience.
• Because of the nature of the product, there is no single medium that provides a complete
solution to vendors' promotional needs.
• One of the strengths of mobile gaming is that its marketing campaigns can be integrated with
other campaigns, in particular for film and console games.
• Television can be used to show gameplay in great detail.
• Frost & Sullivan (2003): Interactive TV and the Web are excellent media for offering a variety of
games and demonstrations. Even so, the lack of animation in print media, the high costs of
television advertising and limited penetration of interactive television could prove to be
dampeners.
About Value Chains in General
• One major problem for developers and publishers of mobile games is describing a
game in such detail that it gives the customer enough information to make a
purchasing decision.
• Two strategies are followed by developers and publishers to combat this lack of
purchasing information:
• there is a reliance on powerful brands and licenses that impart a suggestion of quality to the game such
as Tomb Raider or Colin McRae
• there is the use of well known and established play patterns (game play mechanics that are instantly
recognizable) such as Tetris, Space Invaders or Poker.
• Both these strategies are used to decrease the perceived level of risk that the customer feels when
choosing a game to download from the carrier’s deck
About Value Chains in General
• Some reasons why operators are the preferred direct channel for
around 80 percent of mobile games is that they have trusted brands,
subscriber information and control the 'handset window interface'
and the delivery channel to end users.
• Operators stand to gain revenues when games are downloaded
through a portal and also when games or any other content is
ordered through other channel.
Retail Value Chain
• Mobile games can be distributed, advertised and sold through retailers in a similar way as PC or
console games.
• eg. Nokia’s N-Gage games use also retail as a distribution channel
• The researcher suggests that with the advent of 3G and other fast network technologies, the
need for retail may have decreased, although customers may still prefer to buy something
concrete.
• PC game developers often prefer to use game publishers that take care of marketing and
distribution
• The researcher suggests that as most mobile game developers have even less resources than PC
game developers, the effort of doing one’s own marketing and distribution to a global market may
be overwhelming for game developers.
Other Value Chains
• SMS games: operators charge users a fee according to sent messages.
The game developer can get from 20 to 50 percent of revenue.
• Browser games: operators charge users based on amount of used the
air-time or data-transfer. The revenue shared with the developer of
the game can vary greatly. In North America developers get about 10
percent, while in Japan they get up to 90 percent.
Financial Forecasts
• The problem is that although consumers are increasingly playing mobile games,
they are not at all keen on buying them. Even though mobile games have been
around for more than a decade, they have yet to succeed in generating significant
profits for the region’s mobile operators. (Frost & Sullivan 2006)
• In 2006, the global market for mobile gambling alone was forecasted to grow
from $1.35bn in 2006 to $16.6bn in five years' time. Mobile gambling often forms
the majority of forecasted mobile gaming revenues.
• Forecasts of mobile gaming have changed recently due to strenghtened legal
barriers in the US.
Financial Forecasts
• Another indication of the expected continued growth of mobile
games is the venture capital funding being received by proven players
as well as new start-ups.
• In 2004, several players got funded for about $20M.
• Acquisitions were of the same size.
Part 1
Mobile Game Design
Target Platform
• Know your target platform
• Buy lots of phones
• Play lots of games
• Embrace the limitations (be realistic)
•
•
•
•
•
Small screen size
Limited content (graphics, sound)
Slow performance
Poor input
Limited RAM (limited code)
• Base design on Nokia Series 40 (64KB, MIDP 1, Colour)
Mobile Game Sales by Handset
Siemens, 5%
Other, 18%
Motorola, 1%
Nokia S30, 18%
Nokia S60, 24%
Nokia S40, 34%
Device Capabilities
• 75% of phones have 64K or less space for Java games
• Most carriers will not let you exceed 100K
• 65% of phones support the Nokia UI
• 30% of phones (T6xx, Nokia Series 30) are troublesome to develop on
What’s in a Mobile Game?
• Relative impact of medium on design is very high (compared to PC
games)
• Limited play time
• 1-6 hours total
• Short bursts
• Small scale
• Focused game styles (simple, direct, easy)
• Go back to the 80’s
• It’s getting better, but don’t let marketing fool you
New Technology
• Avoid the new technology traps
•
•
•
•
3D
Location based
Multiplayer
High-end phones
• Isolated, typically leading to limited sales (but some nice hype if you
want it)
• Not the same as the PC market. New technology comes and goes in
isolated “bumps”
• Consider using new tech as add-ons or options
Multiplayer?
• Yes, but not on your first game
• Use an existing system
• Mophun
• Red Star
• Terraplay
• Bigger revenue, but smaller market
• On-going
The Secret to Mobile Game
Design?
Keep it simple
Part 2
Game Production
Development Time
• Typical development time is 3-4 months
• Devil is in the details
• Porting/testing can take 30% of dev time (up to 80% first time around)
• Staff required:
• 1 programmer (full-time)
• 1 artist (half-time)
• Ad-hoc producer, designer, sound (depends on the final game)
• A small studio can produce 3-5 games per year
Example Media Budgets
(64 KB Game)
Maps & Script
(10 KB), 16%
Strings (6 KB),
9%
Graphics (20
KB), 31%
Source (28
KB), 44%
Starting Tools
• IDE: Eclipse (with EclipseME) or IDEA
• Build: Ant + Antenna
• Map Editing: Tile Studio or Mappy
• Graphics: Photoshop, etc
• Testing: Emulators and real phones
• Multiplayer: Red Star
Ant Builds
• Use Antenna to simplify things (but watch out)
• Simple override for custom resources
<!-- copy default resource -->
<copy todir="${bd}/res">
<fileset dir="res/default"/>
</copy>
<!-- copy overrides -->
<copy overwrite="true" todir="${bd}/res">
<fileset dir="res/${build}"/>
/res
</copy>
/default
/splash.png
/nokia-s40
/nokia-s60
/splash.png
/build
/default
/nokia-s40
/nokia-s60
Using a Pre-Processor
• Add conditional code to Java:
//#ifdef nokia
com.nokia.mid.ui.DeviceControl.startVibra(10, 300);
//#endif
• Use Ant/Antenna to pre-process code before compilation:
<property name=“device" value=“nokia"/>
<wtkpreprocess srcdir="src" destdir=“/build/${device}/psrc“/>
<javac destdir="${bd}/classes" srcdir=“/build/${device}/psrc/>
Tile Studio
• Easy to use
• Layering
• Multi-levels
• Custom output
generator
#file levels.dat
#tileset
#map
!<MapIdentifier>~<MapWidth:"%2d"><MapHeight:"%2d">
#mapdata
<TSMidTile:"%2d">
#end mapdata
#end map
#end tileset
#end file
Map File
Optimisation Tricks
• Try different PNG optimisers
• Use object pools (Java object creation and GC penalties can be huge)
• Avoid interfaces, inner-classes, exceptions and complex hierarchies
(merge your classes)
• Set everything to null as soon as you can
• Don’t type-cast, use integer switching
• Use statics, arrays (single dimension) and switches
• Don’t use synchronize (create your own mutexs)
• Cache as much as you can (but watch out for memory cost)
The Secret to Mobile Game
Development?
Test using real devices
Part 3
Commercialisation
Channels to Market
• Carrier (direct handset) sales dominates the market
• You can no longer go direct, use publishers
• Lots of publishers (and lots of developers)
• Fifth Axis, AirG, Digital Bridges, MForma, Tira Wireless,
JAMDAT, Unplugged, …
• Portals/distributors can be supplements, but they
wont earn you a living
• High inventory turnover means games only last in
any single market for 1-4 months
• Big, complex, market filled with islands of success
Expected Revenues
• Expected revenue (first year):
• Single player game:
• Unbranded:
• Branded:
$10K to $30K
$20K to $80K
• Multiplayer can add $10K-40K in ongoing revenue
• Block-buster games (mega-brand, heavy promotion, all the right
channels) $100K to $500K
The Secret to Mobile Game
Marketing?
Get more than one publisher
Part 4
Hyper-Gate vs. Club Soccer
Hyper-Gate
• Four-way scrolling shooter
• Great storyline
• Missions
• Ported to wide-range of devices
Portions © 2003-2004 Tasman Studios Pty Ltd
Club Soccer
• Manage a soccer team
• Turn-based, simple strategy
• Very addictive game play
• Ported to a wide-range of devices
• Great sales
Portions © 2003-2004 Tasman Studios Pty Ltd
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