Users love plain mobile games

First of all: The mobile gaming market is booming. Though in Germany the game developers are still fighting with the network operators to make them invest more in end-consumer marketing so they don’t slow down the market – but the owners of mobile phones are more and more enjoying playing in-between.
Mobiles are mainly competing with portable consoles, „they have established as equal platforms“, Thomas Richter, Jamba director for content sourcing recently reported. Hard to imagine – with a handling everything but comfortable. Miniature keys, the display coloured but much too small for details. But apparently mobile phone owners are willing to accept these inconveniences. Of course, the mobile is always on hand. You just have to grab into your pocket and the „Almost-console“ is ready for action.

The numbers confirm the growing devotion to mobile games – market research institution Gartner predicts a worldwide increase of mobile gaming revenues to 4.3 Billlion Dollars (~3.1 Billion Euros) – for this year. Management consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that sales are to be doubled to 3.1 Billion Dollars (~2.4 Billion Euros) throughout Europe during the next four years.

Mobile technology is developing rapidly. Processors are becoming more and more powerful, thereby the game’s quality is rising, graphics and playing mechanisms are becoming more complex. Looking at the most popular mobile games, this progress seems to be almost unneccessary: Classics such as Tetris, Pacman, simple puzzle games, casino-games. What’s so special about these games which contain nothing really new? „Simplicity is the key“, is the answer of Frédéric Cremer of Gamesmill.

Simplicity – and why even more powerful mobile phones?

Mobile games, in contrast to console games, are not designed for several hours of playing, but for „in between times“. Experts agree on this issue: It is important that mobile games have an easy access, an intuitive usability and, in Paul Maglione’s* opinion, „a sense of achievement within the first thirty seconds of playing.“ However, he does not consider the technological progress as a contrast to the customer’s wishes: „High-resolution graphics, a better sound, a larger capacity can make even simple games more pleasurable, while the gameplay itself remains relatively simple.“

Plain games with pleasant graphics – that sounds like the customer’s wish, like a signpost for developers. A realistic 3D-scenario which is equal to that on a console, on a display of two by three centimetres, is certainly not very promising. Besides all urge to further development the effective use for the customer should not be forgotten. As rapid technologies are developing, as fast only a few customers change their mobile. If a game devours more battery than five hours of phoning, there must be something wrong.

Mobile games have to be entertaining, they have to fit into five minutes of bus station, into 10 minutes of tram, into 20 minutes of intercity train. And, above all, they must be great fun. They should not cause frustration and aggression in the morning, when the person sitting next to you accidentally covers the display with his bag and thus the decisive millimetre.

*Senior Vice President for distribution and Marketing of I-Play