They are holding the wolf by the ears. They are not the money spinners like the ringtones had been some years ago. They are in a loop. For them, the mobile games, it hasn’t been easy to stand steadily during the last weeks, among all these staggering and commiserative words.

„Having started with high hopes of the producers, they still don’t take place in the perception of many mobile phone users”, the “Netzeitung” wrote at the end of last year. This is the way Germany thinks. But what was that again? Aren’t we leaping behind in terms of usage of mobile applications? Anglophone experts assess the current situation a bit differently. Australian Game designer and journalist Jason Hill agrees with German experts on mobile games not having fulfilled the expectations of the last years. But he believes in a better development in the near future because “19% of Australian mobile users are playing games at least once a week on their phone”. Quite a number of people who actually are said to not have realized the existence of mobile games yet.

There are a lot of experts who believe devoutly in the soon breakthrough of mobile games that is, in their opinion, long overdue. One of them is David Watkins, a multimedia sales director for Nokia. He feels confident about the immense potential that mobile games have. A potential that hasn’t been able to unfold just because of the difficult basic conditions.

As we reported recently, industry experts now pin their hopes on Google’s operating system Android which is said to come on the market this year. Jason Hill is sure that Android will enjoy wide support from game developers. “Android sets these developers free”, Baris Karadogan, venture capitalist with ComVentures, promises.

Another restraint for development besides technique Gunnar Lott, chief editor of the magazine “GameStar”, sees in the function of mobile games in general: “They are a domain of occasional players – and they needn’t have always new titles”. This statement is contrary to the behaviour of many mobile gamers who not only play occasionally, but at every opportunity. Particularly they wish for a new game after a few weeks.

There’s a lot to grumble about – but a lot to praise as well. Better technique. Affordable data rates. Network operators who understood that they just cannot “imprison” their users within their own portals. There are many reasons to believe in the potential of mobile games. Baris Karadogan is convinced that gaming in general will „take off“: “Non-gamers will realize his or her true forgotten self.” He emphasizes this quite extraordinary opinion by some factors that all are connected: Games will be more social, tangible, palpable. And with this they appeal to those people for whom digital games have been a hobby of introverted freaks until now. Now, formulated a little pointedly, the target group is expanded with “social” beings. This includes the majority of the women. And particularly they currently have the tendency to be just as likely to play as men.

Game development studios maybe should throw a glance at mobile games, too. It could be worthwhile. “Mobile games provide one of the best avenues for new Australian studios to find their feet” – Tom Crago, president of the Australian Game Developers’ Association, is convinced of that.

By now all developers understood that it’s not enough to reduce mobiles to second rate consoles. Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts, emphasizes the uniqueness of the mobile phone: „It’s a new medium and I want to take a fresh look at what the new medium can do.”

So why still harp on a slow development? Why don’t we recognize the current proceedings that are everything but inconsiderable? Filling new media with appropriate content has always taken a while. Until computer games have reached today’s level, it has taken decades. Why do we want our mobile to reach this within one? What we can learn from media history is an open view for people’s usage of a new medium; to develop creative ideas from this and then create innovative and exciting games.