Once again somebody discovered that the Mobile Games market isn’t growing as exponentially as the Gaming industry might wish. This somebody this time was Matt Gillis, Senior Vice President Publishing at Capcom Games, who moderated the discussion forum „What’s moving in Mobile Games?“ at ICE Conference 08. Of this Ryan Coleman reported last week. A scapegoat had to be found – was the poor merchandising to blame? No, the panel agreed, this was not the reason. Who or what is then bearing the brunt of guilt that Mobile Gaming is growing like a water lily in the steppe? It’s the “viral aspects of the industry - or rather, the total lack thereof”, stated the panel at the ICE.

What’s the situation, apart from Merchandising Games, considering the marketing of mobile games? Here, it wasn’t true either to call the marketing poor. The one abandoning oneself to the lunacy of still tuning in a TV music channel can, by no means, escape from the omnipresence of advertised mobile games, ringtones and wallpapers. If this sort of advertising can be called “top quality” remains to be seen, but it seems to be profitable.
Numerous magazines are teeming with full-page advertisements, packed full of small pictures, all promising huge mobile entertainment. Candy packages are yelling at you: “send mobile game XY to 123456 and get yourself the free game XY for your mobile phone”. Those On-Pack Promotions have been the scoop in the physical marketing world for a considerable time.
In the internet, the consumer might have the biggest trouble to overlook websites offering mobile games. Search engines, banners, Google Adwords – not to find a gaming portal would be the bigger challenge. There’s no deficit in marketing campaigns, at least no numerical.

Still standards are missing, a well-known and much bewailed issue. But viral marketing needs more than only the perfect technical conditions. It needs the novelty, the product per se, which is so unique, ingenious and fascinating that everybody wants to show it to their friends, no matter if they’re 14, 40 or 74 years old. Great graphics don’t help a campaign when the principle of play behind it is just the 10.000^th sudoku variant. It needs a killer application.

Viral marketing of free mobile phone games is already today not that difficult. The channel is there, the mobile phone is at its core communication. A conspicuous “tell a friend” button in the game menu from which the player can access the phone book, followed by a funny text with a link to the game – if then there would NOT appear a site with a thousand-columned drop-down menu to chose mobile phone producer and model first, but a direct download link instead, the chance for a new player was nearly 100 percent. Provided that the game is amazing. But this was the subject of the game designers and the most difficult part of the campaign.