A great theatre actor once made an interesting statement: ,,Games are the way through which we remain young.” There’s more than just a grain of truth in that.
Today we’re going to paint the picture of the state of mobile gaming and draw a parallel to PC games. Specifically we’ll delve into mobile and PC games then move on to the pros and cons of mobile games.
Two lines led to the emergence of a multi-billion dollar industry in less than three decades. It created an entire culture, hundreds of millions of fans, a new form of art and narrative storytelling.
It also revolutionized some of the true reasons for the excuse ,,I had trouble sleeping last night.”
That history changing phrase was ,,Game over”. Those simple words spurred an entire generation to try again and again, wits against chip, patience vs AI, man vs machine, to win.
It used to be ,,Tag” and ,,Hopscotch” in the yard. They still are. But now there’s more games and platforms than you can count. From Wii, Nintento, PC games, Arcade, Xbox, you name it.
The new kid on the block is mobile. And through games he’s making millions every day and won’t stop here. In a gaming market that globally reached $ 82 bn in 2012, mobile games are taking a nice slice for themselves out of that pie. More exactly data from Avista Partners shows that the value of the mobile game market in 2012 will likely be around $7.8 billion and is projected to grow to $18.3 billion in 2016. That’s not too shabby considering 6 years ago most of us were playing Snake on our mobile phones.
And it’s no surprise since mobile games have become the most popular apps in the world. Android and iOS games now generate more revenue than all of Nintendo and Sony’s portable games combined and games are the most popular mobile app category in the U.S.
From popular games like Rovio’s Angry Birds, cash-cows like Clash of Clans) or Temple Run, mobile gaming is a goldmine of opportunities but also risks.
Why do we want to compare mobile games to PC? Simple. PC games had a pivotal role in setting the stage for the adoption of mobile games. The gaming perception was there, cultural the momentum was there and mobile game developers reaped the benefits of it.
One of the reasons mobile apps provide such a bounty of rewards is low development costs and the ability to experiment with concepts. Let’s give a background.
In the early ’90s until somewhere at the beginning of 2000, there was a huge wave of new concepts for game design, backstory and gameplay. This provided game developers the ability to try out new ideas to see how they pan out. Some of them, like Blizzard’s ,,Starcraft” or Valve’s ,,Half-Life)” created instant classics. They won ton of awards and sold millions of copies around the world. Two decades later, they’re still selling. Games like this forced a paradigm shift that severely impacted developers.
Gamers wanted games that could match the quality and immersiveness of their favorite champions. As games mainstreamed into categories such as adventure, shooters, fantasy, sci-fi, brain trainers, puzzle, city building, strategy and so on, a lot of game companies stopped investing in ,,experimental” ideas. Developers and game creators had a lot of talent, but no funding. Companies wanted to go for the sure formula, putting out relatively similar games, with better graphics and more eye-candy.
This isn’t to say that developers and companies completely stopped experimenting with new gaming concepts. They were just more reluctant to do so. Developing for PC can cost millions of dollars even if you want simple graphics. Developing for mobile costs significatly less. It can cost $10 000 or $100 000. The gap is huge.
For PC games you have to pay a lot for advertising, design trailers, teasers, customer support expenses , host debut events, create demos and endless patches and updates after the game comes out and some have multiplayer integration which means paying for servers. Huge costs. Another problem is that most PC games feature the ,,pay-up-front” approach. Or even worse, you can use torrent sites to get them for free. Mobile games are a different breed.
What makes the creation of mobile apps so cheap is a simple trick: producers can first put out an initial version featuring 30-40 levels or 30 hours of simulation gameplay. If the app sinks, the production can be closed down. If it soars, new levels and expansion packs can be churned out at short intervals.
Costs cut down, risks lowered and testing is more efficient. PC games don’t have that luxury. You can sink into a PC game over $10 m and you might end up with a low quality game and even no ROI.
Another reason why mobile games can only grow in size and profit is that unlike other species of software, games don’t necessarily have a specific lifespan. Tetris never went out of style after all.
To see where mobile games are going we have to take a page from the history of PC games. That page is hardware improvements. Mobile devices are quickly becoming faster, smarter, have better wi-fi connections that will soon be on par with ethernet speeds. As hardware improves, people will want to see better games rather than recycling the same old ideas over and over again.
An emerging trend we notice is that ,,old” games such as GTA series are now available on tablets. This will actually lead to an interesting synergy between PC games and mobile games, where the market will see a boost from PC games. PC game developers can expand to mobile platforms and increase their overall revenue through that. Sadly it will also mean a flood of games in a market that’s already crowded with apps.
Now that we’ve seen how PC games impacted mobile game development, let’s take a look at how mobile games work.
In the next couple of months or less, the number _,,2 m mobile apps”_shouldn’t be surprising.
Within that context, let’s see what are the positive traits of developing mobile games and what challenges developers currently face.
When it comes to mobile development we’ve already talked about how it’s much cheaper than other platforms. If we add the approach of putting out a game with enough content to see if it survives or not costs are reduced. If the game survives its baptism by fire, then developers can add more content and use the money saved to spend more on advertising it.
As for balancing in-app purchases with content, the explanation is simple. Too many in-app purchases and too little game content = no incentive for users to actually play it. On the flipside, if you offer too much game content, there’s no incentive for gamers to actually buy anything more for the game since most of it is free.
Some may argue that even if you design a brilliant game, the main challenge of making it stand out in an app store still remains. But the key to compensate for this situation is making a game social and free.
What does social mean for mobile games and monetization? Stay tuned for this will be the subject of our next article in ,,Mobile games and how some developers make $1 mil per day out of it, Part II”
,,Related article: The State of Mobile Game Development”
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