Global Mobile Games: New Business Models, Hit Games, and Mobile People from Around the Planet
by [name redacted]
Current rumbling in the design community suggests that mobile games have yet to find their real application, and most games for the platform are just ports of established console or handheld ideas; they aren’t really based on the intrinsic character of the mobile platform. Taking in mind the control problems, the group began to discuss new ways the platform provided to interface with a game. Perhaps the camera could be used to sense rotation, so the user could swing the phone like a golf club. Some phones have rotation, stroke, and squeeze sensors that could be put to use.
Someone then observed that a game that requires a camera would have trouble getting “live;” not all phones have cameras. The only way to get carriers to support a game is if you design it for the lowest common denominator, technologically. Bringing carriers into the conversation set off a chorus of groans. Someone noted that carriers do not, really, understand content, and wondered whether not going straight to a carrier – rather, developing for a publisher that was in a position to negotiate with carriers – would give developers more freedom to push the envelope; to develop less “safe” games.