Online games quest the mobile landscape
09 April 2008
Online games quest the mobile landscape
It's become almost a cliche to say that "casual" games - ones that are easy to play and don't take long to pick up - are what's driving growth in the mobile games industry. But there's truth behind it, in that simple puzzle and card games tend to sell more - and for longer - than the "hard core" offerings based on console games.
Research has shown that mobile games attract a diverse demographic, drawing more women and users in their 30s than console games do. The latest figures from M-Metrics show that marginally more women than men download mobile games in the UK.
That statistic doesn't bode well for mobile versions of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), which have thousands of players online at once, playing with or against each other. On PC, such games are played mainly by men.
MMOs are too male-oriented, geeky and complex to be turned into mobile games, market observers say. Nevertheless, excitement is building around the idea of mobile MMOs, either based on existing PC games, such as World of Warcraft, or developed as mobile-exclusive titles.
Just this year, there have been rumors that World of Warcraft is coming to mobile in some form, vendors Vollee and Comverse have demonstrated technology that enables people to play PC-based MMOs from their handsets, and Nokia has said that it plans to launch at least one MMO for its new N-Gage mobile games platform.
At first, it doesn't make sense, since everything about MMOs seemingly makes them less than ideal for mobile play. They tend to be sprawling, complex games requiring large client applications and high-end graphics-processing hardware.
They also need constant, reliable connectivity to stream large amounts of data. And they demand long, uninterrupted sessions of game play - it's no coincidence that many World of Warcraft users play into the wee hours, when there are fewer distractions from the real world.
With that in mind, the technology being shown by Vollee and Comverse doesn't appear to have an auspicious future. In both cases, the basic principle is the same: The processing of the action is done on a remote server, rather than on the player's handset.
All that's streamed to the phone is video of what's happening, and all that's streamed back to the server are the user's keystrokes. In essence, a virtual computer is playing the game, and the handset is just being used as the user interface.
The technology works, but when Informa Telecoms & Media got to try out Comverse's offering, there was a clear pause between when a button was pressed and when the result would show up on screen. The delay would severely hamper any game involving fast action, such as dealing with a monster attack. And most MMOs involve a lot of that.
Such a lag also has negative implications for the multiplayer element of these games. Using a mobile keypad would always leave a player hamstrung against PC-based users with mice and keyboards.
The game-streaming technology developed by Vollee and Comverse is impressive as a technical achievement but is currently not a realistic way to interact with MMOs, even for players desperate to get their fix while away from their computers.
There is far more mileage in MMOs designed exclusively for mobile. Some are already live, such as German firm CipSoft's TibiaMe game, which launched in 2003 and has more than 15,000 players logging in daily. CipSoft also recently launched episodic content for the game, meaning players can download new quests on a regular basis.
Nokia is investigating a similar idea for N-Gage, going for a made-for-mobile MMO rather than trying to link up with an existing PC game. The company dipped its toes in the water with the original N-Gage handset and its Pocket Kingdom MMO.
What about World of Warcraft, Maple Story and other PC MMOs? They are set to go mobile in the next 12-18 months, but it's more likely to be with spinoff applications than games. For example, you might be able to access Guild Chat - WOW's proprietary in-game chat system - from your phone. That's something committed MMO'ers would pay for, for sure.
This article appeared in Mobile Media, a sister publication of telecoms.com
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