The Difference is Clear

Developing a game for mobile is a unique experience. With any other platform your objective is to push the boundaries. With mobile, you always have to bear in mind that the game will need to be adapted to 500 handsets of different performance, application and screen size and therefore delivering a uniform experience takes precedence over experimenting with technology breakthroughs. Until recently, industry consensus on mobile game development has been to deliver the same experience across all devices. This may mean that on low end devices the graphics may be reduced with some levels missing, but generally we try and give players a similar experience.

As the power and application size has increased, we have hit a breaking point where this is simply no longer possible. Now the focus is on developing different games across the spread of devices, delivering the best game for each device rather than trying to keep uniformity. This has to be the right approach. As a colleague says "shit games for shit handsets" is not good enough. Whereas tailoring the game for the device does allow you to have a playable game even though it may bear only a passing resemblance to the high end versions.

However, the problem with this is the expectation of the gamer. One of the key drivers of game downloads is recommendations from a friend. When a user downloads a game and shows it to a friend, who owns a lower end device but who then nevertheless downloads the same game and is naturally disappointed when it bears little resemblance to what they’ve seen on their friends’ handset. Gamers are quick to let their grievances known when they see certain features are missing or why it is a different game altogether.

Part of the problem is the confusing labeling of handsets by the manufacturers. Users barely know the manufacturer of their device, let alone the model. I may know that a Nokia 6610 is a low end handset and a 6680 is high end but I’m in the minority of geeks. The manufacturers numbering system does nothing to help this, Nokia uses the numbers to differentiate between demographic type (6 is business, 3 is casual/cheap, 7 is stylish) and has nothing to do with technology or performance.

This is going to become more and more of a problem as the devices get more powerful and the range of handsets widen. With the move into technology like Symbian the difference between a Symbian and even a high end Java game (let alone a low end game) is going to be massive. How will the user ever know what they are buying?

Until there is clear information on how good a device is at running games then this will get worse. Once consumers understand the capabilities of their own handset, compared to their friends’ – via a more consumer friendly labeling system, then the introduction of a game index, based on the handset’s capabilities will be the way forward.