Preface

The mobile segment of the video game industry has quickly become the best opportunity for a development team wishing to enter the video game market. Since the appearance of the Snake game for the Nokia cell phones in 1997, the number and quality of video games developed for mobile has constantly increased, while mobile phone hardware has improved dramatically.

The main factor that makes the mobile video game segment a very interesting opportunity these days is that, although not everybody has a console or a PC at home, in most parts of the world everybody has a cell phone.

Another factor is that the hardware capabilities of mobile phones have improved quickly. In about ten years, we have moved from devices with monochromatic small screens with limited input opportunities that could only run the simplest games, to devices with true color displays and gyroscopes with almost the same potential of consoles such as the PS2, if not better.

Also, for a team of people who want to jump into this industry, it is a good opportunity because, generally, it takes less resources to develop a game for mobile than for console or PC games.

In fact, the scope of a mobile game tends to be narrower than a traditional game, which means that to make a mobile game it requires fewer people for development, less time to get to shipping, lower investments to buy the tools, and in the end, less money in general.

Should the game go well and sell, the potential revenue can be very high!

On the other hand, the mobile segment is not necessarily a gold mine where everybody can easily find nuggets. The design of a mobile game requires several factors to be taken into consideration, as we will show you throughout this manual.

First, the device itself puts some limitations on what can be achieved. Though screens are getting larger and allow better resolutions, still they are not TV screens and monitors. The audio capabilities of mobile phones are several steps below their console or PC counterparts.

Game controls have to rely on the touchscreen or make use of sensors available on smartphones, which is an opportunity but also a constraint if we consider the flexibility of a common gamepad, or the combination of mouse and keyboard in PC games.

The experience of playing a mobile game on the bus is totally different from that of a console game played on the couch in the living room.

If we exclude the iPhone platform, there are literally thousands of different handset types on the market. Developing for a market this diverse can be daunting. Compared to this variety, the traditional segmentation of the video game market among the three consoles made by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, is almost nothing.

Finally, and this is a consequence of all that we stated before, there have never been so many games available at the same time as there are now for mobile phones. This means that any new game for mobile phones has to face a hard struggle against other games which compete for a share of players.

The aim of this book is to offer a guide to those who are willing to test their skills in this potentially very profitable segment. It will provide useful information about the tools you need to develop, well-done games for mobile, how to take advantage of the limits of a mobile phone to design perfect gameplay, and which are the best business models to adopt in order to make money out of your games.

Examples of mobile games such as Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja, and Angry Birds show us that the right decisions and the proper tools make success possible. We'll help you with that by offering you hands-on examples, extensive background information, useful insights, and a wealth of knowledge on the subject!