MoMo London 28th Jan. Event Round Up – Mobile Games – Part 1

MoMo London 28th Jan. Event Round Up – Mobile Games – Part 1

Not just one round-up but two this time! We’re very fortunate to have two complementary views of last Monday’s event.

The first is from volunteer Valentina Ciolino that’s @MissFog. Thanks for this most comprehensive-write up, Valentina – what’s the story with the hats? Indeed!

With many thanks, once again, to our event partners, ICTKTN.

Oscar Clark

Having worked invideo games and mobile, I could not miss the first London MobileMonday of 2012. “Mobile Games” was the hot topic of the night,discussed by a great panel of professionals and chaired by OscarClark of Papaya Mobile. Notthat one would want to miss any of these industry gatherings, but,for me, it was also the first time on the volunteer side. In fact,they even gave me the chance to blog about the event, so here I am.

The Copy Cats

The third, less positivetrend of 2011 was the increase of the number of “copycat” gameson the market. Apparently, some big and medium companies (in order toavoid the risks of innovation, and the costs of experimenting withnew channels, noted Georgina), prefer to reproduce famous existinggames, replicating the gameplay. One of the possible solutions tothis problem is to use the cloud to make social-mobile games for alarge market, which is something that big publishers are alreadybetting on. “Social mobile is going to explode”, said Gareth,“thanks to the cloud”.

1. 

   Research about your target market and decide the business model before stating to design your game: if you go web, you can have a “try before you buy” approach and make the first level teasing like a movie trailer or, if you are opting for the freemium approach, the gameplay must be compelling enough to make your audience play often and pay for in-app. That’s what Natural Motion did before releasing “My Horse”, and that’s a point on which all the panelists agree, the marketing must be integrated with the game design.
2. Choose your coding language and engines with care: Objective C can limit your chance to port the game to other platforms in the future, warned Georgina, who suggested C++ for the core features of any game so they can be transferred, but only if you’re using the same core mechanics. The rest of the code could then be more quickly ported from one program to others. When someone from the audience asked if the panel would suggest developing games separately for each platform, the answer was unanimous: you can develop you own engines, but don’t underestimate the value of cross-platform engines such as Unity, Marmalade and so on.
3. Don’t limit your business to only one market; try to plan your production so to include porting the game to other platforms and stores. Having one product on one app store is not going to be enough for funders to notice you, as Ian hinted, and, as in Struan’s experience, being an established developer on one app store also helps to get more users thanks to “internal” cross-promotion. As Gareth said “there’s an opportunity in throwing at different channels out of the app stores” such as operator’s markets, if you have good content, or, better, a network of content. But there’s a catch: be specific about the channel you address: don’t go for the common lower denominator, try to exploit all the hardware features.
4. Make a clever use of analytics: pass the knowledge from the commercial to the production team and back, change your product price and game design according to the feedback from your customers. Never before the game industry has had such an amount of data, comments and feedback from the users, let all the people in your company understand the information you get.
5. Have a roadmap for main changes, but be able to respond to the market. In the console world sales data were locked due to licensing and access issues, and both prices, design and were basically fixed. Now, instead, you can change your game’s design depending on the rise or fall in sales, so have an expert to look at your data and let your product evolve with them.
6. Beware! When porting your product to the iPad, remember that it is used in a much different way and for longer game sessions compared with mobiles. Ian was the first to point that out: people use their mobiles to play on the go, shorter and simpler games, but if they can choose, they opt for the iPad as console and buy optimised games. Porting from iPhone to the iOS tablet is one of the simplest ways to differentiate, he said, and Georgina added that her company produces games with high quality graphic exactly for that reason. That applies to all the platforms.
7. Don’t save on Q&A, or better, set a budget for proper testing. Ian pointed clearly out that many mobile developers unfortunately have no idea how much important that is for every release. I would add: test features that will make your product stand out from the crowd – original soundtrack, great graphic, vibration effects, multiplayer etc. Don’t be scared to be original and innovative, as long as your products are technically impeccable and fun.
8. Apply for grants and funding. Abertay University, TIGA and ICT KTN periodically offer the chance to get some money for your ideas and support the applicants during the process with mentoring sessions. Someone from the audience even said he had won one of the challenges and got a fair amount for a mobile game! You’ve just missed the deadline for the contest to produce a game integrated with the SDK and marketed through the networks of Antix Labs and Turbulenz, so try not to miss the next one.