Less than two years ago, carriers were blaming publishers for stifling mobile gaming by churning out a surfeit of high-profile, licensed games that made for a rotten user experience. Now it’s the game makers’ that are pointing fingers.
Handsets are quickly evolving into mini-videogame consoles, with 3-D graphics capabilities, bigger screens, stereo sound and impressive memory capabilities. But mobile publishers say they’re forced to build titles for run-of-the-mill phones built to do nothing but make voice calls. The result, some claim, is a market that stifles innovation and rewards developers based on the number of handsets they can support-not the quality of games they produce.
Porting-generally defined as customizing content for a variety of handsets across carriers, in different languages and on varying platforms-has always been a massive headache for game publishers. Operators generally require games to be playable on at least two-thirds of their devices in order to garner deck placement, and often require games to support more than 90 percent of their phones.
That problem is being magnified, publishers say, as the gap between older, mass-market phones and high-tech 3G models widens. A game that looks like a cutting-edge arcade title on one handset, then, can be nearly unplayable on older phones.
“The problem is that for a game company to get deck placement, you actually have to support” two or three dozen of the carrier’s phones, Multimedia Networks founder and former Mforma executive Rob Tercek said during a session at the MECCA 2006 event two weeks ago in Los Angeles. So while a developer may create an enthralling, eye-popping experience for high-end devices, he must also build an inferior, stripped-down version of the title for more archaic phones-which still represent the majority of handsets in use.
“Most phones (on the market) were never designed for a good gaming experience,” said Tercek, drawing applause. “The consumer is getting screwed.”
Established publishers view porting as a double-edged sword: Developing games for hundreds of handsets can be both expensive and time-consuming, but it also serves as a nearly insurmountable barrier to entry for would-be newcomers. And while direct-to-consumer activity continues to increase in the United States, wireless game publishers reluctant to incur the wrath of the operators have largely stayed on-deck, accepting carriers’ porting mandates and other restrictions in exchange for prime shelf space.
And the problems surrounding porting are likely to increase as new technologies become mainstream. Many 3G handsets already offer 3-D functionality, and publishers are already working to embrace features such as location awareness and real-time multiplayer functionality.
Operators are beginning to differentiate their data offerings based on handset capabilities, though-a trend that may serve game makers. Sprint Nextel Corp. offers multimedia content to its Power Vision subscribers, and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. targets wireless Web surfers with its MediaNet service. Verizon Wireless offers video and music through its Vcast service and has created a Vcast category on its game deck. The result not only gives developers the freedom to build games specifically for more advanced phones, it allows users to find those games more easily.
“The specifications for Vcast games are much larger; you can build games that are in the megabytes,” said Andy Riedel, the former general manager of games and InfoSpace Mobile who is currently forming another wireless startup. “For non-Vcast games, you have to support phones in the 400 or 500 kilobyte range. (For Vcast games), you’re not trying to squeeze into something that just won’t work.”
When it comes to gaining serious traction, though, device fragmentation may not be the problem that it appears to be. For all the talk of 3G handsets and innovative, cutting-edge games, casual titles continue to dominate the landscape, I-play Chief Executive Officer David Gosen was quick to point out.
While early adopters and tech-savvy gamers may seek out the most sophisticated titles, familiar names such as Tetris, Bejeweled and Pac-Man consistently rank among the top game downloads in the United States. And most of those games offer the same user experience on a 2-year-old, mass-market phone that they provide on a new, $300 handset.
“Those are things that we can all get excited about, but it’s not what’s going to grow the market today, or for the next two or three years,” said Gosen. “I think this comes back to: Who is playing the games? Who do we want to play our games? The answer is the mass market.”
