Mobile Gaming is one of the most fast changing, lucrative and exciting space to be in today. The mobile gaming industry in Europe alone is worth about $ 7 Billion. China, Korea etc are also large Mobile gaming markets and even networks in India are pushing this industry offering thousands of games to their subscribers.
The Mobile gaming market is a very attractive market for most startup developers because of apparent simplicity of the content. New developers are often fooled by the fact that being simplistic platforms with major technology restrictions themselves, mobiles are thought to be a medium where simple games developed with small budgets do well. The truth however is that the industry itself is very resource intensive and not as easy to survive in.
That being said it is still not to be shunned, just not underestimated, to be successful in the Mobile gaming market careful planning and proper allocation of resources is required.
I have put down some thoughts that came to my mind on how one can enter this industry.
The most tried and tested model for a viable Mobile game development studio is structured as under:
a. Multiple Development teams working on simultaneous projects.
b. Development pursued on various platforms such as J2ME, Brew, Symbian and Microsoft etc.
c. Specialized music and art departments with low resolution graphics & sound specialty.
d. Gestation period provided for with resources to produce at least thirty to forty games before revenues start coming in.
e. Resources to license IP from successful movies and franchisees
f. R&D department closely following new technologies in the Mobile Handsets and their impact on the games.
g. A strong marketing team and budget to negotiate good contracts with publishers as well as follow leads with networks.
h. A model for regular infusion and training of fresh talent in creative departments with new ideas and concepts.
Additionally to the above it is my view that any company looking to enter the Mobile market should not only restrict itself to gaming and also target other mobile content segments such as ringtones, screensavers, jokes and cartoons etc.
The reasons for this model being necessary and prudent are as follows:
1. Most of the simple game content (which is the one that encourages the new developers to enter this industry) is provided free of cost to the mobile users by the mobile companies themselves.
2. Due to the abovementioned the successful retail mobile games are necessarily rare gameplays or very innovative use of technology.
so a successful mobile gaming company requires dedicated development teams developing multiple products before they achieve breakeven or profitability with the success of a few of their products.
3. The Mobile gamer has a vastly different profile from a PC or Console gamer. Mobile gamers require their content to be interruptible, easy to learn and non explicit. This difference manifests itself mainly at design development time as innovative content here has a much longer design cycle compared to a similar product on the traditional gaming platforms.
4. The success of Mobile games besides their own merits also depend a lot on the hype and publicity created by the mobile network. Therefore it is advisable for those companies that are not themselves network backed to license expensive Intellectual Property in an effort to make their products marketing worthy for the networks. (e.g. movie franchise etc.)
5. Due to the initial attractiveness of the industry a plethora of small ventures have flooded the market with a vast variety of offerings. This has created intense competition with networks offering unestablished companies (even those ones with extraordinary content) literally peanuts compared to what they offer companies with a few successful products. This has also created an entry barrier of sorts with longer gestation periods for new startups.
6. The mobile itself is a restricted platform supporting limited input layouts and a small viewing area. The developing of immersive content for such a platform requires specialized graphics, programming, sound and design capabilities that are different from traditional content development teams. For existing Game studios to enter into this industry setup of new divisions with new development platforms is required.
7. The marketing strategy of the mobile games has to be well thought of even before the development begins as Games have to be very platform dependent to take advantage of specific features in different models of mobiles. This leads to a paradox where cross platform games are not optimized and the users of specialized games are restricted to the number of handsets sold.
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