Carlo Longino has put up another post on the Austin Game Conference, this one on a talk by Greg Costikyan, formerly with Nokia Research but now head of Manifesto Games, who highlighted a number of problems facing the mobile games industry, and developers in particular.
The first problem is that the business model impedes innovation, “because consumers buy games based on one line of text, and therefore are drawn to recognized brands (Tetris, licensed games, console titles, etc)”.
This has been brought up before, and emphasizes that there is no “mobile games media”. Other platforms have dedicated magazines or sites which offer reviews, previews, screencaps, forums and so on but mobile games are only promoted as a subset of the mobile content media or — sometimes — the general game media at places like Gamespot.
Another problem is the platform, which apparently offers so much promise in terms of connectivity…
“What makes mobile different as a medium? It’s voice-centric, highly personal, it contains a slew of the user’s own information, it’s networked, it’s ubiquitous (both always on and always with the user), it’s usable anywhere and it almost always now has a camera… But, almost none of the above characteristics can be used by mobile games.” Bummer. Actually, I think all of those characteristics can be used by mobile games, but no-one’s figured out a way to do so effectively yet. At least, in a way that creates a “buzz”…
Related stories:
–@Austin Game Conference – Mobile Keynote
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