Tim Harrison, Head Of Games At Vodafone – Part One

Mobile Industry has interviewed Tim Harrison, the mobile games guru at Vodafone — well worth a read if you’re into that sort of thing (and I am). There’s some interesting points about the industry as a whole, such as why Vodafone won’t release its sales figures, the wildly varying estimates of the global market size and the effect that has on investment in the sector.
He also points out that big companies coming into the space need to work in the new medium because it’s different to console or computer games — but strikingly similar to arcade games.
“I think that arcade games, one of the reasons they’ve proved very popular is because the arcade game was designed for short snatches of play. The whole way its billing mechanism worked – ten pence for three goes – it was designed to sit there, maybe in a specialist arcade, but also in the fish and chip shop while you were waiting to get your food, also in the hotel lobby while you were waiting to check out or whatever. These were games that were designed with that short, episodic gameplay in mind and that is, I think, one of the reasons why arcade classics have done well.”
This is true, and in fact the mobile space is even better suited to the games because it allows them to be paused. If you wanted to finish Pac Man on in an arcade you had to stay there for all that time — on mobiles you can pause the game and come back to it later.
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