Trip Hawkins laments the state of mobile gaming

TRIP HAWKINS, the self described industry cockroach, now head of Digital Chocolate, kicked off the mobile track at GDC 2007 with a broad overview of the mobile gaming world. Lets be kind and say it is it's infancy.

The most interesting part of the speech were the statistics he tossed out. Mobile games tend to be derivatives of their mainstream counterparts, usually cut down fractional experiences or barring that, licensed names slapped on a mediocre filler. Only 10-15% of the content is new to mobiles, and that pretty much defines the parts that can be innovative.

On top of this, licensing costs can kill you. One statistic Trip tossed out was that an unnamed licensing authority charges four per cent for a Gameboy licence, seven per cent for Playstation, 11 per cent for 'internet' based games, and 50 per cent for mobile. This makes the dull crapola expensive dull crapola.

To compound the problem, people rarely download mobile games. Currently, about five per cent of the US population has downloaded a game, so the people who are buying are a small repeat audience. This gives people a big incentive to cater to that audience rather than people in general.

What you end up with is a hardcore set on one side and a broad audience on the other that buys based on a name. People bid for those names, pay dearly, and the consumer ends up with marginal product because they buy for the name not quality. Add in that it is hard to download, annoying to use, and generally problematic, and you have a mess.

Two thirds of the current games are 'retro', remakes of classic games or simply ports of old arcade machines. There is little innovation and things need to change radically before the market will take off. It is inevitable that it does, but the industry status quo is not helping much.

Trip then went on a trip down memory lane about another little company he founded, Electronic arts. Initially, they eschewed the dominant console at the time an put out things for early PCs, no 2600 EA games, lots of C64 and Atari 800 titles in those funky flat sleeves. The first console games they made were for the Sega Genesis, a move that caused enough internal dissent to have a large number of people quit EA. The company then dropped the word quality from it's mission statement and added customer satisfaction. I will refrain on snide comments here, they are unnecessary.

That brings us back to Digital Chocolate, and how they do things. The main problem they face is that the hot talent tends to want to work on big hardware and big titles, coding a fun little widget for a cell screen isn't all that appealing. You have your work cut out to convince someone to code for a low end phone.

Also if you want success in mobile games, you can't just slap out crap. The Digital Chocolate games do not drop out of the sky, they are thought out, researched, and worked on by a team. Feedback matters, this is a team effort, not a hit song.

Overall, the state of mobile gaming is sad but there is hope. It is not taken seriously so the effort isn't expended. Because the effort isn't expended, people don't buy so it isn't taken seriously. The whole industry stagnates, or at least moves forward at a snail's pace. Welcome to the state of mobile gaming. µ