So I'm in San Jose for GDC 06. And today I got to go to a whole bunch of sessions. Here is a quick summary of where we are at from the morning keynotes, in bullet points
- Things are good (over 2 Billion dollars spent on mobile games last year) but things are also bad,with the amount spent levelling off, the price of games rising and the operators wanting to get more out of the price of games (which by the way are dropping).
- The biggest name (EA) has just bought the best mobile name (Jamdat). If you are struggling publisher you are likely to struggle even more. But there is still room for the little guy with the big idea as long as you are prepared to let the big guy take your idea and run with it. (so says the big guy).
- The biggest selling games are old favourites (Tetris rules) and casual games (easy and quick to play) are the way and the truth.
- Too many games is causing confusion. More choice is not good, just makes things hard to find. And buyers are suspicious of retreads of old titles and odd versions of existing games. The fact that the same title is sent around a whole bunch of licence holders causes mega confusion for the customers. And the way games are deployed is a mess.
- The field needs a multi-player game. The team that comes up with "the mobile World of Warcraft" will make a lot of money. Games must make an emotional connection with the players and more fun would be nice. And the wider demographic of mobile phone owners means that you have a much more interesting market to attack too.
- Music has potential. But nobody is using it at the moment.
- All is not lost. At the moment only arund 4% of mobile phone owners actually buy games, so there is a huge market to be tapped. And thre are some interesting technologies, for example Microsoft Smartphone (their words not mine).
My unbiased (or at least no less biased than anyone else) advice for what it is worth: Brush up your C#. Get good with Visual Studio 2005. Get into mobile Direct 3D. And prepare to leapfrog the current level of somewhat restricted devices, wide platform variations and horrible languages to produce some really good stuff.
More later.