Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

C H A P T E R 9
seen anything like this yet (which doesn’t mean that a solution isn’t out there!). When
it comes to games, the wireless carriers themselves are entering uncharted territory.
They are not set up, nor do they intend to function, as QA clearing houses for phone
applications like games or other kinds of content.
Testing phone handsets loaded with your game content provides several unique
challenges. If you are building content for a series of handset models (as seems to be
commonly required by many mobile game publishers), as a developer, you probably
don’t have access in any easy way to each of these handset models. Technical specifications
vary from model to model, and games seem to perform differently from
model to model as well. What runs seamlessly, even perfectly, on one model phone
will suspiciously crash another.
What about the economics? Since mobile game publishers aren’t sure what they
can expect to earn for any given title, they are understandably not necessarily willing
to risk much money in development. Many developers, eager to enter this market,
must work with these “experimental” budgets carefully. Mobile publishers and developers
alike are eager to understand just how mobile games translate into sales, and
what this means for the future of mobile development.
Obviously, only if a strong and clear market for these titles emerges will publishers
of any kind continue to put games or other applications on this platform. As in any
other area of game development, those developers with strong titles and proven sales
become attractive partners for any publisher involved. Publishers always seek to
place content with proven developers, which can be a sizeable hurdle for new developers.
Many mobile publishers are betting that the future demand for mobile content far
exceeds the present and have committed relatively small amounts of funding to current
projects, betting that this will be enough to grow the market at a reasonable rate
until risking larger funding is warranted by newly created demand for game content.
Many games that seem to fit perfectly on the low-horsepower cell phone handsets
are becoming available and will help to test out the market for similar titles. In
short, it’s a large experiment right now as many competing technologies start to settle
into place.
A fairly even-handed analysis of the potential, however, should prove that initial
investments into this gaming arena are well worthwhile. Very little will probably
stand in the way of more people taking out wireless service plans every day as a
one-time luxury device becomes absolutely commonplace. As a delivery mechanism,
the game industry has never seen such a wide potential audience looming. Will it turn
everyone into gamers? No. But you really can’t ignore the idea that, given the right
kind of content, many new players will be created simply by increased access.
And now for some good news! Earlier in this chapter, we looked at some of the
specific development challenges related to building wireless games. While these definitely
hold true in the present, there is every reason to believe that the future for this
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Cell Phones and Wireless Gaming