诺基亚研究中心手机游戏技术及市场分析.ppt

Research CenterNRC-TR-2007-011Mobile Games 2010Elina KoivistoNokia Research Center Finlandhttp:/1.1.2007Abstract:The Mobile Games 2010 report looks at how mobile gaming could be like in year 2010 from three points of view:games and players,technology,and business.The studywas done by interviewing about 20 mobile game publishers,developers,operators,and inviting experts to write articles on the topic.The invited articles are attached inthe end.The report reflects the opinions of the interviewees and authors of the articles-not Nokias game strategy or future product releases.Index Terms:MobileGame2010,NRC-TR-2007-011,Copyright 2007 Nokia,Mobile Games 2010Elina Koivisto,2,Layout and cover art:Jouka Mattila,Nokia Research Center,Finland,Special Acknowledgements:,The IPerG(Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming)project for funding part of this workTeemu Jalava,Nokia Research Center,Finland,Jyri Salomaa,Nokia Research Center,China,For initiating and structuring the project,co-authoring the initial sets of questions and invitations,rewiewing and selecting the articles.,Chapter 1:,who contributed in this study.,ered important themselves.,3,Please note that this report does not reflect,Nokia roadmaps or future product releases.Thisreport is a collection of opinions of the people,Introduction,The study looks at mobile gaming from three pointsof view:Users and games,Technologies,and Busi-ness.We focus on Europe,however,our contribu-tors come also from other regions.Differences indifferent markets can be rather large 19.The studyThe Mobile Games 2010 study(MG2010)was initi-concentrates more on the future than today.Excel-ated by Nokia Research Center(NRC)at the end of lent sources exist about the todays situation,andyear 2005 to get insight on how the mobile games some of them are freely available,such as the IGDAand gaming will be like within a few years time.We Mobile Games White Paper 27.One of the articlesstarted the study by organizing an expert workshop in the article collection also gives a brief summarywith 13 game experts in Nokia.With the data that of the History of the Mobile Games(starting withwas gathered in the workshop,we created an inter-the first commercial Mobile Game,Nokias Snakes,view structure and interviewed 20 mobile game de-in year 1997)40.,velopers,publishers,operators and other researchers,(see the list of contributors in the end).The inter-The report is divided in three parts:Section 2.Usersviews were done either in face-to-face situations and Games,Section 3.Technologies,and Section 4.(majority)or via phone,and email.The interviews Business.Conclusions are drawn in the end of thewere semi-structured(1).document and the referred materials are listed.The,contributors for the report are listed in the begin-Additionally,we invited experts to contribute to the ning of the document.Most of the contributors werestudy by writing short articles related to the topic.interviewed for the report,some of them reviewedThese articles are compiled in an appendix that ac-the report and came up with useful comments,andcompanies this report.The journal includes articles some did both.,on mobile game security(Steven Davis)12,tech-nology road mapping for future mobile games(Son-ja Kangas)32,proximity gaming(Tom Sderlund),51,virtual asset trade(Steven Davis)13,cross-(1)The interviews involved a list of interview topics that were,medial access(Vicky Wu)54,architecture for con-followed in the each interview.However,the intervieweesnected mobile gaming(Frank Fitzek)18,and fu-were freely allowed to talk about the topics that they consid-ture of mobile games(John Paul Bichard)6.,4,Chapter 2:Users and Games,Partly this can be due to what kinds of games ex-ist for the platforms,but also it must be noted,thatin the case of PC,you already have the device andyou just need to buy the game.The same applies tothe mobile platform and this may be one of the rea-sons why mobile games can become popular amongwomen(3).,In this section,we look at who will be the mobilegame players and what kind of games are predictedto be popular in year 2010.The users and how they playThere is quite a lot of research conducted on themobile game player demographics,but the resultsvary a lot depending on the group who participatedthe studies.Typically,the studies show that a con-siderable partition of the mobile game players arefemale.One example is the free mobile game por-tal GameJumps study 9 among its users(50 000players were involved in the study)where it wasreported that in the US 59%of the players weremale,and 41 female.The male/female ratio wasmore geared towards men among the internationalplayers(79/21)(2).Juniper Researchs 39report es-timates that mobile games business will grow from$3 billion in 2006 to$10.5 billion in 2009 and thatgrowth will be driven by the casual and female play-ers.One comment from our interviews was that inthe non-mobile gaming field,more women play PC,It is commonly said that mobile game players aremostly casual gamers who play the games for afew minutes when waiting for something or beingbored.However,a study done by Sorrent and U3027 found that many core or hard core gamers(fora definition see e.g.28)play mobile games.Thestudy was rather large-scale,more than 700 mo-bile game players participated the study.They alsofound that 80%of them had a gaming console athome,more than 60%of them played mobile gamesat home,many of them played frequently(more than60%played mobile games more than once per day),and they played for long periods of time on average(15-20 minutes).In another study(4)19,which wascommissioned by Nokia,the average play sessionlength was found to be 28 minutes.In our studies inNokia Research Center,we have field tested com-mercial mobile games,and found that particularlythe players of online games spend a lot of time play-ing one play session.The most enthusiastic mobilegame players can even spend several hours playinga mobile game.The typical places that are reportedin our studies for places where the games are playedinclude home and work.It seems to be common toplay mobile games in places like bed before going tosleep,or playing on the couch while watching TV.,Figure 1 An example of a mobile game that istargeted to women.WatAGames GoSupermodelgame(2)Could be because the game site is not welknown outsidethe US(3)Also,according to the authors own experiences and ob-servations,women who already have families are often quitebusy and cannot necessarily afford to spend several hours infront of computers.There are always distractions in the reallife.The mobile gameplay that is not fixed in one location andoften supports short playsessions may fit better in that kind oflifestyle.(4)1800 users participated in the study in six countries,5,(5)The word”pervasive”is used here in the sense that the,mobile phone is an important part of every day activities.,(6)The children used the mobile phone in a special Finn-,Chapter 2,Users and Games,In 2010,more people will play mobile games.As given by our interviewees about the players of real-mentioned earlier,and also noted a few times in our life games using mobile phone as a tool.interviews,women will be important for driving thisgrowth.Recently,there have been signs that somecompanies particularly aim to target their mobilegames to young women(see e.g.Gamelofts com-ment about targeting women players 29).Oneexample is Danish game development companyWatAGames goSupermodel(Figure 1),where theplayers battle it out in the catwalk.We can expect tosee more mobile games that are targeted to women inthe future.The number of hard-core gamers will alsoget bigger in the mobile platform when the qualityof the games is getting better and the mobile phoneas a game development platform will offer morepossibilities for creating games that both look goodand lots of“deep”content.One of our developer in-terviewees noted that the company is addressing theneeds of hardcore gamers by providing games thathave hard-core theme and content but casual gamemechanics that are better in the mobile game playsituations.One good example of this is the Doom15 mobile game.,In the year 2010,more people than today have beenusing a mobile phone for their entire life.In Fin-land,a typical age to get a mobile phone is whenchildren go to school at the age of seven.These kids,who have grown up with mobile phones will have Figure 2 Future players of mobile games.The mobile phone can be used as a tool in play.,a different,more pervasive(5)relationship with themobile phone.One example of this is using the mo-bile phone as a tool in everyday playing.A Finnish,tabloid recently reported children playing hide-and-ish variation of the hide-and-seek game for collaboration,seek with using mobile phone as a tool in this game amongst the hidden players,informing the lost players,and30(6).There were also some spontaneous positive revealing someones location by calling his or her mobile,6,Chapter 2Users and Games,The games that will be popularCurrently,the most popular mobile games are quitecasual and many of them are versions of game titlesthat are developed for PC.For instance,Tetris ap-pears frequently in the list of top ten most sold mo-bile games 16.These“snack games”will definitelynot vanish from the market,but they are more likelyto have optional multi-player functionality.Whatwill change is that there will be more diversity.Like mentioned in the previous section,games thatoffer deeper gameplay and good graphics will getmore common.Some of the experts who we inter-viewed believed in similar games getting popular inthe mobile platform are as popular now in the PCplatform.However,the majority of the experts be-lieved that the successful mobile games would besomething different,specifically designed for themobile platform(7).These games could utilize thespecific features of the mobile phone:1.connectiv-ity,2“always-with-you”,and 3.the context of theplayer.At the same time,the games need to be de-signed around the limitations in the mobile environ-ment.The biggest limitations for the game designinclude today:small screen size and keypad,net-work latency and traffic pricing,file size limitations,and platform fragmentation(see Section 3)(8).Theuse situations of the mobile games are also oftendifferent than when playing a PC or console game,even if as noted earlier mobile games are oftenplayed at home as well.We have listed the following game styles that will be,few emerging game styles that may or may not bemore popular in year 2010 or later.“Snack games”Snack games are small simple games that are typi-cally played just for a while when the player is boredor waiting for something and then set aside.Thesegames are typically small puzzle games or simplearcade games(9).Most of the todays mobile games can be describedas snack games.Even if there will be a lot more di-versity in the future,there are no signs that snackgaming would vanish anywhere.This was confirmed Figure 3 Fitting a 3D object into an silhouette inin our interviews.Snack games will be there and Fathammers SiL game.they may even drive the industry 39.The mobilephone fits very nicely for snack gaming since it isalways available and many players do not care aboutdeeper gaming experiences(and do not even con-sider themselves as“gamers”).Instead,they are sat-isfied with more casual gaming experiences.Also,innovation can happen in mobile puzzle games aswell.One good example of this is Fathammers SiLgame 49 where the player has to rotate 3D objectsto fit into a silhouette.(7)One of our invited articles defines the first category as“port-able games”and the second as“mobile games”6(8)The battery life and processing power can be also problems,however,these issues do not usually need to be consideredwhen designing the game.(9)However,it must be noted that a snack game like Tetris canbe played by another player like a snack game and by someother player fanatically.In this paper,we refer to a commonplaying style,7,Chapter 2Users and GamesCross-platform,Cross-platform games and entertainment(or poly-morphic content)was a big theme in our interviews.One of our invited papers also concentrated in thisissue 54.There are different kinds of cross-plat-form games.The“mildest”form of a cross-platformgame is that the games in different platforms justshare the same game license,but the gameplay indifferent platforms does not have any connection.We can already see these kinds of games utilizingpopular game licenses,such as The Sims.Thesegames can have similar stories or gameplay,or theycan be complementary.One example of this couldbe a console game or a movie that is complementedwith a mobile game where a small part of the wholestory is revealed.For instance,the mobile gamecould explain something about the main characterspast that was never told in the movie.,Figure 3 Fitting a 3D object into an silhouette in Fathammers SiL game.,The next step in cross-platform is allowing the play-ers to use two or more platform to access the samegame.The ways to play the game with the differentplatforms are symmetrical(similar)or asymmetri-cal(different).There are already games that can beplayed in different platforms,such as an MMORPG“A Tale in the Desert”4.However,having the mo-bile phone as part of the cross-platform functional-ity is not common yet.Hinterwars is probably thefirst commercial cross-platform MMOG(MassivelyMulti-Player Game)25 including the mobile com-ponent.In Hinterwars,the gameplay in the PC andmobile platform are symmetrical(see Figure 4).,If the gameplay of a cross-platform game title isasymmetrical in different platforms and the mobilephone is one of the platforms,most of the game-play can happen in the mobile platform,the otherplatform(s),or equally in all the platforms.A typicalexample of a game where the mobile phone wouldbe the main platform could be a game where somecontent for the mobile game is created in other plat-form,for instance,in a web page.Mobile games canalso benefit from allowing the players to use the mostfeasible available platform for communicating witheach other,e.g.for writing messages in a game fo-rum.A good example of a game where the PC gamecould be the main game,and the mobile phone,could be used as“a remote control”,is an MMOR-PG(Massively Multi-Player Online Role-PlayingGame)where the players can use mobile phone fordoing small tasks in the game.Nokia Research Center has conducted two quali-tative studies together with SonyNetservices andGotland University on what kinds of cross-plat-form access methods could be popular among thecurrent MMORPG players 3435.In these stud-ies,28 players participated in in-depth interviews.It was found that the MMORPG players were veryinterested in using mobile features that allow themto connect to the communication,8,Chapter 2Users and Games,channels of their favorite PC-based MMORPG.Also,using small features that would not affect toomuch the gameplay in the main platform and wouldnot require too fast interaction were popul