The mobile phone industry's main annual shindig, 3GSM, took place last week in Barcelona. For the past couple of years games have figured quite highly on the agenda, with network operators seeing them as a way of increasing data traffic and phone manufacturers using them to make expensive feature-rich handsets more desirable in a saturated market.
But this year, a fresh-faced newcomer, mobile TV, has hit the scene, seemingly relegating games (and other previously vaunted entertainment services such as MMS and video downloads) to the gloomiest recesses of the industry party.
So did anything interesting happen for games at the show? I don't know because I couldn't get a flight out there (long story). But I know a man who does - industry analyst Stuart Dredge of Informa. So here's what he made of 'the greatest show on earth centred around mobile communications technology'(TM)...
*Oh alright then, tepid...
So, what games caught your eye at the show this year? Sonic The Hedgehog was the star of the show - men dressed as giant hedgehogs are par for the course at E3, but 3GSM delegates still get quite excited about them, and the iFone booth was manic all week. The game looks good too, a really good conversion job, although I've got reservations about how easy it is to play Sonic at full speed on a mobile keypad.
There was lots of 3D stuff, mainly on the 3D hardware stands (Nvidia, Texas Instruments etc). Although some of this was demos, some were full games - e.g. a corking version of Need For Speed on the Nvidia stand. A related development is the new Texas Instruments initiative, which includes EA, Nokia, Activision and lots of others, to set out standards for native gaming (games using the hardware acceleration, etc, inside the phones). It'll be important for this to take off.
RealArcade and Mr Goodliving are doing the official Gorillaz mobile game, which looks very nice. A mix of proper Gorillaz animations, with simple 'hit one/two keys' gameplay. And a nice retro feel too, featuring mini-games based on each character.
The IMG Awards (which - declaration of interest - I helped judge) threw up some interesting stuff. AR Tennis won a couple of the categories - it's a table tennis game on your phone, but uses the camera so you can use your phone as a bat. If that makes sense. Very innovative. But my fave was actually a game called Monkey Pole Climb, done by one bloke in the UK. Three monkeys, three poles, and coloured balloons which send them up or down. It's genius (and won the best gameplay category). More info here
There's going to be about 273 soccer games out this summer, but the two that caught my attention were Mr Goodliving's Playman World Soccer, which is the first mobile football game to be truly easy to control. And also HandyGames 'Flitzer', where you play a streaker legging it round the pitch.
Mforma are doing a new Spider-man game, which cuts out all the fighting and puzzling, to focus on the building-swinging bits. It looks cool - one-thumb rather than complex action-adventure.
Finally, the twisted part of me liked Danish firm Kiloo's Happy Tree Friends game, more mini-games, including one where you drag a rabbit along from a helicopter setting it on fire, smacking it into things, electrocuting it, etc. Always good.
Where there any interesting new ideas going on in mobile gaming? Online multiplayer? Social gaming? New techy concepts? There were some techy demos of multiplayer gaming, and definitely some good stuff being done in that area. There's still more buzz around connected gaming though, which could be high-scores, buddy lists, tournaments, or extra content downloads (new tracks and levels, etc). It's easier to do, but also maybe appealing to a wider base of players. Oh, Siemens launched some multiplayer stuff, including a football game where you point the camera at your foot and swing to kick, but I didn't see that.
A big theme at the games panels was pricing, actually. It's become clear that if you just sell mobile games for £5, a lot of people won't buy them - especially prepay users who often don't have much more than £5 of credit at any one time. So there's a general push towards more flexible pricing this year - e.g. pay 50p per play, or £1 to rent a game for 3 days, or subscriptions where you pay £1-2 a month to play a game. 3 has been doing this in the UK, but I think a lot of operators are looking at it.
On the subject of social gaming, with Habbo Hotel looking into going mobile, and a few interesting social game concepts floating around, does Informa see this as a potential new 'saviour' fore mobile gaming? I don't think saviour is the right word - one of the best ways to sell more mobile games is to: a) make more good ones, and b) stop selling so many rubbish ones, especially those based on brands. That's not to say branded games aren't important - they are - but there's a real focus on quality at the moment from operators and publishers.
But yeah, social games are really interesting - particularly as they show off one of a phone's key strong points. I'd highlight Hotties, which is from InfoSpace's US development studio. It's a bit like Am I Hot or Not, on mobile, with flirting, messaging and competitions built in. And Digital Chocolate's Mobile League Sports Network, which is half fantasy football and half betting with play money. You predict what's going to happen in upcoming sporting events, get points for correct predictions. But the cool bit is you can sign up friends for mini-leagues. There's a lot of technical issues holding these things back in Europe, but this sort of thing will come. And of course, it'll be interesting to see how things like Myspace.com approach mobile too.
Any other interesting enertainment apps at the show? I saw a few companies producing shortform animations for mobile. E.g. one-minute cartoons, usually based on what works well on the Web (i.e. very twisted, very funny, and usually featuring animals doing violent things to one another). Some were based on existing brands (e.g. Happy Tree Friends), while others were completely new for mobile. I think it'll be interesting to see if this takes off - at least as a separate strand to what the operators are doing with mobile video. It will also be interesting to see if operators and/or the content providers can introduce a viral element to this content, as that's one of the key ways this kind of stuff spreads online.
The big new thing in the mobile adult content world is two-way video-calling - basically webcam girls on your phone, who you can talk live to. I certainly wouldn't want the businessman sitting next to me on the train home to be doing this! But the adult companies seem sure that there will be a demand for it.
Are any manufacturers proceeding with gaming-specific phones? Or at least phones with very good specs for gaming? Not really gaming specific phones, as such. There's a few in South Korea, where operator SK Telecom has a service called 'gxg' which is 3D mobile games - and reportedly has over 300,000 users with dedicated gaming handsets. But in the West, music and TV seem to be the main drivers for content-specific handsets.
