Graeme Ferguson, Head of Content at Vodafone UK, has launched a blistering attack on the quality of mobile phone games. Writing in the industry newsletter, Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook, the outspoken exec rages:
"I've seen some dire games (surprisingly most with good, great or at least recognisable licences) that really insult the customer... our customer. But whose fault is it that mobile games could go the way of WAP games, where delivery has not matched expectation?
The market will not grow and customers will not repeat-buy if the basic quality of mobile-games does not improve. Quicker access to a crap game or greater revenue share for a crap game, or fewer handsets and lower QA costs on a crap game and guess what? It's still a crap game."
Ferguson also berates publishers for producing far too many games for any portal to adequately feature. He wants producers to concentrate resources on fewer, better titles. "Here´s my advice... Don't pay a fortune for irrelevant licences. Don't re-skin old engines with even older movie brands or socially irrelevant brands and expect operators to get behind them. What next? Monkey Tennis? Inner-city Sumo? Cooking in Prison?" Ironically, I could imagine any of those three attracting interest - from the gaming press at least - but that's probably not the point here.
Of course, Vodafone, as a key mobile network operator, is in a unique position to protect consumers. If the company doesn't want to feature crap licensed games on the front page of its Vodafone Live! portal, it doesn't have to.
However, when a massive blockbuster movie comes along with a mobile game conversion limping behind it, the temptation must be enormous to shove that game - however good or bad it is - to the top of the 'This week's new downloads' list. After all, that's how the traditional console and PC games industry has worked for years - and no one has stopped buying aggressively marketed PS2 movie conversions just because 90% of them are mediocre or worse.
Yet, there does seem to be evidence that poor games are affecting the mobile entertainment industry. As Ferguson points out, "According to industry analysts M:Metrics, the market for mobile games has peaked at around 5% of mobile users and only 20-30% of first-time mobile gamers go back again." That is a quite terrifying churn rate for a form of entertainment that's cheap and ostensibly easy to get hold of.
Clearly, the answer is not only to make better games, but also to provide an environment in which those games can prosper, even if they don't have a licence. Partly, this is going to involve making the transaction less economically risky for the consumer - billing options like rental, subscriptions and 'play before you pay' can help here. But also, mobile game aggregators are going to have to bite the bullet and apply a little QA to their catalogue of titles.
It is going to be risky, but ultimately liberating. The mobile games industry is not and has never been a sort of reduced reflection of the console games industry. It is a different beast altogether and everybody involved must understand that. The old tricks aren't working here. They never will.
