Lunchtime Discussion: Mobile

I’m not sure how, but it looks like lunchtime discussions have yet to cover mobile gaming. Even if we did cover it and it’s been lost to the mists of time now would seem a good time to revisit. As I said in yesterday’s discussion, this week’s topics are sparked off by a panel I attended at last week’s Develop Conference. The panel featured Ben Hebb, the Art Director at Zoe Mode, John Nash, the Studio Design Director at Blitz, and Neil Thompson, the Studio Art Director at Bizarre Creations, and the discussions kicked off by talking about social gaming, which almost immediately turned into a discussion of mobile gaming.

One of the most interesting comment came from Thompson, when he said that older developers are actually suited to developing for mobile devices. How so I hear you cry? Well he said a lot of the game play mechanics and development techniques reminded him of developing for the Amiga, so developers who cut their teeth on the Amiga are now just dusting off their old skills and using them to make huge piles of money.

Thompson was in fact full of wisdom on the topic, as he also made a comment about the cycle of gaming and how he perceives that cycle now moving into gaming on phones and says that these games and platforms may be the real next generation of gaming. With developers more able to take risks and having more flexibility, as well as much shorter development cycles, it does seem likely that building games for these devices will tempt more and more major players, particularly as the hardware continues to improve and grow in popularity.

Talking of development Ben Hebb echoed Tim Schafer in espousing the benefits of smaller dev teams being able to work on these title. In particular he noted that having a team with just one programmer, one designer and one developer is a great way of building confidence and getting the best out of your staff. It gives the team members, who may have been responsible for just a very small part of the game otherwise, room to grow and show just what they’re capable of.

Of course it’s not all rainbows and lollipops in the land of mobile phones. With such a huge volume of titles being released onto mobile gaming app stores, Nash said it can be very hard to get noticed or stand out against the ocean of competing games. You have to come up with new ways of marketing your games and in particular social networks have been very successful at selling these games.

So how do you feel about all of this? Will mobile games start to follow a more generational cycle? Would you consider them the ‘real’ next generation? Personally I think they could be, if only because there seems to be more scope for innovation over traditional consoles. Will more and more mainstreams developers put resources into the area? Let us know.