Mobile Games 2008 Part 3: Original mobile games

Let's get one thing straight: Pocket Gamer doesn't have a downer on branded mobile games.

We're not prejudiced against movie games, console conversions, celebrity tie-ins, or sports star endorsements. There are plenty of great examples of cool games based on brands, and it's an area in which the mobile games industry has improved markedly in the past couple of years.

The trouble is, they outsell unbranded mobile titles by a vast amount, and we wish that a few more own-IP games would cut through to become hits. But what do publishers think? Will we see more original mobile hits in 2008, or do we need them at all?

"Mobile is a challenging commercial environment, so lower-risk (i.e. branded) titles are inevitably going to account for the lion's share of releases," says Tim Harrison of EA Mobile. "EA will continue to invest in original IP - we have a number of strong new titles coming out this year - but until the environment becomes friendlier to new IP, we're going to see a focus on hits and titles that the customer can feel confident about buying."

The other big publishers agree, and it's perhaps telling that for most, their strategy is based on making money from the branded hits, and using some of that to fund original games. Glu has been doing just that, and the likes of Frantic Factory and Shadowalker have been the result.

"Original mobile hits are important," says Glu's Chris White. "They ensure the mobile platform has unique content that can't be found elsewhere. This ensures mobile feels fresh and exciting. Having said this, there's no reason why a branded game can't offer gameplay innovations and something unique when brought to mobile."

Gameloft's Gonzague de Vallois also thinks a mixture of brands and own-IP is crucial.

"If we only take movie or videogame IP, the mobile game market will remain a small subset of the Holywood or console business," he says. "We believe in original titles. More than half of all our sales are generated through original IPs. It is with originality and diversity that you bring a mass audience like the operators' millions of subscribers to mobile gaming."

Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins has been flying the flag for unbranded mobile games ever since the company started, with some superb games resulting (although rivals sometimes point out that sales don't quite match). He draws a parallel with broadband content:

"In broadband all the big brands are new, and no big brands are recycled from other media. So, Beowulf may do well in movie theaters, but it means nothing as an internet phenomenon, and frankly, who cares about Beowulf on a phone? Meanwhile, Facebook can find 50 million customers on the web without any marketing budget."

He complains that it's the operators who have driven the focus on brands in the mobile games industry, with many of those games failing to meet the expectations of gamers.

"This mentality has persisted for more than five years with disappointing results. Including music, mobile content remains as little as 2 per cent of total mobile spending in the Western world. This is not going to change until the carriers wake up and realize the imperative that they must stand for something new in content."

In fairness, it's not just the operators pushing branded games. Gamers do buy them in droves, and it's an open debate how much this is because they don't have enough information on the operator portals to risk something new, or because they simply want to play games based on their favourite brands.

"We have a deep well of brands and characters at Disney to choose from, as well as the added benefit that Disney itself is a brand," says Sunil Gunderia of Disney Mobile. "For consumers, brands like Disney convey trust and accessibility which is quite important when trying to make a emerging platform like mobile gaming successful. In terms of development it is original in so much as we are focusing on coupling our brands with the accessibility and the right game play for the mobile platform."

I-play's (now ex-boss) David Gosen agrees that consumer demand - and trust - is behind the success of branded mobile games.

"The market is still at a stage where consumers look to trusted brands before experimenting with unknown entities," he says, although he says there are exceptions, such as his company's My Dog. "It's important we continue investing in original content, because as the market grows and 'all you can eat' price plans are launched there will be greater end user experimentation and trial."

Several publishers we talked to for this feature mentioned game trials as a way to get more people trying out original-IP mobile games. Unsurprisingly, Digital Chocolate has been active in this area, but other publishers are keen too.

"I'd like to see a greater use of try-before-you-buy from the carrier deck, especially and perhaps exclusively for unbranded games," says Paul Maglione, of Vivendi Games Mobile, although he points out that the 'try' period needs to be kept short to prevent freeloading.

"We have to try new ways of tempting consumers to try original non-branded games, otherwise when browsing a games deck the average user will always go with the big brands especially if all games are priced at the same price point."

Hopefully this will happen quickly, before developers lose heart and drift away to other platforms with their original ideas - some already argue that you're better off launching own-IP titles on the web than on mobile. RealArcade's Jeremy Wells strikes a downbeat note:

"Just look at how different Pocket Gamer's games of 2007 is compared to the actual top 10 based on sales! – Clearly innovation doesn't sell, so we can expect to see less of it. The market will continue to become more sequel driven (like the console business) as rising development costs and consolidation impact publishers' risk taking."

He thinks originality and creativity still have a place on mobile, but that they'll need to have a technological bent, for example social networking games and MMORPGs using network features, or DS-style touch-screen games.

The comparison to console is also raised by Player One's George Sakkas.

"We definitely need to have original games being produced to compliment the bigger brand-associated titles," he says. "Much like our console cousins, it will become more and more of a financial risk for original IP to be created, due to the fact that it has less of a chance when competing in the market place with established brand franchises or movie tie ins. But in terms of pushing the games to be more creative and innovative, original games keep thing fresh and new."

But we should get back to our opening point: branded games aren't bad in themselves - it's unimaginative branded games that are the problem.

"Consumers want to see more than simple Jump&Runs based on famous movie brands," says HandyGames' Christopher Kassulke, while Universomo's Markku Hakala agrees that branded must not mean 'old gameplay', although he defends the general idea of branded games.

"Brands are not a bad thing for mobile at all. Brands do make commercial sense," Hakala says. "We must bear in mind that a mobile game is not the best medium for introducing a new story setting. For example, the player is able to immerse in the Star Wars much faster with a novel sci-fi setting. Far too often a brand is also just wrapping around an old gameplay concept when it should be used as an inspiration to create an original concept. Mobile is the perfect platform to try out something new."

Perhaps EA's Tim Harrison should have the last word on the branded versus unbranded games debate, since he prefers to focus on the games themselves, regardless of source.

"Let's bang the drum for quality, value and originality within game play, whether it's a branded title or not," he says.