I-play's David Gosen talks to Pocket Gamer

I-play CEO David Gosen is one of the more outspoken advocates for the mobile games industry, not just in terms of promoting his own company, but also banging the drum for independent publishers, and the wider world of mobile games.

At a recent conference in Amsterdam, Gosen claimed that mobile gaming will eventually make console a niche platform. We were intrigued enough to sit down with him at 3GSM to discuss the subject more, as well as picking his brains on original mobile games and Nokia's next-gen N-Gage.

It all goes back to the fact that the mobile phone is the digital distribution device for entertainment in the future, without a doubt. It will be the hub of entertainment because of its penetration. If you look today, there are 2.7 billion mobile phones in circulation, 1.2 billion TVs, and under a billion PCs, so mobile really is THE device.

I've said this before, but in the last 25 years, 300 million consoles have been sold, yet in Quarter 4 alone last year, 300 million mobile phones were sold. So in one quarter, the same number of devices were sold than in 25 years of consoles. Clearly, a console is a dedicated device you buy to play games, and a mobile device is not. But penetration is everything.

We have to make sure we don't turn a mass market into a niche market. Like it or not, console is a niche market. It's a good niche market, but it's targeting a 16-24 year-old male demographic, and we know that's not the profile of mobile gamers, who are 50 per cent female, a little bit older, and tend to be not gameplayers.

Our philosophy is very clear: it's about casual games. 75 per cent of people play a mobile game for less than 10 minutes at a time, while 95 per cent of people play mobile games while doing something else, whether it's sitting on the bus, on the train, watching TV at home or even sitting on the toilet. 9 per cent do that last one, there's an interesting fact for you!

If you're playing as part of another occasion, you don't need a deep immersive console-style gaming experience. It has to be simple, intuitive yet still challenging. You need to be able to dip in and dip out. If console gaming is a three-course meal, then mobile gaming is a snack. It's about bite-sized chunks, which I know is a line everybody uses...

I think markets take time to get to a tipping point, which is what we see happening in 2007. People think 3G technology is going to drive hardcore gaming, but the research we've done with M:Metrics [a mobile industry analysis firm] shows that 3G is great news for overall downloads. People are twice as likely to download, and it's casual games they want to play.

That's why arcade-style puzzle games are doing so well. Yes, the console companies will be pushing their licences, but at the end of the day it's about mass-market franchises that will really excite consumers, and not – NOT – about hardcore console games.

There is a perception that big brand licences are critical in this industry. I think they have a very important role to play, as I would say with something like Fast And Furious, which has done over 6.5 million downloads for us, and 24 doing incredibly well. So there is a role for these big brand licences.

But what I think is going to change the real impact of casual games over the next 12 months is this cross-platform play between online and mobile. In the last year, broadband penetration has increased significantly. The awareness today of a game like Jewel Quest is far greater than it was 18 months ago, so we're starting to see the online games getting even more traction when we bring them across to mobile.

Today, the operators are still the gatekeepers in terms of what games they launch. So if they determine they want big events and big licences, then that's what they'll drive. But as [off-portal] direct-to-consumer services grow, you'll see more consumers surfing either the web or WAP sites looking for what they want, so they'll have more opportunity to discover the more casual games.

It's about leveraging communities. Take two examples. With Fox and our 24 licence, 27 million people watch the TV show in the US and Europe. That's a huge community to access either through the TV show, the Fox website or the DVD. So we do look for brands and licences, whether online or TV or Hollywood, which have significant communities that we can bring across to mobile.

Then, if you look at something like Slingo, over three million people play, and one in 20 Americans have played a Slingo game. Again, there's a significant community that has a relationship with that brand, so we can appeal to that community and bring them across to mobile. So people will be able to buy mobile content off the Slingo site. We do that with Jewel Quest and the iWin site, and we'll do the same with Slingo.

It's true that there isn't one. One of the challenges we've had is that games aren't new. They've been around for five to six years on mobile, whereas music is quite sexy. Who would you rather write about: Mariah Carey or David Gosen?

Well yes, I've got a new one coming out soon, you may have seen me on YouTube strumming in my bathroom... But seriously, it's about driving awareness. I saw some research recently saying that 20-30 per cent of people use search on their mobile device. That opens up a whole new opportunity for us in mobile gaming.

Having people like EA in the business also drives awareness. If EA want to drive their console message, that's fine. Every incremental download we get into this business is tremendous.

Music is one of those very topical areas on mobile, but if you look at it from an operator's perspective, gaming is far better margin-wise than music. Gaming is important too, so I'm seeing the operators put more effort, resource, marketing and focus into mobile gaming, which will help.

It's interesting to contrast the US and Europe. The Top 20 titles in both are broadly the same, but just in a different order, with casual games higher in the US than they are in Europe. Why? There's a real appetite for casual games in the US, although even if you look at some of the top games in the UK ELSPA chart, it's predominantly casual too. It is!

We've had success with Jewel Quest, you've got Tetris and Block Breaker. It's pretty casual. The problem that mobile companies who are subsidiaries of console publishers have is that they have to drive their console titles. They have no choice. Whereas independent companies like ourselves can take a console title when it's relevant, but our focus is more on the casual / puzzle / casino / card / game-show casual titles, and also the arcade-style games.

That's quite important too, that casual gaming is definitely not console, but it's also not just puzzle. It can be the way you play games, so something like Fast And Furious is a casual racing game, not a hardcore console game. This definition of 'casual' is something that needs more clarity.

Licences are important to grow penetration, as consumers want to buy something they can trust. But we're also testing the water with more and more original IP like My Dog, which was one of the fastest growing original IPs in the US last year, and was in the Top 50 ELSPA chart too.

But it is a challenge to get original IP to break through – we think the mix is roundabout 80-20 or 70-30 in terms of licences compared to original IP. But as the market continues to grow, and we get up to 20 per cent of users downloading games, there will be more buyers out there prepared to take more risk in terms of different types of games.

We're rolling out 'Try Before You Buy' as a concept, and seeing pretty good conversion rates. With original IP, if you can try before you buy, and the game is good, you'll get good uptake. And you're more likely to find original IP from the independent publishers than you are from the console companies, because if they have a choice between supporting a game that's own-IP or a console brand, they'll put the money behind the console one every time.

Let's take an example. We have a game launching in May, which is original IP, and it's called Pillowfight. I'm not aware of anyone having done a pillow-fight game on console, DS or mobile before. So what we're doing is taking this growing underground sport... Actually, can it be underground? An in-your-bedroom sport?

Anyway, it's launching in May and we'll see how it does. It's a great game, and the research we've done shows that it appeals to both women and men. Plus potentially it could go from mobile to the online world.

Absolutely. The way you create traction on original IP is by getting distribution. So if you have Pillowfight on mobile, online, in retail or on Xbox Live, it almost becomes a brand in its own right. I think you'll see cross-platform original IP being a big growth area for this business in the next 12-18 months.

What's fascinating about the online world is that the profile of the gamer is much closer to mobile, and totally different to console. So I see console going down one path, and online and mobile gaming going down another. And of course, the sheer penetration of mobile plus PC is far greater than that of console, which is why we're saying it's a mass-market.

It is going to be important, but to a smaller part of the market. We will always have two to five games in our portfolio that appeal to hardcore gamers, because they're a market you can't ignore. So we will work with Nokia, and you'll see casual games migrate into 3D.

But again, even on 3G, the games people want to play are casual. Now that will upset all the console boys, but that's the way this market goes. The overriding headline is that mobile is not a console, so let's not turn a massmarket into a niche market.