Xbox Live Arcade creator Don Ryan talks mobile games

When it comes to casual gaming, Don Ryan is one of the experts. In a past job as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios, he played a key role in setting up Xbox Live Arcade, as well as overseeing casual games on Microsoft's MSN service.

Now, though, he's senior vice president of publishing at Oberon Media, which also means he's in charge of its mobile division, I-play, following the recent departure of the latter's boss David Gosen.

We talked to Ryan to get his views on mobile, and how it fits in with Oberon's other casual game activities online and on interactive TV. As you might expect, the company's strategy involves finding 'synergies' between those different divisions, particularly between the web and mobile.

"We already have a Facebook application for our new Bubble Town game, but that's just the tip of the iceberg," he says. "One of our key partners is MySpace, so we're looking to evolve that relationship, and also reach out to online communities, making them more aware of mobile content and brands. In our opinion, the casual market on mobile has been a bit underserved."

This reflects a common theme in the mobile gaming industry, which came through strongly in a presentation at the recent Mobile Games Forum conference by M:Metrics. It indicated that while casual games sell strongly on mobile, they get less promotion on the operator portals than more hardcore action and sports games.

Ryan says that while there are understandable reasons for the operators preferring branded games, it causes problems for players looking for a casual gaming fix.

"From when I ran MSN Games a long time ago, I know that the casual consumer doesn't have any patience to go and try to search for things," says Ryan. "We had a catchphrase at MSN: '15 minutes of fun.' And you don't want the first 14 minutes of that to be searching for something that'll be fun. It's about getting players to what they wanted quickly, so they could have a really satisfying and intuitive experience."

Although Oberon will be looking to work closely with mobile operators, Ryan implies that it's going to be putting a lot of effort into other ways of getting casual games onto people's handsets.

Besides publishing its own casual games, Oberon has a services division that runs casual games web portals for the likes of Microsoft, Pogo, Comcast and France Telecom, as well as that relationship with MySpace which will be rolling out soon. The theory appears to be to take people from those websites to WAP sites on their mobile, to download games.

Ryan gave a speech last week at the Casual Connect conference in Amsterdam about convergence between the different platforms (web, TV and mobile). What does this mean for I-play specifically? Will the company just be making mobile ports of Oberon's web games from now on, or could I-play's own franchises – My Dog and Sexy Pillowfight, for example – be popping up on those other platforms?

"We're starting from the mindset of the target customer, and the franchise that we want to build," says Ryan. "So for My Dog, there's an audience that enjoys that product, and would enjoy accessing that product in some form on the web, maybe as a PC download product if modified slightly, and potentially on iTV, too. Although we're not making any product announcements about My Dog on the TV."

In short, as the dust settles from Oberon's acquisition of I-play, every game in both firms' catalogues will be scrutinised to see if it would suit the other platforms. This works both ways: right now, I-play is working on a mobile version of Oberon's Paparazzi Snapshot game – a thorny task that involves translating the original's 'hidden item' gameplay to mobile.

One last thing we wanted to ask Ryan about was cross-platform connectivity. In other words, games on the web or iTV linking up with mobile, rather than simply being released in different versions. Is the vision of playing a casual game on the web, then switching off your PC but continuing with your game (score, progress and all) on the phone going to become a reality soon?

"We believe the real value of cross-platform connectivity is in shared community, through functionality like high scores and shared profiles," says Ryan.

"Shared community features are more meaningful in a cross-platform gaming context than shared game state across devices. While Oberon has the technical capability to deliver cross-platform solutions involving shared game states, we just haven't witnessed the massmarket consumer demand for it."