RonEnix

Mobile gaming, an aspect of the gaming industry over-shadowed by current generation gaming console, is left to wander all alone whilst a war is waged somewhere else. At least that’s what I view mobile gaming to be.

When you speak of mobile gaming it is just a thought to many gamers whether hardcore or casual. At least that’s my thought also. That’s when Thomas Hulvershorn stepped in and gave some pointers to what happens in mobile game development and how much similar it is and more complicated it is to produce games for various mobile phones.

First of all Thomas Hulvershorn is the Q&A Manager for I-Play mobile gaming company who’s released over 30 title since 2004 in the Q&A division. You can visit their site here: http://www.iplay.com/.

Designing games for mobile phones adds numerous complications in the process. Many things have to be considered whilst deciding the design of a game. As what you may expect from mobile phones controls aren’t that helpful in many ways. Some mobile phone companies try to create a solution to this common problem as some phones have a specific hand-held style look-a-like to them that make them feel more comfortable for gaming and for regular phone calls.

As pointed out by Thomas once control is managed to an extent the content of the game must be manage also so that the player can pick up the game and play it right away. This can be hard to get by when you try to produce a complicated games, although the genres of games mostly cover the casual aspect of gaming. Most games tend to be situated into puzzle games which fit easily into both given considerations.

Another point given out by Thomas was the difficulty of creating a software which can run on various mobile phones. As with games mobile phones in general are being produced with new/updated framework/firmware which the software has to run on. Most mobile phones are categorised likewise where testing can be done on one phone per category.

As a Q&A manager most of the speech described testing procedures in alpha and beta stages. As far as I am aware testing seems to be more vigorous and immediate feedback is required which are then handled back to the developers for some improvements.

Testing as a job in the industry is also highlighted during the talk. This itself is a discipline of games development and has become a new profession. As a graduate designer this is one ideal job to have in order to get into the games industry. Thereafter testers move on to become part of a Q&A management team or delve into a designer role.

Although this relates very little to my background, it is still a very good information to take into account. Ideally how a mobile game is produced is what made the content of the session very useful in the end.

As a rap up, Thomas has provided a new in site into mobile gaming itself. Although it is in obvious terms that games available for phone are incomparable to console/PC/Hand Hand, mobile gaming industry has it’s own section which it can be very successful at and it’s mostly dominated by casual gamers. Gamers like me.