A few of the remarks coming back from this year's Mobile GDC are showing that despite the huge leaps made in the last few years, the mobile games market is still missing some very basic fundamentals - and none of the big players seem to be willing to take responsibility.
Responsibility for marketing, channels for marketing and basic INFORMATION for consumers are all missing from the average purchase.
Mitch Lasky, the former head of Jamdat and now EA Mobile's new Senior VP gave the keynote on Monday morning.
Mitch says there's far too much crap on the market. Way too many bad games on carrier's decks and the carriers themselves can't tell the difference between AAA titles and generic junk.
"It's crazy that games like Tetris and Madden are getting the same attention from carriers as some Chinese whack-a-mole game," says Mitch.
He wants carriers to cut the number of titles offered and oddly, thinks that EA will save the whole sector thanks to it's reach and Jamdat's execution.
Hmmm...?!
This is actually a very nice piece of spin. Since it places the blame on the developers (low quality games, far too many titles) and the carriers (poor dopes wouldn't know a good game if it bit them and wouldn't know what to do with it if it did), implies EA can sort it all out, from their unique position in the console world and outlines the market exactly as they'd like it (Tetris or Madden and that's your lot).
On the other side of the coin, we have the carriers themselves. A panel of network folk at GDC came together to urge developers to be more innovative. They're similarly tired of too many poor quality titles and mediocre gameplay experiences.
There's no denying that there are a lot of poor games out there on the market. But this is also true of the console games market, the PC games market, the DVD market, music, books - and every other area of media.
The problem that mobile gaming has it that no one is really quite sure what consumers want. Therefore we get a lot of jumping around at trade shows and competing factions pushing different aspects of gaming as the key to the mass-market.
Connected and online gaming, casual gaming, 3D games, convergent gaming, location-based gaming, etc. are all interesting areas and will all help build up the industry overall, but the real problem right now is a very basic lack of information for consumer.
If the carriers were truly committed to innovation, they would all be offering the games which represent the best that mobile can offer (Bubble Headed Boy, Playman Sports titles, Mosquito, Denki Blocks, Kodo, etc...) and actually putting some effort into supporting them. As it is, some of the sweetest and most interesting games are never seen on top tier carriers, because they're not 'mainstream enough'.
Even outside the fairly horrid mechanics of buying and paying for a game, the entire mobile industry is asking consumers to take a huge leap of faith with every purchase.
If we as an industry truly believe that mobile games have a value - and let's face it, the entire industry is predicated upon that belief - then we need to start treating them as if they are actually worth buying.
Asking consumers to make a purchase based on a title, a screenshot and maybe a paragraph of text is truly stupid.
Even if every game was great, the chances are consumers would be unhappy because the game was not what they expected.
The problem is that no one is willing to be the one to do anything about it. The carriers want the publishers to promote their games. The publishers want the carriers to help push their titles. The developers are wondering is their latest game is actually any good, since it's not being pushed anywhere bar the deck. The responsibility for marketing is being shrugged off by almost everyone and the consumer is suffering as a result.
The problem is not the huge number of bloody awful games out there. The problem is that the industry has no mechanism for weeding them out. This is gradually changing, since sites like mobilegamefaqs, pocketgamer and wgworld offer news and reviews. But this doesn't help the casual gamer with their impulse purchases directly through mobile.
For an industry which thrives on creating industry bodies to address important topics (interoperability, WAP, Bluetooth, ...), there's a marked lack of desire to look at the consumer experience and alternative models.
Blaming developers for lacking innovation and carriers for being indiscriminate is pure corporate spin. EA are promising a lot in the mobile sector, but they've yet to outline anything outside their normal franchise operations.
Unless we see something radically different to Tetris, Tetris 3D, James Bond Bowling, Harry Potter Sudoku, Harry Potter Championship Golf, John Madden Bowling, Tetris Plus, FIFA Street Bowling and Need For Speed Tetris, we'll know it's business as usual.
Sexy Soccer™ – TRADE RELEASE
