Nowadays, gamers expect Hollywood special effects, great music, engrossing storylines and brilliant artwork in games. Indeed, arranging a bunch of oddly-shaped falling bricks isn’t considered quite good enough anymore.

Taking this into account, it’s rather odd that the latest emerging market segment in the games industry is bringing it back to its roots – back to the days of beeping sounds and blocky graphics.

Yep, mobile phone games are the next big thing, apparently.

Cellphone operators and service providers have already jumped onto the bandwagon, churning out mobile games by the hundreds. As unbelievable as it may seem, people are actually buying cheap, simple and ugly games again.

What’s going on?

Different type of gamer
The success behind the mobile phone games industry stems from the fact that it does not target the usual hardcore gamer (i.e. the guys who go out and buy PC gaming rigs, PS2s, Game Boys and Xboxes).

Rather, they target the casual user who is more likely to play a game just to pass the time while waiting for something. If there’s one thing market researchers have figured out, it’s that people would rather fiddle with something than to die of boredom in a queue.

“Our CEO saw some opportunity in providing entertainment on mobile phones. Early examples included SMS text-based games and downloadable ringtones,” says Lee Yow Chuan, head of the technical R&D unit for UnrealMind Interactive Sdn Bhd (www.UnrealMind.com).

The company was founded in 2001 to deliver games and other forms of entertainment on the mobile phone platform. It is currently staffed by about seven people, currently working on a series of detective puzzle games under its Chabomzie family.

“The whole idea was to produce entertainment content and we planned to enter the mobile phone games industry, but at that time, the phones were not that capable yet. We waited until the time was right, when there were enough phones to deploy games, and now we’re focused on creating mobile games,” he says.

According to Lee, mobile phones offer a lot of possibilities as a platform.

“There is a future for it. It doesn’t really compete with other gaming platforms – it is a unique platform itself since it has a very wide audience already. Most people have a mobile phone but not everyone is a gamer; there is a wide range of people to cater for such as adults or girls, who have different preferences for games.”

“Also, because all phones are connected to the network, we can exploit multiplayer capabilities in the future. Unfortunately, the wireless connections here aren’t good enough yet, so we can’t really go into that,” he says.

Making games
UnrealMind writes all of its games in J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) for use on Java-enabled phones (java.sun.com). The company currently concentrates solely on mobile phones, and has no PDA (personal digital assistant) games in development.

“We like Java because we can find a lot of documentation from forums; it’s much easier to learn,” explains Lee.

Java is the most common choice for making mobile-phone applications since it is largely platform-independent; the same application can run on different mobile phones and other Java devices with little or no reworking required.

However, it doesn’t solve the compatibility issues that come with such a large variety of handsets in the market.

“Every phone has a different screen size, different processor speed and different storage capacity. Some games will work on a certain phone, but not on another,” Lee complains.

“There’s also a lack of documentation on the specifications for various phones, which makes it hard to debug compatibility problems in games. The manufacturers can be on the unhelpful side too, which leaves us no choice but to resort to trial and error.”

The development cycle for mobile games is much shorter than for other platforms. A well-designed mobile game can be completed in just four months, as opposed to the one- or two-year development cycles for console games, Lee says.

“It makes it much easier for we developers. When you think of an idea, you can quickly put some code together, which allows us to see results almost instantaneously.”

As you can probably guess, simplicity is the key.

“We don’t really have to go overboard with the technology since there’s no use trying to break the limits. In console games, you have access to machine language, which allows you to do lots of things such as speed optimisation and graphics tricks. Unfortunately, it also makes console development very difficult.

“In mobile phones, there’s not much low-level optimisation that can be done,” he says.

This simplicity is a double-edged sword though; in limiting the extent that programmers can access the hardware on mobile phones, they are also severely limited in performance.

The different shapes and sizes of handsets mean that mobile developers also have to approach game design differently.

“We start by thinking from the device perspective and taking into account the limitations that it has. Mobile phones have many keypads but if you utilise all of them, the actual gameplay may suffer since the controls may end up being really confusing,” says Lee.

“Requiring the user to keep their attention on the phone all the time is no good either. Since most people play mobile phone games to kill time, they have to be simple, fun and easy to play,” he adds.

Real gaming platform
One problem with the mobile phone games industry is the lack of innovation. In an attempt to make a quick buck, developers are churning out rehashes of old games.

As a result, you can easily download a whole bunch of games that, apart from graphics and artwork, play identically.

However, Lee doesn’t see this as a lack of creativity but rather as a transitional phase. “The reason that we’re seeing all these old games re-appearing on the platform is that people are still learning the capabilities of mobile devices. Once we have confidence of what can or cannot be done, you will start to see innovations in mobile phone game design.”

Speaking of learning, the J2ME mobile phone platform has become a great place to learn how to program games since it brings you back to the basics of game design. Moreover, the software developer toolkits are freely available of the Net.

“You can compile a game and let your friends play it on their handsets. It’s a fun way to improve your game development skills, compared to spending months or years trying to come up with your own PC game,” says Lee.

In closing, Lee also points out that the mobile phone game industry is the only one where nobody has an unfair advantage.

“It’s so easy to penetrate the market. Somebody can just download all of the tools and start programming the next day. It depends on determination and perseverance.

“Mobile gaming is new, unlike PC and console games where the United States and Japan have a 10-year headstart; there’s almost no way we can close the gap.

“For local game developers, the stakes are not so high with mobile phone games since everyone’s starting at the same time. As a result, you have a good chance of succeeding,” he says.