Adapting your Online Games to the Mobile Platform

Lecturer: Christof Wegmann, Exit Games

The PC space has brought to life a large number of connected online games – however, the market today is dominated by a small group extremely popular games brands that gather millions of players, making it hard for small developers to stand out. The mobile phone offers new ways in this market to create innovative features and attract new users.

With characteristics such as ubiquitous availability, instant access and location detection, it provides the possibility to integrate completely new aspects into games and thus constitutes an interesting new platform for online games.

While building for various end-user platforms, the user experience will differ greatly from one platform to another. To provide an exciting product to the user, the developer must know how to take advantage of the specific characteristics of the mobile device and how to avoid conceptual and developmental mistakes that erode the positive gaming experience on this platform. This means a different infrastructure has to be taken into account for development:

• Device and network fragmentation is high, so games must be adapted to many phones
• Bandwidth and transmission speed are still inferior to the online PC games market
• Distribution is fragmented and the strong role of mobile network operators must be taken into account, but there are also new ways into the market.

This presentation shows how you can best make use of the specific characteristics of this platform to enhance the gaming experience as well as increase your revenues. It outlines how different online games should be adapted to the mobile space: from simple and short casual games to complex, long-life MMOGs. Case studies for both gaming types will be given.

Intended Audience: Game developers participating in or intending to enter the mobile games market
Prerequisites: Attendees should have work experience in game development – ideally in the realm of connected games.
Format: Lecture
Date/Time: Friday, 9:00 AM
Room: Council