QUALCOMM's BREW Developers' Conference

"Wireless Games: A Brave New World"

by Barbara Walter, CPC, Walter & Company

The title of the last session at QUALCOMM's BREW Developers' Conference in San Diego, "Wireless Multimedia and Games Panel: A Brave New World," must have been chosen with US executives in mind. Wireless technology and mobile games are going strong in Asia, but in the US, company ceos have to be brave. By most estimates, they'll wait about two more years to realize a return on their companies' investment.

Mike Yuen of Qualcomm (far left) introduces the panelists

"Established videogame companies can't do this without taking a P&L hit," Mitch Lasky of JAMDAT Mobile said. "They couldn't take the loss at years one and two to reap the benefits at years three and four."

Potential financial benefits are what prompted QUALCOMM to create its BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) technology. BREW and Sun Microsystems' J2ME are the current platforms of choice for developers of wireless and mobile applications. The stakes are high: a projected wireless games market of $2.8 billion and 107 million wireless gamers worldwide by 2006, said panel moderator Mike Yuen.

Yuen is senior product manager, BREW developer relations (games) at QUALCOMM, which is based in San Diego. He may be unique among QUALCOMM staff members in having a game industry background. Before QUALCOMM, Yuen was at Hammerhead Entertainment, a game publishing company he co-founded, and also at Accolade and GTE Entertainment.

Four of Yuen's five panelists also had roots in the hardcore game industry: Alex Green, vice president, nGame Ltd., formerly with 3DO Company; Gin Hyeon, co-founder, Com2uS Corporation; Mitch Lasky, ceo, JAMDAT Mobile, formerly with Activision; Tripp Wood, director of business development, Disney Interactive; and Matt Sivertson, technology manager, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). SOE and its subsidiary Verant also are based in San Diego.

Games are in Development

All the panelists' firms have wireless games completed or in production, Yuen said. They include SOE's Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy; Disney's ESPN X Games Snowboarding; and a simple and highly addictive bowling game from JAMDAT.

"Bowling and our football game are doing well on an unbranded basis," Lasky said. "People know what those games are before they buy them. I think in many ways brands are more important to the carriers than they are to the end users."

As the deck becomes more crowded on Java and BREW platforms, wireless providers will turn to co-marketing, or licensing, opportunities, Green predicted. However, at least one content provider opted-out. Disney will not license its properties, Wood said. "We're not doing it," he said. "In the mobile environment we think the value of the brand is bringing audiences that have an affinity with the character and property to something new they haven't done before." With a limited gameplay experience, about 5 to 7 minutes, a gamer who already knows the story and character can immediately dive into gameplay, Wood said.

Co-marketing has been done successfully, Green said. He said his company worked with Titus to market the game TopGun. "We promoted their PS2 and Gamecube versions of the game and Titus promoted our (mobile) games in their print advertising," Green said. "We threw in a sweepstakes as well, which encouraged repeat usage. It turned out to be pretty effective."

Effective maybe, but probably not easy. Licensees and licensors have a difficult time coming to terms in today's nascent mobile games market, Lasky said. "This market is very inefficient," he said. "Licensors and licensees don't necessarily know what these things are worth yet. (Uncertainty) leads to a high degree of negotiation for the acquisition of licenses." It also leads to more emphasis on partnership and less on arm's length licensing, he said.

The Price is Right

Pricing in the US also is in its early stages. Hyeon said in the Korean market they offer daily, monthly and full versions of games, and the trend is to emphasize full version. He said their mobile games are offered free but end users are billed for the value of the interaction taking place. "The game might be for free but the networking aspect we're going to start billing on," he said.

Green said his firm has had several pay-for-play games in Europe and Canada, and they've found flexibility in pricing works best. Hardcore gamers may not mind paying a fee upfront, but casual gamers might balk, he said. "Successful (business) models enable the user to pay on a pay-for-play basis, say 25 cents per play, and also give them an opportunity to pay on a monthly basis."

Pricing aside, Sivertson said the production environment for mobile games is very different than for PC or console. "It is a new market for us," he said. "The main thing we're trying to avoid is taking PC games and cramming them onto a cell phone." Mobile games have shorter play times, Sivertson said, minutes as opposed to hours on end for massively multiplayer role-play games (RPGs) such as SOE's Everquest.

Developing smaller games is faster and less costly. But developers have to contend with different types of phones, varied screen sizes and other technological quirks, Sivertson said. "We have to accept that's the way it's going to be and plan for it in our game design and code design," he said.
"There are challenges in how much you can squeeze in the footprint of these games," Lasky said. A smaller game needs a programmer good at optimization, he said. "The real advantage is production process advantage." Lasky said. "As game developers for mobile, our platforms are moving targets," he said. "Optimization has to occur with each individual handset, and handsets are constantly changing." JAMDAT spends a lot of time managing assets for handset diversity, Lasky said. But they don't begrudge the time spent. "Part of what makes the wireless business such a good business is that the consumer has a lot of choices," he said.

Beware the Emulator

If he could tell would-be mobile games developers one thing, Lasky said, it would be: Ignore the emulator. "You can get a game working in 6 to 12 weeks but there is an equal amount of time to get them to run on the handsets," he said. "Don't think you're done when you get them working in emulation."

Yuen asked if smaller games means a return to the lone-wolf game developer, one person who does it all. The answer was, Almost but not quite. Sivertson said SOE's mobile games teams are extremely small when compared to teams for its larger games, just two programmers and an artist. He said, "We didn't need a full-time game designer for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, but it really depends on the kind of games you're doing." Hyeon said a typical dev team at Com2uS is a programmer and designer, but that testing takes "quite a few more people."

None of the panelists would directly answer Yuen's question: What does it cost to develop a mobile game? Lasky did give clues by citing team size and development time. "It depends," he said. "You're typically looking at a 3- to 4-member team--an artist, designer, programmer, fulltime QA, part-time producer, and a 12- to 20-week production process."

Before developers seeking faster turn-around time hurry to buy a BREW SDK, Wood had a word of caution: "Mobile games are smaller productions relative to the videogame business, until you look at the true cost of supporting 6 or 7 operators on multiple handsets." He said he thinks the mobile games business will follow the same curve as the videogame business--prices will go up in a fairly rapid way to keep quality, and there will be choices made regarding standardization, i.e., which handsets will be supported. Standardization has to happen eventually, because right now "it gets tricky," Wood said. He added, "Outside of Japan the revenue business model has been undefined. Once it is, the next consideration will be about platform ubiquity and standards."

Developers deal with standardization and compatibility problems because of the potential huge market--everyone with a cell phone. "The inherent benefit of this platform is that it has communications built in," Lasky said. "Games will leverage that." Also, Lasky said, "Other than your wallet, your cell phone is the second item you will return to get if you left home without it."

Successful Penetration

Although Sivertson said big RPGs like Everquest won't work on a cell phone, many genres can be successful on mobile devices. Branded sport games and casual games are likely to succeed first, panelists said. Lasky said JAMDAT is "going to try everything." JAMDAT currently offers sports games because they perform well with both casual and hardcore gamers, he said.

When networks become more robust and faster, game companies will offer real-time multiplayer games, Green said. He also predicted that "lifestyle products" such as virtual dating, will become popular in the future. Wood thought stock market trading games and fantasy league sports games would capture gamers' attention.

Green said, "What will happen pretty quickly, providing these BREW and Java devices penetrate to the mass market, is casino games, board games, games people feel comfortable playing." (Note: None of the panelists was brave enough to predict when mass market penetration will occur

Lasky said he believes a genre-busting mobile game is out there waiting to be born; a simple game terrifically engaging and totally interactive. He remembered the time several years ago when he and several hundred others at SIGGRAPH used interactive paddles to play Pong. "It was stupid but incredibly compelling," he said. "I think it is up to us to come up with something like that."

Mike Yuen (Qualcomm) and Matt Sivertson (Sony Online Entertainment) discuss BREW technology

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Barbara Walter, a game industry recruiter, is co-moderator of the IGDA's Newbies forum. She also is a founding member of the San Diego chapter IGDA. She can be reached at walterco@earthlink.net.

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