Sizes of Games

Whoever said size doesn’t matter clearly wasn’t talking about the mobile games industry. With improvements seen in all the features of the mobile phone; camera, better functionality, quicker processing and more memory, it seems inevitable that games and applications will soon be able to make the most of these more powerful devices.

Nearly everyone at one time in their lives has bought a device to play a specific game. Whether it was the original Game Boy for Tetris, Playstation One for Final Fantasy VII or a mobile phone for a good game of Snake, this has always been a swaying factor that has helped persuade the floating buyer. Naturally, this hasn’t been such an issue so much in more recent years, with nearly every game being made available for any handset and all being able to be bought at much less than a whole new phone would ever cost!

This convenience factor of a game which you can download to your phone and play within minutes comes at the cost of typically being a small file. However, with every contract and some pay as you go phones providing unlimited or increased download limits, the costs to surf and download files are getting cheaper by the day. All of this bodes well for the social network addicts, gamers and business folk alike, who use their mobile phones for anything but making a call.

Unfortunately, game developers seem to be geared towards providing lots of smaller and more limited games than providing more in-depth, complex games which we’ve come to expect on other playing devices such as the PSP or DS. But if this is the case then this poses the question, are they missing the trick?

This is a difficult question to answer simply – undoubtedly games are getting more graphically advanced, e.g. introducing 3D, shading and smoother images – which only a few years ago would have been unimaginable. Unfortunately these advanced games still seem pretty lightweight when it comes to providing an engaging or long plot – with many being able to be completed within a matter of hours which still leaves gamers feeling a bit left out in the cold.

For some, it’s not necessarily the graphics which make the game so enjoyable or addictive. Many mobile game playing enthusiasts find board games, such as chess, draughts or even Monopoly a firm favourite. Of course these games tend not to require the star treatment but will always be addictive and remain a firm favourite in any platform they become available in.

Naturally, with the launch of the iPhone and the various other devices which react to movement or touch, games are getting far more intuitive to use and distraction from making a game truly in depth is virtually assured. With the advances in technology, games could well become bigger and better and far more closely linked to the ones you would expect to find on consoles.

Games such as Guitar Hero which started out on games consoles have already been introduced to the mobile phone, with music and key presses being nearly as simple as it gets by today’s standards, I would predict this is only a tip the iceberg of things yet to come in the ‘crossover’ market.

This is hardly big news as far as games go for mobile phones. Nearly with every blockbuster movie comes a mobile phone game to ride on its successful coat-tales. Some of these are very good indeed, however some are very poor quality and should be firmly locked away for good.

One way in which mobile games could be made more console-like yet avoiding the high download size and time would be to break down the game into segments or chapters. This would allow players to download the game piece by piece and build it up over time rather than one big download – which no doubt would be draining both in terms of bandwidth and processor power – in turn avoiding high demands on the battery too. Also this would help spread costs and could even be incorporated to the game, so depending on the path chosen by the player, you download the corresponding level pack – which to many players would add to the addition factor offered by a game.

For those who don’t want to have to wait on downloads or would find it more convenient to have the entire game whole would no doubt find it more suitable to have the version as a hard format like a cartridge a la Nokia N-Gage, which gained a cult following however the fairly lacklustre titles available and the uncomfortable impractical design to use as a phone or gaming device didn’t make it a truly great must-have piece of kit. Following the demise of this handset it is possible to imagine the full games loaded onto the regular memory card which stores your photos, messages and music could arise from its ashes.

With memory cards being able to store thousands of pictures or music files and being able to be changed quickly and painlessly on many handsets, it’s not too much to expect some come pre-loaded with games or applications or made to run faster (as used by professional photographers) to improve game-play.

If either of the above methods were adopted, mobile phone games could easily match like for like games produced for the console market. As a CD only contains 780MB and a memory card can contain increasing amounts in gigabytes, it doesn’t take a genius to see the capability of a storage device is more than adequate – with even enough storage space for saving the game – without the use of an additional memory card or hard drive.

Speaking of hard drives, or solid state drives which seem much more suitable for a number of reasons – mainly less power consumption, reliability, durability and compact size, for the mobile industry, it may do away with interchangeable memory cards altogether. Due to their high capacity – it may be easier to control the distribution of games if they can only be installed by downloading them onto a specific device and unlocked with a key-code.

As nearly all current handsets come with wireless broadband capabilities it could be possible to play games remotely with virtually nothing but your avatar or on screen character and saved options, like modifications or personal preferences being saved to the device. This would do away with the memory demands that some games would require to the system entirely. Instead you could simply log onto a game and play remotely as in many PC games which can only be played online. Although this sounds perfect, with the high demand to battery-life that being online poses with existing technology, you would need to be plugged into the mains to really make this viable – which kind of makes the whole point of being ‘mobile’ nullified!

Another possibility which would be less demanding on the battery and would offer multi-player functionality would be through a smaller network, either via a hub or connection in a small room – using Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth devices can last for hours, offer high security from un-linked devices and can transfer large amounts of data within a small area. Again those of you who had played with the N-Gage particularly may have experienced this, but it could be possible to use this technology again if a game proves popular enough.

With the likes of Sony developing advances to the PSP with the soon to be launched ‘Go’ model, it seems as though mobile phones have a tough time to remain as purely mobile phone devices and instead it could well become a truly integrated multi-media device which incorporates the best parts of all current handheld technology. It is possible that a mobile of the future would offer the current plethora of functions but more advanced so that the games utility alone would be improved to handheld console standards or better!

Some devices, such as the iPhone are subject to constant software updates which will be downloaded as when they are released. It could be possible if charges for any downloads are abolished or reduced to a negligible rate, that games and applications alike could be constantly uploaded in the background as devices would remain always ‘online’ like we currently see with the Blackberry. If this is to be the case then the only restriction to the downloaded content would be the memory available on the device. But as we already see, cost of memory is reducing more and more and even if you do fill up your available space, there’s always another option – backing up to an external device, storing on a removable memory card or even saving it on the phones internal memory.

The only possible constraint to a mobile device is the controls and arguably the display. As devices have to be small enough to be portable but big enough to be comfortable to use, as there’s a fine balance on the ergonomics of the device. Already repetitive strain injury (RSI) is quite considerable and it could be increased through children or adults playing for too long on a device such as a mobile phone. Although this will seldom scare people off, it could be a consideration for the user.

Fortunately there’s been the launch of a Bluetooth handheld gaming controlling device which works much like the Nintendo Wii’s nunchuk called the Zeemote. This not only makes games easier to play and more fun, but opens the opportunity for game developers to design games which require more subtle moves and diagonal moves rather than simply up/down/left/right and fire!

Let’s hope that as the technology continues to develop, a well balanced approach is adopted so that games and users can evolve more seamlessly than suddenly jump to prevent anyone and any phone being left behind.