Mobile Gaming and Beyond in Barcelona

The next MobileMonday Barcelona event “Mobile Gaming and Beyond” (Monday, April 2, 7pm, Auditorium of the UPF) will discuss the current state of the mobile gaming industry and present the new opportunties and challenges that lay ahead. It is my pleasure to invite Nicolas Nova and Maarten Noyons (Managing Director, International Mobile Gaming Awards) to share their experience and (provoking) visions in the field of mobile gaming. Ignacio Cavero CEO of LemonQuest and Marta Vieira, Head of Entertaiment Division at YDreams, will complete panel. The introduction to the topic is as follow:

Currently, the mobile game market is highly dominated by games that have an easy gameplay, few simple rules and do not require special skills to enjoy. These games are mostly clones of successful casual games such as Minesweeper or Tetris.

However, the future of mobile gaming seems to rely on new types of gameplays that embed the new capabilities of mobile phones to sense their context. Like the newly released and successful Wiimote, mobile devices become sensitive to movements (e.g. Nokia N5500), engaging players to physically move as part of the gameplay. In addition, the emergence near-field communication (RFID, Bluetooth, QR codes) and location-aware technologies enable new types of scenarios that link virtual worlds with the players’ physical surroundings. For example, multi-player location-based games played out on city streets and built up urban environments.

The increasing contextual and proximity awareness of mobile devices provide new opportunities for players to engage in collaborative or competitive game settings. In contrast to this pretty picture, many issues such as the operators walled gardens, the size of the screens, network quality and coverage as well as the processing power of the mobile phone challenge the development and deployment of these new types of games. Finally, the economic future: who is going to pick up the fragmentation and the distribution challenge? Where is the 8 billion mobile gaming market?