Ken Chang asks:
> I think in Japan-Korea, mobile users play mostly stand-alone games.
> anyone would please tell me the justification (survey whatever)
> of multi-player games or any that require frequent communication?
Well, the Korean market isn't the same as the Japanese market (isn't the
same as the US Market).
1. Data Charges:
In Japan the data charges are quite high, I believe DoCoMo
charges 0.3 Yen per. 128 byte packet. This comes to about $21.94 US
per. megabyte of data. I have a figure of $22.18 per. megabyte for
Vodaphone JP. To contrast that, LG Telecom (I met with them in Feb.
'04) runs about $4.26 per. megabyte (2.5Won per. 512 Byte Packet) SK
Telecom about the same.
In the USA we now have some "all you can eat" data plane
(T-Mobile, $30/month) ... charges run from $2.81/megabyte for AT&T to
$3.07 for Cingular. Of course, our largest carrier ... Verizon ...
charges AIRTIME for data transfers. Sending a BYTE will cost you a
MINUTE.
2. Game Size:
Most of the phones in Japan have 30kb limits on the JAR file.
While this is easing ... I can assure you that it's incredibly hard to
build a decent multiplayer game in 30kb ... even with graphics and other
assets loaded from the network.
When I was at Teknik Digital Arts, we managed to get a version
of SpellStrike (multiplayer J2ME game) down to 64kb JAR for the Nokia
Series 30, but only released the 100kb+ Series 60 version.
3. Audience:
The mobile gaming audience isn't the same as the hard core PC
gaming folks (o.k., they may overlap). The best selling multiplayer
game in Korea on the phones is "Korean Poker" (source, LG Telecom).
It's a more casual market.
I tried promoting a "Starcraft-like" title for Korea, but the
Telecoms there seem to think that the audience for Starcraft (Korea is
CRAZY for that PC Game) won't go for it.
4. Technical:
It's hard to build data-lite multiplayer games. Turn based
gaming is a lost art for most people. Add to that (in the USA) 4 to 6
second latencies. Still we did manage to design a decent game that used
the game mechanic of having a 10 second "set up", a 10 second
"playback", and then a resolution phase ... so we were only sending a
packet out and back to each handset maybe every 30 seconds or so. So we
ran less than 50 bytes a second.
5. Marketing/Business Strategy:
Most of the game publishers are focused on $30k-wonders ... i.e.
cheap to produce and ship mobile titles. Building a mid-six-figure
title isn't in their interest (I've been shopping around a massively
multiplayer economic simulation for over a month ... no takers).
Why bother? Because network and multiplayer games are the one thing
mobile handsets can do that Gameboy etc... can't. I also believe based
on the success of SMS in Europe ... some sort of social game will break
out and be a big success.
At my new company we're going to do some network (new content every day)
and multiplayer stuff geared to a general audience. Card`games, word
games (based on a 1.2m PC seller), etc... Still, it's going to be hard
work.
Bill Volk
BonusMobile
Received on Fri Apr 9 21:03:58 2004