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A game being played on asmartphone
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Amobile gameis avideo gamethat is typically played on amobile phone.[1]The term also refers to all games that are played on anyportable device,including frommobile phone(feature phoneorsmartphone),tablet,PDAtohandheld game console,portable media playerorgraphing calculator,with and withoutnetwork availability.[1] The earliest known game on a mobile phone was aTetrisvariant on theHagenuk MT-2000device from 1994.[2][3][4]

In 1997,NokialaunchedSnake.[5]Snake,which waspre-installedin most mobile devices manufactured by Nokia for a couple of years, has since become one of the most played games, at one point found on more than 350 million devices worldwide.[6]Mobile devices became more computationally advanced allowing for downloading of games, though these were initially limited to phone carriers' own stores. Mobile gaming grew greatly with the development ofapp storesin 2008, such as theiOSApp StorefromApple.As the first mobile content marketplace operated directly by amobile-platform holder,the App Store significantly changed theconsumer behaviourand quickly broadened the market for mobile games, as almost every smartphone owner started to downloadmobile apps.[7]

History

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Main article:History of mobile games

Towards the end of the 20th century, mobile phone ownership became ubiquitous in the industrialised world due to the establishment of industry standards, and the rapid fall in cost of handset ownership, and use driven byeconomies of scale.As a result of this explosion, technological advancement by handset manufacturers became rapid. With these technological advances, mobile phone games also became increasingly sophisticated, taking advantage of exponential improvements indisplay,processing,storage,interfaces,network bandwidthandoperating systemfunctionality. The first such game that demonstrated the desire for handset games was a version ofSnakethatNokiahad included on its devices since 1997.[8]

In 1999,NTT Docomolaunched thei-modemobile platform in Japan, allowing mobile games to be downloaded ontosmartphones.SeveralJapanese video gamedevelopers announced games for the i-mode platform that year, such asKonamiannouncing itsdating simulationTokimeki Memorial.The same year,NintendoandBandaiwere developing mobile phone adapters for theirhandheld game consoles,theGame Boy ColorandWonderSwan,respectively.[9]By 2001, i-mode had20 millionusers in Japan, along with more advanced handsets with graphics comparable to8-bit consoles.A wide variety of games were available for the i-mode service, along with announcements from establishedvideo game developerssuch asTaito,Konami,Namco,andHudson Soft,including ports ofclassic arcade gamesand 8-bitconsole games.[10]

Screenshot ofEdgegameplay mocked up on aSony Ericsson W880i,an earlysmartphone

By the mid-2000s there was a large market for mobile games, of which many were built on theJava MEplatform that many devices at the time supported. Earlier they could be obtained usingSMSshort codes before manufacturers as well asmobile network operatorsstarted offering them for download both on theWeb(on a PC to be transferred to the device) or directly via the air (usingGPRS,3GorWi-Fi).[11]The launch of Apple'siPhonein 2007 and theApp Storein 2008 radically changed the market. The iPhone's focus on larger memory,multitasks,and additionalsensing devices,including thetouchscreenin later model, made it ideal forcasual games,while the App Store, which is also independent frommobile carriers,made it easy for developers to create and post apps to publish, and for users to search for and obtain new games.[7]Further, the App Store added the ability to supportin-app purchasesin October 2009. This allowed games likeAngry BirdsandCut the Ropeto find newmonetization modelsaway from the traditionalpremium"pay once" model. Meanwhile, Apple's disruption caused the market to stabilized around iPhone devices andGoogle'sAndroid-based phones which offered a similar app store throughGoogle Play.

A further major shift game with 2012'sCandy Crush SagaandPuzzle & Dragons,games that used a stamina-like gameplay feature found insocial-network gameslikeFarmVilleto limit the number of times one could play it in a single period, but allowed optionalin-app purchasesto restore that stamina immediately and continue playing. This new monetization brought in millions of players to both games and millions ofdollarsin revenue, establishing the "freemium"model that would be a common approach for many mobile games going forward. Mobile gaming grew rapidly over the next several years, buoyed by rapid expansion inChina.By 2016, top mobile games were earning overUS$100 milliona year, and the total revenue for the mobile games sector had surpassed that of other video game areas.[12]

Other major trends in mobile games have include thehyper-casual gamesuch asFlappy BirdandCrossy Roadandlocation-based gameslikePokémon Go.

Mobile gaming has impacted the larger video game market by drawing demand away fromhandheld video game consoles;bothNintendoandSonyhad seen major drops in sales of their 2011 handhelds compared to their 2004 predecessors as a result of mobile gaming.[13]At the same time, mobile gaming introduced the concept ofmicroconsoles,low-cost, low-poweredhome video game consolesthat used mobile operating systems to take advantage of the wide variety of games available on these platforms.[14]

Calculator games

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Clone ofTetrisbeing played on a modifiedTI-83 Plus
A fan-made game similar to the gamePortal

Calculator gaming is a form of gaming in whichgamesare played onprogrammable calculators,especiallygraphing calculators.

In 1980,Casio's MG-880pocket calculatorhad a built-in "Invaders" game (essentially a downscaledSpace Invadersclone),[15]released in the Summer that year.[16]Another early example is thetype-in programDarth Vader'sForce Battlefor theTI-59,published inBYTEin October 1980.[17]The magazine also published a version ofHunt the Wumpusfor theHP-41C.[18]Few other games exist for the earliest of programmable calculators (including theHewlett-Packard 9100A,one of the first scientific calculators), such as the long-popularLunar Landergame often used as an early programming exercise. However, limited program address space and lack of easy program storage made calculator gaming a rarity even as programmables became cheap and relatively easy to obtain. It was not until the early 1990s whengraphing calculatorsbecame more powerful and cheap enough to be common amonghigh schoolstudents for use in mathematics. The new graphing calculators, with their ability to transfer files to one another and from acomputerfor backup, could double as game consoles.

Calculators such asHP-48andTI-82could be programmed in proprietaryprogramming languagessuch asRPL programming languageorTI-BASICdirectly on the calculator; programs could also be written inassembly languageor (less often)Con a desktop computer and transferred to the calculator. As calculators became more powerful and memory sizes increased, games increased in complexity.

By the 1990s, programmable calculators were able to run implementations by hobbyists of games such asLemmingsandDoom(Lemmings forHP-48was released in 1993;[19]Doom for HP-48 was created in 1995[20]). Some games such asDope Warscaused controversy when students played them in school.

The look and feel of these games on an HP-48 class calculator, due to the lack of dedicated audio and video circuitry providing hardware acceleration, can at most be compared to the one offered by 8-bit handheld consoles such as the earlyGame Boyor theGameking(low resolution,monochromeorgrayscalegraphics), or to the built-in games of non-JavaorBREWenabledcell phones.[21]

Games continue to be programmed on graphing calculators with increasing complexity. A wave of games appeared after the release of theTI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus series,among TI's first graphing calculators to natively support assembly.TI-BASICprogramming also rose in popularity after the release of third-party libraries.Assemblyremained the language of choice for these calculators, which run on aZilog Z80processor, although some assembly implements have been created to ease the difficulty of learning assembly language. For those running on aMotorola 68000processor (like theTI-89), C programming (possible using TIGCC) has begun to displace assembly.

Because they are easy to program without outside tools, calculator games have survived despite the proliferation ofmobile devicessuch asmobile phonesandPDAs.

Industry structure

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Total globalrevenuefrom mobile games was estimated at $2.6 billion in 2005 byInforma TelecomsandMedia.Total revenue in 2008 was $5.8 billion. The largest mobile gaming markets were in theAsia-PacificnationsJapanandChina,followed by theUnited States.[22]In 2012, the market had already reached $7.8 billion[23]A new report was released in November 2015 showing that 1887 app developers would make more than one million dollars on the Google and iOS app stores in 2015.[24]

Mobile gaming revenue reached $50.4 billion in 2017, occupying 43% of the entire global gaming market and poised for further growth.[25]It is expected to surpass the combined revenues from bothPC gamingandconsole gamingin 2018.[26]

Different platforms

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Main article:Mobile software

Mobile games have been developed to run on a wide variety of platforms and technologies. These include the (today largely defunct)Palm OS,Symbian,Adobe Flash Lite,NTT DoCoMo'sDoJa,Sun'sJava,Qualcomm'sBREW,WIPI,BlackBerry,Nookand early incarnations ofWindows Mobile.Today, the most widely supported platforms areApple'siOSandGoogle'sAndroid.The mobile version ofMicrosoft'sWindows 10(formerlyWindows Phone) is also actively supported, although in terms of market share remains marginal compared to iOS and Android.

Javawas at one time the most common platform for mobile games, however its performance limits led to the adoption of various native binary formats for more sophisticated games.

Due to its ease of porting between mobile operating systems and extensive developer community,Unityis one of the most widely used engines used by modern mobile games. Apple provide a number of proprietary technologies (such asMetal) intended to allow developers to make more effective use of their hardware in iOS-native games.

Monetization

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See also:Video game monetization

With the introduction of theiOS App Storeand support for in-app purchases by October 2009, the methods through which mobile games earn revenue have diverged significantly away from traditional game models on consoles or computers. Since 2009, a number of models have developed, and a mobile game developer/publisher may use one or a combination of these models to make revenue.[27]

Premium
The premium model is akin to the traditional model where the user pays for the full game upfront. Additionaldownloadable contentmay be available which can be purchased separately. Initial games released to the App Store before in-app purchases were available used this approach, and still common for many types of games.
Freemium
Thefreemiumor "free to try" model offers a small portion of the game for free, comparable to agame demo.After completing this, the player is given the option to make a one-time in-app purchase to unlock the rest of the game. Early games shortly after the introduction of the in-app purchase feature used this approach such asCut the RopeandFruit Ninja.
Free-to-play
Afree-to-playgame requires no cost at all to play, and generally is designed to be playable from start to finish without having to spend any money into the game. However, the game will include gameplay mechanics which may slow progress towards completing the game. Commonly in mobile games, this is some form of energy or stamina that limits how many turns or actions a player can take each day. By using in-app purchases, the player can immediately restore their energy or stamina and continue on. In-app purchases can also be used to buy power-ups and other items to give the player a limited-time advantage to help complete the game. While free-to-play games had been common on computers prior to mobile, the method was popularized in mobile gaming withCandy Crush SagaandPuzzle & Dragons.
A mobile game displaying a full-screen interstitial ad for a different game
Advertising-supported
Aad-supportedgame will be free to download and play, but periodically or persistently, the game will show an advertisement to the user which they will have to watch through before they can continue with the game. Thedeveloperearns revenue from the advertising network. In some cases, an in-app purchase allows the player to fully disable ads in these games.
Subscription model
Asubscription-based gamewill offer a base version with limited features that can be played for free, but additional premium features can be obtained if the user pays a monthly subscription fee. If they terminate their subscription, they lose access to those features, though typically not any game progression related to those features, and can pick up those features later by restarting their subscription.

Many game apps are free to play through a combination of these models. Over time, mobile developers of these types of apps have observed that the bulk of their players do not spend any funds on their game, but instead revenues are generated from a small fraction, typically under 10% of their total players. Further, most of the revenue is generated by a very small fraction, about 2%, of the total players, who routinely spend large amounts of money on the game. A similar split on revenue had been seen insocial-network gamesplayed inbrowsers.These players are known as "whales", inspired bysame term used for high rolling gamblers.The social nature of a mobile game has also been found to affect its revenue, as games that encourage players to work in teams or clans will lead to increased spending from engaged players.[28]

Common limits of mobile games

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Mobile games tend to be small in scope (in relation to mainstream PC and console games). Storage and memory limitations (sometimes dictated at the platform level) place constraints on file size that presently rule out the direct migration of many modern PC and console games to mobile. One major problem for developers and publishers of mobile games is describing a game in such detail that it gives the customer enough information to make a purchasing decision.

Location-based mobile games

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Games played on a mobile device using localization technology likeGPSare calledlocation-based gamesorlocation-based mobile games.[29]These are not only played on mobile hardware but also integrate the player's position into the game concept. In other words, while it does not matter for a normal mobile game where exactly the player is (play them anywhere at any time), the player'scoordinateand movement are the main elements in a location-based mobile game.

A well known example is the outdoor recreational activity ofgeocaching,which can be played on any mobile device with integrated or external GPS receiver.[29]External GPS receivers are usually connected viaBluetooth.[30]

Several other location-based mobile games, such as the 2001 gameBotFighters,were closer to researchprototypesrather than being commercial successes.

Location-based mobile games sometimes haveaugmented realityfunctionality, such as in the case of the 2016 gamePokemon Go.Usually in these cases the augmented reality functionality is not at the center of the experience.

Augmented reality games

[edit]
Main article:Augmented reality

Mobile devices have been used as a platform for Augmented reality (AR in short) games, using the device's camera(s) to as an input for the game. While playing the game, the player aims the device's camera at a location and through the device's screen, sees the area captured by the camera pluscomputer-generated graphicsatop it, augmenting the display and then allowing the player tointeractthat way.[citation needed]The graphics are generally drawn as to make the generated image appear to be part of the captured background, and will be rendered app memorizing as the player moves the device around.[citation needed]The most successful and notable example for a mobile game that has an augmented reality feature isPokémon Go(2016), where the player travels to locations marked on their GPS map and then can enable the augmented reality mode to findPokémon creaturesto capture.[31]However, as of January 2022 there has been a lack of significant AR mobile games success since, with several AR mobile game projects being shut down, such asMicrosoft'sMinecraft Earthand Niantic'sCatan: World Explorers[32][33][34]

Multipurpose games

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Since mobile devices have become present in the majority of households (at least in thedeveloped countries), there are more and more games created witheducational,lifestyleand,healthimprovement purposes. For example, mobile games can be used inspeech-language pathology,children'srehabilitationin hospitals (Finnish startup Rehaboo!), acquiring new useful or healthy habits (Habitica), memorizing things and learning languages (Memrise).

There are also apps with similar purposes which are not games per se, in this case, they are calledgamified apps.Sometimes it is difficult to draw a line between multipurpose games and gamified apps.

Multiplayer mobile games

[edit]

Many mobile games support multiple players, either remotely over a network or locally viaWi-Fi,Bluetooth or similar technology.

There are several options for playing multiplayer games on mobile phones: livesynchronoustournamentsandturn-basedasynchronoustournaments. In live tournaments random players from around the world are matched together to compete. This is done using different networks such asGame Center,Google Play Games,andFacebook.

In asynchronous tournaments, there are two methods used by game developers centered around the idea that players matches are recorded and thenbroadcastat a later time to other players in the same tournament. Asynchronous gameplay resolves the issue of needing players to have a continuous live connection. This gameplay is different since players take individual turns in the game, therefore allowing players to continue playing against human opponents.

This is done using different networks includingFacebook.Some companies use a regular turn-based system where the end results are posted so all the players can see who won the tournament. Other companies takescreen recordingsof live players and broadcast them to other players at a later point in time to allow players to feel that they are always interacting with another human opponent.

Distribution

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Mobile games can be distributed in one of four ways:

  • Over the Air (OTA): a gamebinary fileis delivered to the mobile device via wireless carrier networks.
  • Sideloaded:a game binary file is loaded onto the phone while connected to a PC, either viaUSBcable orBluetooth.
  • Pre-installed: a game binary file is preloaded onto the device by theoriginal equipment manufacturer(OEM).
  • Mobile browserdownload: a game file is downloaded directly from a mobile website.

Until the launch of Apple App Store, in the US, the majority of mobile games were sold by wireless carriers, such asAT&T Mobility,Verizon Wireless,Sprint CorporationandT-Mobile US.InEurope,games were distributed equally between carriers and off-deck, third-party stores.

After the launch of Apple App Store, the mobile OS platforms like AppleiOS,GoogleAndroid,and MicrosoftWindows Phone,the mobile OS developers themselves have launched digital download storefronts that can be run on the devices using the OS or from software used on PCs. These storefronts (like Apple's iOSApp Store) act as centralized digital download services from which a variety of entertainment media and software can be downloaded, including games and nowadays majority of games are distributed through them.

The popularity of mobile games has increased in the 2000s, as over US$3 billion worth of games were sold in 2007 internationally, and projected annual growth of over 40%. Ownership of a smartphone alone increases the likelihood that a consumer will play mobile games. Over 90% of smartphone users play a mobile game at least once a week.[35]

Many mobile games are distributed free to the end user, but carry paid advertising: examples areFlappy BirdandDoodle Jump.The latter follows the "freemium" model, in which the base game is free but additional items for the game can be purchased separately. Some of the most popular mobile game developers and publishers includeGameloftandKing.[36][37]

See also

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References

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  2. ^"This was the world's first cell phone with a game loaded".Phone Arena.16 November 2014. Archived fromthe originalon 22 May 2019.Retrieved16 September2018.
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  10. ^"Big guns join the iMode revolution"(PDF).Edge.No. 95 (March 2001). 26 February 2001. pp. 18–9.Archived(PDF)from the original on 14 July 2018.
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  12. ^Chan, Stephanie (July 13, 2017)."Mobile game revenue finally surpasses PC and consoles".Venture Beat.RetrievedJanuary 8,2018.
  13. ^Yang, George (June 24, 2021)."'The Little Handheld That Could': Examining The Vita's Impact A Decade Later ".The Verge.RetrievedJune 24,2021.
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  16. ^Porter, Matt (11 May 2019)."Episode 131 - Retro Gadgets - Part One - Casio MG-880 Music and Game Calculator".The Gadget Man: Technology News and Reviews.Retrieved2 December2021.
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  18. ^Librach, Hank (February 1981)."Hunt the Wumpus with Your HP-41C".BYTE.pp. 230, 232.Retrieved18 October2013.
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  20. ^"Le projet Doom".Hpfool.free.fr. 2001-01-07.Retrieved2013-08-12.
  21. ^Eric Rechlin."HP 48 Arcade Games".Hpcalc.org.Retrieved2013-08-12.
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  26. ^Wijman, Tom (30 April 2018)."Mobile Revenues Account for More Than 50% of the Global Games Market as It Reaches $137.9 Billion in 2018".newzoo.Newzoo.Retrieved12 July2018.
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  28. ^Carmichael, Stephanie (March 14, 2013)."What it means to be a 'whale' — and why social gamers are just gamers".VentureBeat.RetrievedAugust 21,2020.
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  32. ^Campbell, Ian Carlos (2021-09-17)."Niantic is shutting down its AR Catan game after a year of early access".The Verge.Retrieved2022-01-04.
  33. ^Webster, Andrew (2021-11-03)."There will never be another Pokémon Go".The Verge.Retrieved2022-01-04.
  34. ^Warren, Tom (2021-01-05)."Microsoft's ambitious Minecraft Earth game is closing down on June 30th".The Verge.Retrieved2022-01-04.
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  37. ^"Celebrating 20 Years of Gaming Excellence: King's Milestone Journey".businesswire.2023-09-27.Retrieved2023-10-04.
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