The mobile marketplace is a new and evolving landscape.  We need to understand it to design for it.  Taking our old assumptions and placing them against this new model will inevitably generate unwieldy, clunky, and bad gameplay.  We must know what makes mobile play different from other sorts of play, namely the console and PC.  

Assumptions: Hardware

For years, decades even, the gaming experience has been designed around the gaming console.  Games were designed for a specific piece of machinery that people must own in order to play.  It sets an even bar for the developers when it comes to hardware expectations and limitations.  There is always some wiggle room for code masters to eke out performance or designers to create interest while limiting performance needs.  But the general assumption that everyone will have the same hardware, the same machine to run these products still remained a given.

The assumption of ubiquitous hardware is one of the greatest follies for mobile design.  Not everyone can afford the latest and greatest IPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or Windows Phone.  The difference in performance from the high end of phone to the low end is tremendous.  If a developer were going to create a game and test it on his/her brand new Nokia 1520 it would look gorgeous.  Say the playability was good, no real drop in frame rate or lag, so they ship it.  But the most common Windows Phone is the 520.  A game that runs fine on the high end model could be unplayable on the low end.  In general all you hear about is the latest and greatest phones, when in reality the lower to midrange phone are the norm.  So performance becomes a huge question.  It is one of the greatest hurdles and limitations in the mobile market.

Assumptions: Experience

In the beginning of console gaming the user experience was generally one of a complete package, a single experience.   There generally was no saving, if you could not beat the game in a sitting you would have to completely start over if you left the digital world.  This was partially due to the limitations of technology but the idea of long sessions of gaming are still the general norm for games, particularly console games.  It is true that in the modern gaming era there are so many checkpoints and save states that theoretically you could pick up and put down a game after 5 minutes and still make progress.  But the designers do this mainly for ease of playability.  If you were to die, they don’t want you to have to slog through waves of enemies or perilous terrain just to get where you already were.  It creates a faster paced game and an easier experience.  But the games are still designed as a single, long experience.

When designing a game for a phone or tablet the user is generally going to play the game for very brief periods of time.  Mobile apps are used in the time between other events; when a person is in line at the store, waiting for a friend while they take a shower, or even on the can killing time at work.  These mere moments are when mobile apps spring to action.  A game must be designed to be taken in very short pieces.  By creating levels that are short and can be completed in a few minutes or even seconds the experience is broken up into sessions that are manageable but still entertaining.  This concept has lead to the common design of many puzzle and social games.  But it can be taken and applied to any style of game.

The Change

The mobile market is a totally new landscape from the console and PC worlds.  Games should be modeled around the most common of phones to reach a broader audience, not just catering to the elite level phones.  This potentially puts a limitation the graphics, as well as the size and scope of the world or story.  But by carefully working the gameplay, story, and level designs everything can be made to work within the constraints.  By tweaking the games level design the world can be compartmentalized into smaller, more manageable pieces.  Even seemingly large worlds or vast expanses can be broken down with occlusion, well placed doors or walls, even the classic Silent Hill fog can all give the illusion of world while only rendering part of it.  Not only from a processing perspective must the world be broken up, the actual play must be compartmentalized to fit into the lives of the player.  Someone should be able to pick up and put down the game in just a few minutes.  This can lead to a whole host of new game concepts and even mechanics.  Perhaps it’s a game full of mini-games, a classic RPG were the battles are the “levels,” or even using real time events and clocks to naturally break the game up over the course of a day.

We at ObscuredEdge are excited to create within the bounds of the mobile market.  Creating levels, worlds, and stories that fit in the moments between life.

I wanna talk about some of the things that we’ve been trying to focus on with regard to designing with touch controls in mind.  To do that, we’ll discuss some of my observations on the history of design for touch, and how Obscured Edge is considering moving forward from there.

When smart phones were initially on the rise, mobile game developers had their work cut out for them.  We had spent years designing for roughly the same interface: the controller.  And suddenly we found ourselves without our lifeblood: buttons.  This was a turbulent time for designers, and in some ways it still is.

Early State of Touch Controls

I remember seeing many attempts at hack and slash games, dungeon crawlers, RPGs, and platformers all with the equivalent of a directional pad drawn to the screen for input.  Many users realized fairly quickly that this form of input made precision control very difficult without the feedback of feeling a physical button press under their fingers or thumbs.  Not to mention that this design caused a user’s hands to cover important real-estate on the screen.

The Casual Revolution

Mobile developers were learning their way around an entirely new problem.  With old control schemes being somewhat problematic for users, designers looked to entirely different game design styles than were standard for games at the time.  Games commonly considered Casual became more of the standard as their turn based style and  UI based gameplay were a perfect fit for touch controls.

Modern Touch-Based Games

Along with the casual revolution, other games were starting to pop up that used more natural touch controls like gestures as their base control schemes.  These turned out to be much more natural for users, and therefore were very successful.  Some of these games have even taken off to the point that they’ve become multi-million dollar industries with merchandise and their very own theme parks.

Where to Go From Here

At Obscured Edge, one of the ideas we’ve been playing with is how to revisit some of the older genres that got written off as not user friendly for touch, by introducing a new take on them.  We believe that if you boil a game down to its true basics, it could bring about a simplicity that will allow for gesture-based controls.  What if in an RPG your users were able to tap on UI buttons to bring up various aspects of the battle system like Fight, Magic, or Items instead of navigation via d-pad?  What if in an action platformer, instead of charging your weapon by holding a button down, the player character automatically charged his weapon when not in use?  Maybe we could use natural gestures, like swiping, to determine jump trajectories in precision platformers.  By simplifying what we ask of the player, and boiling it down to the important decisions they’d be making, and then translating those decisions into something gesture based, we can bring any genre we want to touch.  We just have to get a little creative.  There are so many really great things to try from here, especially now that other games and designers have shown us what gestures feel natural to players.  We love seeing new and interesting control schemes.  And since the mobile market isn’t going anywhere, we’re really excited to see what the future brings.

One of the tools that we’ve been toying with understanding a little better, at Obscured Edge, is the use of Video Advertisements as a way of monetizing Video Games on mobile platforms.  So I thought take a second and mention some of the trends and issues that we’ve been noticing in games today.

Some Observations on Modern Mobile Games

One of the issues facing many modern mobile games is monetization.  Since many mobile markets don’t have much love for paid games, many developers have been looking to ads instead to put bread on their proverbial tables.  However, many developers use banner advertisements and what are called interstitial ads (basically a banner ad that temporarily takes up the whole screen) to monetize.  The issue with this is that the primary money making action for Game Developers occurs when a user taps on one of these ads.  This is an issue because the user is then removed from the game experience.  It would be an easier ad and game experience for the user, if the advertiser could make their statement or inform the user of whatever message they were hoping to say, and then the user was then returned to their game.

Video Advertisements

Obscured Edge has been looking into Video Advertisements to possibly solve this issue; very similarly to the way television uses ads intermittently to support its shows, but without interfering with the user watching the whole show.

Ad Placement

The remaining question to be answered is where to place these videos.  Unlike television, there are less obvious times to inject Video Ads, since time-based breaks could be very jarring for the user.  Instead, some have said Video Ads could be well placed a the start of each “level segment” or “area” of a game.  This is one way to go, and certainly is less jarring to the user than showing an Ad every 10 minutes.  However, since users aren’t quite used to Video Ads breaking up the experience of their video games, we instead have been toying with the idea of rewarding users that have the choice of watching an ad every so often.  For instance, a user could watch an Ad at the start of a level to begin with a powerup of some kind.  Taptiles is a great example of this.  They have a timed level in their game, and users may (once per level) watch a Video Ad to get a little extra time.  This is great, as it gives users the option to watch an Ad, instead of forcing their hand.  Users that want to experience their game ad free, may do so unimpeded.

The Downside

Yes, there will be users who will feel that it is unfair that some are able to play with an advantage because they took the time to view a Video Ad.  This is unavoidable, but we can use design to try and remove this issue as well if we are clever.  Maybe viewing a Video Ad could provide help when a user is backed into a corner, but offers no general advantage to beating a level.  Or possibly a Video Ad could be used to unlock an aesthetic or customization that doesn’t even affect gameplay in a direct way.

There are a lot of options, and we are very excited to see what people come up with.  It’s easy to see this sort of design as a bad thing, but in reality it gives the greatest gift of all when done right: free games.