Multiplayer Mobile Games

If you are into games and you are a developer and you think wireless has a wonderful future, Nokia’s paper on Multiplayer Mobile Game Design is a very good read to get introduced to the subject.

I am still trying to think about a mobile game myself. There are some things that would drive a successful game I think. First of all involvement and interactivity over a longer term. You need to get SMS messages or something else to tell you that you need to do something new, but you need to be able to choose when to react within a given timeframe, let’s say 1–5 hours. When I am on the train to work I want to be able to choose my next moves but then I am at work and don’t want to do something for a few hours, on the game that is ;).

I also think that graphics aren’t of the utmost importance when you think about the game on a mobile phone. Sure, they have to look good, but the time for full 3D power isn’t there yet. The N-Gage from Nokia is doing something great there but as Nokia has said themselves, it will take some time for something like this to really take off. As always, Nokia is in this for the long run and they are learning far earlier than anyone else thanks to the N-Gage.

Chess would be a good idea for a mobile server based game. Especially with MMS you could send arround the boards. Then add a little bit more interactivity to it, a little bit more liveliness ala Tamagotchi, then we are getting somewhere. If you have any ideas, I’d like to hear about them.