The last few days I’ve been addicted to Dicewars.

It’s a very simple browser-based game, superficially similar to Risk. Try the link, but only when you’ve got a few hours to blow off. The games themselves take only about 15 minutes, but you won’t be able to stop with just one.

The site does not explain the rules. The basic mechanics are obvious, but one thing I did not figure out at first were the rules for generating new armies/dice. You get one extra unit for each contiguous territory you control.

So the most important strategy is to unify your empire. Five separated territories will only add one unit to your forces, but three unified territories will add three units.

And, as in Risk, try to get yourself into a defendable corner.

Almost exactly 4 months ago, Microsoft announced the (then) latest delay to Microsoft Vista, from fall ‘06 to January ‘07.

Yesterday:

Today, Microsoft co-president Kevin Johnson would not even entirely confirm that second half date. Sources quote Johnson as saying, while Vista remains “on track” for 2H 2007, it will only ship “when the product is ready.” Later during the meeting, Reuters quoted Johnson as slipping that commitment even further, stating, “We will ship Windows Vista when it is available.”

Wow, 2H 2007 would likely mean October, 2007. In four months time, they’ve slipped nine months.

Interestingly, yesterday morning (prior to reading this), my wife’s 3.5 year old computer was having problems and getting slow. I told her, “Hold out another 6 months and we’ll get you a new PC with Vista on it.”, which shows that even tech goobers like me still get suckered into believing Microsoft’s release dates…

[Update 8/23/06]
I haven’t seen anything else to indicate an official delay beyond January ‘07, and I think that this statement was probably referring to fiscal calendar, rather than actual calendar (see the first poster in the comments section). So the official date is still probably January ‘07, although at least one analyst (George Shiffler – Gartner Group) in an article I read today does not expect MS to make the January date.

[Update 8/28/06]
Well, it seems that at least Amazon is indicating Vista will be available on January 30, 2007. The prices on the linked page are Canadian dollars I believe…

**Edit – I’m not seeking any more beta testers at this time**

My next casual game is coming along nicely, and I’m looking for some beta testers.

The game introduces a significant twist on the basic match-3 mechanic. I think it’s pretty fun, but I want to see what you think.

Beta testers who provide useful feedback will receive a free copy of the full version when it’s done.

Windows only at this time (A mac version is possible, but would happen later).

If interested, e-mail me at psteinmeyer A T newcrayon d0t com.

Please let me know if you or your significant other work for another developer, a portal, or are in some other way employed within the industry.

I may not respond immediately, as I’m not sure exactly when I’ll do the first beta, and I may do it in waves, gradually rolling the game out to larger groups of beta testers…

**Edit – I’m not seeking any more beta testers at this time**

Beyond Conversion Rate – Interesting Gamasutra article looking at other statistics that contribute to total game sales – i.e. ways to quantify numbers of web visitors, downloaders, etc…

Cashing in on casual games – CNN article on this biz…

Browser and OS Statistics – Not an article, but a web page tracking market share of different browsers and OS’s. Beware of reading the data too literally – they’re user base is not necessarily a perfect match for the universe of all computer and web users. Still, the trends are interesting. Firefox/Mozilla growth (June or July figures for each year):

2003: 5.7%
2004: 12.2%
2005: 23.6%
2006: 27.1%

Also, further down on the page, you can see a big upswing in Mac usage – nearly a doubling of market share in 3 years.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that among Windows users, Windows XP did not cross the 50% threshold until early 2004, about 2.5 years after the OS was originally released (October 2001). For developers, keep in mind that Vista will likely be similar – most of your users will be on XP (and in some cases 2000 or even 98/ME) for about 2 years after Vista’s launch. And even 4 years after launch, there will still be a fairly sizeable audience of non-Vista users.

There’s been a pretty good follow-up to my post criticizing quality of some mobile phone games I’d bought. Some of the comments came from mobile phone developers, generally agreeing that current quality is poor, but pointing out that the phone I’m using is mediocre, and that given time for Moore’s Law to kick in, quality will improve.

I generally agree with that, but still see mobile phone gaming as being pretty limited for the foreseeable future.

Sure, processors will get faster and screens sharper, which will at least mean the games will show prettier pictures and animations. But that’s only part of the problem.

I see several remaining issues where the primary purpose of a cell phone (for the user – making calls, for the carriers and publishers – making money), conflicts with the goal of making good games.

Physical

1) Small screens. Physically small screens are not much fun for games, even if the resolution gets better than it is now. This is not only true for cell phones – the GBA lite (the little keychain-sized GameBoy) is a failure, I think, largely because those of us over the age of 9 have thumbs too large and eyes too old to work a device so small.

2) Poor buttons/controls. To play any but the most limited games, you really need some kind of D-Pad, that’s raised up at least 1 and preferably 2-3 millimeters from the underlying surface, plus 1-4 secondary buttons, also raised and easy to locate with your thumbs. But this conflicts in a major way with the numeric keypad layout, and also with the best-case form factor for a cell-phone (flat, tightly spaced buttons, allowing for a thin, small phone).

Yes, there may very well be “gamer’s phones” (like the current Nokia N-Gage), willing to sacrifice cell-phone mobility and utility for a better gaming experience. But these will likely remain niche products. The other 98% of the audience, who want a good small cell phone, and if it plays good games, maybe they’ll try them too. But these consumers won’t buy an inferior phone just for those gaming capabilities, and as a result, their gaming experience will be poor.

Business Model

There are too many people taking a bite of the revenue stream, resulting in too little money actually reaching the developers making the games. (Warning, I’m no expert on mobile gaming standard royalty rates, so somebody can comment and fill in my fuzzy/erroneous details)

Start with the low price for cell phone games – $5.99 seems to be standard. That’s the smallest standard price, by far, in any area of gaming. There’s not much money for anybody in the value chain unless the volumes are huge, and because of the poor game quality, that seems ulikely.

Now you’ve got the carriers taking their bite at the apple. Because the carriers have nearly complete control over what games the user can see, they have complete negotiating power with the publishers, and presumably take the lion’s share of the revenue. I’m gonna guess that a standard deal is something like 60/40 (carriers get the 60).

Of that remaining 40% (i.e. ~$2.40), publishers need to pay a developer and a licensor. Cell phone games are small, well suited for entrepreneurial small teams to make, but again, with a limited number of major publishers, I suspect the developers get hosed and only get a fraction of the money.

But the publishers are not the only ones taking a cut of that $2.40 before the develop sees it. The market for mobile games is VERY heavily driven by games coming in from other sources – either PC casual games, console games, or movie licenses and such. Here’s a top 10 list from this past November (source):

1 TETRIS ® – JAMDAT

2 EA SPORTS TM TIGER WOODS PGA TOUR ® GOLF 2005 – IPLAY

3 DOOM RPG – JAMDAT

4 PACMAN – NAMCO

5 BLOCK BREAKER DELUXE – GAMELOFT

6 3D POOL – IPLAY

7 MONOPOLY – IFONE

8 EA SPORTS TM FIFA FOOTBALL 2005 MIE – IPLAY

9 THE WEAKEST LINK – IPLAY

10 MIDNIGHT BOWLING – GAMELOFT

Seven of the ten appear to be licensed. The licensor will certainly want a significant cut, too.

So, you’ve got 3 parties (publisher, developer, licensor), slicing and dicing $2.40 per game. There’s just not much money in the pot, and therefore not much to develop ambitious, high quality games.

And a lot of that money has to be spent on porting and testing across the myriad handsets.

So, yes, the cell phones may improve in technical capability (as consoles did from PS1 to PS2 to PS3). But I wonder if developers will have the budget to exploit that power.

Limited Incentive For Quality

The current business model does not provide much positive feedback for high quality games.

In console gaming, the developer must create a high quality game to generate buzz and favorable reviews – the primary drivers of sales in that segment.

In casual downloadable PC games, the developer must create a high quality game to ensure a good conversion rate – the primary driver of sales in that segment.

But in mobile gaming, I doubt many users read reviews, and most games right now must be purchased outright (i.e. no ‘try and buy’), so overall, there’s not nearly as much incentive to create a good game. Rather, the emphasis is on a recognizable license of some sort.

So a developer/publisher is not strongly rewarded for any particular game being good, thus encouraging quickie ports and such, that aren’t much fun for the user, thus ‘burning’ the user on the experience and discouraging them from trying further mobile games.

—-

OK, that’s an overly long essay already. I had some further points about the concept of digital convergence being a bit of a fallacy (disproven by the iPod and the strength of dedicated game consoles versus do-everything PCs), but I’ll save those for another post.

I welcome comments from everyone, especially those in the mobile games industry. I am admittedly not well versed in the technology or business models at play, so please correct my analysis above where I’m way off-track.

I was a bit late to the cell phone party – I only got my first cell phone a couple years ago, and I don’t use it much (I work at home and generally spend little time on the road, so it’s kinda moot).

My phone is, I guess, a reasonable one – a fairly small Samsung X426 with a decent color screen.

As a casual game developer, I have certainly been cognizant that mobile phone gaming (generally featuring casual-style games) is a big and growing industry, but I’d never really played with it much. I tried to, but I could never get my phone to successfully download games, beyond the couple lame pre-installed ones.

I’ve stopped at the Cingular store a couple times over the years to try to get it resolved, and despite the salesman’s puttering with my phone, it wouldn’t work. Today I tried again, and low and behold, in about 30 seconds, a different salesman had it working by changing one setting in my phone’s menu options somewhere (I forget which).

Lesson 1 – mobile phones are unnecessarily complicated – to the extent that some salesmen can’t even make all their features work.

So, I downloaded a couple of games. Neither had free trials, as far as I could tell, so I paid $5.99 for one, and used a free comp. credit I’d gotten at the Casuality show for the other.

I won’t name names, but let’s say that these were both adaptations of well-known casual games – big hits in the PC space that are apparently also successful on mobile. They were from different publishers and different port-shops, so any issues were unlikely to be the result of a single party’s sloppiness. Overall, the games were…

Terrible. Just awful.

Barely any animation, low rez graphics, weak sound, and worst of all, trying to control these games with a cell phone keypad was a mess.

I’m not blaming (for the most part) the publishers, developers, etc. I strongly suspect the problem is just that the phone is not powerful enough for decent games. Even if it had a CPU as powerful as a desktop PC, the small screen and tiny keys would make the experience mediocre at best. But compounded with the slow processor, slow reaction times, and poor animations, it was a terrible experience.

So be it. But what I can’t understand is why this is a growth industry, and who is buying these games (more than once). I can see making a mistake one time, but I can’t see buying a second mobile phone game (unless, like me, you’re a developer trying to understand the phenomenon.)

Is my phone just uniquely unsuited to playing games versus other mobile phones, or are teenagers willing to put up with terrible games, or what? I’m really wondering how this can be a sizeable industry. I definitely understand the speaker at Casuality who said that Try Before You Buy is bad for business in mobile, because the trials are generally so disappointing…

I missed the discussion panel at Casuality, but fortunately, Brian Fisher from ArcadeTown has started a discussion thread on the topic of in-game upselling, and posted their powerpoint slides from the panel. The slides have a lot of meat in them about rationales for doing in-game upsell, and techniques for accomplishing it.

As always, I’m most interested in hard data, and they do not disappoint. Here’s the slide on conversion rates for two casual games using different techniques:

The IGDA (International Game Developers Association) has just released the 2006 Casual Games White Paper. It’s 113 pages chock full of wisdom and facts about the casual games biz – check it out.

They’ve also put up most (all?) of the content of the white paper on a wiki, which seems to be getting a fair amount of continual updating by various contributors.

[edit - fixed wiki link]