Culture and Leisure

Photo by Jessica Fan

Games on mobile

A rough ride

by Jessica Fan

Kickboxing, golf, card games and mahjong all can be played anywhere and any time by just clicking buttons --- on a mobile phone.

“I usually play mobile games when I am travelling or waiting. I think it is fascinating,” university student Eddie Yip said.

Alex Cheung, also a university student, downloads mobile games once or twice a week.

“Once mobile games are installed, I don't have to buy any extra console to play games,” said Cheung, who has been playing mobile games for two years.

“I love playing golf, card games and mahjong. These kinds of games are easy to play and can last for a long time. Sometimes I even play mahjong games with my relatives,” he said.

Mobile games can be downloaded easily. Customers can go to a game service provider's website and complete the download process by following the instructions online. The installation will start automatically thereafter.

The games are simple. Users are often familiar with the types of games provided by mobile service providers. For instance, action games like KO Kickboxing and action role-playing games like The Final Ancient Battle designed by Funmobile, a Hong Kong-based mobile content developer, are programmed to have similar settings as that of the popular Japanese video games.

“Users play mobile games in their spare time, such as taking MTR, bus, etc. Therefore, our company designs games that are very short, 10 to 15 minutes at most, to suit the needs of our clients,” said Kurt Chan, director of Mobile Gamer Ltd., a local developer of interactive entertainment and infotainment software for wireless devices.

To grasp the demand of the Chinese market, Mobile Gamer has developed a number of mahjong games as its flagship products.

“We offer games that local people are more familiar with. Mahjong game serves the market of Hong Kong, Taiwan and even mainland China. Mahjong game becomes the selling point of our company's products and casino game is the most popular category provided by us,” Chan explained.

The popularity of pop stars and models may also help the mobile game business in Hong Kong. The “star effect” attracts many fans to download games and mobile contents featuring their idols.

Mobile Gamer tries to use the “star effect” to attract more customers in the market. Mahjong Lovers 2 is its latest game that uses women models.

“These models are well known among mobile game users. When users play the game, they may feel like playing with the models. This attracts users to download our games,” Chan said.

Antony Fung Ying-him, associate professor of communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said idol-related products like Star Mobile provided by the New World Mobility w ere more popular than the mobile games themselves. “Fans of Twins and Boy'z would like to download mobile contents involving their idols. This is an attraction of mobile games,” he said.

Despite the development of portable game consoles like Play Station Portable (PSP) and Nintendo DS, Chan said the mobile game market had not been affected. Noting the differences between the two kinds of entertainment, he said PSP games could not be played online. Users of mobile games, for example, could compete with their opponents in Taiwan.

Yet, users of game consoles are confined in the same district, such as in the same library, or else they cannot play a game together, he explained.

Funmobile chief executive officer Christian K-L Yau Heilesen echoed that the two types of games were completely different.

“Even the prices of games are different. Each mobile game only costs $15, but a game for PSP costs $300,” he said.

According to a research by the government's Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau, there were 8.12 million mobile subscribers in Hong Kong at the end of January 2005. The mobile subscriber penetration per population is 117.8 per cent, which means many people here have more than one cell phone. But that does not imply mobile games are popular in Hong Kong .

Mobile game developers are gearing up for a rough ride to explore the potential of the market, although cell phones have almost become a daily necessity and their games are handy.

Fung said the popularity of mobile games should not be overestimated. One of the major obstacles affecting the trend of playing games on cell phones is that the games are not interesting enough.

“Java games are no longer a selling point of mobile phones. It shows that mobile games are not really popular in Hong Kong,” he said.

For the role-playing games, users find them lack the sense of reality; for strategic games, they do not carry the complexity and challenges that users look for, Fung said.

Tammy Tam, a university student, who has never downloaded any mobile games, said she would not spend any money on doing so.

“Mobile games are already pre-installed in my phone. Why shall I download more?” she asked.

The limited memory size of cell phone is another obstacle to the development of mobile games. The display and the size of the games are smaller than that of portable game consoles, and that in turn restrict the complexity of mobile games.

Stonely Leung, a computer game user, said he preferred PC games because of their higher quality.

“I can play PC games for many times, but my interest in mobile games seldom lasts long,” he said.

Traditional television game developers in Japan are also producing mobile games and that poses competition for the Hong Kong market.

“Traditional games developers like Sega and Nintendo are opening their mobile game market. They remake classical games like Sonic and Super Mario for mobile phones. This leads to keen competition in the mobile game market,” Chan said.

It is also yet to clearly identify the target users of mobile games.

Heilesen said the users consisted of people from different age groups ranging from teenagers to adults. “Anyone with a mobile phone may download mobile contents,” he said.

But Chan said young adults were the major users. “People spending $2,000 to $4,000 to buy a mobile phone are more willing to spend more on mobile contents. Usually young adults belong to this group of users,” he said.

However, Fung considers that teenagers prefer listening to MP3 to playing mobile games. “Teenagers have many other entertainment to choose from, such as listening to radio. Not many of them will play mobile games.”

The academic suggests that other new media services are more popular than mobile games. Nowadays, a multifunctional mobile phone can provide diversified services to users. Functions like listening to MP3, downloading ringtone and wallpaper are more popular than playing mobile games.

Funmobile said ringtone took up 70 per cent of its mobile content downloading service.

Fung said: “3G mobiles are multifunctional.The quality and colour of the screens of 3G mobile phones is better. Yet, people mostly use 3G phones to chat face-to-face. Only a small proportion will play mobile games instead of trying the gimmicky functions of a 3G phone.”

“And many young adults prefer an iPod to a mobile phone.”

Although the development of mobile game market is challenging, people in the industry like Chan remain optimistic that there will be an increase in users and hinge their hopes on teenagers.