In 1997, Nokia launched Snake.[5] Snake, which was pre-installed in most mobile devices manufactured by Nokia, has since become one of the most played games and is 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 of app stores in 2008, such as the iOSApp Store from Apple. As the first mobile content marketplace operated directly by a mobile-platform holder, the App Store significantly changed the consumer behaviour and quickly broadened the market for mobile games, as almost every smartphone owner started to download mobile apps.[7]
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 by economies 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 in display, processing, storage, interfaces, network bandwidth and operating system functionality. The first such game that demonstrated the desire for handset games was a version of Snake that Nokia had included on its devices since 1997.[8]
The launch of Apple's iPhone in 2007 and the App Store in 2008 radically changed the market. The iPhone's focus on larger memory, multitasks, and additional sensing devices, including the touchscreen in later model, made it ideal for casual games, while the App Store 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 support in-app purchases in October 2009. This allowed games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope to find new monetization models away from the traditional premium "pay once" model. Meanwhile, Apple's disruption caused the market to stabilized around iPhone devices and Google'sAndroid-based phones which offered a similar app store through Google Play.
A further major shift game with 2012's Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons, games that used a stamina-like gameplay feature found in social-network games like FarmVille to limit the number of times one could play it in a single period, but allowed optional in-app purchases to restore that stamina immediately and continue playing. This new monetization brought in millions of players to both games and millions of dollars in 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 in China. By 2016, top mobile games were earning over US$100 million a year, and the total revenue for the mobile games sector had surpassed that of other video game areas.[11]
Mobile gaming has impacted the larger video game market by drawing demand away from handheld video game consoles; both Nintendo and Sony had seen major drops in sales of their 2011 handhelds compared to their 2004 predecessors as a result of mobile gaming.[12] At the same time, mobile gaming introduced the concept of microconsoles, low-cost, low-powered home video game consoles that used mobile operating systems to take advantage of the wide variety of games available on these platforms.[13]
Calculator games
Clone of Tetris being played on a modified TI-83 PlusA fan-made game similar to the game Portal
In 1980, Casio's MG-880 pocket calculator had a built-in "Invaders" game (essentially a downscaled Space Invaders clone),[14] released in the Summer that year.[15] Another early example is the type-in programDarth Vader's Force Battle for the TI-59, published in BYTE in October 1980.[16] The magazine also published a version of Hunt the Wumpus for the HP-41C.[17] Few other games exist for the earliest of programmable calculators (including the Hewlett-Packard 9100A, one of the first scientific calculators), such as the long-popular Lunar Lander game 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 when graphing calculators became more powerful and cheap enough to be common among high school students for use in mathematics. The new graphing calculators, with their ability to transfer files to one another and from a computer for backup, could double as game consoles.
Calculators such as HP-48 and TI-82 could be programmed in proprietary programming languages such as RPL programming language or TI-BASIC directly on the calculator; programs could also be written in assembly language or (less often) C on 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 as Lemmings and Doom (Lemmings for HP-48 was released in 1993;[18] Doom for HP-48 was created in 1995[19]). Some games such as Dope Wars caused 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 early Game Boy or the Gameking (low resolution, monochrome or grayscale graphics), or to the built-in games of non-Java or BREW enabled cell phones.[20]
Games continue to be programmed on graphing calculators with increasing complexity. A wave of games appeared after the release of the TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus series, among TI's first graphing calculators to natively support assembly. TI-BASIC programming also rose in popularity after the release of third-party libraries. Assembly remained the language of choice for these calculators, which run on a Zilog Z80 processor, although some assembly implements have been created to ease the difficulty of learning assembly language. For those running on a Motorola 68000 processor (like the TI-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 of mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.
Industry structure
Total global revenue from mobile games was estimated at $2.6 billion in 2005 by Informa Telecoms and Media. Total revenue in 2008 was $5.8 billion. The largest mobile gaming markets were in the Asia-Pacific nations Japan and China, followed by the United States.[21] In 2012, the market had already reached $7.8 billion[22] 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.[23]
Mobile gaming revenue reached $50.4 billion in 2017, occupying 43% of the entire global gaming market and poised for further growth.[24] It is expected to surpass the combined revenues from both PC gaming and console gaming in 2018.[25]
Java was 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, Unity is one of the most widely used engines used by modern mobile games. Apple provide a number of proprietary technologies (such as Metal) intended to allow developers to make more effective use of their hardware in iOS-native games.
With the introduction of the iOS App Store and 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.[26]
Premium
The premium model is akin to the traditional model where the user pays for the full game upfront. Additional downloadable content may 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
The freemium or "free to try" model offers a small portion of the game for free, comparable to a game 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 as Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja.
Free-to-play
A free-to-play game 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 with Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons.
A mobile game displaying a full-screen interstitial ad for a different game
Advertising-supported
A ad-supported game 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. The developer earns revenue from the advertising network. In some cases, an in-app purchase allows the player to fully disable ads in these games.
Subscription model
A subscription-based game will 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 in social-network games played in browsers. These players are known as "whales", inspired by same 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.[27]
Common limits of mobile games
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
Games played on a mobile device using localization technology like GPS are called location-based games or location-based mobile games.[28] 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's coordinate and movement are the main elements in a location-based mobile game.
A well known example is the outdoor recreational activity of geocaching, which can be played on any mobile device with integrated or external GPS receiver.[28] External GPS receivers are usually connected via Bluetooth.[29]
Several other location-based mobile games, such as the 2001 game BotFighters, were closer to research prototypes rather than being commercial successes.
Location-based mobile games sometimes have augmented reality functionality, such as in the case of the 2016 game Pokemon Go. Usually in these cases the augmented reality functionality is not at the center of the experience.
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 plus computer-generated graphics atop it, augmenting the display and then allowing the player to interact that 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 is Pokémon Go (2016), where the player travels to locations marked on their GPS map and then can enable the augmented reality mode to find Pokémon creatures to capture.[30] 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 as Microsoft's Minecraft Earth and Niantic's Catan: World Explorers[31][32][33]
Multipurpose games
Since mobile devices have become present in the majority of households (at least in the developed countries), there are more and more games created with educational, lifestyle and, health improvement purposes. For example, mobile games can be used in speech-language pathology, children's rehabilitation in 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 called gamified apps. Sometimes it is difficult to draw a line between multipurpose games and gamified apps.
Multiplayer mobile games
Many mobile games support multiple players, either remotely over a network or locally via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or similar technology.
There are several options for playing multiplayer games on mobile phones: live synchronoustournaments and turn-basedasynchronous tournaments. In live tournaments random players from around the world are matched together to compete. This is done using different networks such as Game Center, Google Play Games, and Facebook.
In asynchronous tournaments, there are two methods used by game developers centered around the idea that players matches are recorded and then broadcast at 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 including Facebook. 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 take screen recordings of 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
Mobile games can be distributed in one of four ways:
Over the Air (OTA): a game binary file is 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 via USB cable or Bluetooth.
Mobile browser download: 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 as AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Corporation and T-Mobile US. In Europe, games were distributed equally between carriers and off-deck, third-party stores.
After the launch of Apple App Store, the mobile OS platforms like Apple iOS, Google Android, and Microsoft Windows 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 iOS App 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.[34]
Many mobile games are distributed free to the end user, but carry paid advertising: examples are Flappy Bird and Doodle 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 include Gameloft and King.[35][36][37]
See also
Digital zombie– Person overengaged with digital technology
The history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games were Computer Space and Pong. After its home console conversions, numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success in both the arcade and the home by cloning the game, causing a series of boom and bust cycles due to oversaturation and lack of innovation.
In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software requires a separate build for each platform, but some can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, being written in an interpreted language or compiled to portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all supported platforms.
A regional lockout is a class of digital rights management preventing the use of a certain product or service, such as multimedia or a hardware device, outside a certain region or territory. A regional lockout may be enforced through physical means, through technological means such as detecting the user's IP address or using an identifying code, or through unintentional means introduced by devices only supporting certain regional technologies.
Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, a design flaw, or a configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user. The result is that an application with more privileges than intended by the application developer or system administrator can perform unauthorized actions.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
GLBasic is a commercial BASIC programming language that can compile to various platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and some handheld devices. The language is designed to be simple and intuitive.
Game Center is a service by Apple that allows users to play and challenge friends when playing online multiplayer social gaming network games. Games can now share multiplayer functionality between the Mac and iOS versions of the app.
The hacking of consumer electronics is a common practice that users perform to customize and modify their devices beyond what is typically possible. This activity has a long history, dating from the days of early computer, programming, and electronics hobbyists.
Amazon Appstore is an app store for Android-compatible platforms operated by Amazon.com Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.
An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the computer itself. Complex software designed for use on a personal computer, for example, may have a related app designed for use on a mobile device. Today apps are normally designed to run on a specific operating system—such as the contemporary iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux or Android—but in the past mobile carriers had their own portals for apps and related media content.
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on desktop computers, and web applications which run in mobile web browsers rather than directly on the mobile device.
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store or Play Store and formerly Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating system and its derivatives, as well as ChromeOS, allowing users to browse and download applications developed with the Android software development kit (SDK) and published through Google. Google Play has also served as a digital media store, offering games, music, books, movies, and television programs. Content that has been purchased on Google Play Movies & TV and Google Play Books can be accessed on a web browser and through the Android and iOS apps.
Candy Crush Saga is a free-to-play tile-matching video game released by King on April 12, 2012, originally for Facebook; other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed. It is a variation of their browser game Candy Crush.
Super Mario Run is a 2016 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for iOS and later Android. It is Nintendo's first mobile game that is part of one of the company's long-running and major franchises.
Nintendo, a Japanese home and handheld video game console manufacturer and game developer, has traditionally focused on games that utilize unique elements of its consoles. However, the growth of the mobile gaming market in the early 2010s led to several successive fiscal quarters where they were running at a loss, partially due to the failure of the Wii U. Nintendo, led by president Satoru Iwata at the time, developed a strategy for entering into the mobile games market with development partner DeNA, as a means of introducing their franchise properties to mobile players with a goal of bringing them to buy Nintendo's consoles later. From 2015 to 2020 Nintendo has internally developed a number of mobile games, while also publishing games with other developers, including games outside of the initial DeNA partnership. Several of them have entered the top-downloaded games list on the iOS App Store and Google Play stores, earning over US$100 million in revenue in total. However, as Nintendo's next console, the Nintendo Switch, proved a financial success for the company, coupled with dwindling numbers on its mobile games during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nintendo quietly backed off its mobile strategy starting in 2020, though continued to back Pokémon Go and future Pokémon games.
Apple Arcade is a video game subscription service offered by Apple. It is available through a dedicated tab of the App Store on devices running iOS 13, VisionOS, tvOS 13, iPadOS 13, and macOS Catalina or later. The service launched on September 19, 2019.
The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.
Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc. was a lawsuit brought by Epic Games against Apple in August 2020 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, related to Apple's practices in the iOS App Store. Epic Games specifically had challenged Apple's restrictions on apps from having other in-app purchasing methods outside of the one offered by the App Store. Epic Games' founder Tim Sweeney had previously challenged the 30% revenue cut that Apple takes on each purchase made in the App Store, and with their game Fortnite, wanted to either bypass Apple or have Apple take less of a cut. Epic implemented changes in Fortnite intentionally on August 13, 2020, to bypass the App Store payment system, prompting Apple to block the game from the App Store and leading to Epic filing its lawsuit. Apple filed a countersuit, asserting Epic purposely breached its terms of contract with Apple to goad it into action, and defended itself from Epic's suit.
Kamibox is an independent German video game developer founded by Philipp Stollenmayer. Stollenmayer is the sole employee of the company, which creates almost exclusively mobile games. Some of Kamibox's games have received awards for their design, including an Apple Design Award. Kamibox games often have a philosophical element to them, such as see/saw and Sometimes You Die, which explore the concept of death in video games.
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