Trends in mobile gaming 2014 (2/3)
The second in a three-part exercise in predictive geekery
This is the second part in a three part series. You might/must read the first here.
Declaration of indie-pendence
If you find articles and developer descriptions containing or starting with “indie studio” interesting, hold tight, because “indie” is going to be the new mainstream. In other words, “indie” will be the new “indie”.
The breach between consolidated studios — usually working for even more consolidated companies — and indie developers will create two sides, which is nothing new. However, in that stack we call “indies,” two distinct groups share the same lebensraum, i.e. the same target audience — and, nearly as important, the same funding channels.
On one side, there are little companies and studios, self-labeled as “indie” because they’re indie in spirit. However, they also have significant know-how, and they develop videogames for a living. Kickstarter and other crowd-funding websites have done a great job so far giving them a chance to promote and finance their projects. Many original games saw the light of day this way. Indeed, some signatures have become indie gaming trademarks (retro graphics, MIDI-like music, nonsense storyline combined with no-nonsense gameplay).
On the other side of the fence, what will we do with the oncoming wave of garage developers looking for a place for their brand new game they’ve poured their soul into? Games with retro graphics, MIDI-like music, and so on, tried to be funded through Kickstarter plus “Mom and Dad-starter” (add also college-savings-starter, dude-please-starter and seek-your-dreams-they said-starter) are to compete against professional videogame creators and flood the app stores with tons of illusion but few effective weapons. Some day like this next year someone somewhere will publish an infography about the thousands of games available, but we won’t have been able to play not even a half of them.
PR crisis line, how may we help you?
Even worse, those non-conventional start-ups will also need to look for a place in the media, asking for reviews and users’ attention no matter how. We know it from the amount of emails in our inbox from individual developers sprouted up from nowhere asking for precious reviewer time.
The utter atomization of the indie mobile gaming ecosystem will make things significantly harder for budding developers anywhere. Big companies already have their own PR armies plus juicy advertising budgets, but indie studios have to compete with even indie-er studios.
Furthermore, expect a groundbreaking, revolutionary and über original indie game being released every two weeks, because we the media and you the readers love success stories. However, bear in mind that for every indie game you get to hear of, there’ll be quite a bunch left in the darkness. Indie mobile gaming has been a gold rush, and now latecomers will have to grovel for the last grains.
Dear garage developer, ask yourself this: How much success would Angry Birds have found if launched today by an unknown Scandinavian company?
Moral: 2014 will be the year of PR, so stash away a significant part of your budget and dedicate some time to plan how and where you will promote your stuff. Comments and user ratings didn’t work in 2013, and word-of-mouth doesn’t reach beyond your second cousins and friends of friends anymore. Likewise, invest in design, little grasshoppers. People like screenshots.
The gamification of everything
Life’s a game in legend mode without respawn. Everything can be and will be gamified and scored and shared and compared with your friends. First it was Foursquare. Then Zombies, Run!, Endomondo and Runtastic came, making a game out of burning calories and hardening six-packs. Zumba! brought, as anticipated, dance to the floor.
And then, the Pandora’s box of gamification will be left wide-open. First we’ll see how dating apps add scores (howdy, Lulu?), followed by contests to wake up on time, go to bed earlier (kids!), eat healthier, visit your parents more often, travel farther, save up more money — whatever you do that can be quantified and compared to your friends’.
Self-motivation apps are going to be the new self-help craze. Let’s wait for a crossbreed of micro social networks (Between, Path) and daily gamified tasks (wash the dishes, ten points for Gryffindor!).
Sooner or later, some crazy developer will release some unsound gamified app about some un-gamifiable stuff and everybody will cry out in protest. But in the meanwhile, if procrastination was 2013's favorite word (that’s why 2014 has taken so long to arrive, you fools), next year we’ll be bombed and importuned with the new word en vogue: gamification.
Till someone ungamifies us all with a meta-app that rewards for not playing at all.
Single gadget looking for an app for friendship or whatever else
Google Glass will hatch in 2015. Check.
Several companies launch their smartwatches. Check.
Big companies believe “eco-” isn’t cool enough and choose “smart” instead. Check.
As a dev faced such a scene, you have two eligible paths: design the new “smart” waffle iron and ram apps for it down users’ throats, or bet on the happy hunting grounds of mobile gaming.
We already know the pros and cons of mobile gaming, but truth is that every one of these new gadgets opens a market in need of new apps and games. Herald the advent of smart wristbands, smart rings and presumably smart trainers, bras and hoodies, plus a whole new world ready to be colonized called smart TV, plus umpteen mobile-controlled RC toys, plus… (read it a la Forrest Gump shrimp scene)
We might well report that mobile gaming is getting swamped, and it’d be true. But we could also bet that 2014 will bring more opportunities than ever for brave and creative mobile developers. Devs should be able to understand both the current and future needs of new gadgets users. They must know how users will play with their toys, in addition to how every one of those gadgets can communicate with other gadgets: cars, bikes, key rings, security cameras, locks, fridges, silverware, shrimps…
In this way, mobile development will be more active than ever, though not in the way we previously understood it. Apps are invading everything, because smartphones aren’t enough.
Nobody’s Subway Surfin’ USA
… which is a mild way of also mentioning Imangi’s Temple Run. Ever-runners, no matter if scrolling upwards, sidewards or downwards are here to stay, because there are so many of them that they’re considered a genre nowadays.
In fact, they existed long time before Temple Run (Hugo, is that you?). Little tweaks apart, they still have a long time ahead of them. Their glamour — if they ever had as such — will swiftly fade, though, because of their unrewarding in-app purchasing system. Ever-runners have to evolve to either something staged/scripted or multiplayer — and thence becoming racing games. Running for running’s sake is demodé.
On the other hand, ever-runners may be one of the best, if not the hands-down best, uses of the accelerometer. Tilt control really makes the difference with handhelds and consoles, and we really hope for innovation in this regard.
And talking about tilt control, this brings us to…
Hey, wanna see what I can do?
Quite a different kettle of fish, but somehow related, are hardware buttons and stuff. In a single sentence: game developers have yet to exploit all that smartphones can offer, and the smartest among them will do it next year if they want to have a chance in the cannibalistic mobile gaming circle of life.
Smartphone’s got a front camera? Take a shot of your winning face at the exact moment you surpass the record. Volume buttons on the side? Scroll through the weapons wheel. Got a GPS? Change the background scenery to reflect where are you playing (as basic as urban/countryside, day/night, sunny/raining)
Some developers thought that last-gen mobile gaming would find everyone jumping in the Augmented Reality pool, setting traditional console gaming aside. Now we can safely say that it’s going to be something betwixt the two.
I heard that jumping to conclusions is pretty popular on the Internet, so I propose we all jump together to the third and last article about 2014 trends in mobile gaming.
