One of my ongoing pursuits is being a Jane Goodall of sorts in relation to mobile gaming (phone-type devices, not Gameboys or PSPs). A facet of this design anthropology that I find particularly interesting is examining how larger/more complex games are adapted/devolved to work with mobile’s affordances and limitations. Recently I’ve come across two mobile adaptations of existing game experiences that share a common strategy.

For lack of a better term, I will call this the “Always On” strategy- meaning that a core function of gameplay, which the player controls in other versions of the game, is simply always on in the mobile version. The reasoning behind this strategy is if players are doing Action X most of the time in the console version of the game, given the limited interface of mobile devices, it should be ok for them to being doing Action X all of the time in the mobile version.

First of all, a poor implementation:

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved Mobile is the Xbox Live Arcade’s smash hit faithfully brought to mobile devices. A modern arcade-style game in the spirit of Robotron: 2084, Asteroids, and Tempest, the player controls a “ship” that must annihilate an onslaught of circles, squares, and diamonds. This is the most intense action ever created for cell phones - deep gameplay and simple pick-up-and-play controls combine for the ideal mobile game experience. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved Mobile brings gamers the addictive action of the original, anywhere and anytime. (src)

In Geometry War: REM, the “always on action” is the firing of your weapon. I’m guessing that the designers thought that by always having your blasters blazing, you would be free to do things like fly around. Well flying around is kind of pointless because if you continually rotate your ship in a 360 degree cardinality, you are pretty much invincible. In fact as soon as I figured out how to do this (the first time I played GW: REM), I couldn’t go back to playing the way that the designers intended. The 360 degree exploit isn’t fun, but the way the designers intended isn’t exactly riveting gameplay either.

Secondly, a decent implementation:

To be honest, I don’t know the full story with this game. It might be a complete fan creation or it might be a cracked/modded version of a licensed commercial game. Regardless, Antone Samy’s Super Mario Planet  (also here) is a good first draft of a mobile Mario game.

Super Mario Planet’s “always on action” is running- Mario is always running forward. What makes this different than other ‘on rails’ games is that, to a certain degree, players can accelerate and decelerate within the frame of the advancing screen. For the most part, this works. I’ve played a straight Symbian port of the original Super Mario Bros, and it didn’t play well. Trying to run and jump at the same time was just too much for the 1 or 2 button control scheme so not having to worry about running as much was a refreshing change of pace. That being said, Super Mario Planet’s level design isn’t great. I’ve actually cleared every level, but all too often I felt that I got lucky rather than being good.

So in adapting an existing game for mobile, or developing an original title, maybe designers should consider defaulting to an “always on action.” The only problem is that it can break your game as much as it can make it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under mobile games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.