0018-9162/13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society April 2013 97

EntErtainmEnt Computing

The Ways We Play, Part 2: Mobile Game ChangersJason Pace, University of Washington Bothell

The lines between PC, console, and mobile games appear to be blurring more each year, suggesting that developers are learning to take advantage of each platform’s unique strengths.

T he first article in this two-part series, “The Ways We Play, Part 1: From PCs to Consoles

to Mobile Phones” (Computer, Feb. 2013, pp. 94-96), traced the evolu-tion of gaming technology over the past decade. This article focuses on mobile game technology, which, due to mobile devices’ ubiquitous presence and smaller screens, is changing the way we interact with games on all platforms.

THE CONSOLE MARKETWith the critical and financial

success of Microsoft’s Halo series, launched in 2001 for the Xbox, many game studios shifted their focus from PCs to consoles. At the same time, a new set of best practices and a greatly increased knowledge base about controller- driven game mechanics was becom-ing available, accelerating console game development.

Television display technology also rapidly advanced in the early 2000s,

with big-screen, high-definition TV sets becoming affordable to average consumers. As Figure 1 shows, game studios began incorporating the home theater experience as a funda-mental aspect of game design, and they invested considerable resources to produce grand-scale franchises with cinematic visuals and music, ambitious stories, and top-notch voice, writing, and composing talent.

On the technology front, in-creases in home connectivity gave rise to richer and more robust online multiplayer and social experiences. Within just a few years of the re-lease of Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the series, the console industry was a multibillion-dollar juggernaut with major titles out-grossing many Hollywood films.

Although the power of consoles, which are upgraded every few years, is always eclipsed by that of PCs, which continually feature more powerful processors, GPUs, and RAM, studios appreciated the uni-form development environment of

consoles that eliminated the need for games to run on a dizzying array of potential configurations.

As was the case with PC gaming in the 1990s, console games grew in popularity and sophistication in the first decade of the 21st century, and developers gained access to well-defined interface conventions for major genres. Today, stand-alone console gaming is an arguably mature but stable major market force; although analysts see growth slowing in coming years, major fran-chises like Halo, Call of Duty, Madden NFL, Uncharted, The Elder Scrolls, Assassin’s Creed, and Grand Theft Auto and new triple-A titles will likely continue earning hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars.

The focus on console blockbust-ers also dramatically increased barriers to entry into the market. With development teams frequently numbering in the hundreds and budgets approaching $100 million dollars with correspondingly large marketing campaigns, it has become

98 computer

EntErtainmEnt Computing

difficult for small studios to compete for player attention.

ENTER SMARTPHONESAs the first decade of the millen-

nium came to a close, a new platform began capturing the imagination of small studios. Smartphones had pro-liferated and were finally shipping with enough power to handle graphi-cally exciting games. Furthermore, unlike the console market, mod-estly budgeted games were making a splash, with casual users eager to play games in small time increments throughout the day whenever they had a few spare minutes.

The smartphone games land-scape began attracting more attention in 2009, with games-

capable handsets reaching critical mass in both system specifica-tions and market penetration. Titles released that year such as Flight Control, Words with Friends, and Angry Birds were unprecedented viral successes, generating millions of downloads and triple-A publicity.

The same year also saw the ex-plosion in popularity of Zynga’s Farmville on Facebook along with other social network games. While there’s no decisive link between the success of Facebook games and smartphone games, it’s clear that social networks are significantly contributing to the evolution of mobile devices, and vice versa.

The first Apple iPad, with its unique midsize touchscreen, hit

the market in April 2010. Within months, most of the top iOS games had released updates for the larger tablet experience. A year-by-year review of the top mobile games of 2009-2011 reveals a dramatic in-crease in production values in just two years. Interestingly, mobile games in core genres such as action, strategy, and sports appeal to a sig-nificant percentage of the same audience playing Doodle Jump, largely due to impulse-purchase-friendly price points and a growing cross-demographic preference for phone and tablet gaming.

WHERE IS GAMING HEADED?Early efforts to replicate the

twin-joystick experience of console controllers on touch devices have often been as clumsy as the early efforts to translate mouse and key-board controls to twin joysticks. Even the best-reviewed mobile games using virtual twin-joystick in-teraction remain complex and have yet to receive universal acclaim, with many players finding that the lack of haptic feedback negatively impacts gameplay.

Small-screen multitouch devices are an even more unique challenge. Touch control requires constant visual engagement with the interface itself and places a player’s hands within the game space. On a much smaller screen size, it’s difficult to create the kinds of immersive cin-ematic experiences users have come to expect on large-screen HDTVs.

Infinity Blade, the most lauded first-person touch game to date, es-chews virtual twin joysticks and instead offers players an “on rails” experience in which gestures con-trol only combat and the visual point of view. Infinity Blade was an instant success upon its release in 2011, with millions of units sold at a premium price point, and received several game-of-the-year nomina-tions, suggesting that smartphone and tablet game developers might be

Figure 1. BioWare’s Mass Effect series blends real-time action with a controller-friendly menu system. The game fully exploits the cinematic potential of large, high-definition TV displays with Hollywood-style visual direction and storytelling.

April 2013 99

looking for alternatives to the joy-stick metaphor.

How important will it be for games on small devices to duplicate the epic, first-person experiences of console blockbusters?

A device that’s always with us and that we tend to play for min-utes as opposed to hours at a time would seem to encourage entirely new kinds of gaming experiences, or at least suggest a fundamentally new approach to crafting familiar genre experiences, as with Infin-ity Blade. The phenomenal success of Angry Birds Star Wars, which launched in November 2012, is a powerful demonstration of how an initially modest casual touch game has evolved into a global trans- media franchise, with review scores rivaling those of prestige console titles.

Our mobile devices aren’t just with us when we’re on the go—we’re also using them while we’re watching TV. A rapidly emerging behavior that hasn’t escaped the notice of major game developers is our use of phones and tablets as ancillary screens to look up infor-mation about actors, movies, sports figures, breaking news, and the like while watching the big screen.

As Figure 2 shows, the control-ler for Nintendo’s new Wii U console looks a lot like a tablet. In addition, Microsoft’s SmartGlass initiative, which uses a tablet as a universal controller for Xbox applications (www.xbox.com/en-US/smartglass), signals a possible future in which dif-ferent platforms do different things while providing a unified experience.

A s we move further away from physical media and our digital identi-

ties persist across devices in the cloud, the lines between PC, con-sole, and mobile games appear to be blurring more each year. With multiscreen games now beginning to appear in the market, perhaps

developers are learning to take advantage of each platform’s unique strengths.

Jason Pace is the executive direc-tor of the Center for Serious Play at the University of Washington Bothell and a former creative director and lead producer for the Halo franchise at Microsoft. Contact him at jpace@uwb.edu.

editor: Kelvin Sung, computing and Software Systems, university of Washington, Bothell; ksung@u.washington.edu

Figure 2. The Wii U controller is essentially a tablet touchscreen device with the addition of traditional haptic console controls. A sensor bar placed near the TV enables the tablet to interact directly with the system, expanding the potential to immerse players in game worlds beyond what has been available on any individual platform.

IEEE Software seeks practical, readable

articles that will appeal to experts and nonexperts

alike. The magazine aims to deliver reliable

information to software developers and managers

to help them stay on top of rapid technology

change. Submissions must be original and no

more than 4,700 words, including 200 words

for each table and fi gure.

Author guidelines: www.computer.org/software/author.htmFurther details: software@computer.org

www.computer.org/software

Call Articles for

Selected CS articles and columns are available for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.