MGF 2008: Gamers have their say

Perhaps the most interesting session of today's Mobile Games Forum has been the consumer panel, where four gamers are up on stage giving their views to the industry.

They're a varied bunch, including one man who says he's played more than a thousand mobile games, and another who says he's not a big mobile gamer because they're "boring". I reckon the latter is the one publishers will want to quiz most.

Here's a snapshot of their views.

"The point where most consumers feel burned is when there's a licensed game that doesn't deliver. If I can pick out the Transformers mobile game..."

"I think games have improved a lot over the last three years, some games are still a bit simplistic, but sometimes the simplest games are the best."

"Mobile handsets tend to be very hard to play with, because they're small, so simple games are good, whereas more complex games are more difficult to play with."

"Snake was a pretty simple game back then, and people used to like playing those games. But now because we have the graphics and so on, developers are trying to push into console style games, but they're not taking the user interface into their thinking, and playing these games on a keypad can be very frustrating. If you can just play the same game on a PC, you may as well do that."

"It's important for developers moving into the mobile space to recognise that we still need to have a game that's produced exclusively for mobile, not necessarily a straight port. If I buy Need For Speed on a mobile, I'm not really expecting a similar quality of gameplay. They should either be a complete exclusive product for mobile, or sell it alongside a console game as anadd-on. For something like Halo 3, the ability to kit out your character on the phone would be amazing."

"It's a mobile. We can connect to the internet, so having online games in a mobile phone is a big opportunity. I would definitely play them."

"Rather than trying to follow what the console developers are doing, instead take a step forward. At the end of the day, we still relate to mobile phones as a social tool, and you have to find a way to incorporate that into the games."

"I have a variety of methods, some of them legal... the ability to browse through a good selection of products at a price I like, and possibly read reviews. At the moment, a tech-savvy person would do that offline. At the moment, when I go on-portal, I feel like I'm being sold to. I don't want to be sold to because I'm a 26 year-old male from a certain part of the company. I want to be in control. I don't want to be boxed into a certain type of game that I don't wanna play."

"It would be good to have bundles – buy one get one free, or maybe buy five games and get five free. I've noticed there isn't a lot of advertising for mobile phone games. I'm keen, so I go out and look for stuff. For the casual person, there isn't any advertising at all."

"I've never seen an advertisement for a mobile game. Every game I eventually bought was kind of an accident! I would like to know a bit more about what games are out there. I've always bought them from my network, Vodafone..."

"I use GameJump where you can download the game directly and then USB-link it to the phone. Or I've searched individual websites where they provide these Flash demos so you can try the game before you buy. In a lot of those cases, I've got bored of them."

"Pocket Gamer is a one-stop portal for me to go and find out about games..." [We didn't pay him to say that, really]

"I look at Mobile Game FAQs and Midlet Review. I don't look at many other sites..." [We need to pay this person though]

"More needs to be done at the point of sale itself. That seems like an obvious point where you can sell games. Mobile games at retail has a jaded past, obviously, but there's no reason when I buy a phone and spend 20 minutes with a phone trainer at Orange, why I shouldn't be recommended a game?"

"To an extent, playing mobile games on the train to work, I've started taking my PSP and playing that more. The only time I can't carry those is when I'm going out literally in the clothes I'm in, and don't have room. The mobile is never going to compare for me to handheld gaming. The comparison to PSP and DS is nonsensical for me."

"I used to have a Game Boy Advance, but I don't play it any more. I can't be bothered to carry it with me. At the moment my Xbox 360 is broken, so I've been playing on my phone..."

"I have a PSP, and I use my mobile games for short journeys, while I'm waiting for someone. That kind of thing. I wouldn't do that with my PSP – I mainly use it to play at home, or if I know I'll be having a big journey. The mobile is basically to fill up short times of space, so I expect short games that I can stop and carry on later."

"I have a DS, which I use to play against friends, or on a long journey. If you're on along journey and you play on your phone, you're gonna run out of batteries, and then you won't have your phone!"

"You have to differentiate between a casual game and a casual experience. If I'm playing Championship Manager on a train, am I playing a casual game because I'm dipping in and out, or am I playing a deep, complex strategy game?"

"If I buy a new phone, there is this exploratory phase where I'll try everything, and this is why I think people buy one game in this period. If the game is good, they'll buy more, but if not, they won't."

"I think it's a shame if you buy a game on one handset, then buy a new handset, you can't transfer it over. It's a shame to have to pay twice."

"Sometimes the game looks great, it's a really good idea, but you can't play with it – it's [the phone] too small. People buy a game, and realise they can't really play with it, and get frustrated."

"Well, I would like to get free things..."

"There's the aspect of speed. I just joined O2, and they said download this game for free, so I connected, and waited and waited and waited, and nothing happened. And when I finally got into the menu, there was no game to download. So..."

"It's got to be sufficient quality."

"At the moment, it could be due to the biased impression of a lot of mobile games - they tend to be remakes of another game just with a different skin over it. For example if you take the newest Kane & Lynch mobile game. The console version wasn't great, but the mobile game was even worse." [this question was actually asked by Eidos. Ouch.]