Mobile Games to address mobile games in both dimensions: as

“scaled-down videogames,” and as emerging new

forms of gameplay, possible only using the oppor-
FRANS MÄYRÄ
University of Tampere, Finland
tunities that mobile devices and their mobile user
contexts open up.

The Expanding Field of Mobile Gaming

Defining a Mobile Game
The International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) estimated that there were more than six Despite being a common enough term and
billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world phenomenon in today’s technologically intense
in 2012. Thanks to miniaturization and the pos- societies, it is not necessarily self-evident what
sibility to implement mobile video games, today’s exactly constitutes and defines a “mobile game.”
mobile games are an increasingly notable and The literature on mobile games is often techni-
growing area of game business and culture. An cally focused, and generally moves directly to
expanding range and increasing number of games discuss the implementation of games for mobile
are being produced and published for handheld phones and other mobile devices without clarify-
consoles, mobile phones, and tablet devices. ing the key concept itself (see, e.g., Hamer, 2007).
The expansion of mobile gaming is noteworthy However, there are multiple different kinds of
also in terms of quality, as mobile games have mobile devices, and even personal computers
become a site for innovative, new play and game could be considered “mobile” today, because of
design practices. Many of the novel innovations the popularity of small and lightweight laptop
that mobile games have introduced benefit from computers. The most common ways of under-
the specific characteristics of the mobile media standing mobile games nevertheless relate to
ecosystem, including the online digital distri- two distinct lines of game development and
bution channels, new interface modalities, and publishing. The first one is mobile phone games
sensor capabilities available in modern mobile and the second relates to handheld electronic
devices. games and video game consoles. Outside the
Other significant factors in mobile games and consumer product market there is also important
game play are the daily contexts and practices work that links mobile games to mobile com-
related to mobile application use. A 2011 study puting and augmented reality experimentation,
of more than 4000 Android phone users found for example. Such research has often stimulated
that the average user accessed some application innovations in consumer electronics and the
or another on their handset about 50 times game industry.
per day, for a total duration of more than one This entry aims to discuss the games designed
hour daily. The average session from opening for mobile phones, and while the full treatment
an application to closing it, however, lasted only of mobile games needs also to take into account
71 seconds (Böhmer et al., 2011). Even though handheld video games and many other portable
average gameplay sessions on a mobile device electronic gaming devices, the history and eco-
are probably longer than that, designing a game nomics in these various areas are so different
for the quick and short mobile usage sessions that they invite treatment in separate entries.
is different from creating a typical computer or Handheld video games, for example, have much
console video game. There are only a few game closer ties with the major video game console
genres that are unique to mobile devices; it is manufacturers, while mobile phone game makers
possible to access most of the popular video game need to take into account the characteristics of
genres also as mobile versions. It is important multiple different kinds of phone models and

The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, First Edition.

Edited by Robin Mansell and Peng Hwa Ang.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118290743.wbiedcs014
2 MOBILE GAMES

differences in mobile operators’ services. The television game systems) was the Game & Watch
distribution of handheld video games through series (1980–91). This was a series of devices
sales in retail stores is also very different from that originally featured monochrome, segmented
the distribution of mobile phone games, which LCD screens, each capable of displaying a single
either come preinstalled to the handset, or are video game. As the name indicates, the devices
installed by the user over-the-air (OTA), using also doubled as an alarm clock. While the original
mobile data services. Some phone manufacturers devices had a single screen, dual screen (“multi-
have experimented with add-on memory cards as screen”) games were also published and later color
a game distribution medium, but without major screens were used as well. It has been reported
success. that more than 43 million Game & Watch devices
were sold. The series also served as an important
precursor for the next generations of Nintendo’s
The Long History of Mobile Games handheld gaming devices that became even more
popular. The Game Boy series (1989) was the first
The early history of mobile games does not start of these (rechargeable) battery-powered game
with the introduction of the first handheld elec- consoles. For the US market, the device was bun-
tronic games in the late 1970s. Rather, there is dled with a game cartridge for Tetris, the popular
a continuity that can be tracked from the early puzzle video game, a combination that was partly
simple electronic gaming devices such as the responsible for the Game Boy becoming adopted
Merlin by Parker Brothers (1978) to the earlier widely by “casual gamers” as well as by young
mechanical toys on the one hand, and to ancient video game enthusiasts. The handheld form fac-
travelers’ game sets on the other. A deck of gam- tor also appeared to smooth the gender gap in
ing cards or a small version of a board game are video gaming. Nintendo of America reported in
easy to use while on the road, and the portability 1995 that 46% of players on the handheld Game
of such analog gaming devices has no doubt Boy were female, as contrasted to 29% on NES
played an important part in their evolution and and 14% on SNES consoles (The Gainesville Sun,
popularity. There is evidence of traveling dice and January 15, 1995). The cumulative total sales for
board games being used by the Roman emperor the Game Boy line of devices have crossed 200
Claudius (10 bce–ad 54; see Joannou, 2007). million units. The popular 32-bit handheld con-
The idea of playing games while traveling is most sole, Nintendo DS (2004–07), proved Nintendo
probably much older than that. was capable of building on top of earlier successes
The digital mobile game can be identified while making use of new technologies such as
as having at least two roots. The early arcade color touch screen, wireless connectivity, and
video games were miniaturized into handheld built-in microphone.
electronic games and consequently they acted While the evolution of mobile games for hand-
as precursors for the handheld video gaming held consoles has enjoyed the benefits of a rather
consoles. The second strand of evolution was unified development and publishing environ-
intimately linked with the mobile phone as a par- ment, that has not been the case for mobile phone
ticular kind of application and gaming platform. games. Since the 1970s and 1980s, there have
In terms of suitability for gameplay, a dedicated been many different mobile phone manufacturers
handheld gaming device benefits from a form in the market, each regularly releasing phone
factor and controls that are optimized for gam- models that support diverse feature sets. Such
ing. Mobile phones are, in contrast, multipurpose key factors as the screen size, keyboard, memory,
devices; therefore generally, in the design of their processor, operating system, as well as wireless
form and keyboard, the phone’s uses (e.g., making capabilities all differ, making game development
calls, typing text messages) have been set as the for mobile phone ecosystems a rather challenging
top priority. undertaking. The most popular early mobile
In the field of handheld electronic games and phone game was a version of arcade game Snake
handheld game consoles, Nintendo has been the (1997), which was delivered preinstalled in Nokia
leader. Originally a playing card company, its first handsets and could therefore be found on more
major success in consumer electronics (after a few than 400 million devices (Wright, 2008).
 MOBILE GAMES 3

Before the smart phone application ecosys- from its App Store, and that the store carried at
tems such as Apple’s iOS and its App Store that point more than 800,000 mobile applications
were launched, there were several competing (“apps”). Other similar digital distribution chan-
development platforms for mobile phone games, nels include Google Play (originally launched in
including Macromedia Flash Lite, Doja of NTT 2008 as “Android Market”) and Windows Phone
DoCoMo, BREW by Qualcomm, and Sun’s Java Store (launched in 2010 as “Windows Phone
ME. When combined with the early mobile Marketplace”). All such mobile stores provide
internet protocol (WAP), such technologies made users with access to thousands of applications,
possible, in the late 1990s, the over-the-air sale, some of them free, some paid for.
download, and installation of a game to a mobile The rising popularity of mobile application
phone via a wireless carrier network. Also, text ecosystems can be attributed to the better qual-
messaging (SMS) was used for implementing ity of mobile games, the better user experience
simple games, such as quizzes, where the price of provided by touch screen-enabled smartphones,
each text message was included in the phone bill the faster access via mobile broadband (3G and
(De Prato et al., 2010; Feijoo, 2012). 4G networks), and the successful distribution of
The visibility of such downloadable game con- models provided by other, nonmobile platforms,
tent was at the time largely decided by placement such as Steam (developed by Valve for Win-
of the game on the “carrier deck,” meaning the dows computers), Wii Shop Channel, Xbox Live
mobile internet landing page the customers saw Marketplace, and PlayStation Store. In indus-
first on the browser of their handset. Without a try sources, it was estimated that the number
prominent placement in these operator main- of smartphone users worldwide exceeded one
tained listings, it was hard to distribute the game. billion in 2012, far surpassing the numbers of any
With the slow data transfer capabilities and other gaming platform, except gaming in personal
small screens of the available mobile phones, the computers. Similarly, the Finnish game devel-
operator listings were usually rather limited; for oper Rovio reported that their popular Angry
example, at one point the US operator Verizon Birds franchise of mobile games had reached the
Wireless listed about 350 games and its competi- cumulative number of one billion downloads in
tor Sprint about 250 (Rabowsky, 2009, p. 157). 2012.
Most users, however, did not scroll down tens of
menu screens, and thus placement at the top of
the deck, along with an immediately recognizable New Directions in Mobile Gaming
title, was critical to success. Tie-in releases based
on popular movie, television, or book franchises Rovio’s successful Angry Birds series represents
were therefore popular choices. well the mainstream world of mobile games devel-
While mobile “middleware” technologies such oped for contemporary smartphone ecosystems.
as Java ME continue to be popular in low-end Based on earlier, trusted gameplay formulas, such
handsets, such as those which run on Nokia’s casual games make efficient use of both the touch
Symbian Series 40 operating system, smart- screen interface and the audiovisual strengths of
phones have radically changed the face of mobile smartphones’ processor and memory capabilities.
games. In 2003 there was an attempt by Nokia to Many of these types of games are first released
launch a dedicated mobile phone based gaming as free downloadable versions, then they tempt
system called N-Gage, but the selection of games, players to upgrade into full, paid versions of the
prices, and user experience of N-Gage compared applications, which – because of the benefits
poorly to those offered by the dedicated handheld of scale – can be priced at an affordable level,
gaming consoles such as the Game Boy line of sometimes at less than a dollar. An alternative
Nintendo. It was the release of iPhone by Apple approach, called the “freemium” model, relies
in 2007, followed by the App Store distribution on in-app purchases of “premium” features such
service in 2008, which had the most powerful as better equipment or additional game levels
impact on the mobile software and game ecosys- that take the otherwise free game beyond its
tems. In 2013, Apple reported that its users had built-in limitations. While commercially suc-
downloaded more than 40 billion applications cessful, such techniques have been criticized by
4 MOBILE GAMES

players and developers alike. The low complexity billion Facebook users actively using the service
and effortless gameplay that characterize casual with their mobile devices. There is an increasing
mobile games do not necessarily attract dedicated number of mobile games that provide some kind
gamers and some critics consider the moneti- of online social gaming experience, including
zation strategies employed in freemium games comparing top scores among one’s social net-
as unethical (see, for example, the discussion in work, or sending challenges, gifts, or invitations
www.gamasutra.com). to one’s friends from inside the mobile gaming
In addition to business model innovation, application. It is also noteworthy that in some
mobile games have also been at the forefront industry studies, a slight majority of mobile social
of some technological experimentation. There gamers is reported to be female.
are modes of play that are only available for
gaming on mobile devices, such as location
based gaming. While there are several decades Research and the Future of Mobile
of history in mobile and ubiquitous computing Gaming
research, which also includes such game experi-
mentation, it was in the early 2000s that the first Research into mobile games has not formed the
commercial location based mobile games were mainstream of contemporary game studies, and
launched. Long before that there had been vari- the study of mobile phones has mostly focused
ous kinds of treasure hunt-style games that later on the communications element rather than on
were turned into the “geocaching” hobby with mobile game studies. Nevertheless, there are sev-
the availability of precise GPS navigation devices eral notable strands of research work that relate to
(Montola, Stenros, & Waern, 2009, pp. 32–34). this field.
The first commercial location based games such In Europe in particular a few research centers
as BotFighters (It’s Alive, 2001) used less precise have carried out sustained research work on
cell location services and SMS messages to relay mobile games. One of the background factors
game commands and information between the has been the European Union, which has been
players and the game server. The augmentation of active in its support of mobile game research and
physical, urban environments with virtual gam- development. For example, the “Mobile Enter-
ing content has gradually increased, leading to tainment and Industry and Culture” (MGAIN)
mobile devices used in a rich range of alternative research project (2001–04) aimed to situate
reality games (ARGs e.g., The Nokia Game series, mobile games in the wider context of mobile
1999–2005), pervasive games (e.g., Can You “content” and entertainment industries, and
See Me Now?, 2001) and massively multiplayer suggested that mobile gaming would continue
mobile games (e.g., Shadow Cities, 2010). Such to grow in popularity, alongside other mobile
complex forms of mobile gaming are growing in applications and services, such as those related to
popularity but have not reached anywhere near mobile music, messaging services, multimedia,
the level that casual mobile games enjoy. gambling, and location based services (MGAIN,
Thousands of new mobile applications are 2003). Another large European research project,
added to the different online application stores “Integrated Project in Pervasive Gaming” (IPerG,
every month, and games are the most popular 2004–08), focused on the new artistic, techno-
category among their hundreds of millions of logical, and business opportunities related to how
users. Consequently, the commercial and cul- new mobile technologies allow the extension of
tural significance of mobile games has greatly gaming experiences in spatial, social, and tem-
expanded from their modest beginnings in the poral dimensions (Montola, Stenros, & Waern,
1990s. Today, games in mobile devices are seri- 2009). IPerG produced both scholarship that
ously challenging the PC and console gaming, mapped out some of the design space and player
particularly if tablet devices are included in the experiences opened up by mobile technologies,
mobile device category. Mobile gaming is also as well as several prototype games on emerg-
becoming increasingly integrated with popular ing gaming subgenres such as mobile treasure
social networks, such as Facebook. Industry hunts, urban adventure games, and massively
reports point toward the majority of the one multiplayer mobile games.
 MOBILE GAMES 5

The sociology and ethnography of mobile gamification nevertheless continue to be debated

communications have also touched upon mobile (see, for example, Bogost, 2011).
gaming. The work of Larissa Hjorth is particu- As a category, mobile games have developed
larly noteworthy, as she has carried out substantial into multiple directions on their own. The conver-
work on the sociocultural dimensions of mobile gence of gaming platforms is also an important
gaming cultures in the Asia Pacific region. She has development: in some ecosystems, and by using
shown how both video games and mobile phones techniques such as game streaming, it is now
serve important roles as extensions of a user’s possible to change from one type of device to
identity and as sites of user creativity in people’s another and yet continue the same game, which
everyday lives (Hjorth, 2011). In Europe, the EU is a development that contributes toward the
Kids Online project has produced research that boundaries between mobile, console, and PC
reports children’s use of online technologies in games beginning to erode. The key characteristics
Europe, indicating that gameplay is among the of gaming on a small, mobile device nevertheless
most popular children’s activities online today, but remain distinctive and unique at their core.
also that problematic behaviors such as bullying
have become common elements in the children’s SEE ALSO: Online Games; Online Games and
lives (Livingstone, Haddon, & Görzig, 2012). In Business Models; Online Games, Casual; Online
Finland, the Finnish Player Barometer survey has Games and Children; Online Games and Genre
identified a significant trend showing an increase
in mobile gaming in 2009–11, and has pointed
out how women and girls play mobile games References
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