In the beginning, mobile phones were nothing more than simple voice communication devices. People wouldn’t have even imagined about mobile game development at that time. On 3rd April 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola made the world’s first mobile phone call to his rival Dr. Engel of Bell labs. Those devices were bulky, large, and plain-looking. Two decades later, IBM introduced the first ever mobile app for a Smartphone.
Mobile gaming is slowly and gradually becoming a craze among Smartphone savvy people, gaining new heights of reputation. The population of casual gamers is increasing by leaps and bounds and so do the gaming industry. A major part of success can be attributed to the App Store, since before that only selected gaming apps were made for mobile. Today, it is so easy to build a mobile game with click and collect capabilities associated with major programming platforms. However, days back the scenario was not same as seen today. Nowadays people want more with gaming stuff, having high expectations with high end games, specifically when made for iOS platform. Mobile gaming apps not only serve the purpose of entertaining users, but have opened new revenue streams with in-app advertising. There are major platforms for mobile, who are today finding it absolutely challenging getting customers to pay upfront for almost everything.
What is Mobile Game Development?
Mobile gaming software is developed for multiple gadgets such as smartphones, personal display assistants (PDAs), tablets, and portable media players. Mobile game development is a huge industry in terms of user base and revenue. It has the potential to grow even bigger with people spending more and more time on their gadgets. Mobile gaming is spread across devices, operating systems and game types. Mobile games can be developed for multiple purposes such as entertainment, marketing, and learning.
Types Of Mobile Games
Mobiles games can be classified in various ways -
Commercial Models
Mobile game development is done for different revenue models. Games can be developed to be used as payable downloads, subscription formats, free-to- play or advertising-supported.
Game Genres
There are a myriad of game formats available such as puzzles, action, adventure, role playing games (RPG), strategy, sport, and education.
Technology
Mobile game development uses different technologies to maximize user engagement -
- Location based games are based on geo-location technology such as GPS. These games incorporate the player's coordinates and movement within the game.
- Augmented Reality games use the gamer’s location and generate graphics atop it and use that for playing the game.
- Multiplayer mobile games allow multiple players to play either synchronously or asynchronously. The players connect over a network or through technologies such as Bluetooth.
