MOBILE GAMES:A Critical analysis of players and culture

• There is flood of mobile and smart phones in the market now a days. And games are one of the most downloaded category for any smart-phone. So, as there is rise in the number of smartphone and mobile, so there is rise in the games being downloaded for these devices.

• As the popularity of smartphones and tablets continues to expand, gaming will remain a key component in the use of these devices. Although they are never used primarily for gaming, mobile games are the most downloaded application category across most application stores

• “For this reason, mobile gaming will continue to thrive as more consumers expand their use of new and innovative portable connected devices.”

• Gartner defines Gaming ecosystem to include : Hardware, software and online gaming.

• Shanda's game products will become lighter and lighter in the future; it's an update and development of our current game portfolio," said Alan Tan, chief executive officer of Shanda Games Ltd, China's second-largest online game company by market share.

• By "lighter", he referred to games that don't run on client software but enable users to play directly on a Web page. He said Shanda's "massively multiplayer online games" (MMOG), the majority of its portfolio, have been absorbing the features of Web games that provide players with easier access and have easier designs.

• The 'lightness' of these games also mean that players may spend less time and money on them,"

"The increasing capability of handsets, having more games on 'freemium' (under which games can be downloaded free but extras cost money) - in line with Chinese people's paying habits - and an increase in wifi coverage. These are key catalysts to speeding up the growth of smartphone mobile games," said Ray Cheng, the China president of Glu Mobile Inc, a leading publisher of social mobile games worldwide. He predicted that China may surpass the United States as the world's largest mobile gaming market by 2015. He added mobile devices are fighting for users' free time with games, which are taking a growing percentage of all online games.

• High-end graphics have been a feature in all NaturalMotion's games so far, capitalising on its Morpheme animation engine. Another common strand, though, is the way hardcore graphics have been complemented by casual gameplay mechanics: the Backbreaker games are far from full-blown simulations, for example.

• "We want to produce really high-end games for a big mainstream audience," says Reil. "We think it's a big opportunity. There has been a belief in the industry that casual games are 2D and hardcore games are 3D, but that doesn't make any sense. The reason has been that there was no platform to deploy high-end content to casual users. Flash can't do it. But now smartphones and tablets can."

• Reil believes that mobile devices will overtake even Xbox 360 and PS3 for graphics quality in the next three years, based on the roadmaps of companies like Imagination Technologies and Nvidia.

• An increasing number of young Chinese citizens prefer mobile games over traditional online games that involve players having to sit beside a desk with an electronic screen showing the action.

Effect of games

• A psychotherapist (Klein, 1984) noticed that some of his teenaged clients exhibited what he would term addictive behavior regarding video game play (e.g.,

• stealing money or spending lunch money to play videogames

• Experimental, longitudinal and meta-analytic data indicate that playing violent video games increases aggression, hostility, and aggressive thoughts

• Games with positive content show positive effects• The Energization Theory of motivation and emotion• (e.g., Brehm, Wright, Solomon, Silka, & Greenberg, 1983)

predicts effort and energy mobilization to be greatest for a difficult, but possible task where success is rewarded.

• Videogames are an excellent example of what this theory of motivation predicts to be the most highly motivating tasks (Dill & Dill, 1998)

• video game effects literature shows, through a variety of research methodologies, a consistent link between violent video game play and aggression

• For example, Carnagey and Anderson (2005) found that when a car racing game rewarded players for violent acts, those players were more likely to attack an opponent than when the same game punished players for aggression.

• Konijn, Bijvank, & Bushman (2007) found that adolescent boys who identified with aggressive characters in immersive, realistic games were most aggressive, going so far as to blast opponents with noise levels they believed would cause permanent hearing damage

• Researchers have recently begun to focus attention on stereotypical portrayals of women and minorities in video games and the adverse effects of these characterizations

• Maximum revenue comes from gaming consoles like – Xbox, Kinect, Playstation etc. For 2010, more than two-thirds of gaming revenue was collected through gaming consoles.

• For years to come, in-app purchases, micro-transaction and virtual good purchase would drive the gaming industry.

• In future, gaming would be used as a medium for advertisements.• The same game would be made available in all the platforms.

Very recent example for this is that Angry Birds is now available on iPhone, Android, Google Chrome and WP7.

• Softwares would lose some of its market share to mobile gaming in years to come.

• Online gaming used for social and casual segment.