Mobile Games: Challenges and Opportunities.

Mobile games are expected to play significant role in future mobile services by evolving beyond the largely single player titles that currently dominate the market to ones that take advantage expanding mobile phone functionality and the wide demographic of the mobile phone user. However, because of the fragmented nature of the mobile software development market, and the restrictions imposed by the mobile phone hardware, the skills required for games development are more akin to embedded software development and those used in the game development of the early 1980s, rather than those currently practiced amongst console and PC game developers. In the first half of this chapter we discuss the hardware restrictions and the different software environments encountered together with methodologies so that mobile game developers can produce effective designs. Having discussed the challenges in developing mobile games in the second half of the chapter we discuss the opportunities for innovation provided by the mobile phones through both their anywhere connectivity and the ever enhancing feature set. To this end we present examples using Cameras, RFID, Bluetooth, and GPS that illustrate how through careful design mobile games do not simply have to be cut down versions of console games but can provide uniquely mobile gaming experiences