Gaming on the go, press pause

Mobiles expanded the video game market to a whole new audience.

People who didn't use to play suddenly started spending a huge amount of time playing on their mobile devices.

Angry Birds from Rovio Entertainment was downloaded by more than 1.7 billions people (yes, you read it correctly, billions...).

Quite impressive knowing that a game reaching 1 million sales can be considered a best-seller. All the more taking into account that there isn't more than a few such games a year.

But apart from changing consuming habits, mobiles introduced some important variations in the way we interact with games.

Good mobile games make those inherent to their design.

The main two are quite well known:

- shorter playing sessions ( a few minutes compared to half an hour and more on console games)

- more frequent sessions (as often as 10 times a day on games relying on energy such as city builders)

Apart from that, there is an important concept that I found to be too often overlooked by designers.

Mobile gaming is, guess what, mobile...

That is to say that people playing will be in situations where they can't give their full attention to the game.

They may be in a bus, paying attention not to miss their station.

They may be walking in the streets, having to watch for traffic.

They may encounter friends and pause to say hello.

All kind of situations where they are not watching their mobile screen.

There are lots of ways for a designer to take that into consideration, but what I prefer is what I call "the never ending pause"

It's really quite simple and can be done with one rule only:

Nothing should ever happen within the game without player interaction

This means that whatever action that has been planned into the game will only happen at a suitable time for the user.

It means I can look up and check the next bus station without fear of loosing.

I am not penalized for not giving my full attention to the game.

When you think about it, that's a big difference from hardcore gamers' titles.

That doesn't imply fast-paced action games cannot exist on mobiles and Real Racing 3 does a pretty good job.

But while, at times of writing, it is ranked 31 among top grossing apps in the French iPhone App Store. It is ranked 6 on iPad.

Meaning it is better ranked on the device used on the couch, in non-mobile situations.

Remember Angry Birds?

This is a nearly perfect example of a "never ending pause" (you could argue, that some Birds require interaction after you shot them. Given that's about 1 second of your attention though, you can safely consider it a "never ending pause").

Still not convinced? Check the iPhone App Store top grossing rankings and just count non-action games.

At times of writing all the games from the top 10 grossing iPhone French App Store are non-action games...

Credits: Original design by N. Lochet (based on Space Invaders start screen)