Creativity MIA in mobile gaming

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.-Hollywood and gaming have been cohorts for quite a while, but their relationship is budding in new ways as film and TV properties look to drive their brand beyond the big screen.
Whereas mobile games may have been an afterthought following the typical course of production, there’s a small group of writers, directors and producers looking to mix gaming into their creative process-thinking about such opportunities early into each project’s development.
During the opening keynote at the third annual Hollywood and Games Summit, director and writer Clive Barker talked about the evolution he’s gone through over the years. So much so, he said, that he’s grown to think of gaming as the next frontier for creative expression.
“The gaming world is just the beginning, we are at the beginning,” he said. “We’re inventing this as we go along, there are no rules. . This is an area of work where I think artists of every kind have huge potential. I mean it’s a wonderful playground and we’ve only just begun.”
While Barker mostly talked about gaming in general, and offered few insights into the particular mobile extensions of his writing, numerous gaming analysts say his approach is unique, albeit a welcome development in the gaming space.
“When you talk about mobile games it’s basically another form of entertainment,” said Tuong Huy Nguyen, senior analyst at Gartner Inc. “I see mobile games as an extension of that.”
More people are involving themselves in the mobile medium, Nguyen said, but few are involved throughout the entire creative process. “I think the learning curve for people in the industry in general is how to approach mobile,” he said. “Everyone should really approach it in that fashion as opposed to some kind of competing technology.”
While writers like Barker might regularly think about and imagine various extensions for their brand in console gaming, it’s extremely rare for mobile to enter the equation, said Seamus McAteer, chief product architect and senior analyst at M:Metrics Inc. The mobile gaming environment plays best to casual gaming, he said, thereby limiting the scope of rich ideas creators may bring to the table.
“It’s a rarity. If you look at what gets traction in mobile it’s retro, it’s fairly simple card games, it’s a lot of casual type games, not sort of deeply immersive type games with more evolved storylines,” he said. “It’s probably becoming even rare still, as the focus increasingly shifts toward casual on mobile handsets.”
Nonetheless, McAteer sees plenty of room and opportunity for more creative minds in the development of games-if only to shake up the status quo.
“It will be helpful to have more creativity in mobile gaming and to have a hit outside of the same cast of characters we see dominate the top 10 in the U.S., so I think it’s good if we can engage creative talent in mobile to do that,” he said.
“People need to pull the plug on the real world once in a while, more now than ever,” he said. In this “aggressive” and “out of control” world, people are looking for an escape, he added.