Branded Mobile Games—If They Buy It, We Will Build It

By James Quintana Pearce - Thu 16 Aug 2007 04:36 AM PST

The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting interview with Andy Nulman, CMO and president of 8-year-old, Montreal-based Airborne Entertainment, about his view of the mobile game industry. Basically, he thinks that current mobile games based on licensed brands "are bastardized, shrunk-down versions of things that work better in bigger formats elsewhere" which is why the industry isn't as big as people think it should be...and incidentally, those are exactly the sort of games he said Airborne make. However, the company has developed a number of games that let the player interact with the world around them...but the market isn't ready for such innovation. He reckons it will come slowly over the next few years. "Right now we're selling what the market is buying. And that's with no shame. We have a lot of pride in what we do although I'm not going to say that we're making better games than anybody else. When developers say that, well, it's such crap. You're dealing with pixels here. How much better can one company's games be than another's. But that's not really the point. The point is that we all need fans. We don't want, say, moviegoers who see the latest film simply because it's Friday night and the theater is next door. That's what's happening now with mobile games. People play the top few games on the cell phone deck because it's convenient. They play "Tetris" or a game made from a movie because it's recognizable. Those aren't fans of mobile games and that's not the way hits are built. Hits need fans—and eventually we're going to have to find them."

I wonder how prevalent this view is in the mobile games industry? Most seem to see brands as a necessary evil (such as Gonzague de Vallois, who argued they can be a cheap form of marketing, or Matt Gillis from Cosmic Games who said small players needed a big brand to get carriers to get their foot in the door), while a few are willfully abandoning the standard branded format, such as Gamevil, Digital Chocolate or Airplay. But it's the first time I've heard someone effectively say "branded games suck, but it's all that will sell at the moment so we do them"—possibly because it downplays the attractiveness of the current line-up. Few people will come out an say that their company's games aren't any better than anyone elses, but it does support Nulman's point: He feels safe saying that because it's the brand that is important.