ESA welcomes latest member DeNA
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a U.S. game industry trade group, has announced that DeNA, a developer of social mobile games, has joined its ranks. With the inclusion of DeNA, the ESA now boasts of 36 companies from throughout the U.S., as well as several other countries, all representing the various aspects of the game industry. DeNA will bring its expertise in social mobile gaming into the mix, which is expected to be a major benefit to the trade group because of the increasing focus the industry has begun to place on the mobile space.
Social mobile games growing in popularity
Social mobile games are extremely popular. Companies like Zynga and Storm8 have pioneered this field of gaming, showing just how willing mobile consumers are to play these games over the past few years. Mobile games themselves are widely popular, but when social elements are introduced into these games, they become much more enjoyable for some consumers. As such, social mobile gaming has begun to gain the full support of the game industry, with interest even coming from developers that have traditionally been solely involved in console gaming.
DeNA finding success around the world
DeNA is based in Japan but recently established a strong presence in California through its acquisition of San Francisco-based Ngmoco last year. This acquisition provided DeNA with a significant amount of attention throughout the global game industry and positioned the developer to enter into partnerships in China, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, and elsewhere. DeNA has established a very extensive network of connections, making its social mobile games widespread and common in several of the world’s most popular gaming markets.
Developer poised to compete with GREE more aggressively
The developer’s primary rival in the social mobile gaming space is GREE, a Japanese social networking and Internet media company with a heavy hand in the game industry. GREE is responsible for many of the most popular mobile games in Japan and the rest of the Asian market and is one of the reasons DeNA has had to expand into other markets to find success. Backed by the ESA, DeNA expects to find the clout it needs to compete with GREE more effectively.
Survey highlights the issues that gamers have with mobile gaming
Mobile gaming has become a fun and important pastime for a wide variety of consumers all over the world. Like other consumers, gamers are a very picky bunch, and anything they perceive as a significant challenge to their gaming experience could have major consequences for mobile gaming. A new survey from Ebuyer, an e-commerce retailer based in the United Kingdom, highlights the challenges that face mobile gaming, and what gamers consider to be one of the most significant problems with most of today’s popular mobile games.
Poor controls cause irritation for gamers
According to the Ebuyer survey poor controls are one of the most problematic issue facing mobile gaming today. Given that the vast majority of these games are developed with a touch screen in mind, creating a control interface that can be both accurate and effective has been a serious challenge for nearly all developers of mobile games. Touch screens are not designed specifically for games, thus have limited functionality when it comes to gaming. According to the survey, 23% of gamers said that controls were often so irritating that they refused to play mobile games.
Micro-transactions and bugs are also a top issue
Controls are not the only problems gamers have with the mobile space, of course. The survey shows that 20% of gamers claim that micro-transactions are problematic in some regard. These gamers suggest that micro-transactions are either completely unjustified or that they are too difficult to use. In some cases, a poorly implemented micro-transaction system has led gamers to spend significantly more money than they had initially intended because of their repeated efforts to get the system to work properly. Bugs and glitches were also a problem for gamers. Approximately 17% of the survey’s respondents claimed that bugs were irritating enough to stop them from playing games.
Advertising proves to be the most problematic issue
The chief issue that gamers have with the mobile gaming space, however, is in-game advertisements. More than 40% of the survey’s respondents claimed that these advertisements were a very problematic issue and that they would be willing to pay significant fees in order to not have to see these advertisements at all. While these problems represent aspects of mobile gaming that are well on their way to becoming infamous, finding solutions to these problems is likely to be a difficult task for developers.
