Many years ago, after the era of the dinosaur but before app stores, I recall talking to what was then Macrospace (now Glu) about its pioneering multiplayer game Cannons Tournament.
It was a kind of glorified battleships game that achieved a certain popularity in Asian markets like Singapore as I recall.
Now, you'd think Macrospace would have been delighted about this, but the game's success was bittersweet. Cannons Tournament very stickiness meant that instead of playing it for a few days, completing it and then paying to download another Macrospace title, consumers were playing this one for months.
So what should have been cause for celebration was actually a bit of a commercial failure. But maybe Cannons Tournament was just ahead of its time. Not so much for its multi-play dimension (jury's still out on that) but for that long term addictiveness.
Here's why. Last week I spoke to Russian games developer Dynamic Pixels. Until a couple of years ago it was unexceptional – making downloadable java games and hoping for deck placement. Then it made a aquarium-based tamogotchi-style game called AquaPhone. It conceived the game as a free giveaway, which would be monetised when users bought in-game extras using premium SMS.
At first it was hard to convince distribution partners (even though Dynamic Pixels was offering a rev share on the PSMS), but the gradual success of the game soon converted them. Today, AquaPhone has a user base of over 1.4 million, and the publisher claims to have generated well over $1 million. And that's after onerous operator PSMS shares have been deducted.
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Dynamic Pixels is not alone. Former Telcogames founder Jamie Conyngham is, for example, currently establishing a company called thedojo dedicated to the same strategy.
With free and cheap games available on the many app stores, browser-based Flash games taking off in the East, and micro-payment games like AquaPhone being given away free on portals, you have to wonder again about the future of the old-school model of a paid download on an operator deck.
It's under pressure to say the least. But I'll admit this is a very Western European analysis. I was speaking to an operator games manager who halted my pontificating when he reminded me of the vast user base in developing markets, still playing Java puzzlers and even text-based quizzes from the operator deck. That told me.
