Don't worry about monetisation, be happy.
The Mobile Games Forum conference in London sprang into life in the final session today, with a pair of panels focusing on game pricing and VC investment.
People were disagreeing, which is always a good sign that there's an issue to chew over. That issue was pricing and business models: how people make money from mobile games.
It's clear there's a significant clash between the 'traditional' mobile games model of charging five quid to download a game, and newer Web 2.0 'freemium' models, where the game is free to download and/or play, with money coming from micro-transactions, advertising, or Google/Apple/EA/Etc buying you before your VC money runs out.
The traditional camp worry about price erosion on iPhone's App Store – that once consumers twig they can buy games for 59p / 99 cents, they'll never go back to paying more.
It's an understandable claim – there was much talk of the importance of word of mouth in promoting mobile games today – people recommending games to their friends.
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Which has unintended consequences when the recommender is paying less than a quid for a game on iPhone, and their friend is being charged a fiver for it on their less capable feature phone.
You could say the publishers worried about this sort of thing need to move with the times – figure out ways to distribute games to big audiences for free, and then make money from them however you can.
If the game is good enough – so the theory goes – making money won't be a problem. Zynga's monster revenues or Playfish's monster exit are generally cited.
However, proof that the freemium model works well on iPhone remains cloudy. If Zynga and Playfish are two of the smartest companies operating this business model, why are they so uninterested in iPhone and other smartphones?
It can't just be that Playfish boss Kristian Segerstrale still suffers nightmares about handset fragmentation and dodgy branded titles, so doesn't want to venture back to his old stomping ground.
Besides, it's not as if premium games aren't making money on the App Store: check EA and Gameloft's occupancy of the Top Grossing chart for proof of that.
In short, there are lots of possible pricing models swirling around on iPhone (which by extension means they'll be swirling around on other smartphones once the platform owners get their acts together), with no obvious correct choice to make lots of money and live happily ever after.
This is why the iPhone gaming world is so interesting, obviously. Nobody knows quite what Apple is thinking, nobody knows which monetisation horse to back for the long (or even medium) term, and nobody has the cast-iron secrets of App Store success. It's fascinating.
One thing's for sure: the mobile games industry is buzzing again. Two years ago at the last Mobile Games Forum before the App Store launched, people were miserable.
All the innovative independent developers were glumly thinking of hightailing it to DS, while the big publishers were grimly boasting about their ability to port to hundreds of handsets that nobody bought games on, while paying huge sums of money to make dodgy quality branded games.
It's a different story now. I suspect a lot of people aren't making much more money than they were two years ago, but they at least have the hope of growth to come – from iPhone and its rivals as they kick into gear.
For the people (including journalists) who endured the tough times, 2010 is all about the positivity. Which may sound rather hippyish, but is still true.
You can read all of ME's coverage of the Mobile Games Forum by clicking here.
