August 20th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »
Andy Nulman, the guy who co-founded the Montreal Just For Laughs comedy festival, writer of the book I Almost Killed George Burns and now CMO and President of Airborne Entertainment thinks things should change fast.
At the Playback Magazine Mobile Entertainment Forum, Andy held a speech called “Mobile: What Sucks and How to Fix It” about the problems he sees facing our industry. HollyWoodReporter.com had a session with Andy about his thoughts which we summarize below. For the full detailed version, go here.
In the interview, Andy explains that even though Airborne Entertainment brings many branded mobile games to the market today, they do forecast a switch to games that are made for mobile. Andy thinks that most of the media formats will only work on big screens like TV and PC. The sole reason for Airborne Entertainment to publish branded games is to follow the market as the market is not ready to make the switch just like that.
When it comes to original concepts, Andy explains to have different thoughts on mobile games than Trip Hawkins. Andy doesn’t believe that community is the key to success, but rather changes the vision of the mobile phone as a desktop to the mobile phone as a mouse. Andy believes the phone should allow you to interact with things that happen around you.
"Community this and community that. Hey, have you ever heard of the game Solitaire? It’s one of the most popular games in the world and it’s just one person enjoying a game all by themselves. Nothing wrong with that.”
By creating such games, Andy hopes to attract non-gaming consumers. Gamers are not attractive in his mind as they form only a small percentage of the total consumer base of mobile phones that are interested in entertainment.
Looking at the mobile phone, Andy even tells the interviewer that he doesn’t think the mobile phone should be considered as a real mobile gaming device. It’s simply too small for big fun.
“Find me someone, please, find me anyone who’s wild about mobile games. Find the mobile game fan who eats, sleeps, and breathes mobile gaming the way some gamers do on the PC or on the console. You can’t do that because the passion isn’t there.”
Airborne Entertainment already has the next step in mobile gaming ready according to Andy. The problem however seems to be in marketing as the operators don’t know how to categorize and understand this next level of mobile gaming. Andy thinks the market will need another two years to evolve far enough to be ready.
