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THE MOBILE GAMES MARKETA report by Elliot HallamMobile Game MarketingIntroductionThe mobile games market is one of the fastest growing markets out there. Over the past decade the mobile games market has grown from what was a small unheard of market to a large wealthy and fast growing market. The growth of technology has had a huge impact on the mobile games market. The better the technology is the better the hardware gets and mobile games get better. However mobile games do not have to be all flashy and shiny to generate substantial amounts of income. In fact some of the highest revenue generated for certain mobile games are very simple and what you would thing easily built games. Games such as candy crush saga and flappy bird both are simple games with simple graphics but have generated enormous amounts of revenue.History of the Mobile Games MarketMobile gaming has shot up during the past decade. Since the introduction of Apple’s first iPhone in 2007, mobile gaming has become a great option for developers to produce games for. An article by Chris Wright was written about the first ever mobile game. It reads ‘In the beginning, there was snake’. Snake was the first ever mobile video game to come about. The game consisted of a few black cubes that followed each other to resemble a snake on a green background. You had to pick up the next black dot to grow your snake without touching the edge of the screen. Doing so will make you fail and you will be granted a score based on how much black dots you gathered to grow your snake.It’s pretty crazy to think how far mobile games have come from back in 1997 when snake made its first appearance. Up to now where we get in game purchasable items. Can you imagine purchasing black blobs for snake? According to theesa website, it is predicted that snake was featured on 350 million mobile phones when the game was released. This game was a huge success and got the mobile games industry to wear it is now because of it.Mobile games are great for getting the average person to try out video games in a method you may not think of at first. Most people in the world carry mobile phones whereas not everyone would own a games console or a computer to play video games on. This opens doors for more people to try out games in general.The mobile games industry has grown to a very viable market with billions of dollars of revenue being generated world-wide every year. This number is fast growing too, who knows how much money the mobile games market will be generating in the upcoming years, however we can definitely estimate that it will be a huge sum of money.User SurveyA user survey was created and handed out to people to answer. The survey got a pretty good response in terms of people to answer it. There was an even match of male to female answers. The age range of people answering was highest between 16 to 18 years of age where as only one survey was completed for ages 25 upwards.This is a great age range for people answering the questions because mobile games tend to be more popular with people who are between 16 and 25 years of age.05143500There were a total of 26 people who answered the user survey. A record of people walking in and out of the refractory was gathered. A total of 144 people passed through the refractory. From the research gathered, people seem to play mobile games but spend little amounts of money on them. A good solution for this to devise a suitable method of generating revenue would be to make the game free to play and have adverts in the game. Another solution would be to have in game purchasable content such as cosmetic items or power ups. I understand that the data may not be accurate, this is because with a question like have you ever played mobile games, and they might be inclined to answer it based on if they have played mobile games on their own devices, when they may have played mobile games on other peoples devices such as a friend or family member.Mobile Game MonetizationMonetization within mobile games is what makes the mobile game market as big as it is today in terms of generating huge amounts of money. There are many type of methods developers use to generate income. Some are more successful than others which is why developers tend to do a lot of research into good ways of generating income through their games before releasing them. Monetization within games is generated all around the world, this helps make the mobile games market remain as big as it is and keep it growing bigger each year.Bar chart of Mobile Game Monetization World Wide in 2013In 2013 mobile games generated more than 12 billion in revenue. In a report that was posted on newzoo, the mobile games market is predicted to double in size making it worth almost 24 billion dollars. The bar chart featured show that Asia Pacific has generated the most revenue during the year 2013 with almost 6 billion in revenue. Middle East & Africa is shown to have generated the least amount of revenue with 260 million dollars during 2013. It would seem right for Asia Pacific to be hugely ahead that Middle East & Africa for generating revenue due to its massive lead in technology. The more people who have mobile phones, the more mobile games are going to be played.Revenue Generation MethodsThere are many methods used to generate revenue for mobile games. One of the more common methods for generating revenue is to make the game free and have adverts in the game. The adverts would play to the corner of the game in the menu of between certain levels of the game, Just enough so the user doesn’t feel overwhelmed by them but they are aware they are there. This makes people able to advertise things within other people’s mobile games allowing the game author to be able to put their game on the market for free. Doing this still grants the ability to earn money from it, except the money doesn’t come from purchases from or within the game; it comes from the adverts / advertises.Another method that is very common and one of the first to come about is to simple charge the user for the game on the online store. By charging as little as a few pence up to a few pounds can generate lots of revenue if the game gets popular and many people buy it. Online Poll SystemA small poll for how often people play mobile games was made and handed out to people over the internet. I handed it out to a few people for them to answer. The results show that most people play mobile games hardly ever compared to people playing them on a regular basis. The information that was collected for this online poll indicates that most people ‘hardly ever’ play mobile games compared to any other answer. It does show however that the majority of people who answered would play ‘a few times a week’, ‘most days of the week’ or ‘only a few times when I find a new game’ compared to people who answered ‘hardly ever’.The information is displayed how it is due to that fact the poll was handed to mostly console or PC gamers where they are not too interested in playing mobile games. This poll would be more accurate in terms of generating precise information if more people were to answer it and not just a collection of similar opinionated people. The people answering this poll might have also wanted to seem like they don’t want to be known for playing too much mobile games as not many people answered it they might think it would be easy for the creator to find out their answer.Retail SitesCandy Crush Saga one of the most popular mobile games currently on the Apple app store. It has over 120,000 user ratings averaging out with a high rating. A player called Martywoody posted a review about how he downloaded this game from a friend who told him about it and now he is ‘hooked’. The game is free to play but has in game items for players to buy. The top purchases within the app are extra lives and extra moves. Candy Crush Saga gives users a certain amount of lives and moves. After you have used them up you have to buy additional ones to progress and keep playing. Once the player is ‘hooked’ on the game they would be buying more and more lives and moves. This is a great way of generating revenue for the mobile games market.The Google play app store is another great store where you can buy mobile games. Plants vs Zombies is a popular game that is currently very high in the charts of games. The game is sold as a one-time payment method for 69 pence. This game has over 84 thousand people that have rated it. It has an overall high rating. More than 260 thousand people have recommended this on social media sites.Data ErrorsI appreciate that there are errors in my data that I gathered. The data that is gathered is not always exact; in fact in most cases it will be false to some extent. For example If I was gathering data on how tall certain people are, I could devise a series of questions on a survey for people to complete with the primary question being the height of the person. That data can become false due to the fact humans are 4cm taller when they are laid down. So the person would normally measure themselves against a wall standing up when if they were laying down the result would be different. This can relate to the questions I asked in my user survey. Some even simple questions such as would you ever pay money on mobile games can lead to containing errors in the data gathered. People could even simply just forget over time that they might have played for a mobile game in the past and not realised. Another error that could often occur with that question is people may have spent money within the mobile game without purchasing the game itself. People may be inclined to answer no because in their mind they haven’t spent money like you normally would think to have on a mobile game but money is still spent. ................
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