Good things come in small packages at Mobile Entertainment 2003

When I first heard about the Mobile Entertainment 2003 (ME 2003) taking place in April at the Business Design Centre (BDC), London I thought: "great, the BDC is a big venue so this is going to be a big exhibition." According to the event organisers, ME 2003 is the world's largest mobile event, so this added to my initial impression that the exhibition was going to be big.

The reality was somewhat different. However, the exhibition, like the market it represents, demonstrated that good things come in small packages.

During the event, the BDC was also hosting the 2003 Materials Testing Trade exhibition in the main hall, which meant that the ME 2003 exhibition was relegated to a much smaller mini-exhibition room. ME 2003 is a business-to-business event comprising of paid seminars as well as a free exhibition, attracting an international audience from mobile entertainment and related industries. In previous years visitors had to pay to get into the exhibition, but with free entry this year I'm guessing that this attracted more people. What did surprise me though, was finding out that more companies exhibited last year than this year. Perhaps this is a sign of today's general economic climate, or maybe an indication of the state of the industry after 12 months of mergers, buyouts, some companies not getting the next round of fundings, hype, market over-confidence, business over-expansion, etc.

Mobile Entertainment encompasses many areas including ringtones, logos, SMS games, WAP games, music, video and Java games. My company did not attend the exhibition last year, but with 2003 being the year when Java phone gaming really starts to take off on a global scale, we felt that our attendance this year was crucial.

The exhibitor list was truly international, with exhibitors from Thailand (Cyberplanet), USA (Comverse), Israel (Cash-U), Finland (CodeToys), Spain (Soul Bytes), Germany (Elkware, Living Mobile), France (Gameloft), Belgium (Flow) and the UK (Distinctive Developments, Opera Telecom, Elite Systems, Abstract Worlds).

Some of the smaller developer companies were pushing individual games, other companies were pushing portfolios, delivery, and billing platforms. Overall, Java games took up a large proportion of the exhibition. Most of the Java games on display at the exhibition could be broken down into the following categories:

1. Remakes of classic branded arcade games
These are generally pretty good reproductions of the original games since today's Java mobile technology is similar in power to the original arcade machines. For example, Distinctive Developments were promoting Space Invaders, and Elite Systems are planning to bring their classic arcade game licenses into the mobile arena - games such as the BombJack and Ikari Warriors.

2. Ports of current popular branded console/PC games
For example Gameloft's Splinter Cell and Rayman games. Since mobiles phones are not as powerful as today's Consoles and PCs, these games quite often look different from the originals, offering a 2D mobile game version of the original 3D title.

3. Media brands moving over to the mobile platform
For example, Codetoys are also bringing popular media brands such as 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' to mobile phones.

4. Translations of current mobile games from a different geographical market
Living Mobile are translating i-mode/i-appli games developed from their Japanese development partners into J2ME games. Cyberplanet are bringing their existing games from Thailand into new geographical markets.

5. As yet unbranded games
This is the area where new unbranded games are created specifically for mobile phones. These games cannot rely on a branded name to sell the game, they sometimes cannot rely on a tried and tested formula since they are a new type of game. This area generally contains new games that you haven't heard of before apart from in the mobile world. They might be based on an existing genre, e.g. racing, puzzle, shooting, or they may have created a new genre for the mobile world. Flow were promoting their new MiniFizz mobile entertainment brands mainly aimed at the female market. At the Elkware stand you could see demos of Dust'N'Dirt, and their latest game S.W.A.T. Sniper. Distinctive Developments were demonstrating racing games like Collision Course and their recent Snowboard-X. Abstract Worlds were showing off StrangeMaze 3D and sneak previewing an early beta of their first person shooter AltShooter 3D. The general hope in this area is that as mobile gaming takes off, these new games will move from being unbranded to becoming established brands.

6. Multi-user
Cash-U were promoting their multi-user and hi-scores gaming platform as well as their portfolio of games. A larger proportion of the games at the show remained single user - in some ways this was a good thing for demonstration purposes since the network coverage inside the building wasn't too good.

Overall, there are bigger gaming exhibitions, but none that are as highly focused in the mobile entertainment area as this one.

Paul Ireland is the director of Abstract Worlds Ltd. (www.abstractworlds.com) a UK-based company specialising in the 3D experience. Paul founded the company in 1998, originally developing 3D accelerated games and applications for PCs, but over the past 2 years the company has applied it's experience to developing a 3D engine and games for the J2ME platform. Prior to Abstract Worlds Ltd., Paul's software development experience spans back to 1982, predominantly in the corporate business arena.