Mobile Content and Application World

Wait, what is a mobile game anyway? Well, you may consider it as any game which is played in a cell phone, or any mobile media or simply wireless. Mobile games bring alternatives in gaming. People usually categorize games into console games, PC games, and handheld games. Mobile game is almost similar to handheld games in physical ways. Tiny screen and can be carried out, etc. But it is integrated with another function of the device such as phone, which a handheld game is not. Mobile games have become a primary entertainment for people. Their phone becomes a multimedia entertainment device. The market for mobile games is good too. With the mobile phone user increasing every year and predicted to reach 220 million in 2009, such a great number if we could say.In past few years mobile gaming had an evolution from black and white games to real-time color games. We can divide mobile games into three types:

• Embedded games: games which are already embedded into the mobile devices by the manufacturer. Example: Snake in all Nokia phones.


• SMS games: games which are using SMS in playing. People send SMS to server and eventually get the result by SMS also. The cost for the player is pretty high since you must pay for the SMS you send.


• Browser games: games which are played using mobile phone’s built in microbrowser. People may play online games through their cellular carrier's or a third-party game provider's game Web site, or download them for offline gaming.

The browser game is the one which is very popular right now. The innovation is very high and likely. The cost is lower than SMS games, and very rich of multimedia content. The development in this games type is great. Right now, people can develop their own mobile games easier than other games. Many of the development tools are free. There is no need to be a big developer to create a good one. Even hobbyist or small production house can develop a mobile game. No wonder there is so many people interested in this.
To develop mobile games, we need a game platform. There are couple platforms in the market. Some of it is:

• J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) is a part of java language developed by SUN microsystems which is optimized for small devices such as mobile phones. J2ME improves mobile phones ability to support games significantly. Almost every phone in the market support java. It has become an industry standard while there are other platform around.


• BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) from Qualcomm. It is a C++ API for mobile platform. It is also a certification and distribution model for getting mobile phone applications out to the audience.


• Mophun created by Synergix Interactive, is a software based gaming console for mobile devices. Sony Ericsson was the first manufacturer to integrate the Mophun games engine in its phones. It is C based.
  
  Another platform is: ExEn, WGE, DoJa, .Net compact Framework, etc.

Most of the resources to develop mobile games are available for free. We can get Java SDK, Wireless Toolkit, emulator from vendor, and many more from the internet. An individual or small group of people may have their own games idea and develop the games themselves. So are you interested?