Hi, great forums u got here, almost as good for game design problems as the articles. yes i know alot of people want to make mmorpgs and how its hard and all, and making it on a mobile phone will be even harder, i really just want to know if there is an audience out there willing to: A) play it B) possibly pay for it ive already made a sort of online world using flash as the client and java for the server, where users could walk around, talk and interact a little with the environment, so i dont think its too past me to make something simple on phone. also if anyone knows other forums where i could put this question to a larger gaming forum that would be helpful too...

This might be of some interest to you.

shmoove

Quote: Original post by DaemonSpawn
[...], i really just want to know if there is an audience out there willing to:
A) play it
B) possibly pay for it

A) Sure, if you can provide something good.
B) If it's good and unique, I guess so.

Quote:
ive already made a sort of online world using flash as the client and java for the server, where users could walk around, talk and interact a little with the environment, so i dont think its too past me to make something simple on phone.

The difference is that the mobile world adds lots of technical restrictions to your idea. Flash-like interfaces will not be possible (as of yet) and bandwidth is very very limited.

I'd first focus on Palms and WinCE devices. I don't know if there is a market for this idea (yet), though.

Quote:
also if anyone knows other forums where i could put this question to a larger gaming forum that would be helpful too...

Is there something bigger and better than GameDev? I doubt that!
(Do I get a cookie now?[wink])

Good luck,
Pat.

Quote: Original post by shmoove
This might be of some interest to you.
shmoove

Thanks for the interesting read!

woah, nice article, didnt know there wos one already made, tho its in swedish.

I was planning on using j2me rather than flash (i know how slow that is, i got a 400Mhz pocket pc which runs my rpg at bout 10fps) and not many people have pocket pcs.

i forgot to mention, but one of my main concerns was the price of the networking, as not only will people have to pay for the game fee, but also the GPRS cost(usually 1cent AUD). ill have to check about 3G costs, probably better anyway, they got faster bandwidth.

even if there isnt a market, ill probably still make it anyway so me n my friends can play around on it

Quote: Original post by DaemonSpawn
woah, nice article, didnt know there wos one already made, tho its in swedish.

The text in the screenshots is german, not swedish [wink].

Quote:
even if there isnt a market, ill probably still make it anyway so me n my friends can play around on it

Absolutely!

Sega's not yet released Pocket Kingdom is a mobile phone MMORPG, and one of the only interesting N-Gage games to date.

Quote: Original post by DaemonSpawn
i forgot to mention, but one of my main concerns was the price of the networking, as not only will people have to pay for the game fee, but also the GPRS cost(usually 1cent AUD). ill have to check about 3G costs, probably better anyway, they got faster bandwidth.

Well, the costs will vary greatly between network operators. Each one has a different way of charging for this traffic. Some charge a flat monthly fee, some charge by time, some by the amount of data transferred, etc. The prices also vary hugely between territories.

With 3G networks though, I think the tendency is not to charge for the actual data, but instead to charge per content. I know of one provider (in Sweden and Denmark) that we work with, where you pay a monthly subscription fee for their "Gaming plan" for instance, and you can play online games as much as you want. Or you can pay for a single game, for a determined amount of time. They don't charge anything for the traffic.

One of the biggest hurdles in my opinion for the mobile MMOGs is the short gaming sessions. Classic MMORPG require you to play for a long time to actually get something done, and players often play for hours on end. With mobile games, players usually play for a few minutes at a time. The design of the game has to take this into consideration if you want to have any success.

shmoove

Quote: Original post by darookie

Quote: Original post by DaemonSpawn
woah, nice article, didnt know there wos one already made, tho its in swedish.

The text in the screenshots is german, not swedish [wink].

oops, looked at the text under it -_-'

Pocket Kingdom looks sorta.....not what i had in mind (non-iso?). sounds like digimon (train your character in sigle player, then play vs other ppl)

Have you approached a publisher yet with your game idea?.. also remember that a mobile game should be developed to run on many different handsets (which means lotsa time spent on porting and lotsa testing) - your game would be good for 3G... but industry research says 3G will not be a 'mass-market' medium until about 2006/2007.