Friday View: Mobile casino challenges
eGR Mobile Intelligence speaks to Alex Cohen, chief product officer at Akamon, about the challenges of designing casino games on the mobile platform
eGR Mobile Intelligence (eMI): How important is it to have specific mobile expertise if youâre developing for that platform?
Alex Cohen (AC): I think there are a couple of aspects to it. One is being able to design games and lead teams on mobile design fairly effectively, and the other is to have a bit of core domain experience that helps guide the product. Mobile design is something that can be acquired fairly easily, but generally domain experience about what makes a good gambling product is something that transcends whatever the platform is.
eMI: What are some of the main challenges of designing for mobile?
AC: I think in general when you translate games from a web product to mobile itâs quite a bit more constrained in terms of being able to present things to a player well and when you look at many games thereâs quite a bit of information that goes into the interface. In order to make it a good experience it needs to be communicated very quickly and the challenge is being able to do that on a mobile device where you have fairly limited screen area. It really drives you to design the game towards focusing on the elements that are important first.
eMI: And does that differ between other devices?
AC: I think it does, the biggest distinction is the case between handhelds and tablet as on tablet you have quite a bit more real estate to play around with the UI design and to design the game. They also tend to be more powerful devices to begin with. Handhelds are more of a challenge just because theyâre fairly limit, and any touch areas have to be designed to what would fit a finger and any game has quite a few buttons that need to be accessed.
eMI: Has what the average customer expects on mobile increased?
AC: People always want new features that trigger players and encourage players to become savvy with them. Thereâs always going to be a challenge in making games that will appeal to players as your core player gets to be more sophisticated, and your competitors get more sophisticated as well.
eMI: Is there any one thing that needs to be kept in mind when developing for mobile?
AC: I think in general itâs to preserve the core experience of the game while doing it for a different use case. If you can understand the use case for the mobile device and understand the emotional experience behind playing a game, I think thatâs the big part of figuring out how to do good mobile game design.