New challenges for mobile game developers, says association

By Digital News Asia August 1, 2014

Mobile game developers going to need bigger ad budgets to compete
SEA games industry earned US$560mil in 2012, to reach US$1bil by 2015

New challenges for mobile game developers, says association THE mobile games market is getting more competitive and it is becoming harder to self-publish such games, said the Malaysian Mobile Content Provider Association (MMCP).

Mobile game developers are going to need increasingly bigger advertising and promotion budgets to compete, and the easiest way to achieve this is via partnerships with mobile games publishers, the association said in a statement.

Large publishers like Electronic Arts (EA) and Sega are testing new native ad formats in their flagship games as they eventually aim to launch them as free-to-play (F2P) games.

In 2014, smaller game developers will follow close behind, pushing the frontiers of what‘s possible for mobile advertising, the MMCP said.

“Malaysia has seen a positive growth in terms of companies involved in the games industry,” said MMCP president Johary Mustapha, adding that credit should be given to national ICT custodian Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC).

As part of its role in managing the Multimedia Super Corridor Project (MSC Malaysia), MDeC has also been looking into ways to develop the creative content industry, including games.

A number of homegrown games companies have been created, but this number pales in comparison with that in the United States and Europe, said Johary.

According to a survey by Niko Partners, in 2012 the games industry in South-East Asia earned more than US$560 million, expected to reach US$1 billion in 2015.

“The game industry has seen a strong demand coming from the Chinese market, fuelled by a shift of low- to middle-income earners,” said Johary.

“Malaysian companies need to ensure that localisation, especially in Chinese languages, is a priority,” he added.

The number of gamers in South-East Asia is also expected to increase to around 100 million.

New challenges for mobile game developers, says association “Malaysia is ranked 4th within the six South-East Asian countries. I feel that both the public and private sector in Malaysia could do more to spur the games ecosystem, especially to put more effort into ensuring sufficient numbers of game developers are churned out … via the education system,” said Johary (pic).

“I have seen game-related design courses being introduced by various universities and colleges such as Multimedia University, LimKokWing and KDU University College.