EA founder envisions the social mobile game

Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins may have built his career on complex, engrossing games that form the foundation of every hard-core gamer's library, but now that Hawkins is CEO of a mobile company, Digital Chocolate, his approach to games is a little more subdued.

Instead of virtually recreating the excitement of a touchdown pass on the gridiron, Hawkins wants his new games to have the complexity of a slot machine. He is evangelizing a new concept in mobile gaming — one he calls mobile games 2.0 — that stresses the social and lifestyle aspects of the mobile phone rather than the adrenaline of the console gaming world. In the process, he wants to use mobile to expand the concept of gaming far beyond its limited audience in the wired world.

“There is a whole lot of statistical evidence showing that a whole lot of people have started using [short message service] and [wireless application protocol] browsing regularly,” Hawkins said. “Only five percent have actually downloaded a game, though. The most disappointing thing is we don't even have much repeat business. Even active customers are buying about three games year, which is not much considering how inexpensive they are.”

The problem is that the industry focuses on mobile games as isolated applications, Hawkins said — as a way to kill time rather than as a piece of a larger social puzzle. Almost all successful mobile applications have been communicative applications: voice, e-mail, SMS. If game developers and carriers can make gaming a social event, the game will assume key lifestyle status in the user's mind, not just as a waste of a few minutes at the bus stop, Hawkins said.

Digital Chocolate has already tackled the issue head on, creating a game called “AvaPeeps,” now being trialed on the Amp'd mobile networks. Hardly what most people would consider a game, “AvaPeeps” allows a user to customize a mobile avatar, which he or she can use to interact with other people's avatars over the networks. Though the choices are more limited than, say, a virtual world game like “Second Life” or “The SIMS,” avatars can flirt, go on virtual dates and gossip, creating online friendships and even relationships that can extend beyond the mobile world to real life.

A game like “AvaPeeps” is the culmination, however, of what Hawkins feels will be a much more gradual migration to social gaming. Things like simple leader boards can be customized to include more insular groups of friends rather than rate millions of strangers against one other. Messaging features can be embedded in games to allow gamers to communicate with one another and virally market their favorite games to other friends. And while head-to-head, real-time gaming will likely appeal only to a small fraction of the mobile user base, simple, asynchronous games will allow friends and strangers to compete casually in their own time (quiz games and turn-by-turn games, for instance).

The 3-D graphics, action and exhilaration of games are fine for a few, but for most, the game will be a mask for the community, Hawkins said. “Mobile is a social medium rather than a content medium,” Hawkins said. “If we can add social and emotional value to the mobile game, then we can turn something we charge $3 a month for into something we charge $10 to $30 a month for.”