Issues in Mobile Games Development

Vasuki a/p Balasantharan, Shubashini a/p Subrayan, Sweeta a/p Subramanian

Faculty of Computer Science (Software Engineering), UNISEL, Bestari Jaya, Selangor
vasukibalasantharan@yahoo.com
ashini_30@yahoo.com
sweetamanian95@gmail.com

Abstract- Mobile games development is

new and has been growth of late. With the
rapid growing within industry, the
evolution of industry to learn the previous
mistakes has been shortened. The
inexperienced developers are trying to
design applications based on the set of
design principles. This is providing some
problems during the development process
and can be seen to be stifling innovation.
Thus, many developers grasp on the shift
between
the
traditional
software
engineering and implicate these design on
mobile devices. So, this paper will
analyses the issues in mobile games
development.

Keywords: mobile games,

development, mobile hardware

I.

mobile

INTRODUCTION

The mobile games development has

growth dramatically in recent years. This
growth can be attributed to the different
gaming platforms currently available at the
market such as mobile devices, handheld
computers and so on[1]. The mobile

phones appearance, sophistication and so

on are the common feature where provides
platform for games for its user. Besides,
the developers should be aware for the
technical and non-technical aspects during
the mobile games development process. At
the same time, the developers should
decide the graphical specs, type and other
aspects according to the model of mobile
phones during developing the games for
the mobile.

The most important aspects during

developing mobile games are the entire
game plot and the game play involved. As
the performance of games are more
efficiency, the numbers of people who will
download the game will be high.
Nowadays, the users feel more easier to
play even complex mobile games in their
touch screen mobile device. Some
companies had started to use offshore
development centres to develop their
games because developing mobile games
is a very expensive process[2].

Furthermore, with the widespread

users of games using the mobile platform
is estimated that already booming profits

will reach $ 11 billion in 2014. This

statement clearly shows that the growing
field of mobile games development will
reach a point where the profits are high. As
the number of users using mobile games
had increased, therefore the numbers of
mobile games developers had increased
too. The mobile phone companies which
are developing mobile games are
Samsung, Nokia, Apple and Blackberry[3].
These companies uses various platforms
and each platform have to develop
natively.

Moreover, the users also will

browse the mobile games according to
their categories rather than segregating the
games according to the platform. The
examples of game categories are War,
Racing, Action, Sports, Strategy and so on.
Thus, these companies currently test their
mobile games with the seasoned
professional gamers and users to do an
overall feedback to market their games
performance in a better way. This paper is
organized by section II related work,
section III discussion, section IV
conclusion
and
section
V
acknowledgement.

II.

RELATED WORK

A. Hardware Limitations

Hardware limitations is an important

issue in mobile games development
because it is difficult to overcome. The
developers will limit the users movement
or the games requirements in common

mobile games. For example, since other

hardware is used, its important to take
them into an account in location based
games. Since location based games are
rely on data or GPS connection to play, the
user unable to have this one or more of
services available, it is incapable to play
this mobile games. If the mobile games
need data to be transferred statistics, scores
or saved the current game, the data transfer
can be saved without any harm to the
game. However, there are some mobile
games that will accept GPS signal as a
hardware limitation and attempt to make
the game playable to avoid the negative
experience.

Figure 1.1 : Hardware limitation in

location based games

Besides, although mobile phones is

getting bigger in size but they are still
limited in hardware. As the hardware is
limited, the development in mobile games
also limited. This aspect makes the 3D
graphical games are not popular among the
users because most current mobile phones
are not optimized for such kind of
hardware intensity. It is expected that
within a few years, the mobile phones
memory, processor and graphics capability
will reach the todays computers
requirements. This will help to full fill the
mobile games development which will
provide a richer game play experiences,

and at the same time will simplify

consolidation of the user game experience
to the various of mobile phones[6].

Moreover, when the mobile phones

hardware is limited, the user cannot
download or installed many games in their
mobile because their phone space is not
enough. Mostly, all the mobile games will
occupy big space in the mobile memory.
So, when the user installed a few mobile
games in their mobile phones, then the
mobile memory space will full and the
mobile start to hang up and the mobile will
be heat faster[7]. This will cause the user
couldnt use any features in the mobile at
that time. So, the hardware limitations give
a big impact in mobile games development
in current days.

Figure 1.2 : Hardware limitations in

mobile

B. User Interface

User interface means where human

interacts with computers. An user interface

is a linkage between human and computer

device that allows to interact and exchange
of information within devices.[4] There are
many types of user interface such as
Command Line Interface, Graphical User
Interface and so on. The command line
interface will accept requests made by the
user and display the respective results on
the screen. The graphical user interface
will accept requests made by the user
through keyboard or mouse and display
articulated graphical on the terminal
screen.[5]

Refer to Sumit Sharma(2011),

when developing mobile games, there is
no any standard of rules that need to
follow to design its game interface. There
are various mechanism and have various
way to implement effective controls for
each different mobile games. In addition,
some aspects in user interface of a mobile
game are shared according to the genre
while others will distinctive for various
genre. For example, a mobile game should
provide a clear info to the user so that the
user can understand if he is winning or
losing in the current game.

Apart from that, each mobile

games has its own distinctive user
interface characteristics. If the developer
does not supporting the users requirement,
thus that mobile game will not frustrates
by the user. For example, Real Time
Strategy (RTS) mobile games allows user
to select a group of units to issue orders.
The user actually can drag the selection
box around a group of units is an expected
features in any RTS title. Since user
interface is such a vast area, it is very

difficult to analyse the user interface issues

without going through case by case
analysis. At the same time, the developer
also have to keep in mind what possible
problems
may
arrive
from
the
conceptualized mobile games.

Figure 1.3 : User interface for mobile

games

C. Security

The major issue in mobile games

development is the games security
(Lowe,2011). Mobile technology known as
mobile also opens the device and users up
for a whole new range of possible
compromise. Spyware can collect much
information about the games from the
mobile phones that could traditionally be
attained from the computers. Besides,
viruses are also popping up using SMS
during playing games and bluetooth
connections which will spread from device

to another device. Preventing these issues

from occurring in mobile device will be
difficult for the developers. As the viruses
are constantly evolving, it is important that
the new methods of attack should be
created so that the mobile games is kept as
easy as possible[8].
It is clearly defined that what
games that has to access. For example, the
MARVEL Future Fight games wants to
access the devices GPS services, it would
be unclear and it will feel like impeding on
the users privacy which causes the
possibly to avoid the games altogether. To
avoid the difficulties in mobile games
development, least amount of privileges
are needed. For example, if the games does
not want to access the camera application,
it should not grant itself to access. This can
effect on the processing speed of the
games(Dwivedi,2010) which will gives the
user more succinct overview on the mobile
games.
Moreover, the developers should be
transparent with the users and explain the
reason why they need to access that mobile
games. The developers also responsible to
use
self-signed
certificates
where
developers can access without anyone
permission. The important reason for code
signing is the developers can update their
version without permissions[9]. The
mobile games could be come from anyone
without the self-signed certificates.
Besides, it is more important that the
developers sign the new mobile games as
their own games to build confidence for
the users. During downloading the mobile
games, the mobile games platform will
contain some information about the current
running games in mobile device[10].

develop a mobile games. Enforcing can

hamper creativity and the originality of the
mobile
games
development[12].
Hopefully, there will be many these
problems in the future where developers
will experience when creating games for
mobile devices. Allowing more games to
be created, a higher standard and making
more accessible. Therefore, improving the
experience in mobile games development
are very important for the developers and
users.
Figure 1.4 : Security in mobile devices

V.
III.
IV.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

DISCUSSION
CONCLUSION

To conclude, developers faced many

problems and difficulties when developing
mobile games. It becomes apparent much
of the problem is limited understanding on
how to translate the traditional software
techniques over this platform[11]. Through
this conclusion, some recommendations
can be drawn. Firstly, security must be
overlooked especially in low budget
games. Security should not be an optional
application but must be the mandatory
application for all mobile devices. Besides,
hardware limitations is also important
during developing mobile games because
hardware space are important to install or
download the games. If the hardware space
not enough in the mobile device, then the
mobile will start to hang.

Furthermore, user interface should be

available as a resource for developers to

First of all, we would like to thank

our mobile programming lecture, Dr.
Saliyah binti Kahar who gave us an
opportunity to do paper work on issues
in mobile games development.
Besides, she also had guide and
support us throughout the whole paper
work as much as possible.

VI.

REFERENCES

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[7] Charland, A., and Leroux, B. 2011.

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[12]Ieee, October 2012. ISBN 978-1-46731526-5. doi: 10.1109/ICIN.2012.