Suggestions for N-Gage in 2009
The N-Gage platform has lots of potential that Nokia simply hasn't tapped, but hopefully that will change as 2009 unfolds.
Here are a few random ideas for getting N-Gage running at full speed, hopefully all fairly do-able, and divided up into three overall themes:
1. Getting more people using N-Gage
- Put N-Gage on all future S60 devices
The more people with N-Gage on their phones, the more people will buy N-Gage games. Building userbase is vital to the survival of any gaming platform, and N-Gage is no exception.
Current N-Gage-compatible phones use the Symbian S60 3rd Edition platform. It ought to be possible to include the N-Gage app with all future S60 3rd Edition phones, they have the right hardware and the right operating system. Other Nokia services such as Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps and Ovi Share are being included as standard, so why not N-Gage too?
S60 5th Edition, which runs on the upcoming Nokia N97, ought to also start getting N-Gage included within it as standard.
-Put N-Gage on Eseries devices
Eseries phones have never had N-Gage, largely because Nokia intends them to be serious business phones.
But there's no technical reason to stop N-Gage being on Eseries phones, they run on S60 too, and the introduction of Nokia Music Store to Eseries firmware shows that people want more than just business features on these devices. The massive-selling E71 is a huge missed opportunity for N-Gage, and so far it seems like the E63 won't have N-Gage either, which is a shame.
2. Getting current N-Gage users to buy more games
- Publish some first party puzzle, card, board and other casual titles
The sales charts for the new N-Gage platform show that card games like Poker and Solitaire are extremely popular, as are puzzle games like Tetris. Nokia ought to take a hint from this and do some exclusive high quality titles aimed at a more casual audience with simpler, more traditional gameplay. The budget for such games could be much smaller than for other titles, which would allow Nokia to produce them at a higher rate, and increase the amount of exclusive content on the platform.
It would be especially nice to see Nokia add multiplayer to these kinds of games, they're usually a lot more fun and a lot more challenging when they have real humans playing against you, and it would show off what the N-Gage Arena can do, as well as encourage people to stay loyal to the platform.
- Include detailed instructions with all games
The first party title Pro Series Golf received very warm reviews, but how many players actually worked out how to use the game's interface? The game itself has no help file or tutorial at all, and it's left entirely up to the player to try and find out how it works. PSG assumed a bit too much prior knowledge, and this writer didn't know how to change a club until the game's producer posted the method on the game's official forum.
If Nokia wants people to purchase games, they have to explain how to play them within the demos, so that people get a feel for the gameplay straight away. Every game demo should include an interactive tutorial, and even a simple text file would be better than nothing (Pro Series Golf currently has nothing).
- Introduce a loyalty scheme
Because N-Gage games are sold entirely as downloads, their pricing structure is extremely flexible. A loyalty scheme could let those who purchase 10 games get the 11th free, which would reward long-time users and encourage new users to register on the service. (And of course all sorts of other possibilities such as subscriptions and Comes With Games are also theoretically possible, though Nokia won't confirm anything.)
- Notify the user as soon as a new game becomes available
At the moment there is absolutely no way to know whether a new game has been released except to keep manually updating the N-Gage app's showroom section. It would be great if there was some kind of on-phone notification system which instantly told you when a new game was available on the platform, perhaps by making the application's icon flash?
- Include every current game pre-installed on new phones
The upcoming N97 has an enormous amount of on-board memory, 32 gigabytes built-in, with a microSD card slot that could allow a total of 48 - 64 gigabytes, and presumably future S60 phones will have even more. Even half a gigabyte is more than enough to store all current N-Gage game demos, so why not include the whole lot pre-installed on all future compatible phones?
- Expand payment through vouchers
N-Gage vouchers apparently had a limited launch in Indonesia last year, and it would be great to see them (or something like them, more general Nokia vouchers perhaps?) expanded to cover the rest of the world. Not everyone has a credit card, and not every phone network offers phone billing either, so vouchers are an important third method for people who cannot use the first two.
At the very least Nokia should launch the vouchers in countries where credit card ownership is particularly low, and also where phone billing is unavailable.
- Open up N-Gage to a wider range of third party publishers
We here at All About N-Gage have been banging our heads against the wall wondering why the N-Gage platform has so few games, when there are so many quality titles out there on the S60 platform that N-Gage is based on. It's a bit like a supermarket running out of bread when it lives next door to a bakery, it makes no sense.
Nokia ought to open the N-Gage platform up to any S60 publisher with the ability to release good polished games such as Astraware, Infinite Dreams (who did Creatures Of The Deep for N-Gage but did a lot more games for S60), Tetraedge, HeroCraft, Simlife Science and others.
Alternatively, as suggested by AAN's Ewan Spence, there could be a "budget" section of the N-Gage application which is devoted entirely to the best existing S60 and Java titles, with the N-Gage app acting as a payment system for buying these titles. It would instantly show just how many games are available for N-Gage-compatible phones, without harming the premium status given to the actual N-Gage releases.
- Tweak the application to make it easier to browse the game shop, and add a horizontal mode
The N-Gage app's "Showroom" section only has a few dozen games in it but it's already becoming difficult to navigate. It would make a lot more sense to organise the games by category, and make the "All Games" section more prominent. At the moment "All Games" is a small link sandwiched between the featured title and the latest titles, it's possible that some people miss it completely.
Perhaps more urgently though, the N-Gage app really ought to work in horizontal mode as well as vertical. Practically all other Nokia apps work in both modes, including all of the phone's built-in functions, and it's annoying to have to turn the phone every time you want to use N-Gage. It's especially annoying when you're playing an actual N-Gage game in horizontal mode, and every time you go back to the app (or even just access a game's online function) the phone starts switching back to vertical mode, then back to horizontal.
The most useful reason for making the app work in horizontal mode is so that N-Gage could more easily be included on phones designed to operate entirely in horizontal mode, such as the E71, E63 and various upcoming models.
- Give at least one game away free for everyone, preferably a multiplayer title
Demos are one thing, but there's nothing like a full game to show off what a gaming platform can do. Ideally such a game would be exclusive and take full advantage of the platform's features, so perhaps an ideal candidate might be Reset Generation. It's already been given away as a PC browser widget, and if it was included free and preinstalled on every N-Gage-compatible phone it could instantly get a lot of people hooked on the platform.
3. Increasing community spirit on Arena
- Let people store and retrieve their scores online
At the moment if you wipe your phone and reinstall your N-Gage games you lose all your save files, and have to start the games all over again.
Nokia's already got three online file storage services, Ovi Share, Ovi Files and MOSH, so why doesn't N-Gage have online savegame storage? It would let people download saved positions whenever they need to, and avoid any potential difficulties with firmware updates or phone replacements.
Some people may be worried about cheats altering saved games, but that would only apply to rankings, it wouldn't apply to offline saved games. And cheats seem to be hacking saved games anyway, so it's not like the current system is secure in the first place.
- Let people upgrade to new phones without losing games
We here at AAN Towers have ranted about this many times, and we'll carry on doing it until Nokia changes their minds: let people keep their N-Gage games even when they upgrade phones. You can see all the many arguments why this is a good idea in the nearby link.
To some extent Nokia has given way and allowed games to be transferred to a single new handset, but really they ought to be allowing people to move their game collections as often as they want. They already do this with Nokia Music and Nokia Maps, so why doesn't this happen with Nokia N-Gage?
- Integrate the official game forums into the games themselves
The N-Gage Arena forums provide a very welcoming and vibrant community for people who use the platform, and include forums for every released game. It might be very useful if these forums were integrated with the games they're about.
For example, if you get stuck looking for a particular fish on Creatures Of The Deep, you would be able to select a "Go to game forum" option from the menu and ask for some gameplay hints, or just browse what others have written.
The content already exists on the Arena forum site (though it may need to be reformatted slightly for mobiles), and N-Gage-compatible phones already have integrated browsers capable of displaying the forum content. It should be technically fairly easy to integrate forums into N-Gage game menus.
- Provide tools on n-gage.com for running unofficial tournaments, then advertise the events on n-gage.com and within the games they apply to
Some Arena users have already run their own unofficial tournaments for N-Gage games, and this kind of activity ought to be supported by Nokia. There could be some kind of official website for running N-Gage contests, which would be accessible by any Arena member, and they could ask a mod if the event could be promoted on the N-Gage website and possibly within the games themselves.
- Work with the fans
Anyone who takes a look at the N-Gage Arena forums knows there are some very clever and very enthusiastic fans of the platform on there, doing everything from designing widgets to creating pop videos.
Nokia ought to open up ways for fans to help the platform directly, through things like game translations and beta testing, with rewards of NGP and game activation codes for people who take part. It would speed up the development process, and make the games feel part of the community.
- Integrate the N-Gage blog into the N-Gage application
The official N-Gage blog provides a useful news service on what's going on in the N-Gage world, and it's already available in a version optimised for mobile screens, so why not include it in the N-Gage application itself? It could display on the front page of the app, and clicking on a headline would launch the phone's browser to display the blog in detail.