Acts To Get Some Game

Kanye West, U2 or Faith Hill may soon be coming to a mobile game near you.

Artists, record labels and mobile developers are in the early stages of discussing ways to create mobile games based on the likeness—and, potentially, music—of today's hottest acts.

"This year, we'll see games based on musical acts that will be successful," says Greg Ballard, CEO of mobile game publisher Glu Mobile.

It is a concept that until recently has been noticeably missing from the broader videogame and wireless entertainment landscape, two platforms the music industry has bullishly supported.

To date, the bulk of mobile-game licensing activity has come from the movie industry. It is almost standard practice these days to release a mobile game based on a movie release, either simultaneously or weeks before the film's opening. Mobile game developers have already licensed rights to such summer flicks as "Ice Age 2," "Mission Impossible III," "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" and "Transformers." Past blockbusters like "War of the Worlds," "Peter Jackson's King Kong" and "Fantastic Four" have all spawned mobile games as well.

Wireless operators and mobile game developers enjoy these deals because the millions that movie studios spend on advertising ultimately promotes and drives sales for the accompanying mobile game.

Movie studios like games because they generate incremental revenue to offset increasingly larger movie budgets and also serve as supplementary promotional tools.

So where is the music industry? Surely a mobile game featuring acts with a pending record release could be used in much the same way.

Slowly, mobile game developers are forging relationships with record labels to expand the music element. Gameloft, a mobile game studio run by the owners of console-game publisher Ubisoft, has started licensing music to include in several of its mobile game soundtracks, including hits from Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sum 41, Phantom Planet and Beyoncé.

According to Karin Kaiser, the company's deputy director of licensing, this has led to preliminary discussions with labels for artist-branded games.

Zingy, known as a pioneer of the ringtone industry, is entirely skipping the labels and striking licensing deals with artists and managers directly. It has already published a game titled "Free Yayo" based on Tony Yayo and featuring members of the G-Unit label, including 50 Cent.

It will release the U.S. version of the mobile game based on the 50 Cent biopic "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " March 28 in conjunction with the film's DVD release. Later this summer, Zingy plans to unveil a series of mobile games based on the Notorious B.I.G.

But such activity remains very much on a case-by-case basis. Mobile game developers have not yet wrapped their heads around the concept of creating games based on musical acts.

"From our perspective, it's not very easy to create a game around an artist," Gameloft's Kaiser says. "With a movie, you have a lot to exploit to develop a game—characters and a story line. For an artist, it doesn't apply as well."

That is why the early entrants to the space have focused on hip-hop stars, where guns, violence and compelling story lines are not uncommon.

"The urban angle certainly has more of a story to it," says Zingy's Scott Debson, VP of licensing and publishing. "When you're looking at shoot-'em-up games, you're not really going to have Kelly Clarkson in it."

It is views like these, however, that may be why mobile gaming still has to realize its full potential. The mobile platform offers different dynamics than the console game world. As such, mobile developers should make different kinds of games.

Although the vast majority of available mobile games fall into the action/adventure category, the best sellers are in fact "casual" games, such as poker, puzzles, bowling or darts. These types of games are much easier to brand with a particular act or album that otherwise lacks a story line.

Additionally, 58% of mobile gamers are women, who do not normally go for the shoot-'em-up style and may want that Kelly Clarkson-themed game after all.

Both points suggest there is room for creative development that does not try to copy those made for the bigger consoles. Actually creating a good game, however, is the more difficult challenge.

"One thing that the mobile-games business has learned in the past year is that brands without good games behind them don't do the industry very good and they don't do very well commercially," Glu Mobile's Ballard says. "There's a lot of risk around doing those sorts of games. For a music label it might be worth the risk. For a game company, it might be a little scary."

But risk is exactly what visionaries feel is necessary if mobile gaming is to realize its full potential. The average mobile game costs only $200,000 to make. That is far less than the budgets of most console-based games, which can run more than $10 million.

But it is the game developer who has to take that risk. For the record labels (and movie studios) it is all upside. They reap licensing revenue and benefit from the games' promotional impacts.

The smaller developer has to recoup those costs, at razor-thin profit margins shared with the licensor and wireless operator.

"At some point we have to take a risk," said John Szeder, CEO of mobile game developer Mofactor, at the close of the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. "Otherwise, people get really sick of the same old stuff." ••••