[This article was first published in 2000]

One of the positive aspects about WAP games is that they open the door for small developers who wouldn't be able to make games for next generation machines such as PlayStation 2.

Finnish multimedia company Wizbang has recently completed its first WAP game, SubHunter. We talked to the game's one-man designer, programmer and producer, Lasse Seppanen [Note: After time at Nokia and Sumea, Seppanen is now a production lead at Alan Wake studio Remedy.]

What was the timeframe for SubHunter's development?

The initial design was created in summer 1999. The actual production started in September. Playtesting took place in December and several rounds of bug fixes were made. The game was approved as finished in January.

How easy was it to configure the game for WAP phones?

On the technical side we were faced with a fair amount of reworking and bug hunting since the Nokia 7110's (our target device) implementation of WML did not cover all the features defined in the WAP standard.

We also had trouble with Scandinavian character sets, since the emulator we used for development was much more forgiving than the actual phone. For instance, with the emulator we were able to use HTML-like abbreviations. On the phone, these just left the device hanging.

In addition, the early versions of the emulator did not have the same screen resolution as the actual Nokia 7110. We had to cut the screen graphics later when we realised they wouldn't fit on the physical screens

What do you think are the advantages of developing WAP games?

One of the major ones is that everyone either already has or will have a mobile phone in the near future. It's not a separate gaming platform like consoles or Game Boy: the number of these will always be a mere fraction compared to the number of mobile phones.

This is especially true as the cheapest low-end WAP phones are expected to become very common - nearly everyone will eventually carry the gaming devices in their pockets.

Another advantage is the revenue model. While the internet, for instance, is mostly advertisement-driven, WAP enables various secure ways to implement end-user billing. You simply utilise the network operator's existing billing system.

How do you expect to make money from WAP games?

One basic model we are looking into is similar to the one used in the PC/console market: i.e. publisher funds the development with a milestone-based prepayment, and grants a percentage royalty on the actual revenues that the game makes after the launch.

I believe this model will become more and more common as the mobile game budgets grow bigger.

Whatever the model, I strongly believe end-user revenue sharing will be included in most deals made in the mobile games industry.