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Opinion: What does Paul Gauguin's masterpiece tell us about the future of mobile gaming?

Thoughts from App World 2013's opening remarks

Opinion: What does Paul Gauguin's masterpiece tell us about the future of mobile gaming?

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?is a painting by the French post-impressionist Paul Gauguin.

A friend of Vincent van Gogh (it was an argument with Gauguin that triggered van Gogh cutting off his ear), Gauguin was the very stereotype of what we would consider 'the artist'.

He was brilliant in many art forms - painting, wood cuts, sculpture - as well as many styles - impressionism, symbolism, primitivism - as well as fathering many children, eventually he gave up life in civilised France for what he considered the pure freedoms of French Polynesia.

And that's where he died in 1903 from a combination of years of alcohol abuse, syphilis and an morphine overdose, aged 54.

History lesson over, it's the title of Gauguin's painting - or more properly its philosophical questioning - that we need to consider.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

For despite - or perhaps because of his exciting life - like all great artists, Gauguin was always questioning; something all good mobile game developers should also be doing.

And that's our plan during day 1 of the Gaming Track at Appsworld Europe 2013.

These are my opening remarks.

1. Where Do We Come From?

That's easy. Mobile games are now the superset of pretty much all game development.

What used to be limited to specialist Java and Brew game development has now grown to include Flash, casual web, PC/MMOG, Facebook and console game developers.

Just as everyone has a mobile device and plays mobile games, so mobile game developers come from everywhere and they should be making all type of mobile games.

2. What Are We?

There are some clear trends about what mobile games are in 2013.

All use touchscreen controls, and most are free-to-play, making their money through additional (and optional) in-app purchases.

Yet compared to what has gone before, or is available on other platforms, mobile games remain skewed casual in theme and/or rely on repetitive gameplay loops as the bulk of their experience.

This is mainly because of such gameplay works well with the F2P/IAP model.

Finally, for the vast majority of players the vast majority of mobile games are disposable. Even if you've spent money buying a mobile game (or spent money in a mobile game), the second you stop playing, you don't care about it any more.

Who weeps for the time and money they spent playing FarmVille?

We need to face the facts that no matter for how long we play mobile games, they rarely raise themselves higher beyond the term 'time-waster'.

Where Are We Going?

But change is coming. It may be good, but it may not.

Thanks to moves from companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon, touchscreen controls will not the only way to play mobile games in future. However, this doesn't just mean mobile games will be controlled with traditional console-style controllers. If nothing else, the Wii taught us that.

Whether in free-to-play or paid games, we're already seeing a growing sophistication in terms of how developers retail in-game resources, and experiences to their players.

Getting someone to spend $0.99 to buy 10 diamonds to speed up building a house is not how the successful games of 2014 will be operating.

Mobile games are becoming much deeper in terms of the experiences they offer, and are required to offer, if they want to make money.

This is seen in core games, especially in terms of features such as multiplayer clans and alliances. But as mobile developers get more confident when it comes to social kudos, games-as-services, cloud-computing and persistence so mobile games will become much more meaningful to their audiences.

This won't be because of the gameplay experience, however, but because of they how they link into our increasingly non-physical identities - allowing us to leave civilisation and explore new ways of living and playing.

Gauguin would be proud.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.