To open a business, one should carefully design a business plan, calculate all possible expenses, and learn the necessary skills. I want to start a mobile game business, as it is a business that can be started with almost no physical expenses and requires only PC, mobile coding, design, and creative skills. While the mobile game market is saturated, one can try to present their game there for a low price, and a reward may be significant if the game is popular. To create a successful game, I will need a proper monetization scheme, allowing me to earn money from its players.
Overall Description
Mobile games are trendy today, and there are plenty of instructions on the Internet about how to start such a business. The game I am planning to develop should be aimed mainly at kids but still be actual for adults as well. Its gameplay is based on exploring the large game map, constructing various buildings, mining materials, and destroying different monsters. An integral part of game mechanics is the necessity to solve in-game logical tasks to open new parts of the map and unlock new technologies and other educational elements. Another essential part is the bright atmosphere, full of different colors, and the presence of 3D buildings. To get an idea about our game, one can see the examples of two games, SimCity BuildIt and Stardew Valley, from The Gamer article (Huston, 2022). The game’s interface will be similar to SimCity while not limited by a single city map. Some of its buildings are inspired by Stardew Valley, but the game is much more than a farm simulator. The main task is building and gathering resources, combining them, and fighting with many funny monsters.
The game’s working title is Crystal Realm: it expresses the abundance of crystals in the game’s virtual world. A player plays as a customizable character: they should harvest resources, design and construct buildings, research technologies, and create various stuff. To research a technology necessary to design a new building, cloth for a character, new characters, or other staff, one needs to solve various logic puzzles. They can also communicate with other players via special communication tools, befriend them, and even visit their virtual worlds. Various in-game items can be purchased for a very affordable price, mainly aimed at creating a unique experience for each player.
What Mobile Game Business Needs
Here is a list of what I would need to start a mobile game business, including all physical and non-physical things, such as skills.
- A personal computer, where the code will be written, and the game will be designed in general.
- A modern mobile smartphone, preferably with an up-to-date Android or iOS system. For testing the game on various platforms, it is better to have both Android and iPhone, but those can easily be emulated on the PC.
- Computer programming skills are necessary to make the game alive and adequately working, checking that there will be no bugs.
- Design and painting skills are needed to create content for the game, which will then be animated using programming.
No physical office is necessary for game development, as all work can be done from home, assuming there is a place for all team members to work together. No supply chain management is necessary, too, which is one of the main challenges of the modern business, which makes this business much easier at the start (Amankwah-Amoah & Wang, 2019). However, one needs good skills in programming and design, project management, and various creative areas such as painting and writing. Cybersecurity is another important aspect, and one should invest in specialists in this area to ensure that the game will not be hacked and users will not lose their bought game items (Amankwah-Amoah & Wang, 2019).
Monetization
To earn money from the mobile game, one should provide some paid functions that enable players to pay for some extra game stuff or see the advertisements. Value chain management is important: it analyzes what is valuable for players and possible sponsors and what they are ready to pay their money (Landoni et al., 2019). For example, players are interested in buying unlimited access to the game or interesting in-game items, especially connected with social engagement, and sponsors are interested in buying ads in the game.
Therefore, there will be three main aspects of Crystal Realm monetization, and the game is planned to be completely free of intrusive advertising. First, there will be advertising, but it will be integrated into the game. As mentioned, there will be various buildings and stuff for characters, and a large part of them will contain brands with descriptions and links that can be opened. The second aspect is the large number of in-game items, most of which are cheap: the feature is that teens will be able to afford them and buy new items progressively as they play. The third aspect is connected with social engagement and the communication system built in Crystal Realm. Players will be engaged to play together and buy various in-game items; possibly, unique products for social communication will be presented in the future. Those three aspects may be seen as three levels of innovation: game advertising as the first stage, in-game items as the second one, and social engagement as the third (Landoni et al., 2019). Thus, game monetization is realized via three different deeply interconnected models.
Target Audience
As mentioned, the game’s target audience consists of children and teens aged 7 – 18. However, the game is designed to be suitable for anyone interested in constructing various buildings in a highly dynamic world. The education aspect is the distinctive feature of the game: a player needs to solve logic puzzles to learn new technologies for building and crafting. Another feature is the creation of various staff, including cloth for characters, and designing various character and building styles. It would attract people who love to design, similar to those who love The Sims game series.
Advantages
The market of mobile games is oversaturated: to see this, one may enter the Play Market or App Store and see thousands of games present there, even in a single category. Emergent mobile technologies increase competition which may lead to our game being pushed out of the market (Amankwah-Amoah & Wang, 2019). It is crucial to have advantages that distinguish Crystal Realm from its competitors. One of those advantages is a large number of cheap in-game items, starting from $1, which makes them accessible to teens from the target audience. Those items help players make their game customizable, creating unique buildings, characters, and other staff.
Another significant advantage is the communication system planned to be built in-game and adding social interactions in the game. While it is designed to be a single-player game and not MMO, the multiplayer mode is available, and players can freely join various sessions. It will encourage them to buy in-game items, either to distinguish themselves from other players by the unique style of their buildings and characters or as gifts for their friends. Actually, each player will possess a virtual world with large mines, unique buildings constructed by them, and characters designed by them as well. They will be able to visit each other’s worlds and spend time together there.
Last but not least is that there will be no intrusive advertising in Crystal Realm, which is often highly annoying to mobile game players. Ads are planned to be integrated inside the game: when playing, one will see advertisement links on the game items, along with brand names. They can replace those brands with their own symbols by buying in-game items. Thus, our game will be able to earn money on ads without interrupting players from their experience and even integrate it into this experience, showing brands, links, and videos connected with in-game items.
Conclusion
The mobile game business has many advantages over the traditional ones, as it requires almost no starting costs, supply chain management, and physical space. However, it requires strong computer skills, management and marketing skills, and a creative approach to everything. In addition, a proper monetization scheme should be applied; in another case, the game will not be profitable. In our game, Crystal Realm, we plan to apply three monetization options. Those ads are integrated into the game and connected with in-game items, unique items that players may buy for real money, and social communication tools to drive those purchases. Possibly, we will add various other purchase options later, based on the social interactions between players. Each player will possess their own virtual world where they are free to build various buildings for producing various staff and where their characters can live. They can befriend other players and visit their virtual worlds, spending time together and finishing various quests. The game’s target audience is teens and children 7 – 18 years old, but all people who love to design buildings or characters or solve logic puzzles may find it interesting.
References
Amankwah-Amoah, J., & Wang, X. (2019). Contemporary business risks: An overview and new research agenda. Journal of Business Research, 97, 208–211.
Huston, G. (2022). The best mobile games for kids. TheGamer. Web.
Landoni, P., Dell’era, C., Frattini, F., Petruzzelli, A. M., Verganti, R., & Manelli, L. (2019). Business model innovation in cultural and creative industries: Insights from three leading mobile gaming firms. Technovation, 102084.