Quality Requirements in Mobile Games Ville Vatn Head

Quality Requirements in Mobile Games Ville Vatén Head of Post Production / Telcogames 8. 11. 2006

Agenda • • Telcogames introduction Introduction to quality requirements Gaming and technical qualities Requirements process Portability Performance Screen scalability

Telcogames Introduction § Global publisher and distributor of mobile games § 1000+ games portfolio in distribution § Offices in 9 countries, HQ in London § 3 studios developing smartphone games § Magic Productions in France § Fathammer in Finland (acquired in June 2006) § Fathammer Asia in Korea § Vision & mission: § smartphone performance, user experience, conversion rate, price point § the leading publisher of native smartphone titles

Quality Requirements in Games • What is the most important quality of any commercial application from publisher point of view? PROFITABILITY!

Building profitable games • Software qualities – Gaming qualities – Technical qualities • Other – – – Brand recognition Marketing Distribution Pricing Development cost

Gaming qualities • “Soft” qualities – – – Easy to pick up Difficult to master Addictive and fun Entertaining: visually, audibly attractive Usability, playability • Challenging to measure – Input vs. reward – Different preferences

Technical qualities • Customer satisfaction – Bug free – Device coverage – Language coverage • Development effectiveness => cost – – Cost effectiveness/fast time to market Portability Localizability Testability

Requirements process ne han w d la set ng s ua ge s w ne ge s ng ua se ts la nd ha w ne . . . Backfill Post production ne w nd la set ng s ua ge s ha n • Continuous testing o ti TRC Transition phase ca Game production ifi s el n GCD rt ce s o ti l ne ca n an ifi ch rt ce an ch on ti ca ifi ls rt ne ce an ch Market analysis

Portability • = Bring the game cost-effectively and quickly to multiple different handsets • = Variability in multiple dimensions – – – Platform Controls Screen size Audio Performance: • CPU, GPU, memory and disk – Network – Localization

Performance requirements • Derived from playable, entertaining, and visually appealing • Depends on genre and title • Variability needed for different performance handsets • Difficult to define explicitly

Performance scalability • Performance, Visual Appearance, Frame Rate High frame rate High visual appearance High frame rate Low visual appearance frame rate h nce a m et s d han or f r pe low Low frame rate Low visual appearance Visual appearance adjustment hig Minimum level Low frame rate High visual appearance

Visual appearance adjustments • Scene complexity – Amount of objects – Polygon count – Number of meshes in polygons • Object coating – Texture resolution – Materials and blending – Perspective correction • Distance – – Far clip plane distance Possible Visible Set Backdrop mechanism Dynamic LOD for game objects • Amount and complexity of eye candy effects • Size of rendering window

Mobile vs. PC performance • Mobiles – fixed hardware per device – a dozen platforms with universal binaries – visuals adjustments only on build time • PCs – highly configurable hardware and drivers – one binary for an infinite amount of configurations – visuals adjustments on run time

Testing performance • Gameplay testing of all levels on different performance devices • Visual appearance variability testing – Code review and testing – Content modifications testing – Hardware and software rendering

Screen scalability • • Resolutions from 176 x 208 to 640 x 480 Different aspect ratios Orientation changeable during gameplay Power-pixel problems 176 x 208 240 x 240 320 x 240 x 320 352 x 416

Screen scalability • Solutions – – Code aligned floating elements Layout configuration files Vector graphics Double pixels

Screen scalability testing • Run game in different resolutions • Code and content review

Conclusion • Most portability requirements can actually be derived to definable low level features • But how to define features for game to be addictive?

Discussion Ville Vatén ville. vaten@telcogames. com More info: www. telcogames. com www. fathammer. com