Juniper Research has just released a white paper (PDF) on future trends and market opportunities in mobile gaming.

The casual games sector is going to be the market driver, even though it may not be at the leading edge of mobile games technology. Casual games make most use of the inherent advantages of the mobile platform. People want to fill ‘dead time’ with easy to use, but fun games. This is the same in just about every culture.

This is hardly news. Casual games, content and entertainment are ideal to fill those ‘in-between-moments’ you spend with your devices. Dave Gosen, CEO of I-Play calls it “snacking“

“mobile gaming is a snack, console gaming is a 3-course meal. They are a different user experience”.

At Vidfest last week, I overheard Pierre-Paul Trepanier, Director of Marketing for Nintendo Canada explain that with Brain Age, they’re starting to see a shift in game and device buying patterns. While it’s impossible to tell the age group that’s actually purchasing the game (is it gift? personal purchase? etc.) what they have been able to track is the overall contents of purchases.

So far, they’ve found that most people seem to be buying Brain Age along with a Nintendo DS—which would indicate that some of them are maybe not already gamers. Or at the very least, are new to the DS (or possibly—handheld gaming) market.

A Cingular webcast I sat in on yesterday listed the top 5 casual game genres as

• Arcade/Puzzle (32.1%),
• Casino (20.7%), Card (19.1%),
• Retro Arcade (14.2%), and
• Strategy (12.2%.)

(Top 5 Mobile Game Genres by Country: % of Average Monthly Downloaders, quarter ended Jan 2006, via Cingular “Introduction to Downloadables”)

This is all well and good and certainly would indicate that the casual game market will grow; but I think the term ‘casual game’ may be a bit narrow.

Let’s forget games for a moment and talk about play.

Think back to your typical ‘break-time’ at school, as a child. Twenty kids scattered around the room. Some are alone—reading, building stuff, sorting stuff, examining stuff, breaking stuff, staring out the window, contemplating the pattern in the weave of the carpet. All good stuff.

Others are in small groups—maybe 2-4 kids—doing very much the same thing—just together in some way. Even there, differences emerge. Some participants are passive. Others prefer to lead the interaction or instruct others.

Then you have the kids who roam or browse around the room. Call it low attention span or call it curiosity. (Does it really matter?)

Now look around the office during break time. Are adults really that different? And do our current casual ‘games’ offer something for all these different types of ‘users?’ (nasty impersonal word btw…must stop using it…)

Do current mobile games allow for quiet time, playful time, competitive time, learning time, contemplative time, silly time..?

We have a unique opportunity with mobile devices in that they can be insanely personal and private while being incredibly social and contextual (presence, location etc.) They can offer small moments of quiet play or learning—no peers, no pressure—or small moments of highly networked interaction and competition. Not to mention hybrids of the two.

I think we’re currently just scratching the surface.

Photo credits:

‘old pic| traffic’ by miss_pupik on Flickr, licensed Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

‘Karen plays as Luigi’ by drag on Flickr, licensed Creative Commons Attribution 2.0