© eWave Interactive - Multiplayer Mobile Games - Business Models for a new Mainstream Market in Gaming Hendrik H. Heimer - CEO / Founder - IDATE Video Game Forum Montpellier (France)

© eWave Interactive 2 About eWave Interactive eWave is the gaming label of NAVUS GmbH (10 years of excellence in software research for industry, EU and ESA) eWave will become an independent business in 2006 Business focus on  Massively multiplayer mobile games  Multiplayer platform technology (real-time, mobile payment)  Mobile marketing 1 st prize at the Game Olympics with KILLING FIELDS, the world- wide first multiplayer real-time strategy game for mobile phones Football Manager game for the FIFA World Cup in progress; players in 8 European countries More multiplayer games will be releasead in 2006

© eWave Interactive 3 The Future of Gaming is Mobile! "As computer games become increasingly persistent, there will be an increasing demand to access the game information at all times." Guido Henkel (Game Over Magazine, 2004)

© eWave Interactive 4 Increasingly persistent worlds... In 2005, online game revenues will outrun desktop games (million USD). Total MMOG subscribers ( )

© eWave Interactive 5... and increasing mobile access... ARC – arcresearch.com SD – screendigest.com

© eWave Interactive 6...will result in converging markets Step 1: massively multiplayer mobile games will enter the market Step 2: cross-platform MMOGs will offer a mobile "window" to the persistent game world Step 3: Main access to the game will be through mobile devices Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Year

© eWave Interactive 7 Mobile Access to persistent Game Worlds Online games will offer different device specific "windows" to the persistent game world.

© eWave Interactive 8 Nice theory, but can it happen? Main constraints still are Signal latency of data traffic Jitter (variance of the latency) Traffic costs (no cheap flat-rates) Complex configuration of mobile phones for socket connections Restricted IP access in some carrier networks Blocked socket connections on some prepaid cards Result: only 2 constraints have technical reasons, the rest are purely administrative and can be easily resolved.

© eWave Interactive 9 Standard socket connection has a very irregular signal latency (Jitter) that makes a predictable game behaviour difficult.

© eWave Interactive 10 The eWGS protocol provides a much smoother characteristics of the signal latency and is also much faster than sockets (~ 600 ms).

© eWave Interactive 11 Typical MMMG Characteristics Server based game-engine  Allows a much higher complexity of the persistent game-world  Content can be changed/added dynamically  Device independend – many different mobile devices can connect  Secure – only registered users can connect  Scalable – server hardware is cheap; performance increases with # users Real-time protocol, even with GPRS In-game payment Secure transactions (Triple DES encoded) Content, content, content

© eWave Interactive 12 Example: KILLING FIELDS Multiplayer RTS game for up to 100 players per map Dynamic, server-based content In-game payment and bonus system  Interface to CRANDY mobile payment  Pay-per-level  Bonus payment for completion of levels / highscore 1 st prize at the Game Olympics 2005

© eWave Interactive 13 Example: Football Manager Game Server based game engine Highly scalable for 500,000+ players Asynchroneous gameplay Mobile payment interface to CRANDY  Transfer market for football players  Monthly subscriptions  Hugh money prizes, in total 100,000€ p.a. Launch 01/2006 in 8 European countries, among them France, UK, Germany, Switzerland (depending on availability of CRANDY) Game will be available for free

© eWave Interactive 14 Football Manager: business potential

© eWave Interactive 15 New Business Models Games provided for free In-game payment per play, per time, per level,...  Direct billing through mobile payment systems  No payment through carrier  No payment with PremiumSMS Micropayment for game items (magic sword, football player,...) Bonus system for long-term game attraction Mobile marketing platform for  product placement (depending on game scenario)  in-game advertisement ( " )  sponsoring

© eWave Interactive 16 Contact Hendrik Heimer Mail: Phone: