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Developer Opportunities for N-Gage Game Deck: An Interview with the Nokia Publishing Team

Version 1.0; January 24, 2003 Games Forum.Nokia.com

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24 January, 2003 Version 1.0 document release

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Developer Opportunities for N-Gage Game Deck: An Interview with the Nokia Publishing Team

Version 1.0; January 24, 2003

On January 24th, Forum Nokia sat down with Rob Milne and Jonathan Sharp of Nokia's game publish- ing team to ask them some questions of interest to prospective game developers for the recently announced Nokia N-Gage™ mobile game deck platform. Here's what they had to say.

FN (Forum Nokia): Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Milne: I'm Rob Milne, director and general manager of the Nokia N-Gage device publishing group, which is part of business development at Nokia's Entertainment and Media Business Unit. Our responsibility is to source the games content for the Nokia N-Gage device platform. Separately from us, there's the prod- uct program that actually develops the Nokia N-Gage device hardware and the Symbian operating sys- tem environment of the device itself. There are the marketing people, the launch people, and the regional people in Dallas, Europe, and APAC (Asia/Pacific) doing sales and marketing, but our job is to go out and get the content.

FN: And how do you do that? Milne: Initially, our primary focus was on relationship building with the publishers. We approached the major publishers around the world and went after content from them for the Nokia N-Gage device. We've also been using a few developers that we already knew to do the first Nokia-published titles.

FN: Are these unique titles, established titles, or both? Milne: Both. Initially, to build the credibility of the platform at launch, we went after well-established, known titles from major publishers. We want people to understand that this device is a real games plat- form that can play real, console-quality games. The easiest way to do that is to not only have new titles, but to also have some titles that people have already seen on more traditional consoles.

FN: Why is Nokia getting into the publishing business in the first place? Milne: The main reason is simple. All the game console manufacturers have self-published titles as well as titles from third parties. Our goal is to be another player in that general mix.

FN: Is that partly to help jump-start the business? Sharp (Senior Manager, Games Publishing): Yes, but also publishing our own titles helps give us a deeper understanding of game design and, because we have first access to new technologies, allows us to experiment with them earlier and understand their usefulness for game play.

Milne: As an example, one strength of this device is its wireless connectivity – Bluetooth, the network connection, and so on. We need to have titles that exploit these capabilities. Nokia-published titles will be leading that.

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FN: Does what you learn feed back to the teams that are developing the tools? Milne: Absolutely. That's one of the other big benefits. The SDK is an evolving thing. It will have new APIs and some new functionality integrated into it on a constant basis.

Sharp: Also, there are some unique Nokia sponsorships that are suitable for games. Things like the relationship between Nokia and FIS World Cup Snowboarding and the Nokia Sugar Bowl.

FN: What sort of demographic are you aiming for? Milne: We're targeting young adults as opposed to the children's market that other handheld devices cater to.

FN: If I'm a games developer interested in producing titles for Nokia, what should I do? Sharp: Towards the end of last year, we put out a request to Forum Nokia developers to submit concepts for the Nokia N-Gage device. We gave (developers) very few guidelines but we asked them to think creatively. We had more than 80 submissions, which was an amazing number. The FN game experts winnowed that down. At the beginning of this month (January), at the concept submission meeting, which we run every month, the FN team presented nine of the top concepts from that initial submission. From that, we selected one title to go into development. We can't discuss the title or who the developer is. But it is an original game and something that we're very excited about.

FN: Once you've been vetted and invited to work on a game for the Nokia N-Gage device, what's the process? Sharp: Once we've approved a concept, we go back and have a discussion with the company to understand the actual business proposition and try to understand the game concept more fully. Then we perform an assessment of the company to understand its capabilities and how we can work together.

FN: Does that also include looking at its financials to make sure it can carry the project to completion? Sharp: Yes. Then, we're into our game development process, determining deliverables, actions, inputs and outputs, and milestones, all the way until the product ships. Provided that the process is acceptable and we can find a way of working, we then move towards a legal agreement and then into actual development.

FN: Do you look for firms that already have experience on small form factor screens? Sharp: That's a positive, but we don't limit ourselves to just those firms. The real thing that we're look- ing for is games experience. That's the most important thing.

FN: What about multiplayer experience? Sharp: No, just general innovation. It doesn't necessarily have to be multiplayer, although we do want to use the connected capabilities of the device.

FN: So once a developer is "inside" and has begun the process, what kind of support do you provide? Sharp: There is a specific Nokia N-Gage device software development kit, with a whole series of optimized tools for game development and documentation to help game developers. We supplement that with first-line developer support.

Developer Opportunities for N-Gage Game Deck 2 Forum.Nokia.com

FN: By "first-line developer support," do you mean someone who answers the phone and talks to you in person? Sharp: We do that, yes.

FN: How is the Nokia N-Gage device SDK different from the Series 60 SDK? Sharp: It's based on the Series 60 SDK, but we've added a number of APIs to help with some of the features that we think are very important in gaming. We're looking for high-performance, rich games, and to support that, we've provided some additional functionality.

FN: So it's a games device that happens to be a mobile phone instead of a mobile phone that happens to be a games device? Milne: Absolutely. Sharp: That's exactly how we see it. Milne: Also, keep in mind that published Nokia N-Gage device games are sold on copy-protected memory cards starting at 8 megabytes. These are much larger games than anything you would ever download over the air into a regular Series 60 device. So the cost of developing the game is higher, but there's copy protection as well.

FN: Do you offer any kind of development funding to developers after you've vetted them? Milne: We are following on a case-by-case basis the normal business practices of the games industry, meaning providing development funding as a recoupable advance against future royalties. Not for every title, however.

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