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The mouse goes mobile

Disney expands Prague game studio to match industry growth

By Victor Velek
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 28th, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Disney's Cindy Rose says games for mobile phones are becoming more mainstream, moving past the teenage-boy demographic.
Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Some of the studio's games include Donald Duck's Quest and Spectrobes.
An icon of American popular culture, Walt Disney, is hoisting its mouse ears in the Czech Republic.
The Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG), a branch of the Walt Disney Company, is expanding its Prague-based game development hub for mobile phones to capitalize on the rapid growth the mobile entertainment market is expected to see in upcoming years.
Disney recently named the Prague development house its European headquarters for mobile game development, one of the company’s four facilities worldwide, with other studios in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beijing.
As part of this distinction, the studio has received a thorough facelift, including a new name: Disney Mobile Games Studio. The formerly independent studio, which Disney acquired in 2005, was previously known as Living Mobile. The rebranding has also involved a move to new offices, which should enable the staff to grow to match the market’s demands.
“In the near future, we are about to double the size of the studio,” said Cindy Rose, WDIG’s managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, at the ceremonial opening of the studio Nov. 19. “Most of the research indicates that mobile entertainment is a growth sector.”
Disney may need all of its new space, as the value of the worldwide mobile phone gaming market is expected to reach $8.4 billion (152 billion Kč) in 2010, quadruple its 2006 value, according to research by Goldman Sachs. This matches the overall trend in the mobile phone entertainment business, which should grow from $17.3 billion in 2006 to nearly $77 billion in 2011, according to Juniper Research.
Mobile phones are turning into multifunctional, sophisticated devices capable of competing with traditional entertainment media like TV, computer and video games.
“There are still many uncharted waters in the use of mobile phones and, with their growing sophistication, space will open up for more advanced games,” said Václav Hodek, CEO of LifeWeb Interactive, which designs mobile phone applications in Prague. Online multiplayer games, for example, are still a virtually unexplored area, he added.
Duck tales
Over the past few years, the local market for mobile gaming has commercialized. Web sites offering mobile content for free have been replaced by Internet portals providing paid download services, and mobile entertainment products have become vehicles for advertising, according to Hodek.
With costs ranging between 30 and 90 Kč, mobile games represent an interesting market segment for all local phone operators.
“Games are definitely the most downloaded mobile phone content among Vodafone customers,” said Filip Hrubý, spokesman for Vodafone Czech Republic. Games account for 65 percent of Vodafone’s downloads and bring the company several million crowns a month in profit, he added.
The most successful games are those based on blockbusters, be they movies, books or computer games, according to Daniel Broulík, mobile game manager at T-Mobile.
Disney is a perfect example of this, Broulík said. The popularity and success of Disney games depends mainly on a large pool of popular movies and cartoon characters, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Donald Duck.
This reliance on conversions from movies, books and PC games might lead to stagnation in mobile gaming, some point out. Recycling other platforms’ titles cannot last forever and new impulses are needed to keep mobile gaming growing, said Ondřej Kolanda, editor-in-chief of MobilHry, a monthly magazine devoted to mobile gaming.
Despite complaints about derivative products, mobile games are becoming mainstream entertainment and are no longer the exclusive activity of male gamers up to 35 years of age, most notably teenagers, experts and Czech mobile experts.
“It’s becoming much more mainstream — moms are playing games, kids are playing games, families are playing games together,” said Disney’s Rose. “I think when that happens the opportunities for growth really start to unfold.”
Disney’s 40 employees in Prague, like game designer Martin Poláček, will look for those growth opportunities in their new open-space office in Prague–Nusle, its walls embellished with vivid paintings of Disney characters.
In the year he has worked for the studio, Koláček has designed four games and co-authored several other titles slated for both the European and global markets, including successful titles such as Spectrobes and Donald Duck’s Quest.
At present, Koláček and his colleagues are working on Cars, a racing game based on the animated feature. “The project looks promising,” Koláček said. “It could be a successful game.”
It was high-skilled people like Koláček who attracted Disney to the Czech Republic in the first place, and prompted the company to invest in its further growth.
“In the Czech Republic, there is a wealth of indigenous programming expertise,” said studio head Jiří Rosenkranz. “Combined with our long-standing Czech animation tradition, [these] provide the ideal foundations for developing high-quality mobile games.”

Victor Velek can be reached at vvelek@praguepost.com


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