Tag: mobile gaming

Considering the penetration of smartphones, it isn’t entirely shocking that 44 percent of gamers use that device to play.

According to the Entertainment Software Association report “2014 Sales, Demographic, and Usage Data: Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Gaming Industry,” mobile gaming is rapidly on the rise as 44 percent of all gamers are using their smartphones as their device of choice.

This has been presenting considerable challenges as mobile devices are run exclusively on batteries.

Unlike video game consoles, in which the primary component is plugged into a wall socket in order to provide power – even if the controllers are wireless – mobile gaming relies exclusively on devices that are run on smartphone batteries. When considering that Big Fish Games has predicted that the market for smartphone and tablet based gaming is expected to double by 2016, that’s a lot of drain in the built in power bank.

This trend has made the portable phone charger an essential tool for the mobile gaming industry.

Beside smartphones, tablets are also becoming extremely important mobile gaming devices. This is picking up as penetration of those devices starts to pick up, though it remains nowhere near that of smartphones, for the moment. New data cited by Big Fish Games has suggested that these will be among the most important gaming devices in terms of popularity, as revenue from those games will have grown 400 percent by 2016. The larger screens and better hardware have made those gadgets specifically appealing to gamers.

Even gamers who are loyal to PC and consoles are playing tablet and smartphone games. Among American households that have a dedicated PC or a gaming console, 53 percent play games on smartphones, too.

While smartphone battery technology is improving, it is not doing so nearly fast enough to keep up with the power demands on those devices, particularly as mobile gaming continues to pick up. Those apps cause a notable drain and can lead the device to run out of juice before it is convenient for the user to recharge it. For this – among other reasons – high quality external battery charger power banks from companies such as Mogix have become a vital tool for gamers, regardless of their mobile device of choice.

Chinese mobile game app published private user videos online.

It should come as no surprise that mobile gaming apps are popular in China, but one Chinese mobile app in particular called “FengKuang LaiWang” has recently received a lot of media attention after it was discovered that the mobile game leaked more than 35,000 user videos online, including video clips of users who were in their underwear or in the nude.

The videos were posted without player’s consent on Youku.

FengKuang LaiWang essentially translates to “Crazy Dealings”, and is a popular charade-style game available for download via Alibaba’s Laiwang chat service. The game is not unlike the mobile game “Heads Up!” that can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store. Basically, in this game, players take turns trying to guess the word that appears on the screen while other players act it out. Players video themselves acting out a charade and share the video privately with friends.

According to “Beijing News”, thousands of these videos wound up on the game’s Youku account, which is a Chinese video platform similar to YouTube, unbeknownst to the players. Some of the videos revealed players, who took the game to another level, wearing very little or nothing at all. Many players did not realize that their videos were being recorded and published to Youku.

Concerns regarding mobile gaming regulation resulted after the incident.

As soon as the privacy blunder was reported by local media, the video-sharing feature of the game was disabled and the games account on China’s leading online video site was closed. Zhejiang Zhile Network, the game’s publisher, released a statement that said as soon as it realized the game was uploading video content without player consent it shut down the video-sharing function. The company apologized in a public statement saying that the game failed to inform users that their activities would be streamed online.

The company said that “Per this mistake, we, as the developer and operator of the game, apologize sincerely to affected users.” However, despite what happened, after news about the leak broke, downloads of FengKuang LaiWang have increased.

Nonetheless, as was noted by the “South China Morning Post”, the leak has resulted in people within the Chinese game industry questioning the safety and security of the mobile gaming regulations.