How do actual young people and kids respond to mobile services? On Mobile Games Forum 2009 last week, we were able to quatify just that. The organizers of the venue brought actual kids and young people to the event, which was a great show and by the way one of the best discussions - revealing, informative, realistic. 

There were 5 kids in total, some of them more or less casual, but generally 3 completely casual mobile phone users (and game players), and 2 more of what we would call hardcore users (and also hardcore gamers).

I just wanted to point out a few quotes from this panel “discussion”:

“We want simple games that don’t waste a lot of time, I don’t actulaly sit down and play the games”

“One minute trial times really annoys you, then you don’t want to pay more”

“I don’t like touschreen, when you are pressing the buttons, it’s hard to know if it really presses. With buttons, if you press one, it actually clicks and moves the button, so it feels easier to click.”

“I like touch screen games more, there is motion sensors, you can tilt it, but if you want to play more advanced games, its with a keypad.”

“You get bored of the iPhone”

“Snake is my favorite.”

“Every game has different handling - like the 2,4,6,8 you always know what they do, but with others it is always different”

“I was on mobile web for like 5 minutes on Facebook and it cost me like 3 pounds”

Comment to using mobile web: “We tried, our credit dissolved, and we didnt use it anymore”

Last but definitely not least, one kid answered if he has downloaded any illegal mobile games (most of the others replied their friends have): “No, I never downloaded mobile games, just my friends send them to me via Bluetooth” :-))

All of them mentioned they usually play games while they travel, only one of them had a data plan, and the others were mostly scared of using mobile data services.

So to recap:

  • This is a group extremely sensitive to costs
  • Extremely sensitive to ease-of-use, and that it is easy to discover
  • Most of them have some sort of negative experience using mobile web (operator mistake) / premium services (off-portal companies mistakes, operator mistakes to allow this to happen)
  • All have experienced downloading illegal content either themselves, or their many “friends”.

And at the end, there was an especially interesting question:

“What about the browser downloading - do you like text numbers in newspapers?”
And the very interesting and accurate response was:
“Well, I come from Austria, and there is a company called JAMBA.” 

People laughed, but it really is sad… 

Well make your own opinion on this last one… So isn’t this worth fighting for, a change in the mobile content industry? Well I think that’s what 2009 and 2010 will be about for mobile games and mobile content. Let’s hope for mobile web, it’s only 2009 to fix the mess of “I tried, and I was in billshock”.