A mobile game is usually played on a mobile phone, smartphone, PDA or handheld computer. It is a video game that is usually pre-installed onto a mobile phone and is played by employing the technologies that are already present on the mobile device. However, mobile games can also be pre- installed over the air, may be side loaded onto the handset with the help of a cable, or may be embedded on the handheld devices by the OEM or by the mobile operator. Most mobile games can be downloaded through the mobile operator’s radio network, however some of these mobile games can also be downloaded into the mobile handsets when purchased, or via infrared connection, Bluetooth or memory card.
The most common platform used in developing mobile games is the Java platform. For more sophisticated mobile games, technologies like Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian OS, Adobe’s Flash Lite, DoCoMo’s DoJa, Sun’s J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition, recently rebranded simply “Java ME”), Qualcomm’s BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless), WIPI, iPhone or Google Android platforms are also used. Many other mobile technologies and network applications include text message (SMS), multimedia message (MMS) or GPRS location identification. There are also some non networked applications that simply apply the device platform to run the game software.
The different types of mobile games include Singleplayer, Multiplayer and 3D graphics. Virtual love games belong to both of singleplayer and multiplayer games. Multiplayer mobile games possess the ability to play against other people, which is a given extension of the mobile phone’s connectivity. The functionality of multiplayer games is achieved through infrared connectivity, bluetooth, which is a wireless protocol using special hardware, GPRS, which is usually used to share the data globally and has the ability to connect a mass number of mobile games with a single server and share data among the players, 3G enables realtime multiplayer gaming and is based on more advnaced technologies as compared with GPRS, WiFi enables internet connectivity at home
The distribution of mobile games can take place in four ways including, Over the Air (OTA) in which a game binary file like BREW or JAVA is delivered to the mobile device through wireless carrier networks. The mobile game can also be sideloaded by loading the game binary file directly onto the phone while connected to a PC, with the help of USB cable or Bluetooth. These games can be pre-installed by pre-loading a game binary file onto the device by an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and can also be distributed by using mobile browser download, which a game file, such as Adobe Flash Lite that can be downloaded directly from a mobile website.
