Malware, meet Android?

Could the success of Google’s Android operating system cause the malware floodgates to open up on our cellphones?

From Malware, Google Android and the OHA:

As mobile devices become more tightly integrated with online services, malware authors potentially gain new targets. Any significant step forward in mobile technology that facilitates web browsing (in terms of both satisfaction and accessibility) could open the door for web threats to pose an increased threat to mobile devices. As browsers are used for increasingly complex web services, it is likely that threats will mature to be entirely OS-independent. Instead of simply using the browser as a vehicle to install malware, threats will deliver their entire payload within the browser ‘environment’. In this way, desktops and mobile devices (any device running an appropriate browser) could be targeted.

Certainly the Android OS would be a prime target for any nasties looking to steal your personal information. But how likely is it that these attempts will be successful? I’m not sure. Up until now Linux has never had a problem with malware, and while some claim that this is because Linux is very well designed (Joe Barr at Linux.com states outright that you don’t need antivirus on Linux), supporters of a certain company in Redmond like to insist that if Linux was exposed to 90% market share it would be hammered with open exploits just as hard as Windows has been.

Personally, I don’t think it’s likely that Linux is completely immune, but there are definitely some design decisions that make it a much more difficult target to hit, and the open nature of the software means that any flaw will be fixed much faster.

If Android takes off, maybe we’ll have a chance to find out for sure…

What could Android do for mobile gaming? Look to Tokyo!

I currently work as a game developer at Javaground, a mobile phone game company based in Southern California. My coworkers and I are all well aware of Google’s Android announcement, and I’m sure everyone in the mobile game industry is waiting with baited breath to get their hands on the “early look at the Android™ SDK” announced to be released into the wild tomorrow, November 12. With a very ambitious press release and such a huge consortium of industry players (and with the industry giants notably absent from the Alliance), all of us game developer types are all wondering one thing: What could Android possibly do for mobile gaming?

First of all, let’s face it, cell phone games in the US and Europe are still, for the most part, pretty terrible. They’re expensive little accessories to alleviate boredom and, like wallpapers and ringtones, the only reason you’re paying so much for them (if you’re wasting your money at all) is because that’s all the carriers will allow you to have on their phone. “What ever happened to free cell phone games?” asks Slate’s Justin Peters. Very good question – I found the beginnings of my answer in Japan.

Tales from Tokyo

I had the opportunity this fall to attend the Tokyo Game Show 2007 (wp), and a couple of things really surprised me there that you don’t really see mentioned at all in the typical gamer media, with their obsession over booth babes and frenzied coverage of big-budget game releases and announcements. First, a significant portion of the show was focused on mobile games. I knew that cell phones and their games were ubiquitous in Japan, but I was still incredibly amazed at how much attention and floor space mobile games received relative to their console counterparts. Stuff like Namco’s Katamari Damacy Mobile seemed to be actually drawing a fair amount of attention relative to the big mega-blockbusters and the standard portable consoles.

My other surprise came from a discovery of a table, rather prominently located on the back side of the Japan Game Awards voting booth, displaying the winning entries of an amateur mobile phone game development competition. I was floored – here I was, surrounded by the game industry giants going all out to capture the attention of the gaming public with huge cinematic sensory overload, and over there are a couple of computer science students showing off their little IT university projects on cell phones! My conversation with one of the amateur game-makers, Hisao, was even more fascinating. I talked with him for a bit about the state of the mobile game industry in Japan, and it turns out that the environment is much more open to amateur game development. Instead of restricting access to outside games in order to capitalize on overpriced games and exclusive deals with licensed publishers, Japan’s mobile game market has developed in the other direction towards making sure their phones could play as many games as possible, and even funding cutting-edge game development in order to push the limits of the phone hardware to show off new features and capabilities of the devices themselves. David Collier’s GDC2003 presentation gives a pretty good overview of the way the Japanese mobile game industry structures its game offerings around unique, innovative and high-end uses of mobile technology.

Another really cool thing was how easy it was to market independent games. Check out Asobism’s game page for a typical example of the ubiquitous black-and-white download box. Snap a photo of this data-filled box with a Japanese cell phone, and it’ll take you straight to a URL where you can purchase/download the game. When I asked Hisao about how difficult it was to get carriers to publish independent games, he looked at me questioningly. “What do you mean? You just go to a site and download the game. Carriers don’t get in the way at all.”

Now, it’s not like Japan’s mobile game market is completely golden – carriers still use games, even free exclusive offerings, as a form of vendor lock-in because users are much more reluctant to swap phones once they’ve built up a good library of purchased or downloaded games that they don’t want to wipe clean. However, the innovation made possible by more open relationships between carriers and content does give us a good sense of the kinds of innovations that are possible for the mobile game industry if an open mobile platform manages to be successful in the Western markets, Android or otherwise.

An Open Gaming Platform

After looking at the vitality of the Japanese mobile game industry, particularly its independent developers, and in the spirit of overoptimistic blogger anticipation, let me offset some predictions of the future impact that an open mobile platform may have on mobile game development in the West:

• Features and performance matter. Currently, phones in the West are marketed based on their looks, their carrier contracts and their call quality much more than their features and performance. Accordingly, games are marketed based almost entirely on their brand. The biggest offering an open mobile platform could bring to mobile games is a renewed freedom of, and consumer interest in, the hardware itself. This means games that will really push the limits of a phone’s processing and graphics power, games that take advantage of new gadgetry, games that gleefully gobble up wifi connections, and so on. No more “generic licensed game based on popular TV show of the month” or licensed Tetris games dominating the charts. No more games that look and feel the same whether your phone is brand new or 5 years old. Games that really push the limits of phone hardware will not only make people take mobile games more seriously, but it will also encourage consumers to select phones based on their capabilities rather than their contracts.
• Open competition means increased innovation. With nowhere but the carrier’s deck to turn to when making a game purchase, mobile gamers are limited to playing what the carriers know will sell well, which usually translates to cheesy, derivative licensed games with instantly-recognizable 16-character titles. There are a few exceptions, but the fact is that successfully turning a profit on a mobile game basically requires the carrier’s permission to do so. With an open platform, one that would allow independently developed games to make full use of the phone hardware and be as easily accessible as commercial products, the increased competition would ultimately mean more innovative cell phone games as a whole.
• Transparent hardware means easier development and optimization. Currently one of the greatest nightmares of mobile game development is porting to the hundreds of different devices on the market, all spanning an extremely wide range of screen sizes, device features and limitations, performance and memory sizes. While widespread adoption of a standard development kit could help overcome this hurdle for amateur developers (though it would be highly unlikely), even more frustrating is the lack of publicly available technical information about the phones out on the market so that any scalable features could be more quickly and accurately automated. Although it wouldn’t be the explicit promise of an SDK, it is my hope that a more open relationship to the phone hardware will encourage developer communities that openly share technical specs, device issues and bug workarounds so that a single piece of software will be able to run flawlessly on as many different phones as possible, with fewer bumps along the road than we see today.

Will any of these dreams become a reality with the OHA’s Android? We’ll have to wait until (at least) tomorrow to find out.

TI-83 Flashback: Dope Wars

I don’t know why, but I was thinking of the old games on the TI-83 this afternoon, and the one that made the biggest impression on my memory was the classic Dope Wars (wkp), also called Drug Wars in some incarnations.

What do you think made this game so popular? Really, it boils down to a simple stock market simulation, with very little strategy involved: buy your drugs low, sell high. Rinse and repeat, then pay off your debts and become a master drug lord.

While I was pondering the game’s allure, I happened upon a slightly more modern version of the game, called Dealer. The game itself, which is designed with a crappy Flash UI with mouse-only navigation, is pretty crap, but I enjoyed the heck out of the gratuitous slang, the dark graphics, and of course the gansta beat.

Based on this anecdotal, purely circumstantial evidence, I’d like to put forth the idea that the style and attitude of a game have more to do with its success than the form. And, when considering a particular form or style, badass is always best. Any thoughts?

Android buzz roundup

Roundup of the buzz surrounding the announcement of the Open Handset Alliance (wp) and its impressive Alliance member list, as well as the upcoming Android platform (wp) by Google and friends last week. Here is a no-frills list of public comments made by various industry spokespeople and corporate types that have filtered through the media:

Symbian VP John Forsyth:

“About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It’s a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business. We don’t participate in these full stop. We make our own platform and we are focused on driving that into the mobile phone market at large ever more aggressively.

“Search and a mobile phone platform are completely different things. It’s costly, arduous and at times a deeply unsexy job of supporting customers day by day in launching phones. That’s something there’s very little experience of in Google’s environment. If you are a serious phone maker and you are asked to bet your handsets on somebody, you would want to bet on someone with a track record of delivery and support.

“It’s very clear what developers want – volume and a stable platform that doesn’t keep breaking. You have to have a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed. They are talking about having a phone by the end of next year. It’s not one that is going to ignite developers.” (BBC News)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

“Well of course their efforts are just some words on paper right now, it’s hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile]. Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they’re welcome in our world.” (PC World)

Microsoft marketing manager Scott Horn:

“It really sounds that they are getting a whole bunch of people together to build a phone and that’s something we’ve been doing for five years. I don’t understand the impact that they are going to have.” (Engadget)

Nokia spokeswoman Kari Tuutti:

“[On the question of partnership] It’s not ruled out at all. If we would see this as beneficial we would think about taking part in it. We should never close any doors.” (Reuters)

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris:

“We have a great relationship with Google and this doesn’t change anything. They are certainly an important partner for iPhone.” (Engadget)

Now, of course the announcement this past week was mostly a buzz-building PR move on the part of Google, but we’re going to find out tomorrow (when Google has promised an early preview release of the Android SDK) how much of this is just talk and how much Google really plans to shake up the mobile phone industry. Of course, my main concern is: How will Android’s promise of an open mobile platform impact the mobile game industry? Will existing mobile game developers need to become a little more quick on their feet and develop more creative games in order to keep hold of their consumer base, once being all buddy-buddy with carriers will no longer suffice? Will publishing independent games for mobile phones finally become possible? Even if possible, will it be at all technically feasible to independently create games that will run on more than just a few select phones?

Answers (or disappointments) to be revealed tomorrow.

Weewar – Online Strategy Game

Weewar is a browser based (plugin-free! Though it does require registration…) strategy game that Will pointed out to me recently. It seems pretty cool, though I haven’t really gotten a chance to play it much.

But I’ve always liked the idea of making interesting multiplayer games using nothing but AJAX, so I’ll definitely be investigating further. Check it out.

Hello, World!

Welcome to our blog. We are the Jordan brothers, super all around: Eric, Will, Greg, and Brian (in order of descending greatne…err, age, yeah, that’s what I meant to say).

We all program, we all like games, and we’re hopefully all going to contribute various random things of interest to this here blog. I’ll start things rolling with a compendium of Hello, World! programs written in just about any language you could think of.

My favorite has to be the one written in Brainf**k.