Time Management in Mobile Social Game Design: Lessons from Mobile Social Games in Japan

The mobile Internet business is entering a new era in Japan with the emerging revenue being generated from mobile social games. Users using high-speed mobile Internet with flat-rate data services have acceptance of micro-payments and increased payment acceptance in mobile social games. This has been impacting mobile business and the game business in Japan for the last 12 months. Given the hype surrounding mobile social games, the author attempts to identify the guidelines in game design that were not explored in traditional game design. Time-factor is one of the to-be-explored factors in the human factors. It provides a rich source of industrial applications including social games in the anyplace and anytime context. The author highlights the time-dimensional factors in this emerging design methodology for mobile social games.