The Observer reported on Sunday that the BBC is offering a mobile game to complement the popular TV programme, Spooks. It mentioned in the article that the game had cost £100,000 to produce and that it was £2 to download. Hmm, that doesn't smell right to me. So I went and checked it out.OK, I can't check how much it really cost to develop the game, so I have to take that as read. But I did go to the BBC Spooks website and found that there are 4 games to play and it's compatible with pretty much all Java capable handsets - no mean feat. So probably the development costs are no way out. It also includes some neat location elements and mobile interactivity which all adds up in development terms.
So, next the question about cost to download. Well, actually, the BBC doesn't charge anything for this at all. So it's free. Great. Or is it?
The game is free to download/play except for your usual SMS and data costs. And due to the interactive element of the fourth game in the series, the BBC predicts that your GPRS costs will be up to £1.90 so it's down to those pesky network operators again and their high data charges. I wonder when they will bring those data charges down so that us mere mortals don't panic when we're doing more than sending or receiving a text message, especially on Pay as You Go phones which are still 70% of the market?
If you want to check it out yourself, just text 'SPOOKS' to 81010. I'm going to try it out myself and I'll let you know if it's any good.
Don't be surprised at the development costs. I have ben researching the costs of having games developed and mostly is appears to be around the US$50-100k mark
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