While I was working in the Mobile Space, I got into a number of arguments with a number of former VP’s about how to design a mobile application. They always argued over the overall design, how to get to the finished product, and why I didn’t know what I was talking about, since I didn’t like working in the Mobile Space in the first place. Sometimes I simply kicked’m in the nuts and called it good, but for the most part I would technologically shred them until they cried and then kick’m in the ding-ding for wasting everyone’s time, and in most cases, what precious little money we had access to.
Because I was right, plain and simple, when it came to the User eXperience on a mobile device. I’m not tooting my own horn here – I know what was good and more importantly, what was bad. Anyway, it’s looking like I’ll have to have a very similar conversation with EA over the PSP platform… After shelling out about $90 between MVP Baseball and Madden on the PSP, I fell that I owe them a kick in the nuts too, but I’d rather get them to fix their errors first.
The majority of the arguments with the VP’s apply here… From a VP’s point of view, we had a web application that ran on a web browser using HTML. Some fly-by-night group would come in and say to a VP “we can convert HTML to WML/HDML!” and they would get sticky pants over it. This would lead to a meeting in my office, followed by a group meeting in my boss’ office, and culminating in an uber meeting with the CEO about why we can’t use the auto-conversion system if we wanted an application with a proper and fine tuned UX. [The joys of working in a 45 person company at the time: instant access to the CEO, which was a mixed blessing at best]
You see, our web based product was multi-framed, multi-pages, multi-colored, with images large enough to melt a wireless devices [at the time] if it was rendered there. It was designed to take advantage of vertical and horizontal scrolling navigation. It was designed to make use of large screens. Yes, I could have taken that entire site and converted the HTML to WML. It would have been easy. The problem is that the resulting page would have been huge. If I stripped out the images, how would the user navigate? What about the frames? Delete all the colors? You’d end up with a 2″ by 2″ window that would have to pan over a 8.5″ by 11″ page. That would be subdivided by the frames, if that particular device supported it…
Bad design: you simply cannot take a desktop application and shove it into a mobile device without any thought involved.
You’re stupid to want it to work like that! You should instead look at the device you’re targeting and then target that device. Take for example SharpMT versus Pocket SharpMT. The major features are the same, but there’s a few less features in the Pocket PC version because of devices it’s geared to. Sliding panels in the desktop with a full row of Toolbar buttons; a simple multi-tab interface in the pocket with a simple menu. And there’s no SmartPhone version – why? Because there hasn’t been a good enough SmartPhone device that offered a keyboard for blog writing. Again, this is targeting a UX to mold to the device.
Enter EA Sports. Madden 06 for the PSP plays just like it does on the Xbox. Long load times. Uber yet unnecessary graphics between plays. Long load times. Same control layout that’s on the PS2, which is nice. Long load times. And the worst connect-to-‘net process evar. Which was made even worse by long load times between screens. MVP Baseball I hadn’t played on a PS2 or Xbox in years, but I have to admit that Sony’s MLB kicks the ever-loving shit outta EA’s version, if only because it’s quick to load, has a better game play feel to it (speedy!), and allows Infrastructure play online (where EA only allows Ad Hoc).
Simply put, EA is taking the same game play that it has on it’s full-sized console and trying to shoe horn that into a portable device. And if feels like crap. If only because my battery will be drained just from trying to start a game… all that UMD access time. Or it could simply be that MVP Baseball 05 and Madden 06 are just that bluh on the main consoles, too, in which case they can’t help their portable mediocrity – that would make it an overall problem rather than a Full to Portable problem… I think their lack of support for Infrastructure in Baseball tips their hand a bit, showing us that they don’t take the portable market all that serious, but that’s just my take on it…
Either way, I think EA should put their employees back on an overtime schedule – it’s obvious that if they have time off, their work suffers.