Hate to wait? Play a game

By Christiaan Hetzner

LEIPZIG, Germany (Reuters) - Mobile game publisher Glu Mobile aims to eliminate the boredom that plagues the taxi driver while he waits for a fare or the commuter during those interminable minutes before the train.

"We are running right now in Spain an outdoor campaign on big billboards on city buses with the slogan, 'I love to wait'," said Patrick Mork, marketing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Glu, which rolls out some 20 to 25 games per year at a development cost between $100,000 and $350,000 each.

"It's kind of cynical because nobody loves to wait for the bus or the tube, but the point we are trying to communicate is those annoying bits of the day where you really don't know what to do -- you're sitting waiting for a bus that's 15 minutes late again -- are the perfect time to play games," Mork told Reuters.

Thanks to shorter development times in comparison with publishers of console games, Glu can offer customers more content based on locally popular board games or sports such as cricket, which can be played for a few minutes on the go.

"Not everybody is going to want to play a shoot-'em-up on their handset. You got to offer somebody a kind of snack of the video games industry as opposed to a 12-course meal," he said on the sidelines of the Games Convention in Leipzig.

"Mobile games don't compete at all with the wider video games industry. If anything we complement it, help (it) grow."

California-based Glu has recently cut deals to distribute Konami mobile games, including Pro Evolution Soccer, as well as develop titles such as Age of Empires III and Call of Duty 4. It competes with Electronic Arts Inc. and Europe's Gameloft.

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