We generally use smartphones for calls, messaging, and to tinker with apps, another important purpose these little toys serve is entertainment. A major chunk of that is mobile gaming that has risen exponentially in the last five years owing to the hardware that permits running console-quality games on phones. On the other end of the spectrum, in developing nations many don’t own a high-end or even a mid-range phone – all they have is a barebones device meant to do basic browsing or other tasks.
GameSnacks, an internal Google program from the Area 120 experimental products launched last year to serve this section of gamers with pint-sized games that run on low-end devices. The idea has gained momentum and Google is now serious about bringing game developers to the platform.
To do that, Google wants to monetize the platform as millions of people in third-world countries have resonated with the idea of playing addictive games on low memory devices – having 1GB/2GB RAM with just 2G or 3G connectivity. The trick here is to make them available on the web by coding them on the HTML5 platform.
Now Google is making the push for GameSnacks in key markets like India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Indonesia as the games will be available in Google Chrome and Google Discover. You can even see it on the Google Pay platform (for now only in India) which natively is used as a money transfer tool.
Apparently, GameSnacks has more than 100 games that come in genres including – classic games like Chess, racing games like Retro Drift, puzzle games like Element Blocks, and other interesting titles. All these games are ad-based and follow a clean operational model which the developers will cherish as the monetization model promise by Google seems lucrative.
