Case Study: Player One gets the power - December 2005  

With the PDC World Darts Championships rapidly approaching, S&T speaks to Pete Russell, managing director of global mobile content provider and games publisher Player One Ltd, the company behind 12-times World Champion Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor’s mobile darts game. Formed in 1999, Player One has grown its stable of properties across a range of applications and platforms including Java and BREW and holds a rapidly expanding library of high quality sports branded content featuring some of the strongest properties in sport.

As well as the Phil Taylor game, recent successes for Player One include the acclaimed mobile phone games 'Steve Davis Snooker' (which the former snooker world champion is rumoured to play more than the real game), 'Michael Vaughan's International Cricket', 'Manchester United's six-a-side Soccer' and 'The Grand National'. New launches have or will include games based around horseracing jockey Frankie Dettori, boxing legend Mike Tyson, England Ashes hero Freddie Flintoff, soccer player Vinnie Jones’ Greyhound Race Night and The British and Irish Lions in rugby. Player One's titles are produced by some of the most respected developers from the console and wireless gaming industry including Bafta Award winners Distinctive Development and Morpheme.
Player One has developed key relationships with the top tier mobile phone network providers and distributes to 89 distribution partners in 46 territories globally, reaching the desirable 12-30 year old demographic with a current skew towards males (60%).
So, how did Player One get into the games market, one that Russell himself admits can be a restricted one? “Sport is clearly a market for games,” explains Russell, “so we bought up a lot of IP [intellectual property] and decided to create games through third parties and sell through mobile operators.”
Russell has certainly seen a vast improvement in the quality of mobile games since Player One first entered the industry. “Due to developments in the phones themselves, graphics are getting better and better all the time,” he explains. “We are almost at PlayStation standard now.”

Time efficient

The good thing about playing a game on a mobile phone, compared with a console is time-savings. “It is much quicker to play on a mobile. You can do it for just 15 minutes if you want, whereas on a console you can end up playing for hours.” For a £5.00 fee, players can download a Player One application and play it as many times as they like (unless the game is offered ‘free’ as part of a network package). At the moment, the system supports single-player use, but Russell doesn’t rule out multiplayer use in the future. “The market isn’t there yet though,” he says, “and until it is, we’ll just keep on developing 2D and 3D games with well-known brands. Mobiles are becoming increasingly sophisticated though.”
Within darts, you can’t get better-known than 12-times World Darts Champion Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor, that’s for sure. The game is a realistic representation of the world’s professional darts circuit and allows players to step up to the ‘oche’ to compete on the world stage, where Phil Taylor, one of the greatest ever darts players, reigns supreme.
There are five licensed real world tournaments from the darts calendar including the Las Vegas Classic Darts tournament and the BDO Darts World Championship. Each tournament consists of four rounds, where players are able to compete at the highest level in order to reach the final and to ultimately play against the world’s greatest players.
In addition to the high profile tournaments, players can relax by playing one of a selection of pub games which include the favourite 501 and 301 matches plus Cricket, Killer, Golf, High, Low and Around the Clock, during which players can choose their skill level and how many players they wish to challenge.
Exactly why did Player One choose a darts application? “Games aren’t all about football, and besides it wouldn’t make sense for us to compete with the FIFA-branded games out there,” says Russell. “There’s certainly a strong following in darts, and pub sports in particular work well on mobile anyway.” Champ Taylor is himself thrilled to have a mobile game that has been created around darts in his honour: "It can only help in terms of raising awareness of our sport and it keeps my kids quiet for hours, which can only be a good thing," he told S&T.
Taylor often turns his hand to a spot of poker these days, and with the increasing popularity in playing the card game globally, it’s not surprising that Player One has developed a game in that genre as well with ‘PokerMillion’. “In fact, we are looking at the whole gambling area in particular,” adds Russell. Motorsport was also on the company’s wish-list, with a game based on Formula One driver Jenson Button now in development. “Launching a game based on an individual rather than say a team can be very powerful when you add the personal endorsement angle into it,” says Russell.

More than sport

Looking beyond sport is also key to Player One’s development adds Russell. “For example, we have the rights to the ‘Young James Bond’ and we are developing a number of female-related products. The challenge is to take on more global brands in a variety of genres.” With plans to open an office in the US during mid-2006, Player One’s ambitions are certainly erring towards the wider market.
An area that Player One is likely to be taking part in on an increasingly regular basis is live streaming. The company for example bought the live streaming rights to the ICC’s SuperSeries and produced content for mobile operator Orange’s cricket channel during the October event. “We did their streaming, produced clips and also gaming,” says Russell. “Games are increasingly part of rights packages now.” Player One is currently watching the mobile TV space with interest but isn’t threatened per se. “A phone is still a phone after all, and I can’t see mobile TV taking off in the same way. The way phones are used now is all about quick gratification and dipping in and out and I don’t envisage that changing.”

For further information on Player One, visit www.playeronemobile.com

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