Philadelphia should be a mobile-gaming hub: Drexel’s Frank Lee

Frank Lee is the visionary behind the world’s biggest video game, but he still has love for smaller games. Way smaller — we’re talking mobile.

He imagines Philadelphia as a mobile gaming hub, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Here’s why:

Mobile games are aimed at smaller screens. There’s no need for 3D graphics and big-game complexity. Development time is measured in months, not years. And mobile games don’t take hundreds of coders and artists to create.

“While I can’t imagine my students creating a game like Halo or Call of Duty, I can imagine them creating a game like Angry Birds,” Lee says.

Mobile gaming is popular among indie game developers, especially the single-person studios: think Camden Segal‘s recent Bulb Muncher, Decidedly‘s Floyd’s Worthwhile Endeavor and Shenandoah Studio‘s iPad war strategy games. Other studios build versions for Windows and OSx and then follow up with mobile versions, like Ghost Crab Games‘ Drive to Hell and Cipher Prime‘s Intake (whose iPad version is launching this week).

Lee has been part of trying to build a more established gaming industry here for years, but it’s a competitive landscape to be sure.