"How do you design a game to accommodate the world's fattest fingers?" Pagano asked the crowd, in discussing five of EA's ported mobile-to-iPhone games, SimCity, Yahtzee, Spore Origins, Tetris and Monopoly.
Creating games for users who "have fat sausages for fingers" was a key theme for much of Pagano's session, which included three additional tips: 1) See games not as ports, but as adaptations, 2) Keep things simple and sexy, and 3) learn from Apple's lead.
Using Tricky Software's Zach Waibel's ideology, "It's an adaptation, not a port," as a key mantra, Pagano said his team prototyped a lot. "We iterated a lot with Spore and tried again and again to not use the D-pad approach," Pagano said, referring to the iPhone's unique accelerometer control method. "We had to do a lot of tuning with this S.O.B. You have to remember that iPhone users are always mobile." Users sit, stand, lie down, and they're in cars, planes and trains, requiring developers to adjust the accelerometer to regular motion.
With a library as large as EA's, figuring out which games to bring to iPhone was as big a challenge as anything else. After thinking about the benefits of adaptation for each game, EA considered four key elements: brand recognition, proven mechanics, fast time to market and high profitability.
Spore took four months to bring to market (with one month dedicated to QA), SimCity took 92 days ("We were very fast on that one and we were very, very tired"), and Yahtzee took three months. Using Spore as an example, Pagano explained how the team stripped down the game to its bare essentials and re-created it on the iPhone, adding 16 new levels that weren't in the mobile version.
One of the biggest issues for developers to overcome is learning from Apple's lead on tough interface issues. "Why re-create the keyboard, when Apple has done it so well already?" With successful franchises that already exist, Pagano's teams spent weeks trying to bring a game requiring 16 button commands to the iPhone. "We shelved the sports game and did Yahtzee instead," he said, most likely referring to EA's biggest franchise, Madden NFL.
Another lesson he tells his team: "Use Google Maps to see how things can be simplified," Pagano said. "And whatever you do, simplify the controls. Every time you create a button, make sure the user knows he or she is tapping that button. The iPhone is touch sensitive, but you can't feel feedback so you don't know when a button is pressed. You have to make that visually clear, which is something we could have done better with Yahtzee. Give gamers a visual cue when they tap, preferably above their fingers, not below."
His last tips: The iPhone and iPod Touch are music devices, so you really want to support user music in your games, Pagano explained. He added the device is also a phone, so make sure to incorporate solid support for interrupt-driven games to avoid slowdown and crashing.