The most popular mobile game: how the "Snake" was created for Nokia phones
Taneli Armanto does not like to tell people that he changed the world. In fact, I am sure that if you are not a friend of his family, then you have not heard anything about him. Usually he never talks about his greatest achievement, but his children do not miss the opportunity to brag to them.
In the end, their dad created Snake .
In 1995, a software developer from Finland named Armanto got a job at Nokia, a fast-growing company. He had experience creating games, so he was tasked with developing “some cool games” for the future Nokia 6110 mobile phone. He perceived his toys as another way to use the device, not much different from the calendar and calculator created by colleagues.
Today, after almost 25 years, his creation called Snake - a game in which a gradually lengthening snake collects food while trying not to bite itself - is seen as a turning point in the history of technology and entertainment. Snake is considered the first major mobile game to spawn an industry that today has a potential of $ 100 billion .
Armanto is reserved and modest when he talks about his career. “A lot of people get excited when they find out that I wrote Snake ,” he says. “And I think that’s quite normal. It’s great to know that people liked this game. ”
We will begin the story in 1995, when Nokia only three years passed after the global modernization of the company. Her new mission: to focus entirely on mobile technology . Although mobile phones have not yet achieved worldwide recognition , they have quickly become smaller, cheaper and easier to use. After the Nokia 2110 was launched in 1993, the company began work on the Nokia 6110 , which was due to debut in December 1997.
Nokia wanted the 6110 to become even smaller and faster, with increased battery capacity and talk time. He was supposed to get a new, improved user interface , allowing people to quickly switch between different phone features. The company needed developers, and Armanto responded to her call.
Nokia 6110 in a blue case.
Armanto: In 1995, Nokia grew rapidly. We were all new to the company. That was awesome! We were developing new features for phones, and we had to carry the latest devices with us, because of course they needed testing.
Some of my colleagues from the UI implementation team thought that I used to create computer games, but it wasn’t! They confused me with my relative. But other developers from my department said that if I go in for games, they will write a phone book, calendar, calculator, etc. Therefore, I was given the task of making games for the phone, which I was very pleased with because I loved games. Especially desktop.
I decided that Tetris was perfect, I even implemented and tested it. But as a result, he had to be abandoned. Tetris Company wanted to receive a share of each device sold, and Nokia did not want to tie any payments to the exact number of products sold.
I had to take into account the specifications of 6110. At first, I thought about the existing limitations: a very small screen, just a few keys to control the game, not much memory space for programming ...
Snake game existed until 1995. She first appeared in 1976 on the Blockade arcade machine , which spawned several clones. Whatever they were called: Nibbler , Worm or Rattler Race , the basic concept remained the same.
Armanto: someone might think that Nokia was the first manufacturer to have games on their phones, but that’s not the case. It’s just that earlier devices weren’t sold in such circulations as 6110.
I used to play a game like Snake on my Apple Macintosh. It was for two players, each of whom controlled his own snake using the keyboard.
Kyle McNeil, Vice, “ Declaration of love for Snake , the best mobile game ”: Snake in its simplest, purest form of video game is fun, its gameplay is similar to Pong or Space Invaders . The pixel chain, nice physics and the feeling of gradually increasing the complexity of the game "
Armanto: After conducting tests and planning, we realized that these snakes would be the perfect solution. They are simple enough to fit in the limitations of the phone. There was no point in using complex solutions if everyone was quite happy with the simple. We tried to find information to find the “owner” of Snake -like games, as we found the owner of Tetris , but we were not successful. Therefore, we began to move on.
Armanto: testing early versions of the game, I noticed that it is very difficult to control the snake near the field boundary so that it does not crash, especially at high speed levels. I wanted the highest level to have the highest possible speed with which the device can work; on the other hand, I wanted the game to be friendly and help the player cope with the level. Otherwise, it would be uninteresting to play the level. Therefore, I implemented a slight delay. A few milliseconds of extra time right before the player crashes into the wall, and at that moment he could still change direction. If he does, then the game will continue.
McNeill: the larger the snake becomes, the more difficult it is to crawl around the screen, trying not to fall into the circle of death. We add that the player has only one life, so each twisty turn becomes a frightening moment, and we get a real thriller on the phone.
Armanto: we made it so that at the most difficult level, the snake moved at the highest achievable speed. Given the refresh rate of the screen and the speed at which the program calculates the next snake position, at slower levels I needed to add a delay so that there was more time between the steps. There are no delays at the fastest level, which means we cannot make it faster. But it would not be so fast if it caused a phone malfunction due to memory leaks. Therefore, I implemented it so that there were no memory leaks.
Nokia began selling 6110s in early 1998 and from the very beginning Snake was standard on the phone.
McNeill: Today, the game built into a cell phone is perceived as a kind of return to simplicity. There is no need to download anything, no in-game purchases, no updates and waste of mobile traffic. Just pick up Nokia and start playing.
Armanto: I myself have not managed to reach the level of a champion, although I, of course, have been testing the game for quite some time. But the best way to win is to practice. Nothing else. Practice and be a champion. I found out that some people used the pause / continue function to achieve a very large number of points. But this is cheating, therefore it does not count.
Perhaps the whole thing was in the mass distribution of the phone, the simplicity of the game, or a combination of these two factors, but Snake turned into a phenomenon. People first began to look at the screens of their phones for a very long time.
Hannu Korhonen, article “Evaluating Playability of Mobile Games with the Expert Review Method”, published by the Association for Computing Machinery : The era of mobile phone games began in 1997 when Nokia launched the first mobile game called Snake on the Nokia 6110. This is probably the most played mobile game because it is available on over 350 million mobile phones worldwide .
Armanto: I myself liked to play it, and my fellow Nokians liked to test it and they often talked to me. But I never thought that she would become so popular. I am sure that the product marketing department was not ready for this either. Information has reached us that the children at school play a lot of it, perhaps even too much. We also heard that phones sell well. But, most likely, this was caused by other functions of the phone. I am sure about that!
McNeill: this is an ideal mobile game, because everyone played it, and especially people who have never played a single game in their life. It is embedded in the consciousness of society in the same way as it is built into the Nokia 6110.
Armanto: In informal conversations they told me how important my game was. But its popularity had other reasons: a user interface, a much improved battery life, lower prices, and so on. However, Nokia never announced the extent to which my game helped the sales of the phone.
I think that there is some kind of policy or practice that forces you to “hide” the names of developers of different functions and say that all these are just Nokia functions or inventions - at least in official communication. Later I received a small one-time bonus. I don’t remember exactly when, but after completing the development of programs for the phone quite a lot of time has passed.
From the 2005 Nokia N-Gage press release : Mr. Taneli Armanto, creator of the world's most popular mobile game Snake, received a special recognition from the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) for his key role in creating Snake for the Nokia 6100 series of phones. Forum MEF said that Mr. Armanto's genius and vision have made a significant contribution to the growth of the mobile entertainment industry. Mr. Armanto received an award yesterday at the annual MEF event in London.
Armanto worked at Nokia for almost 16 years, then went to free bread, and later returned to study. Today he works as a systems architect at Ineo Oy .
Armanto: All in all, I miss the years I spent at Nokia. It was an interesting and inspiring time, even after the release of Snake . Although the company has grown and it has problems, as far as I know, the atmosphere in the local departments was still great. In the end, we built a better world.
In the end, their dad created Snake .
In 1995, a software developer from Finland named Armanto got a job at Nokia, a fast-growing company. He had experience creating games, so he was tasked with developing “some cool games” for the future Nokia 6110 mobile phone. He perceived his toys as another way to use the device, not much different from the calendar and calculator created by colleagues.
Today, after almost 25 years, his creation called Snake - a game in which a gradually lengthening snake collects food while trying not to bite itself - is seen as a turning point in the history of technology and entertainment. Snake is considered the first major mobile game to spawn an industry that today has a potential of $ 100 billion .
Armanto is reserved and modest when he talks about his career. “A lot of people get excited when they find out that I wrote Snake ,” he says. “And I think that’s quite normal. It’s great to know that people liked this game. ”
The phone that changed everything
We will begin the story in 1995, when Nokia only three years passed after the global modernization of the company. Her new mission: to focus entirely on mobile technology . Although mobile phones have not yet achieved worldwide recognition , they have quickly become smaller, cheaper and easier to use. After the Nokia 2110 was launched in 1993, the company began work on the Nokia 6110 , which was due to debut in December 1997.
Nokia wanted the 6110 to become even smaller and faster, with increased battery capacity and talk time. He was supposed to get a new, improved user interface , allowing people to quickly switch between different phone features. The company needed developers, and Armanto responded to her call.
Nokia 6110 in a blue case.
Armanto: In 1995, Nokia grew rapidly. We were all new to the company. That was awesome! We were developing new features for phones, and we had to carry the latest devices with us, because of course they needed testing.
Some of my colleagues from the UI implementation team thought that I used to create computer games, but it wasn’t! They confused me with my relative. But other developers from my department said that if I go in for games, they will write a phone book, calendar, calculator, etc. Therefore, I was given the task of making games for the phone, which I was very pleased with because I loved games. Especially desktop.
I decided that Tetris was perfect, I even implemented and tested it. But as a result, he had to be abandoned. Tetris Company wanted to receive a share of each device sold, and Nokia did not want to tie any payments to the exact number of products sold.
I had to take into account the specifications of 6110. At first, I thought about the existing limitations: a very small screen, just a few keys to control the game, not much memory space for programming ...
Early Snake Story
Snake game existed until 1995. She first appeared in 1976 on the Blockade arcade machine , which spawned several clones. Whatever they were called: Nibbler , Worm or Rattler Race , the basic concept remained the same.
Armanto: someone might think that Nokia was the first manufacturer to have games on their phones, but that’s not the case. It’s just that earlier devices weren’t sold in such circulations as 6110.
I used to play a game like Snake on my Apple Macintosh. It was for two players, each of whom controlled his own snake using the keyboard.
Kyle McNeil, Vice, “ Declaration of love for Snake , the best mobile game ”: Snake in its simplest, purest form of video game is fun, its gameplay is similar to Pong or Space Invaders . The pixel chain, nice physics and the feeling of gradually increasing the complexity of the game "
Armanto: After conducting tests and planning, we realized that these snakes would be the perfect solution. They are simple enough to fit in the limitations of the phone. There was no point in using complex solutions if everyone was quite happy with the simple. We tried to find information to find the “owner” of Snake -like games, as we found the owner of Tetris , but we were not successful. Therefore, we began to move on.
Game creation
Armanto: testing early versions of the game, I noticed that it is very difficult to control the snake near the field boundary so that it does not crash, especially at high speed levels. I wanted the highest level to have the highest possible speed with which the device can work; on the other hand, I wanted the game to be friendly and help the player cope with the level. Otherwise, it would be uninteresting to play the level. Therefore, I implemented a slight delay. A few milliseconds of extra time right before the player crashes into the wall, and at that moment he could still change direction. If he does, then the game will continue.
McNeill: the larger the snake becomes, the more difficult it is to crawl around the screen, trying not to fall into the circle of death. We add that the player has only one life, so each twisty turn becomes a frightening moment, and we get a real thriller on the phone.
Armanto: we made it so that at the most difficult level, the snake moved at the highest achievable speed. Given the refresh rate of the screen and the speed at which the program calculates the next snake position, at slower levels I needed to add a delay so that there was more time between the steps. There are no delays at the fastest level, which means we cannot make it faster. But it would not be so fast if it caused a phone malfunction due to memory leaks. Therefore, I implemented it so that there were no memory leaks.
Nokia began selling 6110s in early 1998 and from the very beginning Snake was standard on the phone.
McNeill: Today, the game built into a cell phone is perceived as a kind of return to simplicity. There is no need to download anything, no in-game purchases, no updates and waste of mobile traffic. Just pick up Nokia and start playing.
Armanto: I myself have not managed to reach the level of a champion, although I, of course, have been testing the game for quite some time. But the best way to win is to practice. Nothing else. Practice and be a champion. I found out that some people used the pause / continue function to achieve a very large number of points. But this is cheating, therefore it does not count.
“I never thought she would become so popular.”
Perhaps the whole thing was in the mass distribution of the phone, the simplicity of the game, or a combination of these two factors, but Snake turned into a phenomenon. People first began to look at the screens of their phones for a very long time.
Hannu Korhonen, article “Evaluating Playability of Mobile Games with the Expert Review Method”, published by the Association for Computing Machinery : The era of mobile phone games began in 1997 when Nokia launched the first mobile game called Snake on the Nokia 6110. This is probably the most played mobile game because it is available on over 350 million mobile phones worldwide .
Armanto: I myself liked to play it, and my fellow Nokians liked to test it and they often talked to me. But I never thought that she would become so popular. I am sure that the product marketing department was not ready for this either. Information has reached us that the children at school play a lot of it, perhaps even too much. We also heard that phones sell well. But, most likely, this was caused by other functions of the phone. I am sure about that!
McNeill: this is an ideal mobile game, because everyone played it, and especially people who have never played a single game in their life. It is embedded in the consciousness of society in the same way as it is built into the Nokia 6110.
Armanto: In informal conversations they told me how important my game was. But its popularity had other reasons: a user interface, a much improved battery life, lower prices, and so on. However, Nokia never announced the extent to which my game helped the sales of the phone.
I think that there is some kind of policy or practice that forces you to “hide” the names of developers of different functions and say that all these are just Nokia functions or inventions - at least in official communication. Later I received a small one-time bonus. I don’t remember exactly when, but after completing the development of programs for the phone quite a lot of time has passed.
From the 2005 Nokia N-Gage press release : Mr. Taneli Armanto, creator of the world's most popular mobile game Snake, received a special recognition from the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) for his key role in creating Snake for the Nokia 6100 series of phones. Forum MEF said that Mr. Armanto's genius and vision have made a significant contribution to the growth of the mobile entertainment industry. Mr. Armanto received an award yesterday at the annual MEF event in London.
Armanto worked at Nokia for almost 16 years, then went to free bread, and later returned to study. Today he works as a systems architect at Ineo Oy .
Armanto: All in all, I miss the years I spent at Nokia. It was an interesting and inspiring time, even after the release of Snake . Although the company has grown and it has problems, as far as I know, the atmosphere in the local departments was still great. In the end, we built a better world.
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