In a time before smartphones ruled our trouser pockets and the words ‘Candy Crush’ conjured up images of a casual game, a Finnish giant named Nokia dominated the world of mobile entertainment.

While the company is best remembered for its hardy and largely ubiquitous mobile phones, Nokia had just as important an impact on the early days of mobile gaming, which begs the question: how did a simple game called Snake become such a surprising influence on the world of online gaming? In this article, we’ll examine how Nokia’s unlikely rise to power in mobile gaming began with Snake and led to an unlikely influence on the online gaming industry as a whole.

The Birth of a Gaming Legacy: The Unintentional Hero – Snake

It’s 1997, and Nokia releases the rugged, NASA-ready, snakeskin-clad Nokia 6110 phone. Preloaded on the handset was a modest game called Snake. Created by a Finnish developer called Taneli Armanto, Snake required you to steer a pixelated reptile around the screen eating dots that turned it into a longer and longer snake, but without hitting any part of your own body.

The game was simple but compelling. Intuitive controls (using the directional buttons of the phone), rising tension, and the desperate panic of ‘close wins’ made Snake hugely successful: millions spent months slavishly perfecting it. And in the process, Nokia – whose strong but stolid mobile phones had never been seen as chief rivals for the gaming market until then – inadvertently unleashed a revolution in mobile gaming.

It seems simple, but it was a huge catalyst for the creation of future mobile games and turned the basic device into a hub of excitement for users. Fast forward to today, and you can play pretty much anything on your phone. One popular genre of games that a lot of people are downloading is online casino games – they’re easy to play on the small screen and the rounds are quick enough for you to enjoy on the bus to work or when you have a spare few minutes. From casino games that pay real money and feel just as immersive as the games you’d play in a physical casino, to a new and improved version of Snake that still pays respect to the very earliest designs, there are so many more options for mobile gamers than there has ever been before.

Beyond Snake: The Rise of Mobile Gaming on Nokia

Snake’s success was unexpected, proving there was room for exploration of what gaming could offer Nokia. The number of games steadily increased, including the release of Bounce which featured a bouncing ball rolling around mazes – a pioneer of the Bust-a-Move franchise – and the inclusion of Space Impact, a Galaga-style side-scrolling space shooter.

These pioneer titles may seem simplistic by today’s standards, but they proved that it was possible to provide entertainment on a device with a limited number of pixels and tiny amounts of processing power. That same year, the Series 20 phones from Nokia were released, with improved graphics and processing capabilities, catering to the market’s growing appetite for mobile entertainment.

The Dawn of Freemium and Microtransactions: A Parallel Universe to Online Casinos?

Though some Nokia games were available to buy separately, many were included with the phone or offered as a free trial with the option to purchase the full version. The freemium model of mobile gaming has been near-universal for years now, but the approach was novel when Nokia first tried it.

The practice of moving online hosted mobile games played for circa-€0.50 costs into the freemium territory was not too different from what was also happening in online casinos, where versions of traditional, styled casino games such as blackjack, roulette and poker were made available to play free-to-play followed by the opportunity to spend real money if desired. The freemium offer forms a gate: to gain some taste of the mobile gaming or betting experience, access must be paid for.

The Unexpected Connection: Mobile Gaming and the Rise of Online Casinos

Although Nokia never made a casino game itself, its influence on mobile gaming indirectly affected the casinos. The freemium model that Nokia and other early mobile phone makers like Ericsson fostered is central to online casino apps.

The slick user experience the Finnish handset-maker pioneered in designing mobile games laid the groundwork for online casinos to transfer to smaller screens. The new generation of mobile-first gamers accustomed to playing on small screens, may have helped to pave the way for the easy transition of online casinos to mobile devices.

The Future of Mobile Gaming: Lessons from Nokia

As the mobile gaming experience moves to higher levels of sophistication in terms of graphics, storytelling and immersion, it is important not to forget some fundamental lessons from Nokia’s early days. Keep things simple, make sure it is fun, and make it widely accessible. There’s a reason why the brand is still known today for being super forward-thinking when it comes to net-zero and innovation.

They also demonstrate the importance of offering something to a broad range of people, who are not the typical mobile-gamer stereotype – Snake was hugely popular all over the world, across age and gender. If mobile games want to continue their growth momentum, they would do well to heed some of these lessons.

The future of mobile gaming also depends on the development of new technologies. With cloud gaming, games can be streamed to a device without the need to have powerful hardware with high computing power. The same can be said of AR and VR technologies that could more seamlessly integrate into our mobile devices.