June column for Develop magazine

Wannabe Ferris Buellers will not be taking another day off if they go to school in South Australia. For those who are old enough to remember the 1986 film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the story of a cheeky chappy who bunks off school to enjoy a day of freedom that ends in benign chaos.

In the intervening 18 years, technology has moved on and so has the surveillance of young people. More than 20 South Australian schools now use an SMS system that automatically sends a text message to parents if their little diddums is playing truant; which serves them right for bringing guns into the classroom.

Kids, however, are better at understanding technology than anybody. In well-publicised cases in Japan and Maryland, students have recently been nabbed using SMS to 'gain an advantage' in their somewhat under-invigilated exams. And as every kid knows, for every one that's caught, they are more beating the system.

And so it goes with generating money with mobile games. For every innovative idea that drops by the wayside, there are others that are truly challenging the industry's current state of play.

One of these is obtaining mobile rights to upcoming films and bringing out 'brand-equalling' games that are synchronised with each territory's cinema and DVD release. At the moment, the idea of such synchronicity is a Nirvana that seems years away, but some mobile content providers are going ahead with the quest for the holy sale anyway.

Companies such as Mobile Scope, who recently signed a multi-title deal with Twentieth Century Fox, and Thumbworks, who own the rights to the wonder that is School of Rock, have realised this is a way forward to bring critical mass to mobile gaming.

In the console world, there have been precedents. Last year's release of Enter The Matrix saw the film and videogame released on the same day and it's not difficult to realise the sense of this. Unless the filmgoer is a complete loser and watches the film several times, the money-making potential from the film audience is finished as soon as the film is over - and the DVD release is only bought by a fraction of those who see the film.

But throw the videogame into the commercial mix while the film is still fresh in the filmgoer's mind and there's another forty quid to be made. The potential for the mobile game is even larger if it can be harnessed with a feature such as opt-in SMS to let film-goers know the game can be downloaded.

That's not to say that people will be playing the games on their mobiles as they go home from the cinema, but there's a fair chance they might take the next day off. Just like Ferris Bueller.