Stuart Dredge's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 195

* This week's newsletter was guest-edited by Stuart Dredge, Informa Analyst

What do Paris Hilton, Tommy Lee and Nicole Ritchie have in common? No, not a sleazy motel-threesome scoop in the National Enquirer. At least, not yet. Instead, all three were in evidence at last month's E3 trade show in Los Angeles.

Paris' appearance on Gameloft's stand gained the publisher more column inches than all its Splinter Cell mobile games combined, even if she did get the name of the game wrong.

Meanwhile, Nicole appeared at a Sprint Nextel press launch the day before to promote Namco's new Super Pac-Man mobile game - which at least gave us journos a good chance to polish our 'One's a pill-popping character with weight issues, the other one's Pac-Man...' intros.

Finally, Hands On Mobile was talking behind closed doors about its new Tommy Lee mobile service, as well as its deal with wrinkly crooner Pat Boone to deliver 'Daily Devotions' prayers to as many of the 40 million evangelical Christians in the US it can, er, lay its hands on?

The thing is, there's several problems with signing up celebs to front mobile games or entertainment. First, the celebrity cycle is increasingly rapid - today's celeb-mag cover is tomorrow's penniless nonentity, which is a risk for mobile publishers.

The second problem with celebs is that they're local. In the UK, we now manufacture most of ours from reality TV shows, and they don't travel well (unless Jade Goody is Big In Germany without us realising).

As a publisher, do you sign up local celebs for individual markets? For example, Player One just signed horse-racing pundit John McCririck, best known for his comedy facial hair, right-wing views and for showing off his man-boobs on last year´s Celebrity Big Brother.

Or do you take one product and sign different celebs for different markets? Maybe Hands On should launch Daily Devotions Europe with Sir Cliff Richard in the UK.

But the third, and most important, problem is that celebrities make for boring mobile games. I blame the lawyers. Gameloft wouldn't be allowed to make a game where Paris stamps on her discarded chihuahuas, for example.

You'll never see a Naomi Campbell game that involves flinging mobile phones at flunkies, or a Sims rip-off where Sir Paul McCartney has to run around his mansion hiding sacks of cash before The Wife's lawyers turn up. Which is a shame.

Quick plug: Informa Telecoms & Media's upcoming Mobile Games report predicts that mobile games will generate $2.4 billion this year,rising to $7.2 billion in 2011. How much of that do you reckon is going to come from Bono's Charity Bowling or Jodie Marsh's Poker Challenge?

Of course, if someone releases a game tomorrow starring Eurovision monster-metallers Lordi, Tom Cruise's cuban heels, and Imogen out of Big Brother, I'd be first in the queue. But until that happens, my fear is that most celeb-based games will be, in the words of last week's guest editor, crap.