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Understanding and Innovation Needed for Location Based Games
While the industry saw a “few early pioneers brave the location frontier”, with titles such as BotFighters, Mogi-Mogi, and Undercover 1, the technology and networks simply were not available to support mass market location based games (LBG). Now, the technology has been rolled out and network bandwidth has been increased. Why have we seen no real mass market LBG?
Kurt Uhlir, Chicago-based technologist and IGDA Mobile-SIG Chairperson, believes that innovation and a better understanding of location technologies and source material by game developers has been the barrier, but that wall is falling…
The mobile games industry did see a few early pioneers brave the location frontier with titles such as BotFighters from It’s Alive (now owned by Swedish games company Daydream Software), Portuguese developer Ydreams’ Undercover and France-based Newt Games’ Mogi Mogi, along with several academic proofs, such as CitiTag, from the UK’s Open University.
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With the technological advancement of handsets and other mobile entertainment devices, and the higher bandwidth of 2.5G and 3G networks, the gaming industry is beginning to rethink what “mobile” means to game play. It is inspiring to hear these intentions, but the industry still has many false impressions about LBG.
In order to truly move forward with the inclusion of location into game play, companies must first understand the definition of a location-based game. Second, they must understand the complexities, strengths and weaknesses of location technologies. And third, they need to move past the “all or nothing” belief that can be seen in most discussions on the topic.
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LBG describes any game that incorporates the player’s location (even if relative) and/or movement into the game. This might include tracking a phone as it moves through a city during a virtual paintball match or a treasure hunt, changing the weather in the game to match the weather in the players’ location, or monitoring players’ direction, velocity and acceleration during a high-intensity “battle.”
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[...] The Technology Suits issued a call earlier this year for more innovation in the location based gaming arena, and Blister has answered the call first for the United States. Several of us here also know the Blister team quite well and are happy to see their progress. Now a little about the games: [...]
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