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The Location Based Entertainment Panelists included Andy Mathis of Motorola, Catherine Herdlick of Gamelab and Marta Vieira of YDreams, and was hosted by Rodney Gibbs of the IGDA. The panel offered some interesting information about the opportunities offered to game applications by GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as cell phones.
Andy Mathis pointed out that global positioning is becoming more mainstream; Google has announced that it will be using cell ID based services that will provide locality information based on the nearest cell tower. This doesn't provide the precision that a GPS feature does, but allows proximately relevant services to be provided to cell phone users who don't have phones with GPS support. Andy gave examples of applications that utilize GPS capabilities, including social networking apps, mobile offices, fitness websites, weather websites, games and mobile commerce. Specifically, he mentioned Bones in Motion, which allows users to record their jogging route to allow them to share information with other users and uLocate, which offers LBS widgets, such as BuddyBeacon and GasBuddy.
Marta Vieira described some of her previous wireless games that had location based aspects, such as Under Cover 2: Merc Wars (a real-time MMOG) and Lex Ferrum, where weapons were available in an armory, that had an corresponding real-world location and then players would hunt each other down in the real world in order to hunt them down in the game. An interesting behavior emerged from this: losing players would flee, hoping to break their Bluetooth connection with the other player before their avatar lost, while winning players would physically chase their fleeing opponents. Marta also provided as an example the Adidas Eyeball, a soccer-themed interactive camera and video display system, which was LBS enabled and could also receive information via SMS messages. She also briefly commented on something that she didn't like: specifically, Bluetooth-based "Push" advertising. She indicated that this didn't make sense, is pervasive and intrusive and merely serves to turn people off.
Catherine Herdlick was probably my favorite speaker of the group. Being associated with Diner Dash in any way, of course, gets her bonus points, as this is a contender for Psibabe's favorite casual game. Besides that, Catherine Herdlick was the only one on the panel to have an actual presentation with slides and it was informative and amusing. She talked about the "Come Out & Play Festival 2008," a festival for location-based mobile interactive games. The festival is a non-profit, self-sponsored event that she helps to organize. She also pointed out that location-based entertainment is not a new thing; it's been around since at least gladiator fights. She also pointed out that the introduction of Pong arcade units created entertainment in a variety of locations that previously didn't hold any entertainment value, even gas stations. She listed the three types of people involved in creating location-based games. Catherine generalized a bit and explained what she thought was the best quality of each. There are the Nerds, who are well known for their curiosity, the Artists, who are very sincere and the Entrepreneurs, at least the good ones who care about things beyond simply making money, are creative sorts. She also mentioned "plundr: Dangerous Shores," by Area Code, Inc., which apparently allows players to conquer areas on the "high-seas," which, in this game, are actually land areas around the map. |