Space Time

The console games industry is obsessed with trying to make games appear more ‘real’, using more polygons and textures to provide facsimiles of the real world.

There are many industry players who believe this is the wrong approach and that games need to be, first and foremost, interactive experiences and not recreations of real world events.

An important point to consider is how reality is more than the visual representation of a car or a famous battle. Reality is both multi dimensional space and time or as Einstein would say space/time. The ability to deliver games and allow interaction that takes advantage of both the 3D world that we live in and time that we live through is an area that mobile is able to expand beyond where the traditional consoles simply can not.

Mobiles can do this for a number of reasons. By being a device that the user always has with them, building games that are time aware makes sense. Players want small amounts of interaction on a regular basis, games like Brain Age and Nintendogs on DS show how limiting player interaction and requiring players to come back over and over again can work so well on a handheld device where they would fail on a console.

We launched Wireless Pets many years ago which was a mobile tamagotchi and have recently updated it as My Dog. This game is focused on time with real world events like night and day and Christmas and birthdays represented within the game. An in game shop exists that only opens Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm and pet shows take place on specific days of the week.

Space is an area that has received a great deal of research within the mobile arena. Every mobile now comes with a camera and this allows eye toy like technology to start to integrate the real world with a virtual world through the camera lenses. Simple fly swatting games where the player sees their surroundings through the camera and swat mosquitoes by moving the phone is both simple and extremely impressive.

Taking this forward, playing ping pong with another real player or building a virtual Lego world on an empty table using your phone shows the power of this technology. The ability to integrate the virtual with the real world and deliver the whole experience through the mobile phone provides an opportunity to develop some truly innovative games.

I'll be honest, I always thought virtual reality was a stupid idea, those silly headsets and all in one suite but ‘augmented reality’ now that really could be the next big thing.