Students Blog

1) Top selling/most popular mobile device games/GPS
It seems that the most popular mobile games are clearly derived from big hits on consoles such as Space Invader or Pac Man.

As a result a GPS mobile game called “Human Pac Man” was one of the first GPS location game prototype:
“Where the original 1980 arcade Pac-Man used a joystick to manoeuvre a small, yellow avatar through an energy grid, eating power points whilst being chased by "Ghosts", Human Pac-Man is a real-world-physical, social, and wide area mobile entertainment system that is built upon the concepts of ubiquitous computing, tangible human-computer interaction, and wide-area entertainment networks.
Players interact with each other and the digitised, 3D "Pacworld" environment overlaid on their field of vision through the use of wearble computers, a headset and goggles. One player acts as Pac-Man and the others roleplay the Ghosts, tracking each other down real-world streets or corridors with GPS receivers and motion technology linked to a central computer by a wireless LAN network. Extra helpers are linked to the system through the internet, making it possible for anyone in the world, not limited by her geographical location, to take part in the game and send players messages. Helpers can also"fly" into any part of the virtual world and advise the mobile players on the positions of all the cookies, treasures, and enemy mobile players in the game.”

Two popular GPS location game available now are:
A)“Swordfish”
“Using GPS technology in your mobile phone, your position is determined via a fish-finder so you can see where the nearest school of virtual fish is located in relation to your current position – just like real fishing! The fish finder also features navigational assistance by providing the direction of the closest school of fish and an optional localized street map* of your current location with virtual schools of fish.
Once you hook a fish – the game begins an arcade-style fishing gameplay. You try to reel-in the fish while keeping in mind that too much tension will snap the line and too little tension will lose the fish. And of course, the bigger the swordfish, the more of a fight it will put out

B)“The RayGun”
“A mobile phone loaded with RayGun software emits "spectral" energy that lets you attract and track ghosts. Unfortunately, the energy also annoys the ghosts, so you'd better "ionize" them before they get to you. To aim the raygun at a ghost, you move toward it. Moving quickly increases the raygun's range. You can adjust your beam to long and narrow (good for zapping ghosts while they're still far away) or short and wide (good for zapping them when they're closing in on you). The longer you play, the more ghosts you attract, and the faster you have to move to stay ahead.”

The website http://www.gpsgames.org/ offers downloads for GPS mobile games.

2) Who plays?
The report added that kids between the ages of 13 and 17 (60%) are nearly three times as likely as adults (23%) to be mobile gamers. A mobile phone is the best alternative when video gamers are away from their game consoles, PCs, and handhelds. Consumers who play games on other devices are twice as likely to play on their cell phones, as well. There is some interest in the general cell phone market as well as 27% of wireless subscribers play games on their and another 6% confess
to being interested in playing.

3)Genres that appeal these players
Puzzle and card games appeal the most to mobile device users since they
require less coordinated input. The most popular GPS games seem to involve movement within the real world to collect imaginary/digital objects in the game world, often for little other gain than obtaining the game items (ex: Treasure Hunt, Mogi). Otherwise, some games use the players movement in real space to simulate different attack vehicles movements in a simulated space (ex: Blister’s Torpedo Bay, GPS::Tron).

4) Characters/scenarios that appeal
In general it seems that the trend would be to follow whatever is popular on consoles with probably a bigger focus on games involving more than 1 player, since the GPS allows people to play against each other in real life. On the other hand, the reasons for playing mobile games are different than consoles, as the top Two (2) reason why people are into mobile gaming are to kill time or to alleviate boredom.

5)Activities that appeal these players
In general it seems that simple tasks that require very rudimentary input are the most attractive as can be seen from games like Raygun where simply moving your body creates all the input. The GPS enabled devices also seem to incorporate a lot of hunting and searching in real life as input for the game. This corresponds to the popularity of Geocaching where people use the internet (as a place to post coordinates of prize-filled caches) and the GPS devices in a sort of digital orienteering.

6)My conclusion
Since more and more mobile phones are equipped with GPS, we definitely think that GPS mobile games are part of the future of mobile games.
For now high prices remain a significant issue for mobile GPS gaming, which explains why the industry hasn’t really taken off, while an unoptimized and difficult controls further hampered user experience.
The cell phone technologies are improving relatively fast, and it seems very probable that within a year or two all cell phones may be equipped with GPS as well as bigger screen to facilitate users’ gaming.
Finally, one important advantage of the mobile game is its capacity to introduce games to the big and eclectic market of cell phone users.