Rambling about games
Engadget has a post about the first cell phone that's excited me in quite some time. Good screen, small, GPS built in, and expandable storage. (Through cards, unfortunately, rather than a microdrive, but nothing's perfect.) Why must all the good toys show up in Japan first?
It'll be fun to see what sort of new games will pop up once you have a serious cellphone platform for them. GPS and decent amounts of storage are key, I think. The really interesting new game concepts are going to be based on location, proximity, and real-world activities. For instance, combine the flash mob meme with an RTS, and stage giant real-world battles. Commanders would direct from above, with an interface that translated the GPS location information from the players into something very much like a traditional RTS. People in the fray could conduct battles by playing quick heads-up games with opposing team members. The interesting bit would be that unlike a computer game, you'd be directing units with genuine autonomy. What does an RTS play like when your units decide to completely ignore your directives? Would players even be interested in playing anything but the commander? There are a ton of fun questions to ask here. Could you work "artifacts" into the game? (Cannons that can remove players from the game when "fired" into a crowd, nerf swords that disable any player if it gets within a foot or so of the player's phone.) How do you represent defensive structures? Do you use natural structures? Invisible "virtual" structures?
Now that I've got all of this written out, I don't think the idea of set-piece battles with hundreds of players is workable. Fun, but it definitely falls into the category of "never-gonna-happen". So, maybe a stealth game, with fewer players. Play it on large areas, with few people. Use some downloaded satellite imagery from the USGS National Map site. (1 foot/pixel color satellite photos. Their interface blows, and it only covers major metropolitan areas, but the imagery is unbelievable.) Moving games off the couch and into the real world is going to be a lot of fun in the next few years.
(Also now that I'm reading this, the idea of a bunch of gamers running about in a field with their phones out also seems pretty laughable. Maybe we'll all just play Pokemon outside.)