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Mogi Location-Based Mobile Gaming Hits Japan
Thanks to TheFeature for its article discussing the popular Japanese mobile phone game Mogi, a title which "uses both the position of players in the landscape, and the landscape itself to generate play." The French developers of Mogi at Newt Games explain: "We used the map to give [virtual] creatures some interesting behavior. Some creatures only hunt at night. Some hang around close to parks", thus: "If a player wants to find that [in-game] creature, they'll have to travel near a park [playing Mogi on their mobile phone] in the evening hours." A keen Tokyo-based player of the game also explains why he enjoys it: "All the trips I make in the city are now randomized, as I will often divert a few hundred meters to go and collect an object around me."
Another reason for a person in LA traffic to swerve all over the freeway in order to collect "creatures"...I can just see the riceboys staring at their cell phones ...
Great.... a whole bunch of people with too much extra time and too little brain capcaicy (as evidenced by what they are playing) are being encouraged to meet each other for totaly artificial reasons. Let's hope they don't breed.... while RPG/quests/adventure games are fun on a computer/console, when it starts effecting your real life, we usualy call that a dilussion.
Less look fast, more go fast.
"pulchritudinous"?
WARNING Will Robinson: Pseudo-intellectual straight ahead!