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."

Comments

Re:Take an object, leave an object

[sould]

Did you look at the website?

This game is nothing like geocaching.

Re:I like it

[Anonymous Coward]

Pokemon Crystal in Japan had a cellphone play feature. It was short-lived, but innovative at the time.

Nintendo now have kiosks where gamers can play wirelessly against each other.

Re:how does it work?

[Bushcat]

The phones have GPS. The actual positional calculation is offloaded to the network. But non-GPS phones have pretty good accuracy in Japan due to the cell density, anyway.

I did some work on a similar type of game last year, and our main concern was whether we actually wanted people to physically meet each other, so we had virtual object layers superimposed on the city, where each player saw their own personalized layer: two people could be racing towards an object, but each saw the object in a different location.

Re:At least the kids will have to leave the house

[Anonymous Coward]

Was never really a problem. Unlike you lazy American bums (ok, ok, me too) who would drive, for example, 3 blocks from an off-campus housing to the campus, Japanese people typically walk or bike everyday to get to the bus/train station because
1) getting a drivers license requires over a month of schooling and about $2000.
2) unless you're off in the farmlands, there is no side street parking
3) traffic is brutul and the streets incredibly narrow

So, the trains are cheaper, faster, and more convenient and so going anywhere usually requires quite a bit of walking. So going anywhere usually involves quite a bit of walking and standing around in a crowded train.

Re:Could be good for geeks...

[Himring]

Perhaps they could put items or whatever in social areas, like clubs or bars. This way not only will us geeks get our exercise roaming around the city, we may be forced to mingle with real people. Maybe they could pay hot chicks to be waiting in a club, and the only way you can get experience points is to talk her into giving you a secret code! Just think, for a small montly fee you could get interaction with a hot chi...

That game already exists. It was called "Leisure Suit Larry...."

It is fully possible in the US.

[jjhall]

" there are no curent phones in the us that have this functionality."

That is not a correct statement. Most of the newer Nextel phone models, and some of the older ones, have built in GPS recievers. That would give you more accuracy than needed for this application. This data is available to the applications inside the phone, as you can get mapping software and fleet tracking software for them.

Now if you rule out Nextel as they don't follow the GSM standard or even TDMA/CDMA "standards," then I believe you are correct. I know of no non-iDEN (Nextel's network) phone that has this capability. Obvious exceptions being a PDA smart phone that has a GPS attachment with it.