Slashdot Mirror
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."
This seems like a logical extention of the pokemon style gameboy games. Hardware will be a big limiting factor, though, as will time if the game continues to play while you're not.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
From post:
Even if you don't read the article, at least read the post.
It was a shoe! A shoe!
Game... blouses.
Now all we need is for someone to wander into the path of a juggernaut while playing this and for them/their parents to sue the game maker - it'll be like the GTA fiasco all over again. Hmm.. now I think about it, imagine if you could use this with GTA - see a car you want to steal? Just wander over to it and you can steal it in the game.
Not just the players are in danger, imagine idiot drivers on their cellphones randomly flying across 4 lanes of traffic to avoid a monster or collect some treasure... It's just stupid enough that it might succeed in America.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Instead of sitting at home playing Gamestation the japanese kids get some exercise by walking around in the city toying with their mobile phones. To me this looks like an improvement.
What about real RPGs with dice and game masters? You do know the computer versions were based on traditional game, right? Besides, haven't you heard of LARPs?
New news forum for Canadians - CanadaSpeaks
But would you want to start RPing with people that you don't know at all? Would you want them to konw where you are? Any mugger/rappist could just as easily buy a cell phone and start playing... no?
Less look fast, more go fast.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are any phones out yet that are capable of doing this. Even on phones that have the emergency GPS 911 system (based on the signal strength to various signal towers) - I didn't think the location information was available to software running on the phone itself (and was only readable by a 911 operator).
:)
Sucks because this would be pretty damn cool.
There's a somewhat larger playing field over here in the US as well.
A (female) friend of mine spends much of her time doing online fantasy RPing, she keeps complaining to me that idiot guys see that she plays as an elf, and think "my character need to #$%& her.", now, imagine this in real life, with GPS equipped phones, were you can track each other's movements, or just wait near some interesting item, add to this that Japan seems to have more than it's share of perverts...
Less look fast, more go fast.
Although going to look for a mythical creature in a city park at night might be considered a bad idea. It would be nice to know that at any point if you got into problems you could hit a "Panic" key on your phone/pda/etc and all other gamers in the vicinity would get a flag telling them to come to your assistance.
some day, there'll be a huge scramble of people waiting for some locked gate or door to be opened in order to get a valuable item just within range. Remember what happened when some company came out with a handheld game that used barcodes to generate characters (Scannerz?). There were sudden shortages of commodity items.
"Perhaps they could put items or whatever in social areas, like clubs or bars."
I appreciate the humor of the suggestion, but the marketting concept is also too obvious to overlook. Monsters/experience points/encounters in specific stores/bars/etc. There are too many modes of abusing this concept either for legal profit, or for illegal. Imagine getting hundreds of people to show up at a marketting show where in a sence they have paid for the advertisement because they are paying for the cell phone use.
In the cyber age, a fool and his/her money are parted faster.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
We have about 1/3 of the well moderated comments on this thread talking about the dangers of going to a park at night.
Parks are some of the most beauitful areas of our world, and particularly in the city. They are not only beautiful during the day but also at night when everything looks different, wildlife acts differently etc.
It's so sad that so many people believe parks should not be visited at night... and how many believe it is the game makers responsiblity to keep people away from parks at night - surely it's the responsibility of no-one except (potential) criminals who may be there, and the police + management organisations whos job it is to keep those areas safe.
Instead of moaning or crowing about potential law suits for location based games, try lobbying your representatives to raise taxes and spend it on more police presence.
Imagine I own a new store. I "sponsor" a power-up or a cool monster by paying mogi a lot of money.. the monster shows up every 4 hours or so... causing people to come hunt down the monster and conveniently end up inside my shop. (say in the corner, where I have a place for them to sit and drink some tea)
meh
I can see easily that this game should be huge to advertisers. Imagine being able to direct people to your soba shop...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The other day you were all moaning how the lack of originality was ruining the industry. Bring it on, I say - this sounds great - hope they make one for London...
If a man speaks in a forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?
Ever been to a LAN party? Room filled with caffiene fuelled nerds carrying BFGs... and how does it end? usually as pretty good mates actually