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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."
THAT IS SO MUCH FUN
THE BALLAD OF THE SAD SOMALIAN WINE TASTER
Passenger puppet is flying high,
crotch grabber,
a pretty puppet on seat nearby
is smelling good - a tasty pie!
Racing heart and throat is dry,
as elbows touch on the sly,
flowing heat in full supply.
Wandering hands start to crotch,
they settle down amid a sigh,
on something soft - her silky thigh.
Silent glance, a pleading try
seeks consent, "Please can I"?
With impish eyes and smile so shy,
she nods to say, "Let them lie".
What next? Don't mean to pry,
but a telltale spot on the fly
grabb the crotch.
It has been named
after its alarm call,
which bears a striking
resemblance
to the bark of dog.
These animals
which resemble
a goat from some
distance
can also frequently
be seen as salt licks.
I sold this little vignette to some somalier from Canada, a menage a dealer
in Canadian certified organic wines. My student has harvested three hours
of sleep from a single bed, picking her puppet's detritus off the floor and
handing it to me. She calls me Santa and her membrane has formed a placenta
around my mangan. The time is now, I tell her. And even while I'm saying
this my head is pounding. To think there's a muscle in there that I
tortured at the bar! And her puppet's all fucked up on the floor, looking
like it was stung by a pack of bees and then peed on. Hell, I've done
crazier things under the insane influence of the nectar of Dyonysis, the
Roamn goddes of Wine women, and somaliers.
I tell her that my puppet case has a capacity to hold 1000 beds. At present
250 beds have been made available. It is equipped with latest machines and
equipments. This declaration she takes as an acknowledgemnt of our
possible future together.
I wiped off her large eyeballs
and squeezed out a measure of liquid soap, frothing it up into a foamy,
cleansing lather. After spending fifteen minutes meticulously washing off
and rinsing her puppet, she was satisfied with the results. She squeezed out
the bulk of the water from the fur material and laughed when the big
eyeballs bounced and rolled at her. She placed her hand inside of the puppet
and turned on the hand dryer, moving the puppet's arms back and forth, not
even knwoing the puppet was actually the somalier from Canada, Todd
Fendrick.
We giggled, tumbled around tickling each other, and then took that Todd to
bed and really fucked it up good!
In the West, this has been called geocaching. There are websites dedicated to it, and it has the added benefit of actually involving other people who you 'interact' with even if only indirectly.
I don't want to say that the Japanese are expert imitators, but they do have a penchant for taking the best ideas of the West and improving on them far beyond the dreams of the original creators.
I have been pwned because my
...and don't you dare say that isn't what it's going to come to. People are going to run around the country-side/planet chasing small cute fighting animals with one word vocabularies and, ultimately, train them to fight each other.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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
Mod this post up if you want a geek to have some companionship!
I am a 20 year old male(obviously) geek and I am skinny. Please reply to this post if you would date 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 ...
This is novel, and regardless of the dangers of doing this in the west - gimmie that phone now kid - this will catch on.
Anyone want to take a bet that this won't appear in the Pokemon series of games? Nintendo are not adverse to hardware add-ons. Not that they all succeed but that's another topic.
It gets kids out of the house, even interacting like geo-caching; I can see the press being positive over this, given the right spin. You'd have to avoid getting kids going to the park at night though, perhaps have the game force you to enter your birth date at the start.
Easy to get around but gives a legal/press get out clause.
To: The Apache Software Foundation
Those of us who have used Apache products know what an great tools the Apache Software Foundation have produced. However, the Apache Software Foundation had decided to name themselves rather tastelessly. The title is clearly meant to refer to the Apache Native Americans, who were the victims of a large scale massacre and enslavement in 1871. In this world, it is unforgiveable that this should be allowed to happen. The idea is both offensive and morally repugnant. Hopefully, when Greg Stein and, more importantly, The Apache Group see the number of signatures on this petition, the title will be changed to something a little more sensitive.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
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...
sssh!! time to run and patent this brilliant money-making idea!!
This is seriously cool, but it would even be cooler if it would be available for PDAs and laptops due to the better systems these devices are running on. Of course a mobile phone has the advantage of locating, thus the PDA or laptop should be equiped with a GPS device, or something like GPRS. However, it would make these things much cooler than on the mobile phone: imagine virtual worlds based on the real world. So you can in-game walk the same street as you're walking in-real-life, but only in-game it's packed with action, wheres the in-real-life version is as boring as always. Now that would be reality gaming!
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
I will often divert a few hundred meters to go and collect an object around me.
Those dealers for not standing still
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
"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."
So the harder the game gets, the lesser your chances of reaching anywhere on time?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
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.
This game could easily pay dividends in advertising... "Go find the new coffee flavour at the $tarbucks store".
Great way to get to know a city, though you'd really need to feel secure.
Could also be applied as a Virtual guide for a tourist trail. E.g. Walk around the countryside, get guided to the local stately pile or see if you can spot the rare lesser-spotted trilby in the bird sanctuary...
Reminds me of this story
Instead of sitting at home playing Gamestation the japanese kids get some exercise by walking around in the city toying with their mobile phones. To me this looks like an improvement.
The monthly LA highspeed chase was starting to wear thin. I tell you what, you run the live footage on cnn, with a embeded picture of what he's chasing/dodging, and a celebrity game designer delivering running commentary on what it is, and I am staying tuned in.
mod down the parent RTFA
Finnish GSM Operator Dna (link here) had a some kind of Robot Wars game last year going on in Finland. It was playable in Helsinki central area and one had to find people around central that where in the game to engage and fight them and this was done by phone locationing.
yush
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are any phones out yet that are capable of doing this. Even on phones that have the emergency GPS 911 system (based on the signal strength to various signal towers) - I didn't think the location information was available to software running on the phone itself (and was only readable by a 911 operator).
:)
Sucks because this would be pretty damn cool.
There's a somewhat larger playing field over here in the US as well.
A device sending you to a park? at night? sounds right for a flashmugging
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
First post, ballbags!
A (female) friend of mine spends much of her time doing online fantasy RPing, she keeps complaining to me that idiot guys see that she plays as an elf, and think "my character need to #$%& 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.
What happens when an item is in the middle of a busy road or intersection?
cool, but is it available in english, and can I get it in Yokosuka or Yokohama? Tokyo is kinda far, especially the fasionable parts.
Ummm, err, say what, now?
Dude its the second already. Get of the crack and send it to me. This is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. It actually brought back memories of tamagotchi. Tamagotchi, I am not kidding; Its that bad an idea.
Geek Code Version 3.0 GSS d? s++
I can definitely see how this type of thing could be commercialized and taken advantage of. Imagine Starbucks paying the publisher to place extra special items in the vicinity their stores.. or a Makudonald's
I was under the impression that you can only be localized with a precision of around 100m using cellphone signal strength (maybe slightly better in urban centers) -- how will you lure players to some specific 'dark corner' then? I suppose the service providers could do some fancy triangulation with your signal strength at different stations, but a) you would have to get them to actually do that and give you the data, b) this would raise serious privacy issues.
this may be just a ploy to get people to accept tracking technologies. I have been waiting for them to come up with a reason why tracking us was a "good thing", but I didn't figure the rationale would be a game. I suppose, soon standard phones will come with gps receivers, and as to who your position is transmitted to -- well, you'll just have to trust the firmware does what the booklet says it does.
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.
Yes it is available for the whole of Japan if you have an AU GPS phone with Java. no Brew yet.p
see: http://www.in-duce.net/archives/mogi_item_hunt.ph
Slashdot should allow moderators to mod a message "+1 correcting". This way I could avoid reading post that correct obvious mistakes, and yet the correcting author would get their well earned karma.
You only have to be closer than 400m to pick the object up.
... and have the chance to own a GPS-enabled KDDI phone, just enter the "EZ Internet Number" 53577 to download the Java application and start playing.
:)
And there currently is 1-month free trial running!
OK that's shameless promotion, I work for Newt Games
Maybe they could pay hot chicks to be waiting in a club, and the only way you can get experience . . . is to talk her into giving you a . . . Just think, for a . . . fee you could get interaction with a hot chi...
I don't mean to put a total damper on your pre-IPO frenzy, yet I cannot help but mention that prior art exists in the form of nothing less than the world's oldest profession. And a pimp's got a better business plan, too, because the chicks don't even have to be all that hot, and the "interaction" is way better than just silly game chit-chat.
"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...
Say you have an interest in collecting 18th century Lower Slobovian pottery by Andru Klobescu. Wouldn't it be cool to know someone with the same interest is a short distance away? Lots of ways to expand on this.
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
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!
Yeah, let's all wait for that.Just imagine you have just lost a fight against someone, then you notice the guy next to you is playing the same game you realise that he is the one who's just kicked you arse. Any sugestions on how this could end.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
But in Korean it means "mosquito."
Mogi chogi yogi.
-Peter
Imagine hacking this system for evil deeds.
Steer an innocent guy to the wrong place at the wrong time -- he takes the fall for a bank robbery.
Maybe use the innocent guy as an unwitting drug mule?
-kgj
-kgj
This is pretty much a twist on the idea of Geocaching. Very cool. I would love to give this a try, especially if I could use a PDA on a 1xRTT network. You would have decent speed and the functionality of the PDA. Give it a few years and we will likely see some amazing stuff!
this game combined with augmented reality technology
Technoli
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?
This strikes me as quite similar to some of the work blast theory have been doing involving shared physical and virtual spaces.
In Can You See Me Now? runners carrying pdas tracked with GPS chased online players running around a virtual city by running around the equivalent real city.
In Uncle Roy All Around You members of the public on the street again have pdas, but they have to collaborate with online players to get to actual locations to retrieve physical objects for the online players.
nice that you can play this on your own phone though, we've been lending punters pdas, which isn't ideal, not so much people nicking the hardware but in terms of scalability.
That way they could be lured into the the day light. You see, thats whats really intersting about Vampire the masquerade people - they really do ignite into flames when they hit open daylight. Thats why they must return to their mother's basements before dawn....
"Capital punishment makes the state into a murderer. Imprisonment makes the state into a gay dungeon-master"
How dare they put virtual objects on my Geolocation. A man's home is his Intellectual Property.
I think that it would be pretty cool to see location-based games on PDAs with GPS-enabling on them. People who play RPG games and are of the "explorer" type would be a good target for this game. I'm partly in the explorer sub-section, and I could see myself taking my PDA out to collect a special something or to go to a certain location to fight a location-specific monster.
Not sure I'd want to use the phone, though...would much prefer the larger screen and arguably better processing of a PDA
Less obvious is someone else placing an object: To get Isansti Cup: Enter Bank Lobby - say "At Entian His Isansti Cup!" and tell the nearest teller to give it to you.
+1: Phonetically Phunny
Read it out loud folks.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
is well known for being perhaps the safest big city in the world. That's why they can get away with it there.
"Are you an engineer?"
"No, I'm a moron. Common mistake."
" 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.
I've been thinking of making a game similar to this for months (and am surprised to see such a game already exists). I like RPG style games but find that the heart of the game, questing, is rather boring because it's repetitious and you don't really do anything. You wander the map to collect stuff.. the map mostly looking the same thru most of the game.. and fight things which are mostly boring (I usually make my first moves and then just hold the button down to keep repeating those moves). I like the outdoors and geocaching.. and have been thinking of merging the geocaching concept with multiplayer online rpg's. A lot like what this appears to be.
I don't think you need to worry about people swerving thru traffic to dodge monsters or collect treasures because most likely all such items would be placed on the map by someone actually going there and either electronicly marking the location or leaving a real key item in a cache. It's unlikely that the game's masters would purposely put objects in places that might cause the player or others harm.
I wanted to make deals with local businesses to put these virtual game objects in their businesses. Maybe even require you to interact with real people at those places. Possibly to get an object you'd have to answer a riddle from the bartender (and buy a drink to get him to ask the riddle). Also I like the idea of putting objects in state parks and places such as that.. to require some physical effort to get certain items. Since wireless might not work in these locations I was thinking of putting real items there, in geocaches, that have a game code on them (as well as the URL of the game.. should a non-player find the object we want to lure them in).. type in the code and you're character receives the item or spell or whatever it was. Some items might even be very difficult (physically) to get to.. requiring rock climbing or diving skills. IMO a dusting of lesser items in easy to get spots and fewer rare hard to get to items would be great. I'd love to see players actually buying and selling game objects with real money. You could actually make a living finding these objects and selling them to other players.
I think this world would be way more interesting than something like Everquest because you'd be required to make quests in the real world. You'd form parties of real people and go real places and buy and sell items with real money. The software would only need to tie these social interactions to a storyline and help connect people, that otherwise might never meet, together. Call it computer argumented reality.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Anybody know of a toolkit, api, library or other method to access the GPS data on cell phones? Clearly it's possible. The question is whether Mogi has paid big licensing dollars to the carriers and/or cell phone makers for access to this data.