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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."
...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
Turning Japanese, I'm turning Japanese, I really think so . . . .
Did you look at the website?
This game is nothing like geocaching.
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.
no no, not geocaching, more like "virtual geocaching", if that.
you have to show up at a certain location in order to collect an "item" which is basically proof that you were at that location (maybe at a particular time).
kinda silly if you ask me (as is geocaching but I won't get into that).
From post:
Even if you don't read the article, at least read the post.
Yeah the magic mushrooms I found it the park did make me grow, but I can't seem to find any fire flowers, feathers, or even a single giant windup sock.
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?
It was a shoe! A shoe!
Game... blouses.
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/
This game could easily pay dividends in advertising... "Go find the new coffee flavour at the $tarbucks store".
Great way to get to know a city, though you'd really need to feel secure.
Could also be applied as a Virtual guide for a tourist trail. E.g. Walk around the countryside, get guided to the local stately pile or see if you can spot the rare lesser-spotted trilby in the bird sanctuary...
Reminds me of this story
Instead of sitting at home playing Gamestation the japanese kids get some exercise by walking around in the city toying with their mobile phones. To me this looks like an improvement.
What about real RPGs with dice and game masters? You do know the computer versions were based on traditional game, right? Besides, haven't you heard of LARPs?
New news forum for Canadians - CanadaSpeaks
But would you want to start RPing with people that you don't know at all? Would you want them to konw where you are? Any mugger/rappist could just as easily buy a cell phone and start playing... no?
Less look fast, more go fast.
Finnish GSM Operator Dna (link here) had a some kind of Robot Wars game last year going on in Finland. It was playable in Helsinki central area and one had to find people around central that where in the game to engage and fight them and this was done by phone locationing.
yush
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are any phones out yet that are capable of doing this. Even on phones that have the emergency GPS 911 system (based on the signal strength to various signal towers) - I didn't think the location information was available to software running on the phone itself (and was only readable by a 911 operator).
:)
Sucks because this would be pretty damn cool.
There's a somewhat larger playing field over here in the US as well.
A device sending you to a park? at night? sounds right for a flashmugging
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
A (female) friend of mine spends much of her time doing online fantasy RPing, she keeps complaining to me that idiot guys see that she plays as an elf, and think "my character need to #$%& 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.
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.
... 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
You have to find the magic hammer first. Then go to the large rock beside the pond and hit it as hard as you can. It will glow and then disappear, leaving a pothole leading to the secret cave. Play the magic flute with the sequence FCBBA, and these items should appear.
That's how we get our pay cheques these days.
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...
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
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.
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?
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.
Live-Action FROGGER
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
" 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.