Carmack Considers Cell Phone MMOG

fistfullast33l writes "John Carmack's new cell phone game Orcs and Elves, which debuted at E3 to some fanfare, has led the famous developer to think about expanding his mobile gaming presence. Carmack said in an interview with CNN that he is interested in a massively multiplayer sequel. 'I have absolutely no interest in going and competing with Blizzard in the high end of that market, but a cell phone version might be interesting,' Carmack is quoted as saying. Even more interesting is his comment in the interview that game engines really overlook security. The article indirectly quotes him as saying 'while id Software is especially careful to lock down its game engines, companies that license and make changes to those engines often aren't as focused, which could open the door to disaster.'"

Comments

Data Cost?

[falcon8080]

A cell phone MMO is great and all but what about the cost of data?

Last time I checked it cost a small fortune per KB. I know you can get unlimited bandwith for a price, but that would be a price ontop of the monthly subscription price...

Re:Data Cost?

[1101z]

A lot of us already pay for unlimited data, or our jobs pay for it so that we can do your jobs from anywhere in an emergency.

Re:Data Cost?

[AKAImBatman]

Cingular does unlimited data for $20/mo.

Re:Data Cost?

[bunions]

I'd be curious to find out just exactly how many people "a lot" is. My gut tells me it's a pretty small number, but my gut has been known to lie to me before.

Re:Data Cost?

[joeljkp]

T-Mobile does unlimited data for an extra $6/mo.

Re:Data Cost?

[rholliday]

I can see that, but a MUD would take a lot more focus. You can take in the general situation on a graphical game at a glance, and give commands with a simple interface. A MUD requires reading the situation in text repeatedly and typing commands for everything. Doesn't strike me as casual enough for a cell phone gamer, not to mention the annoyance of typing things on those keyboards or numberpads.

why not a PSP MMOG?

[mu22le]

A PSP has a better graphic hardware, a wider screen, is easier to handle and has WiFi support.

If only WiFi was a little more widespread I'm pretty sure a MMOG for the PSP (or the Nintendo DS) would be a much better idea. I'd finally had something to do each time I have to spend 1 hour in the subway.

Hmm, one world many systems?

[SloppyElvis]

I know Carmack wasn't going after the WOWs of the world, but the possibility occurred to me that it might be cool to have a cell phone client for a PC virtual world - perhaps affecting the world in non-traditional ways.

Would you like to mash a few cell phone buttons to craft yourself something nifty for your return home?

How about an opportunity to influence factors that aren't controllable through the PC, like beasts or items? For example, play a beast vs. beast minigame against other cell phone users, and the winner will recieve more power or loot in the PC world or something like that.

As an alternative input device, the cell phone has some interesting possibilities. If you consider cell phones equipped with GPS, you could conceivably have a very interesting dynamic to the gameplay based on actual location. I see many possibilities for making this a fun gaming tool rather than the minesweeper handheld it is today.

Re:Hmm, one world many systems?

[cowscows]

I'm not sure how great a game based on one's actual location would be due to the fact that the world is a big place, and dividing it up into manageable chunks would probably result in the game not being particularly tailored to your actual location as much as your general part of the world. And if you need to move to another part of the world in order to access other content, most of the content will probably never get seen by any particular individual person, because travelling is generally time consuming and expensive.

But along a related line, I've played with a GPS unit with some built in games, and one of them was basically a maze that you navigated through by actually walking around. So your specific location on the earth didn't matter, but your position relative to where you were when you started the game was what mattered. It was kind of fun for a few minutes. But really only because of the novelty of it. Although there was a very specific and unique relationship between what was displayed on the screen, and what you were experiencing in reality, there were also a lot of significant differences. (IE, the maze would happily lead you into a street full of traffic if you weren't paying attention).

But that's not to say that phones can't be a really unique platform.

network support?

[edzillion]

I talked to the head of a mobile game company just yesterday about this very topic - since I think any well made persistent world game on a mobile platform would be a winner. His issue was that marketeers always think this kind of thing is possible because the gprs standard seems to show enough data transfer speed to support it. Unfortunately its never the case in real world situations. Unless he is planning to run it over the DoCoMo network or some other proper 3g network it aint gonna happen.

Tibia Micro Edition

[Volanin]

Cellphone MMORPG:

Tibia Micro Edition

Violent games in the right context...

[__aaclcg7560]

This should inspire some great anti-social behavior on public transit systems when someone starts screaming "Die you !@#$% orc! Die! Die!" into their cell phone. I wonder how many people know that ORC != Terrorist and how many gamers will be beaten senseless enroute to the police station.

Re:Is is any good?

[XXIstCenturyBoy]

Thats because you didn't try Doom RPG. He didn't do the game per say, but he is the driving force behind it. And its an amazing cell phone game (one of the best I've played, and only short to DoomRL as far as turn based doom RPG goes.)

Re:Is is any good?

[88NoSoup4U88]

As of the looks of it, it's probably very much the same as DoomRPG, but with some added stats: DoomRPG is one of the few games I downloaded (the others being Zuma and Bejeweled), and has been worth every penny.

Check out the site for DoomRPG, to get some idea of what it was: In short, instead of playing an FPS in realtime, it's now turnbased.