Defining an Interactive Physical MMO For the iPhone

already-living-in-a-virtual-world writes "On his blog, mispeled writes about a new type of game he'd like to see for the iPhone. It's interesting stuff: '... the integration of a true gaming platform with the capabilities of a phone is unique, at least for the quality of the gaming experience offered. For all intents and purposes, the iPhone is a new system. And new systems demand that new gameplay mechanics be explored. For a long time I've been a fan of the MMORPG genre, and the iPhone offers several MMO-type games, especially those in the facebook, social-networking style. However, what I've yet to see is a game that takes advantage of the iPhone's location services, the GPS-like capability of the phone. Tons of applications use it, but no games, as far as I've seen. Why not? Motion sensing is all the rage on the consoles — the Wii popularized it, but now Microsoft and Sony are jumping on the bandwagon. But the iPhone, because it's portable, offers something more. And I want those offerings taken advantage of. I want to play an MMO that knows where I am and links my physical location to a virtual location. I want to create a game that gives the planet Earth a virtual overlay, interactable via a mobile (read: the iPhone) interface.'"

Comments

God no!

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this the most obscene idea you could imagine. Play a game based on where my phone tells you I'm located? Hell no. I do not want that kind of invasion of privacy at all. In fact, given the potential fo abuse, I'd prefer it to be legally banned.

There are enough crazy people doing criminal things with the games we have. Do I want a physical location to be intrinsic to the game? Nope. Same reason I don't post any details of where I live in the games I do play, or on the message boards. Is that paranoid of me? Perhaps, but as long as the number of people who get injured and killed from conflicts with others remains non-zero, I'm going to stay that way.

And yes, that's why I'm an anonymous coward too. Sure, I suppose somebody at Slashdot's HQ could track me down, but that risk is minimal compared to me shouting it out.

Re:God no!

[religious freak]

I'd prefer it to be legally banned

Whoa there cowboy, while you and I prefer to not be involved in these things, that certainly doesn't give us the right to prevent anyone else from doing what they want to do, let alone allow government to get involved which games people play.