The mobile phone is an extremely personal device. The fact that every conversation and text message go directly through a network should make you grateful that we don’t live in an Orwellian society; although National ID cards are only a matter of time.
Given that we have so much of our lives passing through this device, the mobile gaming industry needs to capitalize on it. Justin Hall, at the Mobile Game Conference, had his own take on this subject. His dream of passively multiplayer gaming is one aspect of what I would like to describe as personalized gaming.
Passively Multiplayer is a system for turning user data into ongoing play. Using computer and mobile phone surveillance, a user and their unique history, the personalized mobile game will record this data and turn it into content. This user generated game content will result in avatars that can be viewed online and interact with other avatars online.
Trip Hawkins of Digital Chocolate has and his own vision of personalized gaming: Social networking. Dominated by voice, but also messaging; it�s all about developing a social identity. Mobile connectivity makes the world a smaller place and connects you to the people regularly. Trip Hawkins has described the mobile phone the “social computer.”
Trip wants to help people create these �virtual villages� of personal connections. For the youth and singles market, Digital Chocolate has released a game called The Hook Up: AvaFlirting. In this game, you build an avatar to communicate with others, but these avatars have their own little lives like Tamagotchis (they can go on dates and such).
Other mobile companies have seen the benefits of adding personalized aspects into the game such as Overloaded’s Funkycops games. Funkycops games are simple and by using the Funkycops characters Ace, Jack and Fly, the user will feel that their game is somewhat unique relative to others. As you play the games, the user will enjoy playing with the character that they feel most attached to for whatever reason. Funkycops games include Boogie Fever (a Jewel Quest type game but with a twist), Candy Pop (another puzzle game), Disco DJ, Disco Stars, Bowling and Pinball. Overloaded also has a distinct mobile games retail strategy, selling mobile games directly to consumers world-wide.
Another company looking to capitalize on personalized mobile gaming is a Romanian mobile phone applications developer Halcyon. MyPersonalGame.com is a new service which enables mobile phone users to upload personal images for automatic insertion into a free mobile game. Using a simple and intuitive interface, mobile gamers can upload any image they like to create a simple ‘target practice’ Java game, which can then be downloaded directly to their handset.
Dear Justin Hall, Trip Hawkins, Halcyon and Overloaded: QuicklyBored believes in the cause. Personalized mobile gaming might just save the industry.
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