They may not yet know it, but gamers will soon be quitting their living rooms and heading outdoors.
Handheld consoles and laptops made gaming portable, while the Nintendo Wii made gaming active. Now active, portable gaming is possible thanks to GPS and improved graphics becoming standard in cellphones.
By 2013, the world鈥檚 largest handset manufacturer, Nokia, expects half of its phones to be GPS capable, giving them the ability to fix their locations on the planet to within a few metres.
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Apple鈥檚 iPhone, seen as a benchmark for other manufacturers, also has GPS and many handsets have motion-sensing accelerometers, just like a Wii controller. Games studios are racing to exploit a new world of what is called 鈥減ervasive gaming鈥�, where everyone carries a powerful gaming machine in their pocket.
Hotter, colder
The first wave of games are largely based on treasure hunts, with a phone guiding users through a set of waypoints to a particular goal.
UK firm does it using photos of a neighbourhood. An onscreen thermometer lets a player know if they are 鈥済etting warmer鈥� as they close in on the next waypoint, and users can create and share their own treasure hunts.
Richard Vahrman of LocoMatrix was inspired while using handheld GPS for walking routes, and says location-aware gaming could have health benefits. 鈥淚f we could make a compelling game on a mobile, then youngsters might get out more,鈥� he says.
Other treasure hunt games include , from in Karlsruhe, Germany. But games that blend real and virtual worlds can offer a richer gaming experience.
Real-world fun
have created .
Another example, , starts with users defining an arena using GPS, before chasing moles visible only on their mobile screens inside it.
, from Florida firm mixes the real world around a player into the world of an adventure game. Travelling to real-world locations can unlock or solve quests in the virtual world.
While some location-aware games can be played anywhere, others may be strongly connected to a particular area, says Constance Fleuriot of the in Bristol, UK, those strongly connected to a particular area, say, Manhattan, and those that can be played anywhere.
鈥淭he former could be linked to the history of an area and give you a different viewpoint of a place,鈥� says Fleuriot. 鈥淭he latter are portable.鈥�
Socially mobile
Phones with GPS also allow players to discover each other鈥檚 locations and meet physically as well as virtually. That kind of camaraderie will appeal to many, says , principal lecturer in the Advanced Games Research Group at the University of Portsmouth, UK.
鈥淚f they are designed correctly, they will attract people who currently aren鈥檛 gamers simply because they are social and fun,鈥� says Eyles.
Just as the sometimes madcap physicality of Wii gaming has loosened inhibitions, Fleuriot says social location-based gaming can do the same.
鈥淲e had a group of adults who played an activity game of outdoors and they said: 鈥榃e look like prats, but at least we鈥檙e all prats together,'鈥� says Fleuriot.
, a new media expert at Bristol University, says GPS gaming is likely to be the first application to introduce the masses to being connected digitally to their surroundings, something he calls 鈥渁mbient connectivity鈥�.
The 14-to-19 age group will lead the way, Dovey says, because their social lives depend heavily on cellphones.
鈥淎s soon as you get the link between texting, social networking and GPS-enabled devices, you are going to get something that takes off like wildfire among young people because their culture is already primed for it,鈥� he told 快猫短视频.
Game over
But being able to discover the physical location of other people has downsides. Researchers at Portsmouth University have had to abandon GPS games projects because they cannot get approval from the ethics committee.
鈥淎lready there are social networking applications for the GPS iPhone which let you see where other iPhone users are,鈥� says , lecturer at Portsmouth University鈥檚 School of Creative Technologies. 鈥淚f I were a thief I鈥檇 abuse that knowledge right away to get myself more iPhones.鈥�
Commercial games developers are not subject to the same ethical scrutiny as academics, he adds. It could be left to their customers to work out how to avoid anti-social gamers.
In fact, truly mobile gamers must learn to weigh up a range of new hazards. Bain worries that gamers may focus so hard on their mobile phone鈥檚 small screen that they lose awareness of real-life hazards, such as traffic on a busy road.
The developers of The Shroud have clearly thought of this already; its terms and conditions state baldly that 鈥淵ou will be responsible if you or anyone else is injured or killed while you are playing鈥�. Game over.
