[MUD-Dev] MUDs, cellphones and mobile players...

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Hi,

I am co-writing a class report on mobile multi-user games (in
norwegian) and have e-mail interviewed some MUD designers and some
mobile game designers. I believe there are many interesting mobility
issues that will come up in the years to come and which might affect
how one think about game design. Hope some of you feel like discussing
some of these issues on the list and that you don't mind if we refer
to the discussions on MUD-dev in our text.

Something I find quite interesting is that there are some developers
that more or less explicitly stat that they are making mobile MUDs,
for example:

    http://www.phonegame.net/html/e_web/documents/w20.html
    http://www.m-toyz.com/
    http://www.digitalbridges.com/press0026.htm

Still most true multi-user games seem to be of the strategy variety:

    http://www.picofun.com/football/
    http://www.wapscallion.net/web/content/SpaceWar.html
    http://www.picofun.com/lsweb/index.jsp

And many are pure fighting games:

    http://wap.picofun.com/fightarena/servlet/faweb
    http://nano.ngame.com/cskf/

With this in mind... Do you think one can transfer knowledge about
design from MUDs to mobile games?  After all, the sessions played on a
MUD is typically more than half an hour, and a session on a cell phone
could in some cases be as low as five minutes.

Or do you think one will have to develop new paradigms in order to
support players who literally is "on the move"?  What kind of new
paradigms do you think will come?


There is at least one new paradigm which is rooted in being mobile,
that which is based on location and proximity to other players. New
technology will provide servers with player locations and mobile
devices will be able to detect and communicate nearby devices
(bluetooth etc).

    http://www.wap.com/share/osas/cache/artid550680.html
    http://www.viktoria.informatik.gu.se/groups/play/projects/pirates/index.html

But what actually happens when the physical world becomes the game
world?  What kind of problems and possibilities do you see?  Will this
redefine MUDs as we know them?  Will Live Action Role Play (LARP) and
the virtual worlds melt into one?  And with the next section in mind,
will they go on and become a part of everyday life, more or less
intrusively?


The last paradigm I am bringing up has already got some attention on
the list. That is the attempt to blend reality and game, and utilize
multiple media more or less intrusively for interacting with the user:

    http://www.nokiagame.com/
    http://www.majestic.ea.com/

How do you feel about these types of games?  Will mixing the game
world and reality add anything to the gaming experience or is it a
mistake?


Do you think that you can reach ordinary people through the mobile
devices, or will new mobile paradigms be for the hard-core only?


Interesting times in the gaming industry, I'd say...

Ola.
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