The Rise of Casual and Mobile Gaming 208
HardcoreGamer writes "The New York Times has a lengthy article about the simple pleasures and growth of casual mobile gaming. Trends show that 'more and more people are playing simpler, quieter types of electronic games on the Web, cellphones and hand-helds.' The growth in lighter, less time- and resource-intensive games (like those by GameLoft, Jamdat, and WildTangent) is spurred by the ability to play anytime, anywhere, as much as the rising development costs and production times for a traditional game. A wireless game can cost $40,000 and take a few months to develop, while full-fledged PC and console games can cost $5 million to $10 million and take years to deliver."
Simple Games are Fun (Score:4, Informative)
I have friends that only play simple puzzle/breakout style games, flash ones generally.
They are perfect time killers, no in-depth tactics or plot to worry about. Beating a high score is about as deep as they get, and then you can just walkway from them when your bus arrives.
PDA + Retrogaming (Score:4, Informative)
Spaced Penguin (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Casual Gaming (Score:4, Informative)
I know it is not quite the same level of not resource intesive but it runs on what now is a fairly old system. And can be found new in a tin on ebay for under 10.00 including shipping.
I find that un modded, or on a server where you get insane reload rates etc. it is great for a pop in and play 5 minutes scenario. My biggest problem with it is that it takes about a minute to get started so unless I have 5 or ten minutes it's not worth the time.
Of course I find I need about that much time to get into Frozen Bubble so it is really not that far off.
Also Sim City 3000 is fun and sub 15.00 on ebay(including shipping). I find games like that an addiction though, and cannot just pop in for 5 - 10 minutes. I always end up for at least an hour but YMMV.
I would say the QuakeIII was the best invetment I ever made in gaming. With the mods it covers a broad spectrum of feels (of FPS so a narrow spectrum overall). And it is great to jump in frag a few people, get fragged a few dozen times and then go to bed (I suck).
Re:wildtangent (Score:2, Informative)
Re:play chess over phone? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm from the Java-Chess opensource project, and one of our tasks is to port some of our software to J2ME. You can see some very early sources running in the screenshot, attached to this message:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/java-chess/message/
I guess, the best way to transmit the moves would be WMA, but this won't be available until MIDP 2 is more popular.
BTW: any help is appreciated! Visit http://www.java-chess.de [java-chess.de] for more details.
Ciao, Andreas
Re:play chess over phone? (Score:2, Informative)
I certainly wouldn't wait for MIDP2.0 to become popular, that's a fair while away still (Nokia's 6600 is the first MIDP2.0 phone, I'd give it about six months before the technology becomes more widely accepted, and a couple years before it becomes ubiquitous for Java phones).
You could do it easily using a central server, making http connections to it when you make a move (passing the appropriate parameters on connection) - the server remembers who your opponent is, and the next time the opponent connects to the server, requesting an update, they are sent the updated moves, and maybe a short message.
It's not as elegant as WMA (I assume WMA just pops a message off, SMS-stylee, to the other phone, so your opponent doesn't need to check the server for any game updates, as with this method), as it requires users to log in and check their game list, like checking e-mail, rather than being seamless.
ATEOTD it's a tradeoff - MIDP1.x doesn't allow for true peer to peer communication (as with MIDP2.0), just person to person via a central server.
If you would like to discuss this further, give us an e-mail (available via my webshite, as linked - don't use the hotmail address, it's for the spam).