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Wireless Networking Handhelds Entertainment Games Hardware

Blast Theory Unwires Online Games 77

Posted by CowboyNeal from the real-virtual-play dept.
Wired is running a story on "wireless games" as being developed by Blast Theory. They are games played on mobile phones using GPRS to deduce the physical location of the game player, which is used as part of the game. Two different game ideas are touched on, as well as some discussion of where the ideas came from and where they're going. Cool stuff that even sounds fun, and reminds me a bit of playing tag with CB radios.
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Blast Theory Unwires Online Games More

Blast Theory Unwires Online Games

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  • Common users in the UK don't use gprs (at least, none that I know) because it is slow and far too expensive: while it may be fast enough for these sorts of games, it will still stay quite expensive because service providers have significant infrastructure costs and they have to overcharge in some areas so they can be competitive in others. In other news, look at some of the great ideas for wireless gaming that have fallen flat: namely Nokia's N-Gage. Perhaps real multiplayer gaming (and gaming communities)

    • Re:CB sounds much more sane (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Plus you cant use them on airplanes. Whats the point. Thats the time you do need some entertainment.

      Just get a normal mobile its just a damn phone.

      Until they can pack an mp3 player, 1gb memory that looks like a removable drive to the OS, GPS, flat rate broadband, colour screen and camera and voice for all under 100 bucks (not including stupid contract) for get it. Oh and no custom USB cables. Thats why I do not buy iRiver players, I need to carry cables everywhere I go just to move files.
      • I can put my phone on "airplane mode" and still play games.
        • And how many flight attendants will let you use it? It is my experience that they have a blanket ban on all phones. Try explaining to them that you have an aircraft mode that's safe and you're likely to find yourself unwelcome -- or facing legal action because of their ignorance.
          • I've had it out quite a few times. It's my experience that assholes tend to be treated like assholes, and nice folks tend to be treated like nice folks. I wonder which camp you're in....
      • Just get a normal mobile its just a damn phone.

        Look at the name of this website. How many people here are interested in a "normal mobile".

        Until they can pack an mp3 player, 1gb memory that looks like a removable drive to the OS, GPS, flat rate broadband, colour screen and camera and voice for all under 100 bucks (not including stupid contract) for get it. Oh and no custom USB cables. Thats why I do not buy iRiver players, I need to carry cables everywhere I go just to move files.

        Open your eyes. Most

    • Common users in the UK don't use gprs

      It's not common at the moment but orange reccently launched a flat rate data service. 25UKP (about 38USD) per month for roughly 56Kbps internet access wherever you are with your laptop. This will probably be popular with buisness people who want email everywhere. Per minute fees to access the internet from a mobile phone easily exceed 25 quid a month for ocassional peak time use. I'v been told by a geek aquantance that GPRS operates over ATM which provides a virtual

      • It's not common at the moment but orange reccently launched a flat rate data service. 25UKP (about 38USD) per month for roughly 56Kbps internet access wherever you are with your laptop.

        I'm with Orange, and a GPRS customer. Unfortunately, this is still rather expensive. IIRC, GPRS is around 2 UKP for 1 meg. To make flat rate worthwhile, you'd need to use up around 12 meg. I've got an IMAP sync every 2 hours and use the web now and again, and I've never went over 8meg in one month, average is nearer four.

  • Combine it with flash mob activism for two trendy memes in one! Cell phone tag in the boardroom or to disrupt an abortion clinic.. brilliant.

  • real world? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We wanted the discrete boundaries of online community to bleed out into the real world, and we wanted to see how this might change people.

    I wonder what slashdot trolls are like in the real world.

    It would certainly change our online community quite a bit.
    • I wonder what slashdot trolls are like in the real world.

      At a guess, probably bored and lonely, and not very sociable. They get their kicks out of winding up others, but in the real world that behaviour would get their legs broken.

      I for one welcome trolls to the real world. Could someone capture it to DV and post it here? ;-)

  • Location (Score:3, Funny)

    by ScribeOfTheNile ( 694546 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @11:14AM (#7817381) Homepage
    What if my real-world location places me inside a wall etc. within the game?

  • How about using real maps? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dexterpexter ( 733748 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @11:32AM (#7817436) Journal
    Wow. I cannot wait until they expand this further. Forget pencil and paper AD&D. Imagine expanding on this idea and using known-maps of cities as the dungeons where you take up a character and text message your responses. "I am Tier, master of the Bronx." Certainly redefines the idea of the RPG.

    That touches on one problem I have concerning the game. I think they will have trouble with game dynamics until they are able to provide real-maps of the service area. Imagine having to reach a point in the game that, in your world, would put you in the middle of the river, or inside a concrete wall. I suppose that you could possibly re-define your position, but for users in crowded areas (like the test cities that they mentioned), this would get frustrating. It would not have to be terribly detailed, since the landscape often changes, but it should not be too difficult to define the main buildings of the city and use this as the background map for the game.

    The only question that I have is: how reliable is the positioning? I realize that they are not using straight-GPS, but I am curious as to how reliable the positioning is. When I was working on autonomous robot navigation (keeping in mind that we did not have a differential GPS system readily available), we had problems with floating satellite positioning that sometimes put the target nine foot away from its actual position. The article mentioned getting within five meters, which makes the nine foot floating irrelevant (unless both positions ended up 9 feet on either side from eachother), but I am curious nonetheless.

    • Re:How about using real maps? (Score:4, Funny)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @12:05PM (#7817555) Homepage
      Imagine having to reach a point in the game that, in your world, would put you in the middle of the river

      How about in the middle of someone's living room? "Hello, can we come in? We have to kill the evil dark hag of hell." "Honey, some people here to see your mother..."

      • How about in the middle of someone's living room? "Hello, can we come in? We have to kill the evil dark hag of hell.

        Reminds me of a strange British law, right of way. If a path has been used commonly for X number of years, it is considered a public right of way. If you build a house on it and block access, people can demand to pass through. I remember a TV show about it that had footage of a family having a picnic in someone elses front room due to this!!

    • How about we just run around the city at night and play rock-paper-scissors at each other?

      Do we really need cell phones to have a good LARP?
    • >"I am Tier, master of the Bronx."

      I think I met you back at a Larp convention in '62....

      and,

      Russian gang members don't have names like Tier.
      "Maxilimillian, master of the Bronx" would prolly be more accurate.

      omard-out

  • Sounds cool! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ActionPlant ( 721843 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @11:32AM (#7817439) Homepage
    The idea is great...but as usual, this poses yet more potential for bad driving. If they get good at the pinpointing, I can very well see kids in cars literally playing tag...except this time instead of running in a field, they'll be endangering other drivers.

    Damon,
  • You could redo the entire movie with these new games.

  • Olympic Hide and Seek? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dduardo ( 592868 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @11:37AM (#7817459)
    hmm, this technology sure could have helped those involved in Olympic Hide and Seek.

    Comentator: Hello, good afternoon and welcome to the second leg of the Olympic final of the men's Hide-and-Seek here in the heart of Britain's London. We'll be surfing in just a couple of moments from now, and there you can see the two competitors Francisco Huron the Paraguayan, who in this leg is the seeker (we see Francisco Huron darting about, looking behind things) and there's the man he'll be looking for ... (we see Don Roberts practising hiding) our own Don Roberts from Hinckley in Leicestershire who, his trainer tells me, is at the height of his self-secreting form. And now in the first leg, which ended on Wednesday, Don succeeded in finding the Paraguayan in the new world record time of 11 years, 2 months, 26 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes, 27.4 seconds, in a sweetshop in Kilmarnock. And now they're under starter's orders.
    -------------

  • Extra Cool (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) *
    What would be even extra cool is if they would integrate the sign-reading technology into this product. I poked around to try and find some links to that old story but came up empty.

  • Wireless data with CB radio's (Score:4, Informative)

    by throwaway18 ( 521472 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @12:03PM (#7817544) Journal
    Wireless data with CB radio's didn't work very well for me.

    Eight bit home computers had plastic cases with no shielding.
    They produced lots of noise that interfered with radio reception and transmitting near them caused crashes, paticularly if you illegally used one of the cheap non-linear harmonic spewing amplifiers sold to CBers.

    I only had one friend geeky enough to participate so it was quicker to bike the mile to his house with a cassette tape than to mess about sending something to him at 300 baud. Hours of fun though.

    Years later I got a ham license and went on the packet radio network.
    It was like newsgroups and fidonet, I contacted my local bbs and messges were stored and forwarded across the global. It took about a month to send a message from the UK to Australia and get a reply. Then we eventually got flat rate internet and everyone lost interest in packet.

    In the last few years all the local geeks, hackers and technical types with any enthusiasm have moved south for jobs and opportunitys. I should have followed them. A few people in the Newcastle linux user group are interested in building an 802.11 WAN but we don't have enough people to get it off the ground.

  • Are these questions real, or part of the game? Sometimes players stop midstream and say, "Look, I said 'yes' to the thing about being there for a stranger yesterday, but I thought about it and have to say 'no.' Please remove me from your database."

    It reminds me of the movie The Game (1997) [imdb.com] starring Michael Douglas.

    And to add to the "evil angle" the whole project has real villains ... Spooky ...

    We're funded by the Arts Council of England, Microsoft Research, British Telecom (BT of the Hyperlink

  • Follow the money (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RedOregon ( 161027 )
    No one's noticed yet that this thing is partially (no percentage mentioned) funded by Microsoft Research? I dunno about the collective you, but that gives me the heebie-jeebies...
  • People could play "Highlander" -- when another "immortal" is near, the phone goes off -- a battle ensues and one is dispatched.
    • Finally, an excuse to chop random stranger up with my cool samurai sword!

      These are precisely the types of games I've been waiting for: ones that put all the entertainment of current (okay, okay, of the previous years) into the real-world environment. I want to run around in public with a fake rocket launcher whilst playing AR (Augmented Reality) DOOM! Mmm, I bet the corpses will still be staring up at me even after I walk around to the other side...
  • So soon we'll see people running into the middle of the road shouting "I got the item!!". Then a few seconds latter they get run over. They better make this thing safe.

  • Nokia N-Gage (Score:2, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 )
    Anytime someone mention cell phone and games, I think of lousy tetris or pacman type games with 16bit graphics at best.

    Anytime someone mention wireless cell phone and games, I think of Nokia N-Gage the most poorly launched video game system in the history of the gaming industry.

    If you ask me, cell phones, wireless and gaming just don't mix yet. This stuff is targeting an audience that are anything but hardcore gamers who play only half hour of games in a whole day.

  • Cool but dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @03:01PM (#7818240) Homepage Journal
    Now we'll see sexual predators that use the game to play tag with their victims.. with more and more kids being given cell phones by their parents to keep tabs on them the some sick bastards are probably learning they can do the same.

    Time for CellNanny..

  • This is exactly that the games produced by It's Alive! [itsalive.com] and YDreams [playundercover.com] are about. These games are location-based (using GPS or network cell ID), but add the "always-connected" feature and you have pervasive gaming [itsalive.com].
  • Yeah. What if we play this game? It's called 'where are teh gps co-ordinates of your illegal materials'.

    All you hafta do is answer a few fun locale-related questions and suddendly cops come to your door for even mroe entertaining justice in action!

    Yes I realize this came a little to late to try on saddam...comon america!

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