Hall, J. "Future of Games: Mobile Gaming". In Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press 2005, pp. 47-55.
I saw Justin for the first time when he keynoted at the Mobile Game Conference in Seattle, 2006, saying basically the same thing as this paper. He has quite a vision for integrating mobile gaming into the everyday activities in our lives. I'm not sure he has answers on how we can have fun while still protecting our privacy, but Facebook is already encouraging us to give that up.
All "of a sudden you might be playing a game with your mobile phone when you hadn't chosen to do so; the game might creep into your life. Any random passer-by might suddenly take a deadly interest in you. To quote promotional literature from It's Alive, "In the future, games will surround you and be a part of your everyday life. You're always connected to the game, and it's not always easy to tell reality from fiction. We call this pervasive gaming." (51)
Pervasive gaming is a perfect example of how an identity you've created on a connected, mobile device can integrate more fully with your primary identity then code an identity solely accessible through a PC.
They add the hierarchy and interaction of other beings to the struggles to develop oneself in a finite virtual world. (52)
There is something pleasing about developing an identity in a finite world. The real world is so large it can feel infinite, so we ignore most of it, focusing on our communities and interest groups. In a finite virtual world, we can have an even stronger sense that we've mastered everything there is, enhancing our feelings of competence and sense of accomplishment.
Because the game world might be accessible anywhere anytime so it would seem that the immense time demands for modern multiplayer games make the mobile phone a ready target--instead of spending four hours a night hunting basilisks on the desert plains, you could instead steal ten minutes here and twenty minutes there to dispatch any ready foes. This might give online multiplayers the chance to flexibly engage the game mechanic for character advancement. But the human interaction aspect of multiplayer online roleplaying games could suffer. Players dropping in for ten minutes of gaming and then leaving could fracture the communal aspects of MMORPGs that are obviously so compelling. Perhaps a new form of conversation in MMORPGs would emerge from these mobile players. The first multiplayer role-playing game for mobile phones essentially ditched human communication by relegating it to a separate piece of software. (52)
Ten minute play sessions are not ideal for real-time communication, but they're perfect for asynchronous communication like e-mail and message boards. If e-mail has taught me anything, the desire to check whether the state has changed (new messages have arrived) can be a powerful motivator. Mobile devices are perfect for checking in.
Here on this phone Ulala was not meant for play as a protagonist per se but as a phone intermediary and companion. As people call and email you, she keeps track. If enough friends engage your device, you "unlock" her greater powers; she will do special dances during which you can arrange her on your screen so you can watch her short skirt swoosh up over her orange pixel panties. The phone comes to tease you about the minutes you've already spent online, or plays into your perception of your popularity. (54)
This is a powerful concept in identity construction. Why start from scratch with a brand new character when you can focus on a game-enhanced aspect of your current personality, like your popularity?
Why keep score? It feeds a feeling of achievement and turns this constantly accompanying technology reflective. If I'm attentive to grooming my phone, my phone will increasingly come to resemble me. It's a merging of The Sims and technology, where we raise our devices as our digital children, our spawn reflecting us. This is the game, to create characters in our phones. And there are many minds planning to bring some sort of breeding game to the mobile phone; something along the lines of Pokemon, where characters are fed by your attention to technology and are then shared with or measured against other proximate personalized technology fans. (54)
Keeping score makes progress measurable and thus easier to focus on. Focusing on progress feels good. Measuring your progress against someone else's can feel good, as long as you're not too far behind that person.
All wireless exchanges could be a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. (54)
A lot of MMORPGs advance your character through mindless grinding (usually killing dangerous creatures to gain experience over and over again). If you're going to have grinding, it makes perfect sense to have the grinding activity be something you do anyway -- e.g. all wireless exchanges. This seems especially rich territory for emergent gameplay. I wonder how social interactions would change when people needs to text each other for points.
We compose our mascots in our image, or as our ideal. (54)
Yes, except these mascots are not complete images of ourselves. They highlight a few of our traits and allow us to focus on them.
We need a combination of
We need a combination of this and Cruel to be Kind, where grinding to level up the virtual character is acheived by doing good/socially positive deeds in the real world.