popular genres like building/combat strategies and match 3 games, strong competitors who
have large funds at their disposal have settled in their positions and have risen the quality bar
relatively high. That works as an entry barrier and even though it is possible to find ways how
to copy, criticize and improve their concept, it would require large initial investment in order
to stand up to these big players. Therefore, for the purposes of finding our place in the mobile
gaming industry, we will go by a slightly risky way of least resistance and try to discover
a sector, in which the competitors haven’t yet fortified themselves. To find this sector, it is
necessary to examine not only the sectors of the game market, but also the nature of the
mobile device itself, especially smartphone, and find its advantages and limitations. Then the
captivating features of a game have to be determined and put together in an affordable way.
Smartphone is the key platform for the mobile games and therefore it will be the device for
which the product, which is the subject of this business plan, will be developed. Characteristic
features of smartphone are mobility, connectivity (especially access to the internet), integrated
global positioning system sensor (gps), touch display, simple (often one button) mechanical
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These features and their mutual combination present special opportunities and limitations.
Mobility allows the users to play games at anyplace and anytime, since people typically bring
their phone with them at all occasions. It would be reasonable to assume, that number one
place where the mobile games are played is outside, while commuting or waiting, but even
though substantial part of the gameplay takes places during that time, research shows that the
situation isn’t exactly in the way one might expect.
Survey done by company PopCap (developer of successful games such as Plants vs Zombies)
shows that most common place where people play games is home on a couch.
Table 3 – Where people play the most
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Another survey, conducted by mobile entertainment portal MocoSpace shows, that 96 percent
of the respondents play mobile games at home once a day at minimum and 53 percent of them
replied they play in bed. 83 percent play games while waiting for a meeting, 72 percent while
commuting. 52 percent of users play more than one hour a day, 32 percent over three hours.
EA mobile and Miniclip surveys came up with similar results, home being the most frequent
place for playing.
Touchscreen of a smartphone is a suitable control for many types of games, like match
3, strategic games, searching and adventure games, rhythm games, certain types of RPGs and
so on. These controls though aren’t suitable for a gameplay which demands high level of
precisions or have complex controls which has to be used in combination, like first person
shooters or some other types of action games.
Connectivity of smartphone allows the mobile game to be played in an online mode, where
the user can play together with other players and the game uses the data from the publishers’
server, which helps to prevent game piracy and has other benefits for the publisher, especially
in the field of advertising and data collecting.
Global positioning system sensor/other position locating feature then allows the user to be
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Among the top games listed above, there is none which would integrate gps location or other
way of user position determining technology as a key gameplay element and therefore next
shall be conducted a research among the group of location based games, in order to determine
whether this kind of feature is already fully utilized by the developers of mobile games.
Through research, a group of location based games which most frequently receive attention
has been identified. These games are Parallel Kingdom MMO and other games using the
common title “parallel”, Global Outbreak, Life is Crime, Tourality, Ingress, Shadow Cities,
Please Stay Calm, Geosocials. GPS Tycoon. TrailHit and Turf Wars. Then there is a group of
ghost or zombie hunting games, which use camera picture and lays a gameplay layer over it.
Combination of both was used in the marketing campaign in a form of a game made by
Ubisoft and used as buzz creating tool for advertising of Ubisofts new game Operation
Splinter Cell Revelation.
Upon inspecting the abovementioned games it is possible to observe, that all of them basically
use position locating only in order to use the real world map as a game map, typically to be
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games include other features, like real movement used as a game movement or gps based
gateways.
Figure 8 - Parallel Kingdom
The most far was the location based concept taken by the game Ingress by Google, which puts
together conquest of map based gateways, story elements, real life movement across the game
field and RPG style character development. There are some other examples of the game
which use real world movement as a gameplay movement, but they are doing it in a way
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which I see as not very interesting for the player. Their concept is not right, because they keep
the gameplay on the screen (where isn’t much to be seen anyway), instead of using the mobile
device as a link between the real world and the one in the game. Ingress is slightly brighter
example but still walks the old way of location based games, with its computer generated
empty world and meaningless competition between two groups of players, only based on the
attractiveness of defending your own neighborhood and being able to fight for your cause in
the free moments you have in the city (see figure below).
Figure 9 - Ingress
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Another game called Tourality got near to the use of gps concept which shall be used by our
game. Tourality uses gps locations and has the players compete between each other in
reaching these spots. A feature which Tourality has in common with our game is, that users
can create their own games using the Tourality platform and share these with the others.
Tourality though is a game Tourality missing a game concept. Chasing gps points
discriminates the users with lower stamina and if you don’t want to compete in sport
performance, is pointless. Could serve as a park game for children of school age.
Figure 10 - Tourality
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All the presented games create a picture from which it seems, that their creators don’t
understand that the use of location based features isn’t a magical elixir which people drink
and are amused. It is a tool, which needs to be meaningfully integrated into a wider, well
designed game concept. In some cases if not all it seems, that the location based gameplay
was used as a supplement of a missing idea for a game. That is because a location based game
shouldn’t be a “location based game”. It needs to be a game which incorporates location
tracking elements into its solid structure as one of its key features. That is where I see an
untouched sector of the mobile gaming. This is where the business opportunity arise.
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The members of the gaming community will want to try this new type of experience and the
design of the game will be made to hook them up before they finish their “playthrough” out of
curiosity”.
The gameplay will consist of five key parts, which are rpg style character development and
equipment collecting, gps points based adventures, building, combat and character
management. Adventures and combat will be location based and building will be location
related.
These game elements will be designed in order to activate psychological effect related to
leveling up, hoarding, building, inter player competition, locality related competition,
exploration, gambling and real time related game management. These psychological effect
have proven to be strong factors of player engagement throughout the gaming history.
The abovementioned five elements will be incorporated into three interface layers of the game:
on adventure, in the field, home and town, each serving separate purpose and all working
together.