Wednesday, November 15, 2006 Street games By Zosimo T. Literatus, RMT
Those who love playing software games on their personal computers (PC) or online games in Internet kiosks will find the new trend in electronic gaming very exhilarating—pervasive gaming!
Pervasive gaming took electronic games into a new level…that is, on street level across barangays, towns, and even cities.
This location-based games use not only new technology but also focuses on the simple fact that it is more fun playing as a team than on your own.
Players not only play on foot, they also may travel by car, boat, or even airplane.
One of the team members can stay at home on a PC monitoring "enemy" locations and the rest confront the opponents on the streets and in any location the game may lead them.
Most of these games use cell phones as transmitting tool through text and multimedia messaging.
And many countries around the world have caught up with these street games.
In Korea, the game "Shoot me if you can" is getting very popular.
This urban game is like playing a shooting game online. But this time the gun is not the computer cursor or a toy gun but a cell phone with digital camera, and participants shoot, or take pictures of their opponents. The pictures have to be sent via multimedia SMS to the opponent’s team. Players need to know very well team work, tactics and their real urban environment.
One very popular game in the United Kingdom is Love City. The goal of the game is to form triplets (called "Menage a trios") by sending "text-messages of love" to other players. The messages can be received when players move between mobile phones. Players who initiate such a triplet are awarded avatars (known as "offspring"). A first test game was launched in April in the cities of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby.
Other popular pervasive games available include Frequency 1550 (Netherlands), Pac Manhattan (United States), NetAttack (United Kingdom), and Day of the Figurines (United Kingdom).
