July 22, 2004

By: Lorenz Wing
Website: http://www.1st-in-games.com

Nottingham computer game research could develop next generation of mobile phones

The city in which we live could become the setting for a ‘live action’ computer game delivered to us on the next generation of mobile phones as a result of new research at The University of Nottingham.

Academics in the University’s School of Computer Science and Information Technology have been awarded around £1.2 million in European funding for two projects developing cutting-edge technologies aimed at pushing the boundaries of game playing and storytelling.

For the Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming (iPerG), academics are working with industry partners, including Nokia and Sony, to develop both the software and hardware for new mobile phones that are capable of delivering location-based games to people on the move.

These games would take the concept of live action role-playing games one step further — instead of moving characters around on a virtual computer screen, they become the hero of the game and move through the real world while receiving instructions and interacting with the virtual world over their mobile phone.

Professor Steve Benford, leading the project at Nottingham, said: Our experiences of mobile phones are becoming richer but currently games that you can play on your mobile are, relatively speaking, still fairly primitive. This will take it in an entirely new direction and open up exciting new territory in gaming.

The new games will be tied to the players’ mobility and will be embedded into the world around us — the game will respond to where we are physically and what we are doing at that location.

The Nottingham team has already created several pervasive games. Can You See Me Now, a game of chase between street and online players, is touring internationally and has funding from the Arts Council for a UK tour next year.

Uncle Roy All Around You takes street players on a mysterious journey through a city, guided by remote online players in search of the elusive Uncle Roy. It has recently finished touring and was this year nominated for a Webbie, the online equivalent of the Oscars.

The team recently joined forces with Bristol-based Futurelab, the BBC and Hewlett Packard for the Savannah project, in which school children used a HP iPaq handheld computer to navigate a virtual Savannah landscape to experience how lions hunt and work as a pride using sound effects and visual clues.

Co-ordinated by the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, iPerG will also focus on the development of new digital technologies to enhance existing games, for example offering a new twist to traditional board games.

The second project for which Nottingham has received funding, INSCAPE, will look at developing digital technologies to transform the way in which we tell stories. It will provide an authoring tool kit for professionals working in the arts, television, the gaming industry and other creative industries for exploring the narrative potential of interactive media.

One example of research in the project is how people’s movements through a virtual computer game can be recorded and re-used in a later game, leading to new ways of making animations for film and television. The researchers are also exploring how ‘agents’ — non-player characters in a computer game — can independently assess the action in the game and provide a commentary on what is happening.

About The Author:

Lorenz Wing is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.1st-in-games.com.  Great games for the entire family for hours of fun or competition. We feature all your favorites.