Paul Coulton's Forum Nokia Blog

Postcard from the Nokia Games Summit

coultonp — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:10:40 +0200

I have just come back from the Nokia Games Summit in Rome as I was asked to demonstrate some of the Mobile Radicals innovations in mobile games (Mirage Space, Mirage Money, Bombus, Boom!, 4 in a row) and it was a memorable experience. Not because it coincided with the worst storms Rome has had for 50 years and the problems this caused the organisation team ( who did a fantastic job of keeping the event running and producing a great experience for us all) but that this year I felt there was a real and demonstrable commitment to encourage innovation in the mobile game Industry. This was not merely the simple expectation it should be all down to the designers but there also needs to be innovation from manufacturers and operators in terms devices and business models to support innovative mobile games which was resonated in the talk from Jaakko Kaidesoja. Whilst there were a number talks I particularly enjoyed ( Roshi Givechi, Scott Foe, and Robert Tercek come immediately to mind) it was the panel on ‘Breaking the Borders in Mobile Gaming’ which most got the old grey matter thinking. The panel was discussing the greater incorporation of Music within games and one member was the musician Dave Stewart who is collaborating on the coming N-Gage title ‘Dance Fabulous’ based around new singer Cindy Gomez and developed by telented team at Digital Legends. It wasn’t the game that I want to talk about (although it does look good and will introduce some novel social activities) but rather in regard to a comment from the panel that mobile games could learn from Music industry which is good at maintaining loyalty of its customers to particular artists. This is interesting because the pc and console gaming industry has been good at maintain customer to particular titles or publishers these practices have never extended to promotion of the actual designers and these practices havent worked in mobile. Whilst you can argue that this wouldn’t work for the large teams on pc and console games there does seem a possibility for mobile games which involve much smaller group. In this way we might create a better perception of the art of the game designer (which currently seems just one step from pornographer) and also benfit the mobile games industry. Just a thought!!!

BTW this is a screen shot of me running mirage money within the heart of the Castel Sant'Angelo. I have no shame

N-Gage and Mobile GDC

coultonp — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:59:24 +0200

This week I have been at my favourite event of the year the Game Developers Conference and I must say after a fairly subdued event in the previous year for mobile games this year has been much more up beat. Whilst I felt a lot of people were indicating a need for change last year, this year people have really bought into the idea and I think to their credit Nokia have embraced this most of all. There was a great keynote from Anssi Vanjoki encouraging the greater use of context and the demo of new N-Gage platform at the Expo. For me what is particularly exciting about the new N-Gage platform was not the games they had to show (although i think Yamake is a cool idea) but inclusion of all the social and presence features which will allow us to create uniquely mobile games experiences which I have long be advocating and will help us create a games industry for mobile the exists out from the shadow of the consoles. I feel this could be a good great year for mobile games and I for one am very excited by the prospect.

In terms of other happenings the new Wii fit is great and there was a cool demo of creating your own game assets by drawing on paper by Sony. Oh yes and our Widget talk seemed to go down very well despite having the graveyard shift slot.

Locomash live from Roskilde Festival

coultonp — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:55:48 +0300

We are currently running a Locomash event from the Roskide Rock Festival in Denmark and thus far the spatial map is building nicely and capturing a lot of interesting images including a fair bit of mud.

Unfortunately Will and I weren’t able to attend but our colleague Reuben is distributing the application there for us (and braving the weather) while we administer the system remotely.

The festival goes on until the 8^th of July so you if you want to follow the event visit the Locomash site click on the Roskilde link and then press the GO button.

Forward Planning (GDC Mobile 2007)

coultonp — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:32:21 +0200

Might seem slightly early to be talking about the Mobile Game Developers Conference 2007 when we are only in November 2006, but I just got word that I have been accepted to give a 45 min lecture on “Using Touch, Sight, and Gesture in Mobile Games” and I am thrilled. The talk will cover some of our games utilising RFID , camera tracking, and motion sensors but I will provide a sneak preview near the time.(BTW the guys picked up their award on Saturday for our paper from music legend Quincy Jones and software legend Alan Kay).

GDC it is a favourite event of mine as it has great energy and creativity that is hard to match and the mobile event rises in its importance year on year . I hope some fellow champions may be at the event and I would love to meet up.

Meanwhile I am off to the The Fourth Annual International Conference in Computer Game Design and Technology in Liverpool next week and I will send some highlights to my Locoblog.

Postcard from Nokia Games Summit

coultonp — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 14:10:37 +0300

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the Nokia Games Summit in Monaco (see my LocoBlog) and I thought I would share a few highlights as I haven’t been able to blog much for a while. The summit mixed perspectives from publishers, developers, manufacturers and provided a wealth of information. For me (and this is a very personal opinion) significant aspects were:

Presentation by Lincoln Wallen of EA who was discussing the development of mobile gaming and interestingly touched on many aspects that would have been perceived as Web 2.0. Indeed he seemed to be suggesting using gaming as an offering within the whole Web 2.0 lifestyle choice. This is something I would very much concur with and was delighted to see a company like EA considering these issues.

There was a good talk by Markus Huttunen and Kay Grunwoldt on Nokia next generation gaming offerings and indeed Markus came up with my favourite quote from the event in that we had a paradigm shift in console games when we moved from 3D to 2D and for mobile games this shift would be connectivity.

Mark Ollila of Telcogames gave a very good overview of there business and indeed shared many interesting perspectivies on there business strategies such as adopting the native OS development route.

Other interesting points that came out was that fact that there are huge amounts of mobile game players in Italy. Not sure why this is but may be worth looking into.

Possibilities for gaming offered by IMS which is a another of my research interests (so many cool areas but so little time).

I also got to handle an N95 which is very cool and if anyone reading this would like to supply me with one I would be very happy.

The summit ended with a panel discussion and the question I wanted to ask but didn’t was concerning multiplayer connected games. Given that games have a very short shelf life on portals do we need to adopt the practices of the gambling industry by seeding the games with players before launch to maximise the possibility of success? And if so who should pay for it?

Overall it was a very worthwhile couple of days and my apologies to those speakers not mentioned but all contributed to a great event.

creating digital diversity

coultonp — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:16:27 +0300

I will be speaking at the Developing Digital Diversity conference at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London on Thursday about ‘The Mobile Phone - Enabling Diversity in the Age of Post PC Computing’. The conference itself is part of a wider project aims to examine and address issues related to:

Widening participation in the digital arena;

Encouraging marginalised groups to become practitioners, and to think creatively using digital technology;

The dissemination of digital work looked at from political, social, cultural anthropological, practical and pedagogical points of view;

The impact of aesthetic and functional qualities of interfaces on user groups;

Emerging networks of communication creating global communities;

All of this fits very with my research and my view on the possibilties provide in mobile devlopment. Given the make up of speakers it should be an interesting event and if anyone is able to attend please look me up.