The "Using the Camera and Other Phone Bits" roundtable at the MGC was based upon the premise that significant technological advancements lead to better games. While the console and PC segments of the gaming industry have reached a technological saturation point where development is more evolutionary than revolutionary, the immaturity of mobile means that we're set to see mobile gaming change in leaps and bounds over the next few years.
Moderated by Mark Pierce of Super Happy Fun Fun Inc., the roundtable looked to focus on what new game play future technology will bring.
Right now the mobile games industry is based upon a foundation of casual games with simple control schemes like Tetris and old 70s arcade games that are similar in a lot of ways to board game standards like Monopoly and Risk: games that people of all ages know and feel comfortable playing.
However, there are only so many times you can sell people games they've already played, and for developers who don't have a game like Tetris in their portfolio, they need to offer something innovative and different to stand out.
Luckily for the industry, the mobile phone has a lot of unique technical features that can potentially provide this innovation. For instance, Pierce demoed a game called Tilt that utilized the handset’s gyroscopic features to move a ball through a maze by tilting the phone; simple and efficient, it looked like a game that anyone could easily have a blast playing.
Other handset features like voice, touch screens, location based services and constant wireless connectivity also has the potential to offer experiences unique to handsets.
However, there are many roadblocks the industry has to pass before we start to see a flood of technically innovative mobile games. First and foremost are the handsets themselves: at the moment, very few phones feature things like gyroscopic controls, touch screens or location based services. Also, while we think that that the W600i is a great phone for gaming, most people want a phone that's a phone first, which means support for these features will come slowly.
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