A few days ago I read that Titan Studio’s Fat Princess will be released for PSP also. I was delighted, for a moment, in thinking about a game that you can play no matter if you use a PSP or a PS3, although maybe a bit stripped down in the portable version. That’s not the case, sadly. The two games will have separate incarnations.
That’s obviously due to limitations of the mobile platform. But that made me think deeper about digital games.
Today we have a lot of platforms to deal with. Of course we have consoles and PCs, then we have portable consoles, mobile phones, multimedia digital readers. And now we have an internet platform also (aka Facebook).
Nintendo and Microsoft have already announced an integration with the popular social network through FB connect API. Probably they will show achievements and player information on the player’s minifeed.
I guess it’s possible to do more.
Remember the Dreamcast? Though it wasn’t the most successful console in the world, it was really innovative in many ways. One of chich was the VMU integration.
VMU (Visual Memory Unit) was a peculiar kind of memory card which featured a small dot matrix display and a simple directional cross plus two button controller.
When you weren’t playing at home, you could bring with you the thingie and play minigames downloaded into the memory by some Dreamcast games. Some of these minigames will let you unlock features in the main game. One example? Sonic Adventure featured a small tamagotchi-like minigame in which you could raise small creature called Chaos and then feed them, play with them and so on. From time to time the Chao stored in the VMU will eventually find objects that you can use in the game.
Now, AD 2009, we have the chance to extend this model and creating a network of games running into different platforms, all providing different data to a core engine. What if the Chao in the Dreamcast example were travelling into a mobile phone, taking advantage of geolocalized data?
What if the game you play were deeply connected to facebook and in-game NPC could send you messages even though you are not playing? What if each incarnation of the game, in the end, will be a part of a greater interconnected ecosystem?
I think that we have a jungle of possibilities to explore here.
Sony already did something similar to the VMU with the Pocketstation, a memory card with a small display and a couple of buttons that allowed players to play minigames away from the console.
As far as i remember, it wasn’t sold in Europe (i got mine from a non-EU website) and the only game which supported it was a Final Fantasy iteration which had a crappy Chocobo minigame that was a hybrid between a Tamagochi and a dungeon exploration game; needless to say it was a complete failure, mainly because of the heavy hardware limitations.
Since nowadays portable hardware isn’t so limited, maybe today technology is ready to experiment such possibilities (BTW, PSP already has the “Remote play” feature which allows playing PS3 games via wifi), which i agree are a whole lot :)
Indeed. I didn’t talk about PocketStation, because it was just a timid response to Dreamcast VMU. You remember well, it was only sold in Japan, and it didn’t have a strong success.
I should have pointed out even the integration between Game Cube and GBA, which was another try in a game ecosystem (with Pokémon and Animal Crossing above all) but which failed to give the players two different interconnected experiences.
Having PSP as a remote for the PS3 is certainly cool, but it’s only scratching the surface, i think.
Yeah I have always enjoyed this kind of stuff. The chao was such an interesting experiment at the time. Using the mini-game approach or a portable as a controller seems pretty obvious. It’s interesting to think though how far this network could be taken, I completely agree that we are only in its infancy.
Reading your post I have in my mind the concept of an MSO (massively single player online) game. Always accessible, through all of your devices, all the time. Just starting down that path seems to raise all kinds of game design concerns.
Do you think something like this could be made with all disjoint devices, or do you think it will take the single company approach (i.e. Sony’s PS3 to Sony’s PSP) to move further down this path?
-John
http://www.johnplaysgames.com
I think probably the first approach will be single company. Of course there are lot of environments which are not in direct conflict, such as iPhone and Facebook. I would bet on simple ecosystems like those as well.
Of course, with time, it will be possible to have wider ecosystems, spanning through different game consoles, just as now is more and more difficult talking about exclusives.
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