Comments on: Thinking games as ecosystems

By: Federico Fasce

Federico Fasce — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:09:47 +0000

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.

By: John

John — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:08:03 +0000

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

By: Federico Fasce

Federico Fasce — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:05:32 +0000

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.

By: Raibaz

Raibaz — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:21:12 +0000

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 :)