The team researched 3 topics:
- Characteristics of smart devices.
- Characteristics of US mobile users
- Characteristics of U.S. mobile gamers
We uncovered several ideas that we thought would be helpful for our project. Of particular importance were:
- Despite popular opinion, the majority of mobile gaming is done from home, rather than while commuting (53% of mobile gaming time occurs from home). This gives us hope that our 4-player co-located game should be viable.
- Though the U.S. Mobile user market is not growing as quickly as others (e.g. China), it still accounts for a disproportionate amount of the global market. This is the market that we’re targeting with this game.
- 57% of people who enjoy mobile games tell their friends about it.
We also wanted to get a head-start on building tools with the iPad and iPhone connectivity. One of the items we’ve obtained is Prime 31, a plug-in, allows us to
connect both of these devices, so that a swipe on the iPhone is registered on the iPad and vice-versa.
Created 3 Game Design Sketches
We met as a team and brainstormed a total of over 15 valuable game design ideas. We narrowed those down to our favorite 3. We have subdivded into pairs and have assigned a game to each pair to be further detailed and sketched. The three games are of starkly different genres: strategy, action, and party/casual; they each have unique mechanics that we feel take best advantage of the technology and communication between iPhone and iPad devices.
Next Week
We will present 3 game design concepts to SmileGate and refine whichever concept they feel has the most potential. The concept of inter-connectivity between devices is still unproven, so we need to discover what restrictions and complexity there is to the technology
