September 26, 2006
"Wawwiahs..."
Sometimes, being in the relative boonies of the Pacific Northwest really bites. For one thing, we have no decent amusements parks anywhere in the state. For proof, you need look no further than Wild Waves / Enchanted Village. When a deep-pocket outfit like Six Flags decides they want to buy their way into your state and the best they can find is The Theme Park that Time Forgot, you know you're living in an entertainment backwater.
New York City, on the other hand, is an entire amusement park in and of itself. All the more so this past weekend, when it hosted Come Out and Play, a festival devoted to so-called "street games." Yeah, it's a lousy moniker conjuring images of three card monte and full-contact monkey ball. In this case, though, it refers to games played outside in public spaces, using the city as the game board. I participate regularly in one style of such games, so this is a topic of keen interest.
Some observations from browsing the list of games:
Experimental gameplay graduate students are enamored with the espionage theme.
Nothing makes me lose interest in a live game event faster than the word "spy" or "agent".
Payphone Warriors sounds like it was a great idea.
The game I most wish I could have played is Plundr, which had a number of terrific ideas. I love the notion of exploring a virtual space by moving through a physical one. The designers seemed to have a good handle on keeping things fun-- allowing the first player to discover an island to name that island is a simple but brilliant way to inject personality and whimsy. If I ever design a game where this is feasible, I look forward to unabashedly stealing that idea.
Reading about some of these games has gotten me interested in the gameplay possibilities enabled by cell phone text messaging. I know nothing about the APIs and protocols for such systems. If I wanted to create a game with text messaging, are there any turnkey software solutions for handling the back-end or would I need to roll my own?
Posted by Peter at September 26, 2006 04:28 PM
If you wanted to create a game with text messaging, you might need to get a cell phone. ;-) Then again, if anything could convince you to get one, it would be Game stuff.
Anyway... I'm no expert in text message processing software, but you might be able to get by with a system that handles incoming/outgoing text messages as email messages. Many carriers allow subscribers with text messaging plans to send and receive simple messages to and from email addresses, even if you don't have a fancy smartphone. For example, someone could email a message to [myphonenumber]@tmomail.net, and it would go to my cell phone as an SMS message. I can also put in an email address instead of a phone number when I compose a message on my phone, and it will go to that email address.
A lot of this may depend on the carrier also, but you'd probably want to ask people for phone number and carrier anyway, like XX-Rated did for one of the Paparazzi pregames.
I've done some cellphone messaging work. Basically you've got two options:
- The easy approach is, as Jessica suggests, to use SMTP email. Pros: Very easy and well-documented protocol; easy to set up; unrestricted; free for the app developer; works with devices like BlackBerries and WiFi-equipped Pocket PCs that can do email but may not be able to do SMS. Cons: Not every handset/carrier combination can send to arbitrary email addresses; messages sent to/from email addresses often cost the user more than SMS messages.
- The difficult approach is to use SMS. SMS messages are carrier-specific; they are not automatically routed from one network to another the way email messages are. Instead, each carrier has an "SMS Center" that parses the destination phone number and connects to a counterpart SMSC on the destination network. To send SMS messages from a PC, you have to know how to (and have permission to) connect to the destination carrier's SMSC; to receive SMS messages on a PC, the SMSC has to know about you. There are application service providers called "SMS Gateways" that have business relationships with all the carriers and provide these services for you, so that all you have to do is code against a simple (generally HTTP-transported XML) API. Pros: A cleaner experience, since your destination address is effectively a phone number rather than an email address; broader handset/carrier compatibility; lower cost for many users. Con: The only rational way to set this up is through a SMS Gateway, and that costs you money per message sent or received.
Of the two, I'd go with the first approach for something like a Game. If I were, say, the Perplex City people, and wanted the best and most accessible user experience, I'd go with the second approach.