From location-based adventures to digital pets that live on
your wrist, Apple’s arrival could enliven the idea of playing games on a smart watch
Games are a remarkably agile medium - they can squeeze in
anywhere. Whenever a new digital platform emerges, whether it’s a tablet,
augmented reality headset or smart home security system, games are never far
behind.
Humans, like most animals, are natural players. With the
gradual, lumbering rise of the smart watch, however, games have so far played a
limited role.
The stores on the Pebble and Android Wear devices are mostly
filled with fitness and convenience applications, which is sensible considering
the form factor of these things: they’re small, they’re attached to you and they
have accelerometers to track movement. Hence, dozens of gamified jogging apps.
There are more games that don’t require running, of course,
but so far they have been mostly restricted to simple ports of classics like
Tetris, Pac-Man and Tamagotchi.
According to Will Luton, designer of Pixel Miner, one of the
most successful Pebble games so far, these are the wrong approaches:
“Integrating heart rate and pedometers obtrusively into game loops or
attempting to shrink down smartphone titles onto a smaller device may get some
traction early on as players explore the device and it’s capabilities, but they
won’t be sustainable.”
Love it or hate it, when Apple enters a market, it brings
with it an earthquake of hype and an accompanying tsunami of fresh developer
interest. So how could things change with smart watch games in the near future?
Blipvert gaming Perhaps the future of smart watch gaming is
all about reducing the smartphone “snack-sized” approach even further.
“The correct approach is to consider how the device is used
and builds from there,” says Luton. “Smart watches are high frequency, short
session devices which have low precision controls. This means that interfaces
have to be very simple, such as one touch or menu-based systems. If smartphone
games are designed to be played while waiting for a coffee, smart watch games
should be designed to be played in an elevator ride.”
There are historical precedence’s here. Nintendo’s old Game
& Watch titles - and indeed that whole generation of simple LCD games, from
Grandstand’s Caveman to Mattel’s Dungeons and Dragons - were based around
simple and amusing interactions, where form was as important as experience.
Casio made basic LCD game watches, as did Nelsonic, with its
cute Zelda title. Smart watches could bring this back. Furthermore, the idea of
five-second game collections, popularized in the Bishi Bashi and Warioware
titles, could prosper on a platform where more demanding experiences can’t
jostle them out of the way.
A virtue of simplicity It could be that the limiting form
factor and interface capabilities of smart watches will be enough to spark new
and unusual ideas.
“One thing that game developers like is new modes of
interaction and control,” says developer and researcher Michael Cook. “GDC ran
their annual alt.ctrl workshop recently that’s all about new ways to interact
with games. Apple’s already emphasising these minimalistic ways of
communicating through the watch, like doodling on the screen, tapping another
person’s wrist remotely, and so on.
“The small screen and simple interactions also remind me of
what Robin Baumgarten is doing in his game design experiments. Baumgarten’s
latest creation is Line Wobbler , a game that you played on a single line of
flashing lights. Designing games for really small platforms like a single
dimension or a screen as small as a watch is a really cool challenge.”
Social persistence
Another idea is that smart watch games could evolve into
quick-session social experiences, allowing friends who meet up in the street,
to quickly and seamlessly swap data.
“I do actually think there are some great possibilities for
‘persistent games’- games that you are playing all the time, alone or with
friends,” says developer Bennett Foddy. “For these games, the watch makes it
possible to check in on your progress whenever you have an idle nanosecond,
without starting an app or pulling out your phone. These might be games that
are played by tapping the phone at certain times, or by being at certain
locations: the depth won’t come from the software itself but from the way that
it fits in with your everyday life.”
This is already a feature of the Nintendo 3DS console. Its
Street Pass app automatically collects simple details from other 3DS-owning
passers-by, and then lets you check out their messages and profiles when you
have time.
Street Pass also contains a number of mini-games that can
only be competed through connection with other users. This could actually be
used in a more complex way.
“Developers will have to get better at placing more of the
experience in the mind and less of it on screen,” says game developer Moo Yoo,
who worked at Moshi Monsters creator Mind Candy until going independent. “I
imagine a huge demand for highly interlinked social games and dynamically
generated social narratives. You can take the example of a game like Farmville
which gave context and a real-world meaning to gifting a virtual animal. A
smart watch game could be a system of proposals, acceptances, and rejections -
either in a dating sim or a game of diplomacy.”
Full contact gaming Smartphones have accelerometers so they
sense movements, and they have wi-fi connectivity to allow multiplayer
connection. Add these to a device that you can’t accidentally drop or throw
across the room, and you have interesting possibilities for physical
group-based games.
“I love making digital games involving running around,” says
experimental smartphone and tablet game designer Alistair Aitcheson,
responsible for the likes of Greedy Bankers and Tap Happy Sabotage .
“The smartphone is physically attached to your body, so it’s
perfect for tag-style games involving slapping each other’s wrists.” This
sounds crazy, but it’s actually the basis of the excellent indie title Johann
Sebastian Joust , a multiplayer contact game that uses PlayStation Move motion
controllers: participants have to try to jog or bash the controllers of their
rivals, which removes them from the game.
The winner is the player who survives the longest without
being tagged. It’s enormous fun, but difficult for most people to experience,
because most people don’t have eight PlayStation Move controllers; and with a
smartphone version, they risk getting their handset belted across the room. But
a smart watch version would work brilliantly.
“I’ve also always wanted to do something involving hidden
information - where players see different things on their personal displays,”
says Aitcheson, envisioning a sort of Murder in the Dark experience where
players are fed different information about their roles in the game.
“Delivering this through a phone can feel cumbersome and it
slows the pace and focus of play. But with a watch, players can absorb new
details just by glancing at their wrists, and can continue running around
without having had to stop and think.”
The second (or third?) screen Another obvious use for the
smart watch will be as a second or even third screen for a console, PC or
tablet title - either imparting personal information to the player while
participating in the main game, or allowing them to take an element of that
game with them wherever they go.
“We have already seen a trend for games that connect out of
the main screen, into the real world,” says Tomas Rawlings of Auroch Digital,
which has just launched its board game adaptation, Chainsaw Warrior.
“Skylanders and Disney’s Infinity are good examples of this,
and this device offers potentials here. Also with persistent games - either
online like Travian or MMOs like EVE Online - I can see lots of uses for
getting information about events within the game world, always being accessible
to the player.
“One area I’m interested is in how this might be used for
board games. This form has been undergoing a renaissance in recent years as crowd
funding has connected players with creators. You can see the tentative steps in
this area with games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which uses a companion
app to assist the game flow. Linking that app to a player and their movements
adds lots of possibilities; think Cluedo played around the house or Hide and
Seek 2.0...”
Meanwhile, coder and web developer Adrian Smith sees the smart
watch fulfilling the role that science fiction movies always used it for; as an
intimate extension to a wider computer network.
“The most unique innovations will be augmentation, as a smart
watch is in essence an augmentation device,” he says. “For example, the
player’s heart rate could changes the behavior of an intelligent enemy in a
larger PC horror game. Or the smart watch could be a secondary screen or
interface, for example the onscreen watch used in the N64 game Goldeneye could
have been an actual watch.
“In Alien Isolation, the watch could vibrate when the alien
is detected on the scanner, or in a Halo title, you could have Cortana on your
wrist, available to talk to throughout the game. There is also a hard to define
emotional connection with smart watches, which makes the platform ideal for
personification.”
Smart watch games, then, may well have an interesting future
beyond glorified fitness apps with points systems; it just requires developers
to get to grips with the form factor and truly embrace its limitations and
peculiarities. Perhaps the hype that will soon surround Apple’s entry to the
market will be the boost those developers need.
