Handheld Gaming: “I’m Better than you!”

Hello Folks,

Within the broad scope of online social environments that the Internet has to offer, millions of participants are competing amongst each other to gain the sweet social capital that they yearn to earn. To gain social capital, participants will focus much of their time towards the quality of their content, which will be contributed online to achieve their wanted superiority. Participants contribute art, written literature, open source software and much much more, and gaming content is definitely no exception.

Before you start thinking I’m about to splurge on of online multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft or Runescape, hear me out. I’m actually referring to Handheld Gaming (lightweight portable gaming consoles). That’s right, the sensational Nintendo DS and PSP have spawned many online communities for users to contribute to.

The contributions of gamers in online communities are their achieved scores. A dedicated gamer will spend many hours playing his or her portable device to attain a competitive high score to which thereby it will be listed on a community scoreboard against other player’s scores via the Internet. Cyberscore’s Mario Kart DS Scoreboard is a direct example of this concept; this website publicly showcases a list of the top players of Mario Kart DS (a Nintendo DS game), the top player of the list obviously being the best player with the highest score (Cyberscore 2008).

Bruns (2008a) has discussed that that to be an important and credible participant member of an online social community site, one must commit quality, strength and consistency throughout his or her contributions. That the visibility of one’s contributions will ultimately depend on high they are rated. As you can see from what I have discussed so far, all these theories are correct.

But it doesn’t stop there, rather than heading to the computer to contribute scores, you’re able to do so by creating a social status on the portable device itself, as you play within the online social environment that is provided by Wi-Fi technology. Wi-fi technology enables players of handheld gaming to compete with each other locally or globally around the world. As Bruns (2008, 319) states “The tools for social networking reside no longer in online communities but in mobile devices”.

Referring back to Mario Kart DS, if you play against others via the Wi-fi with your Nintendo DS, you will be able to see the opponent’s victories, losses, play time and their designed avatar as well as allowing the opponent to see your profile. However, every time you compete with other players, they are sought out randomly each time you play, despite their social status.

There is definitely more room for improvement in the area of online social networks based on hand held gaming. Certain limitations such as not being able to freely chat to random players or creating complete online social identities for all to see are definitely some prominent flaws.

What I want to be possible in the near future, is to play a highly social interactive handheld game such as World of Warcraft while sitting on the toilet. Oh the possibilities!

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond : from production to produsage.
New York: Peter Lang.

Bruns, A. 2008a. KCB203 Consumer Cultures: Week Podcast: Developing Social Environments. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/ (accessed September 26, 2008).

Podcast: Week 9.Cyberscore. 2008. Mario kart ds scoreboard. http://www.cyberscore.net/scoreboard-mkds.php (accessed September 25, 2008).

Mobile Gaming Strikes! Beware Handheld Gaming!

Hello folks,

Gaming is both a fascination and my obsession. I will spend countless hours on end, shooting zombies’ heads off or frantically attempting to pull off a radical 360-backflip on a motorbike in fantasy-like virtual worlds. I own seven gaming consoles and three portable gaming devices. Simply put, gaming is my forte. My name is Adam Wright, and I will be Mobile Media Future’s blogger discussing Mobile Gaming for the next three weeks.

The global interactive games industry is large and growing, and is at the forefront of many of the most significant innovations in new media (Flew and Humphreys 2008, 127). We stand in awe of how fast gaming’s innovation and interactivity is progressively evolving; the Nintendo Wii has motion-sensoring whilst online multiplayer gaming connects players to interact with each other globally. Mobile gaming too, is developing further and making more advances in wireless communications to satisfy a significant market that has portable gaming needs.

For those who may not know, a video game for a mobile phone, smartphone, PDA or handheld computer falls under the category of mobile gaming. However this does not include portable video game systems such as PSP or Nintendo DS (Wikipedia 2008). The fact is a mobile game has evolved from being just an "extra" application on a portable device to being a valued commodity itself. To this day, it’s quite possible that games themselves are selling the mobile devices! If you don’t believe me, take a look at the N-Gage. That’s basically Nokia’s attempt towards selling mobile devices specifically based on their gaming capabilities (Wikipedia 2008a). As Flew and Humpherys (2008, 128) state "…the games industry itself identifies direct spin-offs for technological innovation… [such as] mobile telecommunications…"

However, mobile Gaming is infamous for its noticeable flaws. Essentially consumers will most often complain that gaming on mobile devices are often too shabby, disappointing to play and difficult to install (Apocalypso 2005). Yet gaming industries have attempted to tackle the problem by employing 3D graphics, improved multiplayer activity and better use of downloading problems via the Internet.

The current craze of Apple’s iPhone has managed to achieve all these goals, as well as becoming prominent competitive gaming devices to the Nintendo DS and PSP in the market. According to Hartley (2007), Apple’s devices main lead advantage is digital distribution of their games, meaning consumers have the pleasure of convenience of grasping any game anywhere at the push of a button (or the touch of a screen). The games are also claimed to be "sophisticated", popular titles such as Super Monkey Ball are just a click away.

I don’t know about you, but my mobile phone games aren’t exactly "sophisticated". Super Mario on the DS seems the better alternative to my phone’s "Bulky Bill". But things can change, perhaps in the time to come, Mobile devices will be superior to the beloved handheld gaming thanks to convenience and connectivity.

Apocalypso. 2005. Making it easy to enjoy rich 3D and connected gaming with Nokia smartphones. http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/0505/nextgeneration.htm
(accessed September 11, 2008)

Flew, T. and S. Humpreys. 2008. Games: technology, industry, culture. In New Media: an introduction. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press.

Hartley. M. 2008. Next on Apple's agenda: video game supremacy. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080910.RAPPLE10/TPStory/Business
(accessed September 11, 2008)

Wikipedia. 2008. Mobile Gaming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_gaming (accessed September 11, 2008)

Wikipedia. 2008a. N-Gage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gage (accessed September 11, 2008)