Ubiquitous computing is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including laptop computers, tablets, smart phones and terminals in everyday objects such as a refrigerator or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include Internet, advanced middleware, operating system, mobile code, sensors, microprocessors, new I/O and user interfaces, computer networks, mobile protocols, location and positioning, and new materials.
The history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games were Computer Space and Pong. After its home console conversions, numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success in both the arcade and the home by cloning the game, causing a series of boom and bust cycles due to oversaturation and lack of innovation.
Location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, entertainment, work, personal life, etc. Commonly used examples of location-based services include navigation software, social networking services, location-based advertising, and tracking systems. LBS can also include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. LBS also includes personalized weather services and even location-based games.
Ragnarok Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by Gravity based on the manhwa Ragnarok by Lee Myung-jin. It was released in South Korea on 31 August 2002 for Microsoft Windows. The game has spawned an animated series, Ragnarok the Animation, and a sequel game, Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second. Player characters exist in a world with a player environment that gradually changes with the passage of time. Major changes in the features and history of the world take place as episodes in the RO timeline.
A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
Julian Bleecker is an artist and technologist with a history developing innovative mobile research projects.
Locative media or location-based media (LBM) is a virtual medium of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers.
Gil Weinberg is an Israeli-born American musician and inventor of experimental musical instruments and musical robots. Weinberg is a professor of musical technology at Georgia Tech and founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology.
Mscape was a mobile media gaming platform developed by Hewlett-Packard that could be used to create location-based games. The development of Mscape was discontinued on March 31, 2010.
Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, though its most widely used version is primarily developed by Google. It was unveiled in November 2007, with the first commercial Android device, the HTC Dream, being launched in September 2008.
A pervasive game is one where the gaming experience is extended out in the real world, or where the fictive world in which the game takes place blends with the physical world. The "It's Alive" mobile games company described pervasive games as "games that surround you", while Montola, Stenros and Waern's book, Pervasive Games defines them as having "one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play spatially, temporally, or socially." The concept of a "magic circle" draws from the work of Johan Huizinga, who describes the boundaries of play.
Can You See Me Now? (CYSMN) is an urban chase game developed by Blast Theory and The Mixed Reality Lab in 2001. CYSMN is a pervasive game, where performers on the streets of a city use handheld computers, GPS and walkie talkies to chase online players who move their avatars through a virtual model of the same town. CYSMN was built in the Equator project on the EQUIP architecture.
Blast Theory is an internationally renowned artists' group, whose work mixes interactive media, digital broadcasting and live performance.
Transformers G1: Awakening is a turn-based tactics mobile game in the Transformers franchise developed and published by Glu Mobile. It was originally released for feature phones on November 12, 2008, before being ported to IOS in 2010. The game has been redrawn from the Applestore due to licence reasons.
Hero Academy was a two-player turn-based tactics video game created by the developer Robot Entertainment, known for their previous series Orcs Must Die!. The game was first released for the iPhone iOS platform on January 11, 2012, with ports later being released for the Microsoft Windows, OS X and Android platforms. In the game, players take turns moving units on a board and attacking enemy units with the objective of being the first to destroy the other player's crystal or eliminate all of the other player's units. The game received generally favorable reviews from critics. In his review for Ars Technica, Andrew Webster noted that the gameplay was simple and easy to learn, but that the game also offered a satisfying depth within each turn. The game also features cross platform play across all installed platforms. A sequel to the game was launched in January 2018. On January 9, 2019, Robot Entertainment announced in a blog post that Hero Academy and its sequel would cease operations on April 8, 2019 as one had been long defunct and its sequel had been operating at a financial loss for several months.
A location-based game is a type of game in which the gameplay evolves and progresses via a player's location. Location-based games must provide some mechanism to allow the player to report their location, usually with GPS. Many location-based games are video games that run on a mobile phone with GPS capability, known as location-based video games.
The fighting game community, often abbreviated to FGC, is a collective of video gamers who play fighting games such as Marvel vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat, Soulcalibur, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, The King of Fighters, Blazblue, Super Smash Bros., Tekken, Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs., Dead or Alive, Samurai Shodown, Shadow Fight 2 and many others. The fighting game community started out small in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s referred to as the grassroots era, but it has grown to a larger scale in the 2010s, with many tournaments being held around the world. This is predominantly due to the rise of esports, online gaming, and digitized viewing habits on live streaming sites such as Twitch.
A transreality game, sometimes written as trans-reality game, describes a type of video game or a mode of gameplay that combines playing a game in a virtual environment with game-related, physical experiences in the real world and vice versa. In this approach a player evolves and moves seamlessly through various physical and virtual stages, brought together in one unified game space. Alongside the rising trend of gamification, the application of game mechanics to tasks that are not traditionally associated with play, a transreality approach to gaming incorporates mechanics that extend over time and space, effectively playing through a players day-to-day interactions.
The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.
A geolocation-based video game or location-based video game is a type of video game where the gameplay evolves and progresses via a player's location in the world, often attained using GPS. Most location-based video games are mobile games that make use of the mobile phone's built in GPS capability, and often have real-world map integration. One of the most recognizable location-based mobile games is Pokémon Go.
