Group membersVIKRAM NEELAKANDAN

KOUSTUBHA DESHPANDEZAHRA ABBASI

Location Based Multiplayer Game – Mafia

Mobile Health And Social Networking

CSE 598

Agenda

• Introduction

• Motivation & Background

• Related Work

• Overview of Mafia – the location based game.

• Demo

• Novelty & Challenges

• Conclusion

Introduction

Location Based Games

• Novel forms of digital game entertainments that take into account player’s physical location as well as the computer-maintained virtual game environment.

• Location based games introduce an element missing in interactive console games: “the physical effort of sports”.[C. Schlieder et al, 2006]

Motivation-Why Location Based Games?

• Traditional digital games that reduce players’ physical involvement to moving a joy stick is obsolete[”.[C. Schlieder et al, 2006]]

• Location based games entertain players and encourage social interaction of real world in virtual space.

• Maturity of the location based game increases over the period of time.

• Have potential to be commercially successful

– Successfulness and longevity of game depends upon flexibility of Location and time[Marek B. et al. 2006]:

• People like flexibility in location and time [during the day with peaks around lunchtime and commute times]

Motivation- Large Market for Mobile Games

• Mobile phone can provide “five-minute fun” [played over a few

minutes]

• 850 million people use their phones for gaming [CI mobile

gaming]

• 90% of all teenagers and young adults use their mobile phone for

gaming purposes [CI mobile gaming]

• Cellular game:14 per cent of the 35 billon dollars generated from

computer games per annum [Palmer 2005].

• The market for mobile gaming is worth USD 6 billion and it’s

growing [Datamonitor]

Challenges in Location Based Games

• Mobile phone limitations.– Energy and accuracy trade offs, Smaller screens

• Variation or uncertainty with regard to location and network connectivity [O. Rashid et al., 2006].

– Frequency of location changing. – Long time acquisition.

• Cost Overhead.– Expensive communications methods. – Users should pay for internet connectivity/SMS/Location services as well as game

• Developing Game logic. – Game logic should retain user’s interest for a long time.– Tracking the state of players.

• Game developers’ main concerns [O. Rashid et al.,2006 ]

– Within game, movement is mostly designed as necessity.– Games often require frequent updates from other players.– Location based games are not able to introduce a story.– The ability of location based games to handle player network latency in fast moving games.

• Security– Preserving player’s privacy

Service Time Acq. Accuracy Coverage Energy Consumption

GPS 10-60s 2-10 m Outdoors[problem with indoor]

High

GPRS 3 s 100m to 1o km

Cellular Network Coverage

Low

WiFi … Around 100m

Almost Urban Medium

Contribution

• Making an open-source, extendable multiplayer location based game on android.

• Using Google embedded location services [GPS, Wi-Fi]

• Implementing GASP framework for Android.

Related WorkCurrent Location Based Games[O. Rashid et al.,2006 ]

Is a search and destroy combat game, generally regarded as first location based game. Every player can send a SMS to locate other player and if that player was in the vicinity, they could shoot the other player’s robot by sending another SMS

Uses GPS to get information, which allows players try to find a virtual treasure by discovering different clues hidden at various locations.

How we are different from others?

• Introduce a “sense of belonging”.• No extra cost for intercommunication• Using google embedded location service including WiFi and GPS• Mostly players need additional peripheral(s) to play [e.g. Bot

Fighter players need robot]. – We don’t use any other peripherals. Gesturing of mobile is used for

fighting purpose.

• Open Source.• Using the functionality of open source GASP frame work.

How does the game look like?

• Strategy location based team game.

• Motto - “Kill and Win”• 2 teams play against

each other.• Track and kill opponents

in your territory virtually.• Winning team can play

against more competitive teams.

Kill to win

General Features.

• Multiplayer / Team game.

• Session-based handling.

• Create session, join session.

• Lobby room, waiting room.

• Inter Message passing.

• Pseudo player name.

• Private game sessions.

• Generating gesture based events.

Demo

Architecture Overview

Cell Phone Side Server Side

Client Internal Components

Server Internal Components

Development tools : Android SDK release version 2,GASP Framework. Apache Tomcat 6.x,Eclipse Ganymede,JDK 1.6

Handling Challenges

• Uncertain Locating and connectivity– Adaptation.

– Push mechanism.

• Cell phone limitation– Using intelligent location handler to extract habits of players to control

location update periods automatically (avoiding extra energy consumption)

– Dynamic location service type selection

– Designing appropriate UI.

• Attractive Incentive schemes for user.• Security

– Hashing mechanism to store user password.

– Separation of users as per Rights / roles.

– Hiding privacy of players by pseudo name.

removing the variation by technological means hiding it in the system design managing or influencing users’ activity so that the variation is not

made apparent to them revealing variation so that they can make decisions as to how to

handle it and exploiting it as a design resource in which players deliberately seek

out and exploit the limitations of network coverage or positioning [Players tend to move places without coverage to make more reward.

Evaluation Methodology

• User study– What are the best features in this game?– What is the most concern?– Social networking aspect?– Distributing feedback and questioners.

• Simulation – How good intelligent location controller is?– How good gesturing is?

Future Extension

• Concept of “Floating MicroBlog”.

• Coupling with social networking sites like facebook, myspace etc.

• Summary of user activity.– health

• Open ended Customization for user.

• Compatible with Desktop Machines.

• Incorporate Multiple levels in the game.

Acknowledgement and References

• Special Thanks to Georgios Varsamopoulos

• O. Rashid et al.,2006 ] Extending Cyberspace: Location Based Games Using Cellular Phones, ACM Computers in Entertainment, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 2006. Article 3C.

• [Marek B. et al., 2006] Interweaving Mobile Games With Everyday Life, Proc. ACM CHI 2006, http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/

• [Christoph S. et al., 2006] Geogames: Designing location-based games from classic board games, 2006, [Published by IEEE Computer Society ]

• www.cimobilegaming.com• www.datamonitor.com

Q & A