Nokia N-Gage Games Night – I Was There (How Video Games Have Evolved)

How video games have evolved, how they have not.  After attended several of their press / blogger events, this time I was as close to where their home in Singapore is as I can be – the Nokia HQ.  When I arrived at the lobby, I gasped at the grandeur of modernity, perhaps a bit too quiet after office hour, nevertheless a strong statement of what the 5th most valuable global brand is to be ($36 billion).

There is a little corner of a posh retail store setup, there is another little area of some secret prototyping workshop going on, a booth for the N-Gage mobile gaming station next to the retail booth, and I peeped into the heart of the office through the floor-to-ceiling glass door and saw another beautiful lobby area behind the public reception area.  I joked if I could take a look inside and the friendly Nokia staff told me that it is strictly for staff only.  Judging at some of the funky unmarked Nokia devices that some of them are carrying, I reckon there must be quite a few top secret next-next generation wireless phones inside the restricted zone.

In My Days of the Arcade

Previously, I was with the Nokia N-Gage development team and have checked out some of their upcoming N-Gage hits.  Last evening, I had the opportunity to go hands-on with some of their upcoming titles.  And how video games have evolved, how they have not.  As I was staring at the video screens, looking at how two players battle each other in the fighting game “One”, I had flashbacks of my University days in UK, when I often hang out at the social center, admired at how my best mate flair when he played the “Street Fighter” and the “Mortal Kombat” at the arcade video stations.  He is a physicist, and I often joked that the knowledge of quantum physics must have got him far to the games.  I am a computer scientist, and I couldn’t even beat the computer character in those arcade video stations.

Neither could I beat my opponents in the Nokia N-Gage Games Night.  The game play of a fighting game has not evolved that much since the days of the arcade – basic navigation on movements, a set of buttons to execute a combo move, a set of timed counter moves, and a health bar hanging on top of each character’s head.  Yet, gone are the bulky arcade video stations and they are magically shrunk into a tiny device that fits onto our hands – a device that is always switched on in our waking hours and follows us wherever we go.  Finding an opponent is as simple as making an Internet or Bluetooth connection using our mobile devices that in today’s world, it is largely affordable and in many instances, free.  How video games have evolved.

Game with Your Built-in Camera

How video games have evolved that the way we play our game is no longer constrained by what happens inside this tiny mobile device, but we take the environment around us into the game.  “Metal Gear Solid Mobile” for instance enables players to take advantage of the external environment to advance our game progress.  Using the camera that comes with the wireless phone, the game allows you to navigate precisely by how you physically move your phone.  Not only that, you can take a picture of your surrounding area and use that as a pattern to camouflage the suit of your character that helps your stealth mission.  If you need a dark suit, take a picture of a dark object around you.  If you need something light, take a picture of the sky perhaps.

In Love with Racing

One friendly Nokia staff was passionately showcasing the new “DChoc Café Solitaire 12pack” to me and for those who are into solitaire type of games, you would love this one.  As for me, I was literally glued to the upcoming racing title “Asphalt 4 – Elite Racing”.  It is fast pace, taxing on concentration (initially at least), when after a few rounds of virtual racing on the street of Paris, my head was spinning.  I must be experiencing a virtual G force of some sort (too much F1!).  To skip to the end of the story, yes, I did get a rank 1 (I swear I would have kept the entire Nokia and Text100 team locked inside this booth till I get there), with one hand (playing with two hands is not a mandatory), and I could watch the “One” tournament of how the rest of the gamers face off each other live while I raced in my Mini.

How video games have evolved, how they have not.  Kudos to those who are so passionately developing and promoting the next generation of mobile gaming.  The device may be small, the outcome is anything but.

Related Links: Nokia events I have attended