> Funny that this was developed by a french company.
> So Europeans are innovating the JP market?
:) At least trying to. But there's natural reasons for this being so (I know
you were ironical, but I don't get to talk about what we do so often):
- It was natural to go to KDDI as soon as they announced GPS phones. They
still are the carrier with the highest percentage of GPS phones as far as I
know.
- Only VCs could fund this kind of project & I feel that the VC -startup
ecosystem is even weaker in Japan than in France, so chances of young game
designer getting funds to do something like this...
- Even in 2001, Japan felt too mature for a small company to hope make a
dent with anything else than something unique.
- I thought of this game&company as I was handing flyers at roppongi
crossing, watching people walk with their bent on their mobile screens. So
it's still partly japanese origin !
All in all I'd guess that japanese companies have been thinking about LBS
games for a long time, but that flat fees are only beginning now. Also,
there hasn't been a trully successfull LBS games anywhere yet. Though my
take on this is that it will require a strong commitment from a publisher
AND a carrier united together with the dvpment studio to reach the kind of
richness of gameplay existing in massive online games. Or a TV show, with
the TV channel filling the role of the publisher. For the time being we're
happy to hang in there and improve the game every month.
Mathieu
Newt Games
PS: I took a shot of our still in beta web interface today, here's how it
looked at peak time 10h30pm( http://dev.kigen.net/pub/21.jpg - clicking on
the Tokyo 23 ku area would make you switch to the interactive map, some pics
of which were featured in the article). So this is how we are rewarded for
our innovative efforts: we get to watch those little blue dots move :)
Received on Thu Apr 8 00:55:43 2004
