Mobile Game Industry not Understanding Location Technologies

In a Mobile Games analysis, Kurt Uhlir says that the industry has still many false impressions about LBG. They must understand the complexities, strengths, and weaknesses of location technologies. They need to move past the “all or nothing” belief. Each positioning technology (GPS, WiFi, GSM, …) has its own complexity that is mainly underestimated by developers and publishers. The difficulties involve with integrating spatial data, and the accuracy that are needed in various games situations. When designing games, writing storylines and setting expectations, the industry must think about how accurate the average location will be, how often the player’s location can be updated, how the game will deal with the occasional inaccurate location reading and what the benefits are ton incorporating location into game play.