XplanaZine

John Romero, one of the fathers of the PC classic game “Doom,” appeared at E3 this week to promote Nokia’s upcoming N-Gage device. “We really believe the game industry’s future growth is in mobile gaming,” Romero said. He would have been even more correct if he had taken out the words “the game industry’s” to give his statement more sweeping and global vision.
Consider this. Until now, Nintendo has been the only real player in the handheld gaming market with its popular Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. Those days, however, are rapidly coming to an end.
In addition to Nokia’s N-Gage combination phone and gaming system to be released in October, Sony has also announced that it is entering the handheld gaming market.
The PSP would compete to some extent with Nintendo’s Game Boy, but Sony apparently has grander plans than a nice game of Tetris. The PSP will have a screen capable of showing 3D images, stereo sound, USB 2.0 connectivity and a custom processor built on cutting-edge 90-nanometer chipmaking technology.
The device will also use a new media format. The UMD disc is an optical disc about half the size of a DVD or CD and capable of holding 1.8GB of data.
Sony did not offer a projected price for the PSP, but said it plans to release the device late next year, with Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, promising it would be “the Walkman of the 21st century.”
The bottom line is that both the N-Gage and the PSP will extend our previous notions and concepts regarding mobile or handheld gaming (I’m suddenly remembering the little bowling game I wore out on a long flight to Brazil back in 1993). The N-Gage will promote mobile multi-player gaming and will push games like Red Faction into personal spaces previously unknown.
Because the principle difference between mobile gaming and traditional console gaming is that of “fluid experience.” With a traditional game I am pulled into the play experience via an immersive environment and simply leave my real world (a.k.a. living room) behind for a few hours. With mobile gaming, however, my physical surroundings can actually play a big part int he experience — the sounds of the subway, the movement of traffic, the peripheral visual input from a surrounding crowd. My fluidly changing surroundings actually contribute to the game’s ambiance and make it more a part of my actual existence.
It is precisely this fluid experience that offers the most promise for simulated learning and teaching. Mobile gaming will offer teachers and course designers the ability to blend artificial simulations or problems with the actual, real-time experience of the learner to create true immersions that transcend what could ever be accomplished in an actual classroom. Here are two simple (emphasis on simple) mobile gaming immersion scenarios that illustrate a small part of what will be possible.

• Knowledge (scavenger) hunts or puzzles in which users, working in connected groups, find pieces of information or clues embedded in their real world or environment.
• Role-playing immersion scenarios in which the story/experience line is tied to or integrated with the learner’s real-time culture and context. In this way, although the learner is role playing with an avatar and navigating through an environment on screen, that experience is blended with her real-life surroundings.

Mobile gaming promises to blur the traditional boundaries of education even more than traditional gaming already has. The concepts of immersion and group work will be altered in interesting ways, and teachers will be able to cerate projects and assignments that provide learners with apprentice-like experiences in which they learn by doing in contexts that have real import.