We asked developers to weigh in on Android as a mobile game-changer,
from navigation to gaming, to ordinary life.
In early 2008, Google held a contest to encourage young talent to develop applications for their new Android software.
We spoke to three of the top ten finalists about their applications, the pros and cons of Android and what the future holds
for this ground-breaking mobile development.
JOYity by Zelfi
Andreas worked on an application called JOYity –an interactive gaming platform with a wide range of reality-based games for outdoor play. The application features GPS and location-based services, combined with other phone capabilities,sending players on quests to solve complex riddles – using their phones to receive information,hints and as a map. JOYity makes players explore their environment and get to know it in new and unexpected ways.
The next group of developers we interviewed is a team of five engineering grads from Ontario,
Canada: Jeff Kao, Robert Lam, Gary Pong,Taneem Talukdar and Jason Wong. They believe that
climate change will be the defining issue for their generation, so they created an app called
Ecorio that tracks your carbon emissions from travel and automatically suggests
sustainable transportation alternatives.
Their thoughts on the future of Android as a gaming platform
Android will be just as strong of a gaming platform as the iPhone…Android will be a huge source of
innovation from creative developers armed with an idea, a computer and a phone. ..In the end, we’re
going to see some polished, well-produced games taking off of these innovative ideas…Something
for game developers and consumers to get excited about!
Laurent developed the Marvin, which is both an application and a server-side technology. Marvin servers provide a way to make persistent different kinds of objects and data sets (static or moving Geo-localized points of interest, object ratings,profiles, tagged peer lists, etc.) to be accessed over the internet by multiple mobile applications. Marvin reduces the time to market of mobile applications, and transfers some of the application logic to the server side.
Their thoughts on the future of Android as a gaming platform
After the PDA/mobile/services convergence, the communication device will also become a gaming
device. Maybe it’s name should be “life assistant”now…The iPhone started a bit earlier and cool
games are already available…I think the year 2009 will show some sort of equilibrium in that
space between the iPhone and the multiple upcoming Android devices. The size of the audience will
be a key decision factor for game developers.
» Find out what these developers’ favorite features are and what they’d like to see added
