Using Location in Games

Ralph Barbagalloralph@flarb.com

Who am I?

• Game programmer, designer, jack of all trades.

• Founded FLARB in 2001, one of the earliest publishers and developers of mobile games in the US.

• Been working on a location-based game ad startup since 2010

Getting Location

• Most smartphones have GPS receivers

• GPS-less devices (netbooks, iTouch) use “Fake GPS”

• Location from IP lookup

• Color: “GPS Doesn’t Work”

GPS Accuracy

• Limited government restrictions

• 5-10m GPS, 50m WiFi, 500m triangulation

• Hyperlocation won’t be a reality until NFC or other tech comes about

GPS APIs

• iOS– Core Location

• Android– Location Manager

• GPS uses lots of juice!

Location in a Browser

• W3C Geolocation API

• Javascript in modern browsers

• Works the same way as native APIs

Storing Location

• Geospatial databases

• Basic functions:– Storing geographic locations– Sorting (distance checks)– Testing (intersections with shapes)

Storing Location: MySQL

• Spatial Extensions in 4.1 (subset of OpenGIS)

• Geometry stored as WellKnownText (WKT) or binary (WKB): “POINT (30 10)”

• All computations are in Euclidean (flat) space

Storing Location: PostGIS

• PostgresSQL with GIS extension

• Most mature relational solution (2001)

• WKT or WKB

• “Geographic Coordinates” for accurate queries mapped on globe

Storing Location: MongoDB

• Popular NoSQL database with game devs

• Geospatial indexing using spherical coordinates

• Uses geohash to store points

• Only points, no lines, polygons, etc.

Storing Location: SimpleGEO

• SimpleGEO Storage is a cloud service

• Cassandra with custom spatial extensions

• Store location as lat/long, geohash, or IP

• Cloud service—use HTTP calls. Heavy overhead.

Using Location

• Places Databases– Find out EXACTLY where you are

• Different places database provide different info about venues and locations– Trending– Coupons

Places APIs

• Foursquare• Factual• Facebook Places• Google Places• SimpleGeo• CityGrid• Etc. etc. etc.

Street Addresses

• Get latitude and longitude of street address

• Geocoding

• Google Maps API:

http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=xxx&sensor=false

Foursquare API

• Unauthenticated– Raw places API.– Free to use, with paid tier.– Crowdsourced

• Authenticated– OAuth2– Access to check-in history, friends,

mayorships, trends

Facebook Places API

• Database is based on Factual

• Authenticated only

• Tagging friends

• Deals platform

Foursquare vs Facebook

• Foursquare’s unauthenticated mode make it useful as a general places database

• Facebook has WAY more users

• Neither one can detect cheats

• Tagging friends is a powerful feature

Designing for Location

• A sample– Parallel Kingdom– Paranormal Activity– Turf Wars– The Merchant Kingdom– Dokobots

• Too literal.

Location Design Problems

• Convenience

• Density

• Privacy

Popular uses in apps

• As a social networking tool– WhosHere– Color– Instagram

• As a coupon/deals platform– Stickybits– Goldrun

Business Models for Location

• Real-world rewards for virtual world play– Pain in the ass for the advertiser– A hassle to redeem

• Local deals are hard to source– Most LBS companies are sales

organizations

Data Collection?

• Heaven’s Diner!

Summary

• Location is an interesting and low-tech buzzworthy feature

• Location gaming is in its infancy

• The “check-in” may be going away, but location isn’t.

Thanks!

• Ralph Barbagallo

• ralph@flarb.com

• twitter.com/flarb

• ralphbarbagallo.com