Shoot em up - With your Mobile?

By: Conor Ryan

New generation networks allow providers to roll out exciting new mobile services. Take, for example, BotFighters, a real-world mock combat game that's a variant on paintball - but in this case you use your mobile phone to locate and 'kill' opponents.
Created by a Stockholm-based gaming company called It's Alive, BotFighters is offered exclusively to Telia (Swedish Mobile Operator) customers. Over 5,000 customers have signed up since its launch in April 2001. Players join by going to the game's Web site (www.botfighters.com). Once there they can enter the robot lab and design their warriors, choosing from a range of armour, weapons, and ammunition.

Once the warrior has been built, the player can then locate or indeed be located by other players. The fun here is in 'shooting' a real person who could be standing up to 1,000 feet away. Other BotFighters can then try to retaliate. The goal, naturally, is to 'kill' as many people as possible and the game designers provide players with help by inserting imaginary items into the real-world terrain. For example, if a gamer steps onto a certain street corner, they might find that it contains an imaginary first-aid kit. Or an imaginary gun might be stashed at the next bus stop, and so on.

BotFighters has grabbed headlines in Europe for two reasons. First of all it has shown how mobile phones are mutating into location-aware devices. Unfortunately at the same time the game has spawned all sorts of aberrant behaviour:

Reportedly a player went on vacation on the Swedish island of Gotland, located all the BotFighters there, drove around in a sneak attack and actually killed every one of them. In retaliation, five local players formed a team and chased after him, giving him a good beating.
Can you see Ballygunner and Mount Sion battling it out with their mobiles in Walsh Park?
It's not just a possibility that this kind of activity can filter in to our daily lives - it's a fact.

Source: http://www.wired.com/