Nokia recently launched some NFC (Near Field Communication) -enabled phones and now to take advantage of this new capability the company’s research centre has released a suite of casual games, termed as “tangible” mobile games. They use physical objects in the real world, and bring the natural and social fun of traditional family and party games into mobile gaming.
These games are a demonstration of how NFC opens up a whole new category of mobile games. However, if these games are successful they sure are going to usher a whole new dimension to the gaming industry, more than 3D could.
The first three games in the category are Nokia World Flags, Nokia Shakespeare Shuffle, and Nokia Nursery Rhyme Shuffle.
These games can be played on any Nokia Symbian NFC-enabled phone, including the Nokia C7-00, C7 Astound, 600, 603, 700, and 701.
The phone only needs to detect the tags. This means that aside from blank NFC tags (which you can order from some online sellers), you can also use NFC cards that you may already have in your wallet — including ‘contactless’ or Metro card, office ID card etc. And, you can use the same tags or cards for any number of other tangible NFC games in future.
Nokia says, “We hope to publish these games to the Nokia Store soon, so your feedback would be very helpful. We are particularly curious to hear about how easy or hard it is to get enough tags or cards to play with in different places around the world”.
Nokia plans to introduce educational games, family games, and social games using this new concept. These first games may be simple, but think of them as just the first seeds or sprouts in a whole new field of games enabled by NFC.