Micro Devices Everywhere

As a child watching reruns of the original Star Trek series, I was always wowed when Captain Kirk, usually during some cool away mission, would grandly whip out his little communicator, flip it open, and talk with shipmates over great distances.

Well, a bunch of similar kids were watching those same reruns, but instead of rushing off to write sci-fi video games like I did, they played with their circuit boards and crystal sets and dreamed of building communicators. (I know what I'd rather be doing, but hey whatever turns you on, right?) Those kids have gone on to create a world of portable phones, pagers, and digital assistants that would blow even Captain Kirk's pastel-colored socks off. (Now all they need is for us to make great games for those devices!)

When I was evaluating the potential of micro-device game development, one of the first things I wanted to know was the size of the market and how large it might grow to be. After a little research, my findings surprised me. The market is the exciting thing about micro devices. I mean, let's face itafter about three chapters, you'll know just as well as I do how technically limited these little things are. There's no pushing the boundaries of graphical interactive entertainment in fewer than 100 pixels and no sound!

But when you're waiting to buy coffee, riding the bus to work, or just waiting for your girlfriend to finish shopping (remember to say it looks great on her), that 10-GHz dual-processor screamer sitting on your desk won't help much. All that stands between you and having to re-read that ad or poster for the thousandth time is those 100 pixels. This is the same all around the world, as millions turn to their mobile phones to kill a few minutes. Now it's up to us to rescue these people from their boredom, to help them break the chains of deskbound PCs, to bring gaming to new worlds, to bring ...freedom! Now charge! (Oops, got myself a bit worked up there.)