We recently had the opportunity to interview the developer behind Makayama. Makayama has the created several successful games for the App Store and today we’ll be focusing on their innovative app, Mosquitoes (augmented reality game).
In Mosquitoes you get to shoot the buzzing insects as you watch them fly around your surroundings via your iPhone’s camera. The game employs the device’s compass and accelerometer to create an amazingly realistic effect. There are two different game modes. One mode gives you two minutes in which to shoot as many mosquitoes as you can. The second mode gives you 10 bullets to shoot 10 mosquitoes in a timed round. Mosquitoes is a blast to play and currently priced at $.99 in the App Store.
App Store link: Mosquitoes (augmented reality game) $.99
Now that we’ve discussed the application, let’s move on to our interview with Vincent from Makayama.
1) How did you come to your decision of developing an ‘augmented reality’ application?
We were brainstorming on new game ideas and came up with this idea of
shooting flying objects around you. Mosquitoes was developed from that. The AR-technology allowed this to be done technically.
The iPhone is perfectly capable of handling AR in realtime, only the SDK (developer tool) is too limited now. Apple is not allowing the deep level access which you need to do ‘real’ augmented reality. For example, we can’t access raw, streaming camera data. A wish for 2010.
You will see lots more AR on phones. Gaming will be a huge growth opportunity, but also location based apps. However, the risk of AR being overhyped is big. Apps like Layar could easily become the next Second Life: much talked about but no one really uses it.
Yes, we’re working on a couple of AR games, scheduled to come out in Q1, 2010
Our thanks to Vincent and the team at Makayama for giving us their time and we look forward to seeing their next augmented reality title.
