The recent sci-fi film Blade Runner 2049 is also highly praised, with an 8.5 rating on IMDB. In the play, no matter the background environment, concert or AI girlfriend, AR technology has been widely used in the market. People’s desire and fantasy for the future has been gradually realized in the continuous development of science and technology. Science fiction movies have always been a hot topic for most people, and the visual pleasure brought by high-tech in the movies is the most attractive point.
With the continuous progress of high and new technology, as well as the continuous expansion of people’s cognitive demand for the world, high and new technology enterprises also began to use their own technological advantages to provide users with diversified service products. The application of VR (virtual reality) technology embodies the powerful technology flow products that people can understand the world without going out; The AR technology combines the role or environment in the virtual world with the reality through the media in the current real environment to achieve the effect of augmented reality.
VR makes people deeply immersed in virtual reality with the help of devices, while AR presents virtual reality with the help of technology. AR puts a mysterious future veil on the current realistic environment. From the perspective of the application of AR technology in various fields, it is more entertaining for AR to present pictures directly with the help of mobile terminals. AR+ games are popular in the field of mobile games.
Major Internet giants compete to layout AR games, fragmented
Said to the mobile end game consoles, nintendo is the most impressive, as the most influential platform for the game producers and leaders portable console platforms, nintendo is now in the global sales of more than 2 billion game software, has created a number of well-known figures in the history of the game, is also the birthplace of the classic game of IP, Mario series, Final Fantasy series, Pokemon series, etc. These classic games are the gateway to mobile consoles for the majority of the post-80s and post-90s generation, and nintendo’s games are mostly memories of the childhood of modern youth. In 2012, The release of Pokemon AR game “Pokemon Go” by Nintendo set off the craze of AR mobile console.
Coincidentally, there are more Internet head enterprises have joined the RESEARCH and development team of AR games. In 2013, The Google Games team developed Ingress to log into the Android market, which opened the game with the unique role playing of enlightenment army and Resistance Army. Blue-green confrontation became another beautiful scene in the streets besides pet elf searchers.
In addition to portable game consoles, smart phones with high popularity have become another important carrier of AR games. There are more and more AR games on all kinds of mobile application distribution platforms. Rich themes and novel gameplay make AR games quickly develop in full swing. In China, with the strong market base of mobile terminal and the continuous improvement of mobile phone manufacturers’ technology, AR application is unprecedented in the Chinese market. Blank space is opportunity. According to the statistics of AR in China website, in 2015, among the domestic enterprises engaged in AR application development, 80% of them have the intention to develop game applications and have already developed game applications. For the vast number of game manufacturers, this is an urgent development of the market.
From netease’s AR games dawn Call Dragon: Dragon Soul Battle AR and You Dream, to Ali’s AR+LBS game Meng Bang exclusively issued by Alipay, Tencent, as the first game platform in China, is also committed to the development of AR games. In the near future, domestic AR games will welcome a spring full of flowers
In addition to the AR games independently developed by the game team, film and game interaction has also become the development direction of AR games. After launching The Machines this year, Domestic game team Directive Games will launch two AR Games that combine Hollywood and China’s top IP brands. AR game has become a rising force that cannot be ignored in the current mobile game industry. It opens the door of the new century for mobile game platforms, and AR game can bring more players with technological game experience.
AR game advantage: Experience augmented reality in all directions
The biggest feature of AR games is that virtual game characters are displayed in the real environment through mobile phones, game consoles and other media using augmented reality technology. AR games optimize the combination of games and AR technology from the three aspects of location service, image recognition and data processing, so as to combine the virtual picture that originally appeared in electronic devices with the real environment. The major breakthrough in the gameplay and form of AR games brings new game experience to players.
The first is LBS (location service) to realize the close link between virtual and real scenes. Traditional mobile games use virtual maps to locate other players in the virtual scene, while AR mobile games use LBS technology to depict the structure and surface of the surrounding environment, and reproduce it completely in the game simulator, so as to realize the close combination of virtual and reality, and bring players close to the real game experience effect. The AR game Pokemon Go has been loved by gamers since its release, not only because of its top-notch IP genes, but also because Pokemon is a game that projects Pokemon into a real world. Deep game enthusiasts will go out of the house to hunt for more pets, and the combination of virtual and real gameplay brings players a completely different game experience
The second is the use of interesting image recognition to complete the task of the game. In traditional mobile games, all tasks are performed online, while in AR games, players find the task location in the game through location service, and identify the task achievement through mobile phone scanning. In Ingress, for example, when players arrive at the mission location, they need to acquire the scene information in the image to obtain the mission, and they also meet at a more recognizable location when they agree to meet. Based on LBS, AR games arrange the task location in a position with higher recognition, so that players can complete the task quickly and without losing interest, improve their confidence, and promote the smooth development of the game plot.
Finally, the data processing + ranging system brings real visual experience to players. Both traditional and AR mobile games need to match players with more game information through data processing. In AR games, distance measurement system is attached to the data processing. Through accurate distance measurement, the real environment is measured in real time, so that the environment and characters in virtual games can achieve seamless connection with the real environment and the effect of augmented reality, which brings new visual experience to players.
The downside of AR games: Cost, user, and environmental security become time bombs
AR games satisfy the game experience of heavy game players in real scenes and enhance the reality transformation of the virtual world. However, with the continuous expansion of the AR game market and the increase of game players, AR games in diversified scenes face many problems.
First, the application of diversified game scenarios to the real environment brings social security problems. AR games can meet the game needs of players in multi-scene environment. When players are satisfied with the experience, they bring hidden dangers such as traffic congestion and social security to the real society. The popularity of Pokemon is a milestone of AR games, but it has also brought many negative effects: 79 traffic accidents were caused by Pokemon in Japan in the first month after its launch; One French player was arrested after straying into a military base. Police and military bases in Indonesia and Israel have banned staff from playing the game during working hours. At the same time, In early August 2016, Iran banned AR games due to concerns about social security risks, becoming the first country to completely ban Pokemon. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television did not approve AR+LBS games because of the social safety of the game…
Secondly, complex game story background and real game experience bring personal safety problems to players. Traditional mobile games have very high time fragmentation, allowing players to play in very short periods of time. However, in AR games, players must immerse themselves in the virtual atmosphere and act as virtual characters in the real environment because they need to complete the search task in the real world. Therefore, when unknown accidents or special weather and other uncontrollable dangers occur on the way to the task, players are likely to be injured. It was reported that an Ingress player drowned late at night in Pool Beg, Dublin, Ireland, while completing check-in tasks in the game. Pokemon Go also lost 15 million players in a month as it fell off a cliff after boasting that it was “the most profitable game in history at $200 million in revenue” due to frequent security incidents.
Third, the cost of developing games is too high. According to the current AR game development team, AR game development usually requires a lot of time and money, and the later product promotion and publicity, the production cost of AR game is much higher than traditional game. According to statistics, a comprehensive VR (virtual reality) experience scene needs to invest 2 million yuan, and the cost of AR augmented reality technology will undoubtedly be far higher than virtual reality technology.
At present, the rapid development of AR games has brought great challenges to the research and development team and social security.
With capital support and technology, the rise of AR games is just around the corner
Although the current harvest from the application of AR technology in games is not optimistic, with the increase of capital investment, as well as the continuous maturity of the market and technology, the prospect of AR games is particularly promising: Global sales of gaming hardware and software will total more than $150bn this year and $200bn in 2021, according to analytics from Digi Capital, an investment banking service for the industry. In addition, the revenue of AR games will surpass the current rapid growth of VR games in 2021, reaching the sales amount of 7 billion DOLLARS. At least, AR games can take advantage of the mobile terminal as a hardware carrier to win VR games.
In terms of capital investment, ABI Research predicts that AR developers have been spending more and more on AR games in recent years, with $670 million spent on AR apps in 2015 jumping to $2.5 billion over the next five years. Analysts also expect AR technology to become part of a more routine mobile device application in the future, and to find wider use in gaming and entertainment.
And with the expansion of the smartphone market, AR games on the mobile end bearing capacity is gradually increased, has the top r&d team Internet technology giants are also constantly improve AR technology, Google and apple are open in AR platform, the attention of domestic head companies such as tencent, ali, intelligent mobile phone manufacturer for camera, GPS, such as function optimization, All make AR development easier and easier.
In addition, the current boom in wearable devices could lead to more diverse AR games. Just as Ingress was for Google Glass, while the glasses didn’t quite succeed as expected, Ingress’s use of portable devices was refreshing. And with Internet giants spending more on the frontier of technology, AR gaming is a far less explored area of content for developers to imagine.
Therefore, while mobile games have entered a period of steady growth, AR games are still a blue ocean. With the support of capital and technology giants in terms of technology and funding, the experience scene of AR games is also constantly improving. It is believed that in the future mobile game market, AR game will break the current mobile game market pattern and become the mainstream of the mobile game market.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110