Articles have been popping up recently about several new augmented reality (AR) apps available for the iPhone. For those unfamiliar with the term, or who haven’t read the articles, augmented reality is the idea of superimposing computer-generated information onto views of the real world. It’s kind of like having a HUD for your life. Terminator, anyone?

With the iPhone’s camera, GPS system, and compass, it’s possible to point your phone at something and have an app send back useful information about what you see. The app could even superimpose that information on your view, thus providing a connection between your own visual field and the all-knowing Internet. “Augmented reality browser” is probably the best term for this type of app, at least according to a recent New York Times article.

Augmented reality and gaming

But what about gaming? How can we use this technology to create new types of entertainment or enhance what’s already available? Some ideas:

• Mini-AR — One type of AR game that has already emerged involves placing traditional video game fare within a real (often miniature) environment. Check out, for example, this siege game that can be played on a desktop:
  
  (There are more videos like this at Games Alfresco, a site dedicated to AR gaming.)
• Another possibility is travel-based role playing. Imagine a game that imposes a fictional story on the real world. Like a murder mystery set in your home town. You assume the role of a detective following up on leads and searching for clues. You have to drive around town for real to solve the case, but the victim, characters, and evidence are all super-imposed on real locations. A multi-player version could have you team up with friends, each person playing a different role, to solve the crime.The scope of such games is potentially global. Sure, travel costs could be prohibitive, but what a fun thing to do on vacation. This is table-top role playing taken to the next level (ok, the next level after LARPing).
• With some sort of AR headgear, games like laser tag or paintball could be dramatically enhanced. When setting up a game, you and your friends could pick a scenario (WWII, urban warfare, alien invasion, whatever) and stage your match in much more thrilling fashion.
• Multiplayer matchmaking — If you’re involved in some sort of live-action augmented reality game, AR technologies could help you find other players. I could set my phone to broadcast my location and game preferences for other players to see in their AR view. So I could be standing in a train station, scan my phone across the crowd, and spot people interested in a game.(This same idea could apply to social networking, by the way. People at a party could broadcast their Facebook status so others could see it literally floating above their heads. Not saying it’s a good idea…)

AR and you

Certainly augmented reality technology is in its infancy, but its potential is profound. Obviously there are risks as well, to security and privacy most of all. But I suspect AR is going to be HUGE, and even the most mundane details of our lives will be affected (driving, grocery shopping, traveling, conversation). It will happen gradually (though maybe not slowly), and games will have a key role in setting the direction this technology takes.

It’s cool and scary at the same time, right?

I’ve been playing Fable 2 since late December, hoping that it would deliver on all the hype. After putting in quite a few hours and completing the main story line, I’ve decided that, like a lot of critics, I’m not quite convinced. Certainly there are impressive elements — the graphics and visual style are suitably impressive, and the combat system manages to be simple, fun, and relatively deep.

However, as plenty of critics have said, the story is way too short, and ends abruptly without so much as a boss fight. The clothing system is pretty fun to play with, but there is an unfortunate lack of options for outfitting your character, and the only equipment that affects your performance is weaponry (which is also lacking variety).

Aside from all these issues, the one that sticks with me the most is the poorly balanced real estate system. On the surface, it’s a neat system. You can buy property and rent it out to earn money. You can purchase furniture to improve the value of your properties and sell them for a profit. You can interact with the local economy to improve (or destroy) the amount of profit you get from your businesses. You collect rent every five minutes of real time, even when you’re not playing.

As nice as it is to earn money when you aren’t playing, the real estate system actually creates an incentive not to play once you get further into the game. After finishing the main story, you gain the ability to purchase Fairfax Castle for 1,000,000 gold. I didn’t have close to that amount, so my strategy was to buy up as much valuable real estate as possible and then stop playing for a week until my bank account got fat enough. There wasn’t enough content to keep me occupied in Albion until I had enough money, so I just switched to a different game. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t game mechanics actually encourage people to play?

To make matters worse, now that I have more money than I can spend, there’s no reward that seems worth the trouble. Apparently the reward for collecting all 50 silver keys, aside from an Xbox achievement is 50,000 gold? Seriously? After spending a million on a piece of property? Why would I spend hours collecting keys for chump change like that?

As much as I complain about Fable 2, my wife and my brother (who get the brunt of my complaints) would be quick to point out that I’m still playing. I can’t really explain why, except maybe for my compulsion to collect obscure achievements.

One thing my gamer friends (ok, that’s all of them) and I always talk about is coordinating our purchase of a game so we can play together. Things rarely work out that way, mainly since everyone but me is still playing World of Warcraft. But last week three of us arranged to pick up Left 4 Dead at the same time. We even carpooled to the store.

After a few play sessions with everything from one to four players, here are some initial thoughts:

The co-op basket
Left 4 Dead is similar to Portal in one very important way. No, not that it’s made by Valve. At it’s core, Left 4 Dead is an experiment in one gameplay mechanic. Just like Portal took the concept of the portal gun and explored it to its utmost potential, Left 4 Dead attempts the same feat with multiplayer co-op. Zombie games are nothing new. Co-op isn’t either. But Left 4 Dead is designed to force teamwork in co-op, which, strangely, hasn’t been done too often.

From this angle, Left 4 Dead is a smashing success. Co-op play is great fun. It’s intense, fast-paced, requires communication, and presents a decent challenge even on the normal difficulty setting.

The problem is that the game puts all its undead eggs in this one basket. The amout of fun this game offers is directly proportional to the number of people playing. It’s fantastic with four, pretty good with three, just ok with two, and borderline boring with one. Not being one to play online with strangers, I anticipate that we’ll frequently run into scheduling problems. And that’s too much like work.

Embrace the random
The other primary feature of Left 4 Dead is it’s sophisticated AI system. Every time you play a level, it’s different. The game AI decides where to place boss zombies and where zombie rushes will come from. It definitely keeps you on your toes. I imagine higher difficulty levels (which I haven’t yet graduated to) are quite intense. Even music and sound effects are controlled by this system, which creates a wonderful mood just at the right times and gives perfect queues to build suspense about which monster might be around the next corner.

In fact, I think Left 4 Dead’s AI system presents a big step forward in gaming. There’s no more memorizing enemy locations and finding just the right way to take them out. The randomness of gameplay forces you to play the game with urgency each time through.

However (you knew it was coming), all this glorious randomness comes with a price: there’s not much content. The game includes four campaigns, each of which takes about an hour to play from start to finish. They’re brilliantly designed, but they’re short. Actually, they’re about the right length. One hour of zombie slaying is about right. There just aren’t enough campaigns to choose from. It may be impossible to know where the zombies are coming from, but you can certainly learn the best locations to fight them. The first time through a campaign is exhilarating; you don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t know from which door death might emerge.

Overall, Left 4 Dead is quite well executed. There aren’t enough games these days that focus on quality over quantity. Valve has produced the last few. Nevertheless, I find myself wishing for just a little more quantity on this one. I don’t know how many more coordinated play sessions we’ll pull off before somebody loses interest. Once that happens, the chances of anyone else sticking around drop considerably. Just like in the zombie apocalypse, if you don’t all stick together, the fun won’t last long.

I have always been an Apple fan. (That’s not the confession.)

It wasn’t long ago that such a statement would cause listeners’ eyes to roll uncontrollably. Often this reflex was accompanied by a sharp exhale of breath that most people would mistake for an impatient sigh laced with sarcasm. Lifelong Apple fans like myself, however, have always been able to recognize the true emotion behind those reactions: jealousy.

Don’t bother to deny it — denial is just part of the friendly game we all play. It’s ok; I understand. Now that Apple’s cool and Microsoft isn’t, I do like saying that I knew that from the beginning, and I told you so, and Mac OS 6 beats Windows 3.1 any day.

All these things are self-evident, and my gloating undoubtedly suits a Mac user admirably. Nevertheless, there is one little problem: I love my Xbox 360.

Maybe it’s the allure of hi-def gaming. Or the number of games that appeal to my taste more than the PS3. Or maybe it’s the promise of a true all-in-one media center in my living room (not that I’ve downloaded any TV shows or movies through Xbox Live, yet).

I don’t know the reason, but I find, strangely, that I’m excited by the impending arrival of the New Xbox Experience on Nov. 19. Not just a little excited, either — I’m excited like Steve Jobs is giving a keynote at WWDC. How did this happen?

But there are plenty of things to be excited about, right? I will be able to:

• Create a Wii-worthy avatar to replace my stupid gamer picture
• Navigate through thousands of downloadable goodies much faster
• Stream Netflix movies straight to my TV
• Some of the Netflix movies are even hi-def

Sure, mostly I’ll just be playing games like I always did, but there’s something about the new wrapper that has me giddy as a schoolboy. The Netflix streaming itself is pretty awesome, so maybe that’s the reason. Netflix is way cooler than Microsoft anyway.

If anybody’s interested, here’s a review of the New Xbox Experience from Ars Technica.

There was a primer posted on Gamasutra a couple of weeks ago about the growing role of social communities in games (and the challenges of building one that works). It’s probably obvious by now that there are huge advantages to building an online social community around games — give your players a place to compare notes and shoot the breeze with other players, and you’ve got an almost surefire hit, particularly if the game already has a fanbase. Even games that are entirely played online anyway (say, World of Warcraft) have thriving internet communities because they give players another reason engage with each other while they should be working.

But is it possible to provide too many social options for players? It’s a lot of work to set up such things, and there may be a point at which actual gameplay can be sacrificed for the sake of “social” features. The case in point is Spore. I was pumped about Spore before it came out. I bought it within a week after release. It’s a great game, and it’s revolutionary in several ways, but when you really dig into it, there’s not much game there.

The Spore experience is so focused on encouraging players to share their creations with each other that I felt from the beginning as if I were missing half the game because I didn’t care about looking at other people’s creations. I love that other creations are pulled into my universe automatically, but I haven’t spent a single minute looking at sporepedia online or making friends in the online Spore community.

(Full disclosure time: I’m not a heavy user of social media. I get it, and I think it’s changing the nature of the internet before our eyes. But I lead quite an anti-social online life.)

It’s becoming accepted generally that, if you don’t build social features into your game, you better do it online. In fact, one of the suggestions I’ve heard for indie developers is to focus lots of attention on your online social presence. Make your game about connecting, not just playing, say the experts. They’re probably right–all my favorite and most enduring entertainment experiences have thriving communities. My lack of participation doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

What I’m trying to find, being an ultra-indie, is the right balance. I can’t build or support a big-time social platform to supplement my games. Even if I could, it would almost certainly seem incongruous with the scope of the games themselves. Nor can I hope to compete with the big casual game sites (which naturally have full-featured social elements).

Probably, as with most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle. Create a game with in-game social elements (like multiplayer) and then give players a simple way to connect with each other outside the game using existing platforms like Facebook apps or embeddable web site widgets. Guess I’ll add those to the list of things to learn.