Creature Labs and Motorola Form Alliance To Deliver Wireless Games Based On Pet Artificial Life Platform
Sea Monkeys PAL is first collaborative offering - available to operators in Q3 2001.
Creature Labs and Motorola Inc.'s Global Telecom Solutions Sector (GTSS) today announced that the two companies are to jointly develop and market artificial life pet nurturing games that consumers can play with on data-enabled handsets connected to 2.5G and 3G cellular networks.
Under the terms of a two-year agreement, exclusive within the wireless games market, Motorola will be marketing games developed by Creature Labs. The games will be friendly, and aimed at non-traditional gamers, including a greater percentage of female users, as well as the youth market, to give wireless operators a promising new form of pack revenue generation.
Chief Executive of Creature Labs, Chris McKee, commented earlier today on the innovative partnership. "We're really pleased to having formed a partnership with Motorola to exploit the exciting games opportunities represented by next-generation wireless devices. It is our corporate strategy to partner with blue-chip companies to develop new entertainment applications for our proprietary artificial life technology and Motorola are clearly pre-eminent in the field of 2.5G and 3G cellular networks", he said.
The first offering is based upon the world famous Sea-Monkey brand, although subsequent versions will be customised for individual customer requirements. The game will begin with the birth of a Sea-Monkey creature and challenges the player to take the creature through various stages of life.
The Sea-Monkeys game will reside on a server connected to the operator's wireless network and not inside the player's handset, therefore enabling the game to remain active and requiring the player to connect to the network periodically to ensure that the Sea-Monkey creatures are happy and healthy. Newer cellular data systems including GPRS and UMTS enable instant connectivity and permanent virtual connections that allow a user to be continuously connected to the PAL server.
Each player has a virtual tank in which the Sea-Monkey lives. Caring for a Sea-Monkey creature requires the player to also care for the environmental condition of the tank. Different kinds of plants, for example, provide Sea-Monkey creatures something to play with. More importantly, however, these plant life forms also introduce life-supporting oxygen into the water so that the creatures can live.
A player can have multiple Sea-Monkey creatures, which places an even greater emphasis on the care and feeding of each, plus the fact that waste generated by these creatures must also be dealt with or risk contamination of the creatures' virtual tank.
The more interaction a player has with the Sea-Monkey creatures and their environment, the more the player is rewarded in the form of bonuses. These bonuses can then be traded for more plants for the tank, virtual machinery for keeping the tank clean, or can encourage the building of relationships with other creatures.
Feeding a Sea-Monkey pet is critical to playing the game successfully. A Sea-Monkey that is fed too little will not have the energy to swim and play its way into a healthy existence. What is more, a Sea-Monkey that is fed too little when it is young will not grow to adulthood the way a properly fed creature will. Over-feeding a Sea-Monkey can cause other problems, such as increasing the amount of waste in the virtual tank, which in turn can produce an unbalanced biochemistry that would threaten all the creatures in the tank.
Motorola sees the wireless games market as being of major importance to developing the mobile user's experience, and as a consequence, increasing network usage and revenue opportunities. Motorola's vision is to be the leading supplier of the most compelling entertainment experience to the wireless world, and its alliance with Creature Labs brings together two major brands to deliver a major part of this vision.
Under the terms of a two-year agreement, exclusive within the wireless games market, Motorola will be marketing games developed by Creature Labs. The games will be friendly, and aimed at non-traditional gamers, including a greater percentage of female users, as well as the youth market, to give wireless operators a promising new form of pack revenue generation.
Chief Executive of Creature Labs, Chris McKee, commented earlier today on the innovative partnership. "We're really pleased to having formed a partnership with Motorola to exploit the exciting games opportunities represented by next-generation wireless devices. It is our corporate strategy to partner with blue-chip companies to develop new entertainment applications for our proprietary artificial life technology and Motorola are clearly pre-eminent in the field of 2.5G and 3G cellular networks", he said.
The first offering is based upon the world famous Sea-Monkey brand, although subsequent versions will be customised for individual customer requirements. The game will begin with the birth of a Sea-Monkey creature and challenges the player to take the creature through various stages of life.
The Sea-Monkeys game will reside on a server connected to the operator's wireless network and not inside the player's handset, therefore enabling the game to remain active and requiring the player to connect to the network periodically to ensure that the Sea-Monkey creatures are happy and healthy. Newer cellular data systems including GPRS and UMTS enable instant connectivity and permanent virtual connections that allow a user to be continuously connected to the PAL server.
Each player has a virtual tank in which the Sea-Monkey lives. Caring for a Sea-Monkey creature requires the player to also care for the environmental condition of the tank. Different kinds of plants, for example, provide Sea-Monkey creatures something to play with. More importantly, however, these plant life forms also introduce life-supporting oxygen into the water so that the creatures can live.
A player can have multiple Sea-Monkey creatures, which places an even greater emphasis on the care and feeding of each, plus the fact that waste generated by these creatures must also be dealt with or risk contamination of the creatures' virtual tank.
The more interaction a player has with the Sea-Monkey creatures and their environment, the more the player is rewarded in the form of bonuses. These bonuses can then be traded for more plants for the tank, virtual machinery for keeping the tank clean, or can encourage the building of relationships with other creatures.
Feeding a Sea-Monkey pet is critical to playing the game successfully. A Sea-Monkey that is fed too little will not have the energy to swim and play its way into a healthy existence. What is more, a Sea-Monkey that is fed too little when it is young will not grow to adulthood the way a properly fed creature will. Over-feeding a Sea-Monkey can cause other problems, such as increasing the amount of waste in the virtual tank, which in turn can produce an unbalanced biochemistry that would threaten all the creatures in the tank.
Motorola sees the wireless games market as being of major importance to developing the mobile user's experience, and as a consequence, increasing network usage and revenue opportunities. Motorola's vision is to be the leading supplier of the most compelling entertainment experience to the wireless world, and its alliance with Creature Labs brings together two major brands to deliver a major part of this vision.
Companies:
Creature Labs