hey guys, i would love to work with and/or start a company that specializes in making companion apps for games as a promising starting point. a little risky but i have a good feeling that the full featured companion app market is going to be big companion app products: -instruction booklet 3.0 -full featured companions (when synced) companion types: -new games -retroactives instruction booklet 3.0 -full featured companion launched on the mobile device without the game running and synced basically the digital representation of the instruction booklet/website -covers all the basics including story and lore -trailers gameplay showcases -presence to promote and sell DLC for the game as well as photos and other digital media as commodities -ingenious marketing strategy using a companion application for promotion of the game itself, dlc, and other game properties under the same studio/publisher -gotta be inter-operable and most definitely socially infused both types will be interesting in their own right -for new games you would probably develop it in real time as the game itself is developing or after the fact with a team from the developers there to work with you to help make their game even better -retroactives will be more negotiating licensing issues and when a deal is struck then it will be a massive hack fest with huge work loads 4 types of companion aspects to experiment with -ancillary -live -menus on two screens -navigator ancillary: -would be like hacking a game to incorporate mini games and other interactions that correspond with actions the gamer has to do in the game with the idea of improving the immersion and/or overall interactivity of a game -at first they can be optional implanted right on top of the games current system and only used to in essence cheat but some doors hacked can only be unlocked with this system for instance live: -would be in essence a full or sub live virtual controller synced to a live running game -or for starters live virtual hubs running in real time as the gamer is playing the game with the controller menus on two screens: -menus may be live in real time and asynchronous -a virtual pip boy on the iphone perhaps that you can take with you and maybe even trade virtual game objects with other players? which will be synched when the game starts navigator: -this one is extremely interesting to me as its an application where you tweak and program ai to essentially play the game for you while you go on a bathroom break and you can even do this in realtime as well leisurely sittingback and micromanaging everything only jumping in to take direct control when things heat up and get interesting take away: i have already designed an interesting live hub experience for current gen console level FPS would need to mock it up and test it out thanks for read D
