Go fish : Blister snags customers with location-based fishing game

Talk about reality breeding fantasy ... Paul Poutanen, president of Blister Entertainment, was using a fish scanner on a boat in a northern Ontario lake when he hooked an idea that would become Swordfish, the first location-based game running on a cellular network.

Swordfish uses GPS-equipped phones on Bell Mobility, Bell Canada's wholly owned cellular subsidiary, to let fishermen pursue their hobby anywhere they have cell coverage in Canada. A Bell Mobility subscriber downloads the game for free, then hits a button to scan where the swordfish are; about 10 seconds later a navigation screen pops up on the handset delivering information locating nearby schools of fish.

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"You have to move approximately 50 to 75 meters to get within range, do another scan and if you've moved correctly you should be able to play the game without moving again," explained Stephen Nykolyn, vice president of marketing for Blister Entertainment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Knowledge Where and the first company to mix fun and GPS.

Each time a fisherman scans, Bell Mobility collects 15 cents, a portion of which goes back to Blister, which does a lot of the heavy lifting but doesn't collect the tolls.

"The customer gets billed from the carrier; they play the game through our servers," said Jim George, Knowledge Where's founder and CEO.

Bell Mobility taps into the GPS satellite to locate the phone, then sends that information to Blister's server. Blister then plants virtual schools of fish around the location.

Even if it's in the middle of a large city, the fishing hole is very private.

"We don't know who these people are. That's all private information kept on the part of Bell. The only thing we know is an ID number to that mobile phone so that we can know where that phone is located and plant virtual schools of fish around it," he said.

Canada became the game's first market not because it's a fishing-crazed country but because Bell Mobility started selling and promoting GPS phones about a year ago and needed some applications to make the product more attractive. Swordfish launched last July, joining more common GPS uses like E-911, maps and directions programs and a location service Bell Mobility offers customers of the Canadian Auto Association's Club Auto--the northern version of the U.S. American Auto Association (AAA).

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"We don't see location as a single application," said Adrian Vella, Bell Canada's associate director of location-based services.

Map Me is a Java-based application that mixes with GPS and puts a small map on the handset screen. "Because of the rich multimedia capabilities of the phone, the map is very user-friendly. It's a very simple but robust application for customers to look for points of interest around them, get oriented or get driving instructions," said Vella. Club Auto uses the GPS link to location information from club members calling in to report problems. The automated locater saves about 15 percent of the time generally spent on a customer call.

While Swordfish is the first game on the network, it's unlikely the fishing contest will be the only player in the gaming pond for long. "We've seen a number of different models that are out there today," said Vella. "The success that we've seen with wireless games is really showing that the marketplace wants more of them."

While Vella wouldn't divulge hard numbers to quantify the game's success, Blister executives opened that door a bit. Swordfish, said Nykolyn, has "been among the top five downloads on Bell Mobility's network. We're approaching close to a million pounds of fish caught across the country."

Blister is also looking to catch more subscribers with more concepts.

"We have single-player games, multiplayer games, fitness applications and marketing and event applications," he said. "The different types of genres of games range from sports to fantasy to simulation types of things."

Bell Canada's fast start in the GPS realm is a direct result of the U.S. push to put location capabilities into cell phones for E911. While the Canadian carrier is the first with the most in its country--it's already deployed E911 to over 70 percent of its service area--it could move that fast thanks to the U.S. FCC.

"We're leveraging what's going on down there. There's been a good selection of handsets available to us because of the mandate the FCC set out," Vella admitted. "It's a conscious decision we made a couple years ago to take advantage of that. We see the opportunity with location and we're committed to it."

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So is Blister, which is eager to see widespread GPS in the games-happy U.S. market. "We are the only company capable of hosting location entertainment products connected into the carriers' networks," said George. "We are connected into the carrier's location-based server and are integrated as a third party. We're outside their network ... but we pull out location information when we need it."

That experience will help when the U.S. comes on (fishing?) line.

"We're creating other games based around GPS technology, but we're also talking with tier one (gaming) brands around North America who are either looking to bring their brand to a game or use location-based entertainment as a way to herd people," said Nykolyn.

That's the other part of it. Besides herding fish for the gameplayer, Blister can herd gameplayers for those willing to pay to get an audience.

"We could plant our fish around a participating retailer and have that retailer sponsor the game or lend its brand to the game, then we could plant virtual items of either face value or real-world value, like coupons around participating retailers in these different locations," said Nykolyn.

KnowledgeWhere is willing to share its largesse, to an extent, said George. "Location-based entertainment is new and the difficulty is how one uses the location information in a game," he said. "We've developed some expertise that makes that game play situation a reality."

Over the long term, he said, KnowledgeWhere's goal is to "location-enable many third-party game developers' content, whether that's existing titles or new titles. They know how to write games, but they don't know how to incorporate location. The folks that work in Knowledge Where are the location experts."

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When they're not fishing, of course. But then again, all work and no play ...

"We always say 'Blister is fun; KnowledgeWhere is power,'" said George. "The fun part is the entertainment gaming; the power side is the location technology."

Jim Barthold is a contributing writer for Telecommunications[R] magazine (jbarthold@comcast.net).

COPYRIGHT 2004 Horizon House Publications, Inc.
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