Years ago, I read a description of a game in Edge and it has slowly transformed, with time and a forgetting of almost all of the details, into a perfect game – a dream game. This was a while back, so far back in fact that I think the N-Gage was the platform the game was headed for. It was a game about building up a city or something like that – really, I have forgotten almost all of the details – and then your city might be attacked by another player, in real-time, and in real time you would have to do something about it.
A persistent world with things kicking off all hours! This probably doesn’t sound so special these days, but back then? Back then the image from Edge, of being in a boring work meeting and getting a message informing you that your city was under attack? Man, that was just wonderful.
For me, over the years, that game has come to stand for all the interesting ways that games intrude into our lives. The way games bleed in. I love asynchronous games like Words with Friends for just this reason. It’s not that I love Scrabble – man, who doesn’t love Scrabble? It’s that I love a game that interrupts you, that announces itself, that reminds you that beyond the layer of the world that you can see, a game is slowly ticking away.
Source: Eurogamer The other kind of mobile gaming