[IGDA Mobile-SIG List] Mobile games at Ubimob conference, September 5-8, 2006, Paris

[Michel SIMATIC]

Mobile games at Ubimob conference
September 5-8, 2006
Paris

UbiMob is a French-speaking conference. Its goal is to put together 
scientists from different disciplines who study research problems 
related to mobility and ubiquity in computer systems. It constitutes a 
privileged moment of confrontation between multidisciplinary works 
and/or resulting from various disciplines (computer science, software 
ergonomics, usages), these works being theoretical and/or applied, 
academic or industrial.

This year's conference will have a mobile games taste thanks to:

    * 2 invited speakers
          o Olivier Goguel (Lagardère): "Developing games on mobiles:
            Heaven or hell?" (in French)
            The goal of this conference is to give an overview
            (market/production/technology/contents) of mobile games
            today, but also the evolutions which can be foreseen. More
            precisely we will try to answer to the following questions:
                + Market: The mobile market represents 500 millions
                  users, hundreds of operators: Is it an opportunity or
                  a nightmare?
                + Production: Development cycle of a mobile game, from
                  design to deployment: Is the lawn more green on
                  PC/Console?
                + Technology: Presentation of the technologies used
                  today (java, brew, sms) and tomorrow (native, 3D,
                  online, camera, gps, présence…): What are the
                  challenges (portability and accessibility)?
                + Contents: Reality of the productions currently present
                  on the market versus new experiences to be created to
                  have new users.
                + In conclusion: Is mobile the future of game?

          o Matthew Chalmers (Computing Science, University of Glasgow,
            UK) : "Ubicomp: From Theory to Play"
            Ubicomp systems have a history that extends back to the late
            1980s, to work at Xerox PARC and EuroPARC. Researchers, in
            particular Mark Weiser, drew from much older theory and
            discourse in framing a new system design research agenda.
            Studying the strengths and the weaknesses in this conceptual
            work led us to explore new approaches to designing,
            analysing and understanding the use of ubicomp systems. Our
            vehicle for much of this research has been mobile
            multiplayer games, such as Treasure and Feeding Yoshi, and
            analysis tools such as Replayer. In giving an overview of
            this work, I hope to give some practical examples of how
            apparently contradictory opposites within ubicomp are
            interdependent and synergistic.

    * 2 workshops

          o "3D Contents for mobile games" (1/2 day), Marius Preda (INT)
            (in French)

          o "Developing a multiplayer game on mobile" (1 day), Romain
            Pellerin (CNAM/INT) and Franck Caron (CNAM) (in French)
            The goal of this workshop is to introduce the attendance to
            the use of Open Source GASP (http://gasp.objectweb.org), a
            platform for multiplayer games on mobile.

For more information: http://projets.ece.fr/ubimob06/

-- 
Michel Simatic, Lecturer-researcher, http://www-inf.int-evry.fr/~simatic
Institut National des Telecommunications, Département INFormatique
9 rue Charles Fourier, 91011 Evry Cedex, France
Tel: +33 (0)1 60 76 45 61    Fax: +33 (0)1 60 76 47 80