Mobile games publisher Overloaded, owned by media giant Endemol, is setting up a real-time multiplayer gaming service, compatible with both 2.5G and 3G networks. Due for launch in January, the service will allow gamers throughout Europe to challenge each other on a variety of Overloaded titles, many of which are based around Endemol's reality TV licenses, namely Big Brother and Fear Factor. So we can probably expect games where you're locked in a conference call for ten weeks with nine other people. Hmmm.
The service employs a multiplayer distribution and billing infrastructure developed by Terraplay Systems, a veteran provider of dev tools across a range of platforms. It's just one player, however, in the growing mobile multiplayer infrastructure market, facing off against similar services offered by Kayak and In-Fusio. We're also seeing developers produce their own simple multiplayer systems - for example, Macrospace with its two-player versions of Connect Four and Reversi now available on Vodafone Live.
Providing seamless over-the-air multiplayer gaming via mobile phone is clearly a complex business, with various handsets and networks involved, not to mention the difficulty of sharing profits between developer, infrastructure provider and carrier. But as gamers, we don't care. We just want it to work. And although progress is still pretty slow, we seem to be heading toward an era where selecting a game of chess, or hangman, or Tetris and then playing it against a stranger in Portugal is a simple, intuitive process. Next stop, Everquest.
