more handheld games (and CHARGE!)

When I saw the AERA presentation (Adriana and Girlie from UCLA) on Hybrid Reality Games (HRG), which I blogged about last Tuesday, I wondered how many other handheld-type games there were in existance -- or at least approximately. Today I ran across this link to a list of a bunch of location-based games for cellular phones and handheld computers. It is not a comprehensive list, but it's still a pretty good start.

What this list does for me is show me what sorts of games have been tried with handhelds (cell phones, some GPS, and some computers). The Smartmobs folks use the term "location-based" whereas Girlie and Adriana used "Hybrid Reality Games" (HRG) and Mingfong and the MIT folks have been using "Augmented Reality Games" (ARG) -- the distinctions between these terms are shaky at best. Girlie and Adriana suggested that the difference between ARG and HRG is that HRG involves a collaborative element, but that doesn't make sense, or isn't apparent in the name. I suppose we could do what the MMORPG people do and string them all together as CHARGE! (Collaborative Hybrid Augmented Reality Game Environment). Acronyms rock! [sarcasm]

Still, the one who defines the language makes the rules, so I'm voting for CHARGE! (kinda like "voting for change" with more of capitalist-friendly ring to it).