Running with the PAC.

The mobile phone games market is currently dominated by the single player titles that merely use the phone as a computing platform and ignore the possibilities for innovation provided by the phone’s inherent mobility and connectivity. One new game genre that does utilize these features are the so-called ‘location based games’ which allow players to interact in a game space which is a mixture of real and virtual worlds. The emergence of mobile phones that incorporate an RFID reader offer the new possibility of interacting with real physical objects, in addition to real locations, within a game world providing enhanced game play and experience. In this paper we present details of our mobile location based game which is a novel version of the Namco arcade classic Pacman. This game highlights the possibilities that combining the pervasive technologies of mobile phones and RFID will yield for new entertainment experiences