Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian (of Halo fame) is currently working with a studio known as Industrial Toys in an attempt to redefine mobile gaming.
The goal? To bring a “hard-core” gaming experience to smartphone and tablet users with the help of Unreal Engine 3.
While UE3 obviously can’t hold a candle to the fantastic graphics we saw on the Unreal Engine 4 unveiled at E3 2012, the older iteration could still make for some very impressive mobile video games.
In addition to using the Unreal Engine 3, Seropian also plans to rethink the standard control interface for mobile devices. Often mobile gamers are willing to forego console and PC quality graphics, but the controls of many video games on mobile platforms are definitely a weak link.
Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the first project from Industrial Toys is slated to be a science fiction themed video game written by veteran genre author John Scalzi. For now, the project doesn’t have a name, but the devs envision a world for mobile devices as expansive as World of Warcraft – combined with a fully integrated community and unique controls.
Personally, I’m very curious to find out what the next-gen “unique controls” are, simply because I can only think of onscreen touch controls, motion controls, and external Bluetooth controllers when it comes to mobile platform gaming – and none are really unique.
“The whole design paradigm about designing for dual sticks is all about creating a software interface for hardware that makes it feel like you have more control and have better skill curves,” Seropian explained.
“That’s all about getting closer to how a mouse works. There’s no sense to emulate a relative control scheme, like a controller… We have been designing a control scheme that’s all about putting our controls in the game space, as opposed to the screen space.”
