Then, it was a somewhat nascent genre, albeit with localised successes, but with little evidence of mass gamer appeal.
Nine months on, we've re-interviewed developers who remain focused on location-based games to see how the market has changed and what they hope for the future.
Ville Vesterinen, CEO of Finnish studio Grey Area, is bullish about the future.
Pocket Gamer: Since our interview in January, what's your view on how the location-based gaming market has developed during 2012?
Ville Vesterinen:I think all of our thinking has evolved and matured. After seeing the first wave of LBS games many developers understood that a successful location-based game is more than just force fitting an existing mobile game on top of Google Maps.
I think this is very healthy for the whole game category and I believe we will start to see more and more games that are build ground up for location.
What do you think has been the biggest news in location-based gaming during 2012?
I think the biggest news has been that nobody has fully cracked the category yet, but that there's more interest towards it than ever before.
Do you think location-based gaming is a good niche or does it still have the potential to be truly mass market?
I believe it has the potential to be truly mass market more than ever before. I think it's still very early for the location-based games market and that we will see a ton of innovation in 2013.
We at Grey Area, for one, are more excited than ever before while building our next game due out in early 2013.
Given all the problems, why do you remain committed to location-based games?
Short answer is the absolutely massive potential it has to change mobile gaming as we know it. The game worlds that can be build around location data is nothing short of mind blowing.
Manhattan as seen from within Shadow Cities
Location enables us to build experiences that have been previously only possible on console and desktop before.
Do you think developers need to take a more subtle or layered approach to building location into their games, rather than it being the key feature and/or the game being very map oriented? What do you think are the best ways to do this?
There's more ways than one to do this and have a successful game. You can design location in the core of the experience or spice up a more traditional core loop with location elements.
In our next game we are more focused on using the real world data than the exact player latitude/longtitude in crafting the experience.
Regardless of the chosen approach we believe that building a global unified game world where the players can roam is the ultimate location-based gaming experience.
What variation do you see in the take up of location-based gaming in terms of global reach and variation? At the moment, it seems very US-centric?
Most developers focus on targeting the US because it's the biggest market. That said we have seen very strong communities build up all over the world wherever there are dense urban areas.
Shadow Cities works the best in urban areas so big cities have naturally worked great for us.
What do you think remain the challenges in the space?
It's very early for the category. The challenge is two-fold. First there is a design challenge, which is really an evolution where developer get their head around how to design for location.
The second challenge is educational where the masses learn to know what to expect from a location based game.
How are you attempting to push the market in terms of the games you're making?
We're pushing the market by bringing deeper gameplay experiences to mobile by utilising the best elements of location-based games.
There are still very few games that deliver the type of gaming experiences that we have used to see on the console and PC - a deeper more engaging gameplay. This is what Grey Area will bring to the market in 2013.
Thanks to Ville for his time
