A REAL life dress-up game? It’s possible, an Ortigas-owned gaming development company believes.
Boohawi (tornado) Studios Inc. sees augmented reality (AR) technology as the future of mobile gaming and other industries in the country, its creative director said.
“We are confident that we [the Philippines] are ready for AR. We have to take time to study it [but] it’s [just] a matter of time,” Boohawi Creative Director Noel Flores told the BusinessMirror.
AR is a technology that creates a virtual world where physical elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory inputs. For example, if you focus your camera on a movie poster it would pop-up and play its trailer on your smartphone, Flores explained.
He added that AR makes gaming a better medium for advertisement and promotion by other industries and companies. For example, retailers like shoe companies can use AR to create an engaging user shopping experience, according to Flores.
“Imagine if you want to buy a pair of shoes. You just have to focus your camera on your foot then the smart phone will detect it and visualize the shoe’s fitting on you,” Flores said.
“AR would create job opportunities for local artists and will open possibilities from entertainment to education,” he added.
Flores is confident that the country has enough resources for AR such as technical knowledge through online tutorials and gadgets such as smartphones.
“I’ve been studying AR for two months just through YouTube,” Mark Patiño, an AR developer of Boohawi, said.
AR has been in the country for quite some time. The said technology has been applied in various media such as advertising, TV show games and photo booths. In 2013, a group of IT students from Mindanao State University bagged the top prize in a hackathon with their application that uses AR that aim to boost learning by creating virtual and educational worlds based on history and science.
“Most likely there’s the possibility to boost AR in the country. The gadgets are available, the technology is available. The problem is we have to gather the right people who can do that,” he said. Boohawi is a game development company owned by Fernando Ortigas with an initial capital of P1 million. The company did not disclose the number on the total investment to date by Ortigas.