Seeing that is like going back in time to my childhood. I will focus on VR personally, and use the watch as a companion app some day. I think it would be good for a simple remote control, so say a game runs a TV and the audience are all wearing watches and taking part in the same room.
Andrew Webster from The Verge posted an article a few weeks ago called Where are all the Apple Watch games? Its not a surprise that at Spring Forward Apple event was one category visibly absent among the popular showcased apps: games. Having a small display, basically no computing power, extremely short sessions and limited UI possibilities is all against games. If you have time to play, you probably have time to pull out your phone from your pocket and start playing Candy Crush on a much larger screen. Casio had something similar in the 90s with watch games. For those that tried it, they can usually remember holding their hand in front of their body and tapping their wrist and after only a few seconds generating a horrible pain in their shoulder. From my point of view, experiments such as Nimblebits Letterpad or several Tamagotchi-like games are more PR than serious attempts at putting together a long term business. Anyway I see some possibilities how to approach games for Apple Watch: 1. A micro input - as a new Finnish startup, Everywear games claims a concept of games exists which is based on very short sessions. The benefit of the device is that it could easily create a habit based on its ease of use. I could imagine some type of Farmville game where frequent interactions with your beloved animals through the day are performed on the Apple Watch. 2. A secondary display the Apple Watch could be an interesting complementary device for several games. The Watch could serve as a dashboard for your resources in Clash of Clans and inform the player about enemy attacks. For RPGs, one could search their inventory via the Apple Watch or some other quick weapons and items. 3. Fitness games - as a former elite runner, I see huge opportunities in fitness gamification. Today, every app from Runtastic to Nike+ looks as a dashboard in a nuclear factory. Why not take a completely different approach? Apple Watch could present a personalized avatar which exaggeratedly becomes fat or slim, healthy or sick, depressed or enthusiastic based on the data which the device tracks about the user all day long. Another possibility is, for example, if you go running, each session could be a zombie run where the Watch displays how far the zombies are behind you. Moreover, the taptic engine could increase the tension by vibrations when the living dead are coming dangerously close.
Back in the 80's any watches with games were amazing back then, at school it was like a dream having Pacman or a simple game on your watch. They were quite rare, it was mostly games like Pacman or 'Number Invaders' IF the Apple watch came out before the phone i would have been blown away, but theres so many great games on my phone which can fit in my pocket i dont need simple games on a watch sadly. Wish the watch had come out first !!
With the current limitations the watch games are not much more than classic "game&watch" games. You can't even do something like flappy bird. No translation of sprites whatsoever is the biggest bummer. That you can't play sounds is rather funny if you think about getting the 15k Edition hehe. As a customer would somehow expect that the new apple watch can do the same thing my iphone can do but on a smaller screen which yet is faar from the truth. the articles like from verge clearly show that the press has not done their homework regarding the current capabilities of the watch. With the short battery life i somehow doubt even if possible people would not want to play some more hardware demaning games and draining their watch dry. Its interesting how things turn out even if the start is rather dissapointing.
And here it comes. Wooga, generals of top-buying game marketing in a free to play domain (at least, they used to be before Eric Seufert left for Rovio) released Toby (yes, with a trademark sign!..), a dog tamagochi for Apple Watch. These guys know user aquisition. I'm gonna keep an eye on this evil little doggy...
