5 Types of Games We'd Love to See on an Apple Watch

When the Apple Watch was announced, its creators touted its potential for expanding communication, health tracking, navigation and more. But what wasn't mentioned was its potential impact on gaming.

Gaming may not be an obvious vertical for wearables due to the small screen size, but there are certainly fun ideas that the always-with-you technology presents. And while we know Apple's smartwatch is already entering a crowded field of similar devices, its announcement Tuesday was one many in the tech community had been anticipating for years and will undoubtedly signal an uptick in app development.

SEE ALSO: 11 Sleek iPhone 6 Cases and Accessories

So what kinds of games could an Apple Watch, or any smartwatch owner, enjoy? We brainstormed some of the best possible ideas that would work within the hardware's restrictions. Hope you're listening, game creators.

1. NFC-based games that react when another user is nearby

With the Apple Watch's added near-field communication, there are plenty of options for communication between watch owners, or even NFC-enabled spots. This idea is admittedly cribbed from Nintendo, simply because the 3DS handheld has done a dynamite job of giving players multiple positive experiences when they pass near another 3DS user, even if they aren't aware of it.

Nintendo has done this both with 3DS Streetpass games, where encountering other players helps you fill in a puzzle with pieces they provide, or with features in specific titles. Passing by another player who also owned Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds deposited their shadow in your game world, and winning a battle against them gave you loot.

Imagine a game where your carefully leveled warrior battled any other Apple Watch warrior it came into contact with, and you could see how they did at the end of the day. Or a game that gave you new levels based on how many other users you encountered that day. These make up just the tip of the iceberg, but the addition of NFC can add a lot of creative opportunities for gaming.

2. Don't you miss your virtual pets of the 1990s?

Back in the 1990s, Tamagotchis, Neopets and all their ilk ruled our lives, with their need to be fed, inoculated and cleaned up after constantly. Though Tamagotchi has had a resurgence as an app, it's natural home is easily a smartwatch, where it can be attended to more quickly. And though the Apple Watch has a much more advanced screen than the pixelated LCD screen, it certainly couldn't hurt to leave these monsters with the same boxy charm.

The digital crown, visible here, acts as a control for apps so users can scroll and zoom.

3. Simple games that utilize the Digital Crown

As Apple's team demonstrated on stage, having to access the touch screen a lot is difficult on a watch face because your fingers obscure your view. So it added a Digital Crown to allow users to scroll and zoom through information. That means the games can't rely too much on touch controls, and instead need to utilize the crown's rotation for activities. So something simple with one-touch controls would be perfect.

Good examples would be side-scrolling endless runners such as Jetpack Joyride or Canabalt, or even the simple madness of a game such as Flappy Bird. As long as the mechanics are simple, the wearable appeal of a short game that can be picked up and put away during downtime is an obvious one.

4. Gamification of your activity

Gamification is a term that is beyond overused, but with the robust fitness tracking on the Apple Watch, it might experience a new life. For some, exercising toward a goal or purpose tracked in a game is bigger motivation, especially if it's more creative than just adding points to a number. Look at the mobile app Zombies, Run!, which gamifies running by implying you'll have to go just a bit faster to escape the flesh-eating hordes chasing you.

If running while wearing your Apple Watch unlocked new worlds to explore in a game, or new equipment, it could be more motivational. What about a game where climbing more stairs than your friends meant your virtual army was able to overtake theirs? There are a lot of creative potential applications, especially when you tie to the experience to the phone.

5. Managing your mobile games

Anyone who has played a freemium game such as FarmVille or Clash of Clans knows how those games operate. Instead of putting in money, they ask for your time. A lot of time, since you have to constantly check in, or risk missing the benefit of your newly generated energy critical for completing tasks. Freemium games only allow a certain number of actions before you're "tired", and players must wait for their energy to replenish or purchase more.

So for those sucked deep into the free-to-play spiral, a quick way to interface with game via your Apple Watch might save time, especially if they can queue up tasks on their wrist instead of pulling out a phone. And then nobody can judge you for still playing Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.

Got any game ideas we missed? Share them in the comments below.

Vine Finally Lets Users Import Video From Their Camera

With more than 100 million people watching Vines across the web each month, and over 1 billion loops played every day, Vine has just released an update to the app that finally lets users import video from their camera.

Twitter’s video sharing app has always required users to film new content directly within the app, using Vine’s once-unique hold-to-record feature. Now, Vine users can import video that they shot on their phone, or video they downloaded from friends or Dropbox, etc.

This means that slow motion video from the iPhone will now be supported.

When importing videos, users can choose to pull in one full clip, or choose multiple clips to comprise a video that is no longer than six seconds.

Beyond the camera roll import, Vine is also revamping the way that the camera works to offer more precision editing tools, including a button to duplicate a clip and a mute button, to knock out the sound.

The team also added a preview and undo button, which lets you look at the last clip you filmed and gives you the option to undo it.

Both the camera import feature and the ability to delete the last clip shot are available with Instagram Video, which admittedly stole a bit of Vine’s thunder but has yet to reach the same level of creativity or engagement.

Existing features like the Grid view, Ghost (which lets you see a transparent view of the last clip shot; great for the stop-motion/animation artists), and the focus lock can all be found under the Wrench icon, alongside a brand new feature. It’s called Torch view, and it helps Viners get the right shot in low-light settings.

The update is only available for iOS at the moment, but an Android release is currently in the works.

Dafiti, Rocket Internet’s Latin American Fashion Portal, Gets $70M From Ontario Teachers

Earlier this year, when Rocket Internet announced a new injection of $500 million into its Germany-based startup incubator, co-founder Oliver Samwer told me that a large focus for it would be emerging markets like Latin America. Today comes some news about how that strategy is taking shape: Dafiti, a Rocket Internet-backed fashion commerce site based out of Brazil, is announcing a new investment of $70 million to continue building out its business. It comes from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), a Canadian investment fund that has made other notable tech investments, including a $400 million round in Chinese e-commerce site 360Buy.com.
Rocket Internet confirmed to me that OTPP is the sole investor in this round. It takes total funding for Dafiti to $225 million, and puts OTPP among the company’s biggest shareholders, with others including JP Morgan and Quadrant Capital Advisors. It also comes on the back of a smaller (but strategic) investment of $10 million that Dafiti picked up earlier this year from the Leon Group consortium of shoe brands in Mexico.
Dafiti first opened for business in Brazil in 2011. Riding a swelling wave of middle class consumers in the region, the company has expanded quickly and now operates also in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. As with many other e-commerce startups (and those in the Rocket portfolio), Dafiti declines to disclose its actual revenue revenues or any other details on profitability. A spokesperson tells me that the Dafiti gets over 25 million monthly unique visitors, with 2,000 brands and 125,000 products across its five sites.
The bigger opportunity is to take Dafiti to more markets in Latin America, but this funding will be used primarily to build out what Dafiti has already established, not expand further internationally.
“We will use this money to strengthen our customer service and our product assortment,” Dafiti co-founder Philipp Povel noted in a statement. “All in all, this impressive funding helps us to bring Dafiti to the next level and fulfill on our strategic objective to change the way people in Latin America buy fashion, lifestyle and sports products.”
There is some logic to that, since Dafiti has already established itself in five of the biggest e-commerce markets in the region. In Brazil alone, sales from e-commerce sites, led by those specialising in fashion, are projected to grow 25% in 2013, having added 10 million consumers in 2012, according to e-bit. It also predicts that by 2015, 39% of internet users in Brazil (31.6m people) will be making at least one purchase online.
A spokesperson from Rocket Internet tells me that this is the first investment from OTPP in one of its ventures. But it may not be the last: the German incubator has a strong track record for repeat business from the likes of JP Morgan, Kinnevik, Summit, Access and more. On top of that, OTPP — which in December 2012 recorded $129.5 billion in assets under management — has been making a stronger effort to diversify its investments into new markets. Most recently, that has included (along with the 360Buy deal) a new office in Asia to expand its presence there.
“Supported by a growing middle class, huge consumption potential and significant growth in online and mobile access, Dafiti is well positioned to succeed in online retail in Brazil and Latin America,” Wayne Kozun, SVP, public equities, at OTPP, said in a statement. “We look forward to partnering with Dafiti’s successful management team.”
Rocket Internet, it should be noted, has some 75 startups in operation worldwide at the moment across six continents, expanding widely beyond its European origins. In Latin America, it’s active in eight countries, and has been making strong use of one basic building block of its e-commerce business model: building out on economies of scale by consolidating logistics for several of its operations (not unlike what Amazon does with its operations). Brazil, for example, is home to 15 different Rocket Internet startups, including Dafiti.