Issues related to Development of Wireless Peer-to-Peer Games in J2ME

This paper describes and discusses challenges related to development of peer-to-peer games in J2ME using the available Bluetooth API (JSR82). By using Bluetooth on wireless devices, new types of personal network peer-topeer games can be developed. In this paper, we present a classification framework for wireless peer-to-peer games that divides types of games into two different dimensions. The first dimension groups games according to the user interaction patterns and the second dimension groups games according to how data is updated. Further, the paper investigates problems that must be solved before peer-to-peer games using the existing Bluetooth API in J2ME can be developed. Here issues related to the Bluetooth API and limitations in the Bluetooth standard are discussed. Finally, the classification framework is used to reveal what types of games that can be implemented using current J2ME virtual machines and current Bluetooth API. The results presented in this paper are based on experiences from development of cooperative peer-to-peer applications for mobile phones using a framework called Peer2ME.