Digital gaming meets the real world as Game Designer Yasunori Tonooka shows us an exciting new way to use a GPS.
Yasunori Tonooka
Social entertainment entrepreneur
Right now you may see that cell phone in your hand as just a cell phone. But by the time you have finished listening to Yasunori Tonooka, that cell phone in your hand is going to be a key component in an exciting, tech-meets-real-life game. Tonooka is the founder of a mobile game developer based in Kyoto that specializes in GPS-based scavenger-hunt type mobile games. For these games you simply need a cell phone, access to the game and a mode of transportation. The player uses the GPS feature on their cell phone to find a specific location. Once they reach that location, they are given another clue. And so the hunt goes until the game is won. Tonooka brings to this exciting new world of gaming a vast amount of experience and training. He graduated from the Design Engineering and Management Department of the Kyoto Institute of Technology, and continued his graduate studies at Osaka City University. Upon completing his program he became the producer of a major Japanese social networking service provider, followed by working as a product manager with one of the world’s leading Internet search service providers. While working there, Tonooka became deeply inspired by the tech innovations he witnessed around the world, and made it his goal to create a world-class service unique to Japan. The result was “GPS entertainment” which uses GPS mobile services. Earlier this year Tonooka joined one of the world’s largest game conferences “GDC2012″ in San Francisco, and came away as the only representative from Asia who was elected in the Smart Phone/Tablet Section. Tonooka has quickly become a well-known name among mobile technology game developers not only in Japan, but around the world. It is his hope that his game creation will do its part to bring people together and, perhaps, unite the world.
