The Guardian reports that games requiring just one thumb to play are becoming popular on cell
phones and are redefining "playability" on that platform. Notes the Guardian:
One-thumb games make important concessions to mobile handset design. It is, after all, often fiddly and uncomfortable to play games that require two hands - or even two fingers. Demanding such dexterity breaks the ethos of mobile phone operating systems, which allow users to carry out complex functions such as photo messaging with a single digit.
The paper cites a few popular Korean games that can be played with just one thumb, including "Skippedy Seed," a one-thumb jumprope game featuring cutesy characters that the player controls via a single pressure-sensitive button. The harder that button is pushed, the higher the player jumps.
Now if this one-thumb movement had come out of Japan instead of Korea we might hint that the Yakuza Yubitsume ritual was the inspiration for this innovation, but it ain't, so we won't. It's just good, old-fashioned interface design at work here. [Via textually.org]
