The killer gaming apps for Apple Watch…might not be games at all

Much has been written about the best use cases for the Apple Watch and the quest to find the “killer app” and while we may need to withhold full judgement until watchOS 2.0 arrives with native apps, we think we’ve discovered one killer app category for gamers.

No, it’s not the games themselves — at least not yet, in the watchOS 1.0 world in which we live. Developers have tried, but the current WatchKit is built for simple menus, and as VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb points out, none of the games that have tried to skirt these limitations have really succeeded yet.

Today, exciting games are just not in the cards for the watch, but there is still one big reason for gamers to get excited about owning an Apple Watch: it makes your current games better. As it turns out, the watch is fantastic as a glanceable heads up display (HUD) and the perfect device for piping important game stats directly to your wrist while you play.

Imagine loading into a competitive game with a quick glance at your watch, getting an instant dossier of all your opponents and teammates. Within seconds you can see which weapons and buildouts they have, who is ranked as the most skilled, and get tips for how to counter individual players. This level of information would clutter up a game’s user interface if displayed on screen (after all, the recent trend has been to reduce the HUD as much as possible to give the player the best view of the action) but this information can also mean the difference between life and death, and the watch is a great place for it.

As avid League of Legends players we saw how useful match scouting apps could be, but were disappointed with the ad-ridden, slow, and poorly designed options available so when Riot released their official League of Legends API we began building an iPhone app of our own. Then, when we got our hands on an Apple Watch and saw how well it displayed glanceable information, we knew we had to try to support it as well.

The first thing we realized is that the watch, with its digital crown, does extremely well with list-based content. So even though it was a challenge to get all this information on a small watch face, we think it was worth the effort. The app that resulted, Scout Ahead, has convinced us that the Apple Watch is a great place for heads up information for games.

I won’t go into too many specifics here (you can visit our website for that), but we’ve found that giving players the ability to scout their League of Legends opponents can unlock all sorts of new strategies, and while it works really well on an iPhone too, there is something particularly special and exciting about being able to view the information right on your wrist.

We would love to hear what you think of this new category of smartwatch apps, which other games could also benefit, and what you think of our first effort in the space, so please feel free to tweet us at @PixileStudios or me at @michael_one. We can’t wait to see where other developers take apps like these and what new experiences will be possible in watchOS 2.0.