Them and Us: An indoor pervasive gaming experience

2015

Pervasive games employ pervasive technology like location-based techniques, utilize player context in real world, and thus produce high immersion. In this article we will introduce a pervasive game prototype CityZombie, which is a multiplayer strategic game we developed and tested in Trondheim, Norway. The experience from developing and evaluating CityZombie is presented in this article, which covers both technical and gameplay aspects. CellID as a simple and popular technique shows high feasibility and appropriateness to the game, and social interaction plays a dominate role in attractiveness and enjoyment brought by CityZombie. Our research also reveals that strategic game could be a promising genre of pervasive game, due to its relatively low requirement to platform capabilities.

In this paper I present the challenges of combining game design with theatre conventions in relation to the implementation of a hybrid form of pervasive game and interactive theatre, Chain Reaction (CR). I use game design as part of my research process in order to answer how games can be used to promote and develop theatre, more specifically how games can foster artistic creativity. My argument is that games´s competitiveness lure players into engaging in aesthetic activities e.i. Devising theatre and acting, while simultaneously allowing them to manipulate their engagement in the game and enjoy the thrilling experience of making theatre.

By blurring the boundary between game fiction and reality, Pervasive Games impact the shared space of the city areas that they use as gaming platform. Drawing on notions of spatial theory and Pervasive Gaming practice, this paper discusses ways in which game designers can navigate the constraints and possibilities of gaming in social and physical spaces towards creating greater immersion for players and generating new associations for city spaces. This design challenge within Pervasive Gaming represents a broader shift in interest from representing spatial reality in gaming, to being a part of shaping it.

Entertain, 2005

Behaviour & Information Technology, 2019

Urban media interfaces can assume many forms, offering rich possibilities for interactions and social encounters. We focus on a particular type of urban interfaces, namely urban media installations, which are situated, fixed (i.e. non-mobile) and outdoor interactive interfaces enhanced by digital technologies. Drawing on research on play in the context of the smart city, we aim to clarify how the digital and the physical worlds of urban media installations can coalesce into enjoyable and socially thriving playscapes. Two case studies of urban media installations featuring high levels of interactivity and playfulness are presented: the Appearing Rooms, a seasonal art installation in London, and the Mirror Pool, a permanent, large-scale urban installation in Bradford, UK. Each of these interfaces incorporates a design paradigm that differs from the other in terms of context, duration of implementation, and scale. Following a longitudinal approach based on non-participant observations and timelapse photography, we analyse emergent interactions and focus in particular on playful encounters at different levels and scales: from the micro scale of the bodily engagement to the macro scale of the spatial and social configurations. Our case studies highlight that the urban spatial layout is a key element in defining the emerging interactions and encounters around the urban situated interfaces. We suggest, within the premise of the "smart city", that digital technologies can have an active role, with a great potential to encourage playful experiences and shared encounters in urban spaces; yet the digital should be coupled with a careful consideration of the spatial, physical, material and bodily aspects of interactions, that are fundamental to our lived experience of the city. play and who makes connections within the city contingent on mood or orientation. From a design standpoint, Verhoeff argues that media architecture technologies are inherently mobile and temporal, which makes the very process of designing them a performative process: the design does not merely precede the interface, but is rather performed in it; there is no rigorous distinction between "process" and "product" . However, playful interactions can also rely on other types of interfaces, such as the ones that remain fixed in their settings either temporarily or permanently. These fixed, and situated interfaces may carry a great potential to encourage not only playful behaviours, but also social encounters, bodily interactions and social learning and even act as platforms of socio-political critique. An interesting example of the latter case is the series of seesaws designed by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, which were installed at the steel border fence that separates the United States from Mexico. Once installed, the pink seesaws were promptly appropriated by children and adults located at either sides of the border. Their playful interactions, locally and bodily performed, rapidly assumed a global meaning through the intangible interfaces of social media and communication networks. Among other aspects, this initiative is noteworthy because it responds to a serious political, social and spatial crisis in a playful, evocative and light-hearted fashion. According to Rael, besides bringing a sense of togetherness at the border fence, the project is about recognizing that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side (The Guardian, 2019).

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2019

We present the design process and evaluation of a pervasive, location-based mobile game created to act as an experiment system and allow evaluation of how different design elements can influence player behaviour, using social interaction as a study case. A feasibility study with a group of community dwelling elderly volunteers from the city of Kyoto, Japan, was performed to evaluate the system. Results showed that the choice of theme and overall design of game was adequate, and that elderly people could understand the game rules and their goals while playing. Points of improvement included reducing the complexity of game controls and changing social interaction mechanics to account for situations when there are only a few players active or players are too far apart.

Codename Heroes is a persistent, multiplayer, crowd-sourced pervasive game that uses Bluetooth, GPS and the phone camera. It plays in the world around you and is always active. Players take the roles of secret superheroes, fighting for their rights and their beliefs. The game also makes use of physical objects and places in the environment. The game targets teenagers with a specific focus on young women. The purpose of the game is to engage and empower players. The design is informed by ethnographic studies of young women as well as by gender studies. The goal is to create an incitement for young people to appropriate spaces they do not usually move in, and try things they would not otherwise do. Codename Heroes is part of a project investigating pervasive games, games that are played in the physical world with the aid of mobile technology. The current research is focused at exploring large scale, long term, non-location-specific pervasive games, while still keeping the physical aspect of game-specific objects, to understand how this physicality affects the experience of the game.

In this paper we explore how mobile devices and co-location in mobile contexts contribute social play in game design, addressing the limited understanding of social interactivity in mobile games. Using the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework, we code four games illustrating effective use of mobile, social, and co-located elements. Subsequently, we analyse and discuss this data to identify generalisability in these games. In our discussion we identify how these findings address game design problems of designing collaborative games. Furthermore, we contribute to theory of designing for social play from the perspectives of co-located mobile contexts in game design by identifying how mobility: (1) affords co-locating with other players in public spaces, (2) supports physical interactions using spatial context and players bodies, extending games beyond their formal system, (3) supports asymmetric design with information and interaction. Finally we contribute the concept of a pocket magic circle, a particular magic circle, to support a focus on game design leveraging these intersecting properties.

2011

In this dissertation, it is explored which prerequisites are necessary in location-based games (LBGs) to make meaningful the meeting between players and spatiality with an emphasis on physical locations. Throughout the dissertation, it has been shown that LBGs affect players’ perception of and behavior in everyday spaces, as the games reside on the boundaries between the continuums of play and ordinary, authentic and fictional, and as they merge physical and digital media. These are termed the six dimensions of LBGs. LBGs let the player explore the boundaries between these dimensions and the dimensions are related through play. The LBG acts as a mediator for the meeting between the player and locations through the boundaries between these six dimensions. The motivation of the dissertation is to push the development of and research in LBGs toward actualizing the potential for expanding LBGs’ spatial aspect even further and to contribute with a cohesive framework on LBGs. This dissertation consists of a review of previous research and existing LBGs, and a theoretical discussion of the elements of LBGs encompassing: 1) Spatiality: space and place, digital space, mediated spaces (physical and digital), locations as play-spaces. 2) Structure: rules, frames, fiction and authenticity, and uncertainty and ambiguity. 3) Interface: Location-aware devices, seams, and objects and players. 4) Player experience: Motivation, mobility, meaning, and finally, a discussion of flow, immersion or incorporation. The combination of these elements is used to conceptualize LBGs.

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2018

Currently, games that combine the real and virtual worlds have higher availability, wide extension, and better performance thanks to the advances in mobile technologies. These advances allow increasing the accessibility by people. That is why mobile devices have become a fundamental part of daily lives of people. It has involved to people in different types of user experiences as those given by augmented reality, geolocation, virtual reality, among others. This kind of game is defined like Pervasive Game (PG)it is known also as Pervasive Game Experience (PGE)-, where the game world is extended beyond limits of the virtual world, and it can become in part of the player reality. This kind of games can impact the player lives in a positive or negative way. In this line, the academic and industrial fields have tried to create frameworks and tools to develop PG, but it has been in a separately way. For that reason, this paper describes the design and implementation of a platform that integrates several tools to create and edit game experiences in both fields. This paper focuses the study on the narrative and geolocation applied to close spaces, it is a way of giving an enriched experience to the player. Finally, we present a prototype to validate the platform in the educational context. The game demonstrated the increase in the motivation and learning on students of the first semester of computer engineering about basic knowledge in programming.