mobile game research project
John Paul Bichard - Liselott Brunnberg - Anton Gustavsson - Oskar Juhlin
Research
Brunnberg L., Gustavsson, A., Juhlin O., Games for passengers - Accounting for Motion in location based applications. In Proceedings of International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (ICFDG), April 26-30 on Disney Wonder Cruiseship, Florida. Download PDF
Brunnberg, L. (2008). Playing with the Highway Experience - Pervasive Games on the Road. Ph.D. Thesis in Applied Information Technology, IT-University of Göteborg. Weblink
Bichard, J., Brunnberg, L., Combetto, M., Gustafsson, A. and Juhlin, O. (2006). Backseat Playgrounds: Pervasive Storytelling in Vast Location Based Games. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Entertainment Computing (Cambridge, UK, September 20 - 22, 2006), ICEC’06, Springer Verlag, pp. 117-122. Download PDF
Gustafsson, A., Bichard, J., Brunnberg, L., Juhlin, O. and Combetto, M. (2006). Believable environments – Generating interactive storytelling in vast location based pervasive games. In Proceedings of SIGCHI Advances in Computer Entertainment (Hollywood, CA, USA, June 14 - 16, 2006). ACE ‘06, vol. 266. ACM, New York, NY, 24. (Winner of the best paper award). Download PDF
Key Research Areas
• Episodic Narratives - a way of building narratives that work as fragmented
and incomplete episodes, informing an overall plot depending on the journey
traveled - this will be combined with both on and offline non-plot actions
that will encourage players to further explore their environment and the
in-game objects and stories.
• Real World Game Engine - where the game engine is embedded in the 'real'
- using GIS database objects as game objects and assigning game properties
to these real objects. This will allow objects in the real world to function
as game objects with multiple properties ie ability to combine objects,
to query them, affect the narrative and allow the player to collect resources
from the real environment (virtually of course - car boots aren’t that
big yet :) ).
• Lightweight technologies - enhanced mobile phones that respond to user
gestures and which encourage the player to interact with their surroundings
rather than the screen.
Previous research
The scope and topic of this project draws strongly on our previous research
experience in this area. This has included two backseat
games prototypes: 'Backseat Gaming' and 'Road Rager' developed in
the mobility studio at the
Interactive Institute and John Paul Bichards involvement in the public
authoring framework 'Urban Tapestries. The two prototypes for backseat
games were developed to investigate the feasibility and experience of
game manipulation in encounters with physical objects and other players
along the road.
Figure 1- 4 of the “back seat gaming” and “Road Rager” prototype; concept and evaluation
'Backseat Gaming' has been designed as a mixed reality game
using a digital compass and a GPS-receiver to connect the game to the
road side. By aiming the device towards objects as they pass by, players
can defend themselves against attacking creatures or pick up magic artefacts.
In this prototype the kids play with locations along the roads.
'Road
Rager' focused on the social and communicative aspects of gaming on
the road. It is a multiplayer game for gaming with kids in other cars
during traffic encounters. It is based on ad-hoc peer-to-peer networking,
which connects players in each other’s vicinity.
'Urban Tapestries'
has been designed as a public authoring framework to enable members of the
public to create pockets of information: image sound and text, and connect
these pockets wirelessly, to leave story threads throughout the city,
re-defining their environment. This has been implemented in two public
trials on PDAs over WiFi and Sony Ericsson P900s over
GPRS.
Copyright
Copyright © Interactive Institute 2008 - All rights reserved. No part
of this web site may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means,
nor stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission
of the authors with the exception of the case in which brief quotations
embodied in information, articles, etc,
