May 14th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Location Based Gaming | No Comments »
Anika Waern from IPerG talked about research experiences in location based (mobile) gaming, including LBS games without coordinates!
The first experience is with self-reported positioning. Uncle Roy, All About You is a great award winning example, though not mobile. In the game, one person plays online and another plays in the real world. The online player gets a map of the surroundings of the person in the real world. The person behind the computer has to steer the person that is outside. This means the person in the outside needs to notify the player behind the computer where he or she is.
With self-reporting, one of the problems is that users often use landmarks to provide their own position. In stead of the street in front of it, they located themselves as being on top of it. Also, sometimes the street player reported “in the future”, saying they are on a bridge while they are only nearing it in reality.
Another way of LBS gaming is based on bluetooth hardware. Placing pods at set points that phones can connect to. Depending on the pod, the phone knows where it is. A good example is an insect collecting game where each pod holds a different insect that players can connect. In order to have players returning, insect can be fed on those pods.
Cell-based positioning is very difficult to use. Cell-id’s differ per operator (see previous story) and cell id’s are not linked to real world coordinates. This means a company like visibilly has to translate cell-id’s to coordinates that can be used. If there is no translation to real coordinates, you get a distorted world where for example Heathrow can be next to Stockholm. An alternative to Cell-id’s are Wlan id’s for phones that support wireless internet connections. The problem is that if Wlan names change, the virtual coordinates are lost. Wlan’s are very interesting as the broadband connection can leave a better multimedia experience.
GPS gaming also seems to bring problems when it comes to precision of the data as GPS has a range of about 5 meters. Another problem is when players move faster then the device can track them.
Something less related to technology is the social aspect. In one project, players needed to capture object by surrounding them with a team of three. On the screen they could see where those objects are. When players could see each other, they didn’t socialize. When they couldn’t see each other, they communicated a lot more which lead to better strategies and performance inside the game.
The big question that remains for Anika Waern is if LBS games should be casual like past experiences where.
