Pervasive Gaming

This thesis investigates artworks born at the convergence of digital media and contemporary performance, and the ways in which technology impacts the field of performance. The term digital media refers to technology that produces digitised (as opposed to analogue) content such as text, audio, video, graphics and metadata. Contemporary performance refers to artworks that combine different artistic traditions—experimental theatre and dance, video art, visual art, music composition and performance art—in a single performance event. The convergence of these two fields has produced a significant body of technological works of art that challenge and reconfigure traditional conventions in contemporary performance. This thesis examines the impact of digital media on the ways performance is created, received and experienced, and the extent to which media open up new possibilities for creative expression and may generate new art forms.
I mapped the field by defining three large categories that mark the heterogeneous landscape of technologically enhanced performances today, namely multimedia theatre, telematic performance and pervasive performance. Methodologically, I combined hermeneutic methods of interpretation and reflection with academic forms of practical inquiry, combining textual analysis of relevant works from each of the three categories—such as Ghost Road (Murgia and Pauwels 2012), make-shift (Jamieson and Crutchlow 2010) and Rider Spoke (Blast Theory 2007)—with the practical development and analysis of a pervasive performance experiment titled Chain Reaction (Pérez 2009 and 2011). Theoretically, the project is interdisciplinary, bringing together performance theory, digital media studies, experimental game scholarship and experiential art documentation.
In discussing the ways in which digital media impact contemporary performance, I identify a number of traditional conventions in the field of theatre and performance that are currently being challenged. These are in the areas of audience participation, use of space, actor role, rehearsal and staging, and performance documentation. Central arguments in the thesis are, on the one hand, that researchers, critics and practitioners must look beyond the visionary expressions of aesthetic potential in order to grasp the real state of technologically enhanced art forms. On the on the other hand, it is only by considering both, the horizon-pushing high-tech along with the purpose-orientated low-tech, that a more grounded understanding of the present impact of developing technology on art culture can and should be reached.

Edutainment may be considered a developing contemporary research field particularly as new and open source game development environments are made available to the research community. Nevertheless, most edutainment scenarios are usually limited in terms of interactivity, design and aesthetics, a fact that may be attributed to the task complexity, which requires an integrated approach addressing all related fields. This work introduces a conceptual/operational framework for the development of edutainment scenarios, which is both game-based and rich-media oriented. The proposed framework, which for the main part must be considered an educational effort, combines theoretical background -within the fields of human-computer communication, interaction/educational design and entertainment studies-and practical solutions and techniques regarding software and digital games development, for the creation of custom edutainment scenarios. These abstract and more or less theoretical scenarios due to the seamless embodiment of technical practices may be easily developed as fully fledged products, be them games, applications or any kind of digital media that provide the unified service of education and entertainment. In such a case the end product (a digital system) permits the user to interact with the environment in a game-like manner, which enhances learnability and contributes to knowledge acquirement as the underlying objective. The framework, although not a rigid one but rather subjected to ad hoc adjustments, consists of welldefined stages, which include modern educational theories and state-of-the-art development environments. This paper describes in details the proposed educational framework for the edutainment scenarios and presents a recent case study that validates its effectiveness. Despite the fact that the framework is still under development in a continuous feedback process with respect to the scenarios conceived by higher education students who utilise it, the results achieved so far are rather encouraging in terms of creativity, interaction design and aesthetics, thus addressing in a satisfactory manner the above mentioned deficiencies which -in our opinion-characterise a large portion of commercial edutainment scenarios

В статье на примере неиммерсивных игр (тамагочи, дигимонов, Pokémon Go, первазивных игр) рассматривается предложенное Й. Хейзингой понятие магического круга, то есть границы между игрой и не-игрой. Неиммерсивные медиа рассчитаны на особый режим потребления: пользователь делит внимание между несколькими медиа и занятиями, что приводит к тесному переплетению вымышленного мира и повседневной жизни. Явления такого рода позволяют исследователям компьютерных игр критиковать понятие магического круга, описывая его как проницаемую или подверженную разрывам границу. Анализ литературы показывает, что эта интерпретация является следствием ошибочного понимания Й. Хейзинги, а также теории фреймов. Различение игры и не-игры в неиммерсивных играх сохраняется, однако, за счет своей временной структуры они, подобно ритуалу, придают новые смыслы повседневной жизни. Легенды, стоящие за тамагочи и дигимонами, позволяют предположить, что неиммерсивные игры воспроизводят миф о киберпространстве как гибриде, стирающем разницу между воображаемым и матeриальным. Граница, таким образом, уничтожается в этом акте самоосмысления только символически.

This article, drawing on the example of non-immersive games (Tamagochi, Digimon, Pokémon Go, pervasive games) discusses the notion of magic circle, coined by J. Huizinga, which means a boundary between the game and non-game. Non-immersive media are intended for a special mode of consumption: users split their attention between several media and activities. As a result, the fictional world and everyday life become closely intervened. Such phenomena encourage game studies scholars to criticize the notion of magic circle: they describe it as a boundary that is permeable or easily broken. A critical reading shows that this interpretation is driven by misunderstanding J. Huizinga as well as the frame theory. In non-immersive games, the difference between the game and non-game is not lost. However, their time structure allows them to assign new meanings to the everyday life, like rituals do. The legends behind Tamagochi and Digimon suggests that non-immersive games reproduce the myth of cyberspace as a hybrid that blurs out the distinction between the reality and fantasy. In this self-reflective act, the boundary is broken only symbolically.

A film is a complex organism that exists within a network of cultural, commercial, and technological forces. The Hollywood Blockbuster is a particular kind of film that is designed for big budgets, mass merchandising, and large-scale audience response. What designates a film a blockbuster is the size of its production budget and marketing effort rather than either critical success or popularity. The blockbuster, therefore, has become something of a dirty designation—equated with ostentatious budgets rather than good storytelling—because many blame it for the decline of narrative films. Some even say that the Blockbuster has destroyed Hollywood storytelling. This course will explore the tension between storytelling and action films, with a particular focus on audience response, personal media, the rise of transmedia storytelling, and participatory culture.

This paper explores the relationship between the city and the game experience, with the intent of identify how the applied playfulness could happen during the visiting activity of particular areas of Milan.
This paper relates and analyses the design of a pervasive urban game concept, dealing with the territorial communication in the city. The project’s intended target is composed by tourists and curious citizens; the leading idea is to allow players to experience urban spaces more closely, bringing them thoward new interaction models with society and culture. The goal is to engage them in a relationship with the urban context and its compositive elements. The project is the consequence of a theorical research on game topics and of the desire for the development of a socio-cultural interaction related to the urban fabric; it was born as a graduation thesis at Politecnico di Milano, School of Design in 2011.

This article seeks to build a digital ritual framework for the analysis of social gaming and social networking. The architectural design that intertwines Facebook and FarmVille is heightened by the formal and informal participation in ritual practices, which we theorize as digital rituals. Facebook and FarmVille provide a substantive case study that delves into the topical blurring of lines around the game space or magic circle. Through digital ethnographic methodologies the article identifies a number of digital ritual engagements that fit well with Grant McCracken's (1986) four different kinds of consumer rituals: exchange rituals, possession rituals, grooming rituals, and divestment rituals. Social gaming is contextualized as the extension of digital third places complicating distinctions between social network and social networking sites. Beyond simply phatic communication or decompression, FarmVille and Facebook through digital ritual participation are increasingly the manifestation of our networked interests, communities, and lives.

Location-based games have become more popular thanks to the growt. This paper presents a framework for the development of location-based augmented reality games and wARms, an augmented-reality locationin order to play against others experiences.

Ethnographies of the Videogame uses the medium of the videogame to explore wider significant sociological issues around new media, interaction, identity, performance, memory and mediation. The book is particularly concerned with issues of agency and power, identifying strong correlations between perceptions of gaming and actual gaming practices, as well as the reinforcement, through gaming,

This paper explores the Internet as a metaphor for the city and raises some issues associated with its use in relation to pervasive computing. It goes on discuss the idea of the electronic panopticon [1,2] and pervasive surveillance. It is presented as part of a workshop experience and juxtaposed against a series of pervasive technologies that are being developed at the Mixed Reality Lab. This gives attendees a platform on which to discuss theory and practice. Within our day to day existence duality occurs between the corporeal and our cyber (machinic) existence. Whilst browsing through the detritus of out of date pages, dead links and not safe for work (NSFW) images blowing through the streets of Cyberville, we become part of a system that has risks, [3] threats and thrills [4] associated with its use...

Thanks to the rapidly increasing adoption of mobile communications and wireless technologies, language educators are now empowered to sculpt interactions and design learning experiences using the real world as their canvas. City streets, shopping centres, cafés and cemeteries can be augmented with new layers of meaning and narrative as learner-players use their language skills to navigate the chaotic and unpredictable environment of everyday life and achieve their objectives. Spatially expanded games provide a natural way to situate language production in context-rich, authentic settings, in contrast to the comparatively sterile confines of the traditional classroom. They are multimodal, multi-sensory and highly personal immersive experiences. This paper explores the potential of technology-enhanced pervasive urban games for language learning and the pedagogic and philosophical foundations upon which these ideas are based. Examples are provided from an ongoing location-based research project.

Media technology—from mass media to social media and from video gaming to computer-mediated communication—plays an increasingly central role in people’s lives. Due to exponential increases in computing power, people now carry incredibly powerful computers—their smartphones—everywhere they go. This ever-greater access to media technology is generating an ever-greater conflict between media activities and the unmediated activities critical for psychological well-being—from our face-to-face conversations and family time to our down time and work lives. What are the costs and benefits of people’s modern media technology use for psychological well-being? Using a complementarity-interference (CI) framework, I review research to illuminate key psychological processes (i.e., mediators) and conditions (i.e., moderators) of the relationship between media technology and psychological well-being. Based on the existing evidence, I propose an initial theoretical CI model of the effects of media technology on psychological well-being. I use this CI model to outline important directions for future research, providing guidelines for an integrated, theoretically informed research on media technology.

This research is intended to investigate Cooperation and to understand how we can stop the self-interested behaviour of the individual from damaging the long-term interests of the group. Indeed, it is reasonable to think that following cooperation could lead to a mutual benefit for everyone. Nevertheless, reality is often controversial, as selfishness and individuality dominate. This creates problems, because people and organizations fail to coordinate and to make optimal decisions. Because of the wide-ranging nature of the issue, we relied on a largely interdisciplinary theoretical base, grounding on a managerial, micro-economic, financial, epistemological and sociological literature and empirical cases. Our methodological approach grounds on the Thompson’s Epistemic-Ontological Alignment Theory (2011), by combining an Entitative Dimension (models of reality) and a Process Dimension (flux of interactions) to create a consistent and justifiable Mid-Range Theory. By departing from the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Axelrod’s solution, Coordination Games and models of cooperation between firms, we then analysed flux of cooperative interactions and knowledge creation. We eventually found out that the so-called Future Game® and the Scenario Game represent a practical embodiment of the Evolution of Cooperation envisaged by Axelrod, and an important contribution to the Reformation of Cooperation envisaged by Sennett, to avoid the spread of the uncooperative self. They also constitute an example of the emerging practice of gaming, acknowledged as the New Frontier of knowledge management and managerial consultancy. This work wants to be a new beginning for a new research stream around cooperation and knowledge creation through gaming, and around the Scenario Game and the related Future Game®, to create a base for further discussions by departing from the insights produced by our analysis.

ON THE MORNING of November 22, 2016, a journalist in the Kitchener-Waterloo region of Ontario, Canada broke a news story presenting new evidence in a cold case that had baffled police for nearly a full century. Her story was based on an interview with a middle-aged local woman named Janneth C. Smith whom she had tracked down through Facebook and contacted by email. Lisa Drew tantalized her avid audience with historical artifacts and old news clippings belonging to Smith’s family that suggested a solution to the hundred year old mystery: the abrupt and absolute disappearance of Toronto theatre magnate Ambrose Small in 1919 after cashing a cheque for one million dollars, leaving behind his baffled wife, his secretary, and his empire of numerous theatres. Police investigations of the high profile case, and rewards offered, even the clairvoyants they interviewed, came to nothing. While Ambrose Small never really left the public imagination due to his role in Michael Ondaatje’s famous historical novel In the Skin of a Lion, Small was an intriguing character in his own right, immensely wealthy and powerful, whose buildings concealed more than theatre machinery: there were secret apartments and hidden rooms within their walls. As the sensational report ran on 570 News, Facebook searches for Janneth C. Smith surged into the hundreds of thousands.
There was only one problem with the viral news story. The news anchor had unknowingly reported on a transmedia fiction. She had inadvertently tumbled down a ‘rabbit hole’ intended for game-players of an Alternate Reality Game designed by my second year architecture students as the collective term project in their Cultural History course. The students, of course, were elated, as they had just discovered at first hand the role of the imagination in how history is made.

This research aims to understand how the cognitive modulations are configured on the process of playing an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a genre that transcends reality and fiction through puzzles that occupy both virtual and urban spaces. Assuming that their rules of game play and their operationally of this kind of game are based on a complex and fragmented transmedia storytelling in multiple media, ARGs requires the gamers a
cognitive multiplicity based on social and informational sharing in the spaces created for this purpose. Thus, this research seeks to understand how the cognitive configurations of these individuals in their peer interaction with the object are constituted. Our hypothesis is that the gamers build collectively knowledge in the interest of maximizing their own individual experiences during the immersed-pervasive process of the game. Thus, this research seeks to engage a mapping of patterns of cognitive settings of the gamers as individuals in their inter-relationship with an essentially
collective game that overflows the boundaries of reality and fiction

8 women in a dark Nordic winter forest, playing around with flashlights, accompanied by the echoing of a world famous Arabic singer from their mobile phones-
what has this to do with creative and playful cities?

This forest expedition was a part of a non-traditional participatory research and action project from southeastern Sweden. The project provides the empirical material for our reflective story. The overall aim of the project was to investigate, through playful explorations, how a diverse group of women can transform for us unfamiliar places, both concerning geographical, cultural, social aspects, and also how places in themselves can transform people. Ultimately the project also challenged the notion of citizenship not as a legal term but as an active and ongoing becoming. The core group of the project was created by academic scholars, municipality and a number of female immigrants from Syria.

When we started to plan the project we were in need of theoretical guides that could support us in our playfulness, without losing the critical and situated understanding of our trajectory and hence we identified some key concepts provided by our epistemological companions, such as:  caring (de la Bellacasa, 2012), touching/becoming (de la Bellacasa, 2009), messiness (Law, 2004). To meet up these approaches we had to rely on and develop methods that could enable the exploratory playfulness; therefore, we turned to the artistic movements of Situationists and Surrealists.

These choices demanded a sensitive awareness towards ourselves, each other and the places. We locate this project as a transdisciplinary framework of site-specific games, participatory design and feminist research.

Grau obtido: __________________ BANCA EXAMINADORA ________________________________________________________ Prof. Esp. Mônica Nunes Neustadt ________________________________________________________ Profª. Ms. Monica Paula de Lima Cabral ________________________________________________________ Prof. Ms. Sandro Tôrres de Azevedo (Orientador) CABO FRIO 2013 iv Dedico esse trabalho a minha esposa e aos meus pais por todo o carinho e apoio v Agradecimentos Em primeiro lugar, à minha esposa e aos meus pais, pelo apoio e paciência intermináveis em todo esse tempo de estudo. Ao meu orientador, Prof. Sandro Torres, por ter me guiado por todo o caminho necessário à conclusão deste trabalho, ter a paciência de ensinar e por me incentivar a continuar. Sem o seu conhecimento, eu não teria saído da primeira página. Também agradeço à Coordenadora Vanessa Ribeiro, pelas conversas e palavras de incentivo durante todo o curso, e ao corpo docente da Veiga de Almeida. Aos meus colegas e amigos de sala de aula. Meus agradecimentos também aos amigos Paulo e João Marcelo pela força e compreensão. vi

In the heady discourse following the launch of Pokémon Go, many of the game’s influences, histories and precursors were forgotten or over-looked. Against the newness in which Pokémon Go is often framed, this article re-contextualises its history examining comparable practices and recalling the games evolution from earlier locative applications developed by Google to the experimental games of the modernist Avant Garde to which it has been compared. Central to this paper is discussion of the opportunities in the pervasive game development process for encoding and recoding the city by balancing ingame content with the nuances of the urban landscape in which it is played. While Pokémon Go has been revelatory in bringing awareness of pervasive gaming into the mainstream, this discussion of location-based games, public art projects, and playful approaches to urban exploration aims to fill gaps in the history of the field, and offer new possibilities for future game design and analysis.

Este artigo concentra-se nas contribuições da narrativa transmídia para o "letramento midiático", dentro de um cenário que envolve a gamificação do campo educacional e no qual as novas gerações utilizam suas habilidades de storytellers (contadores de histórias), adquiridas pelo método de leitura crítica e escrita criativa, para desdobrar mundos de histórias a partir de uma narrativa canônica. Neste contexto, fan fiction são produzidas pelo processo de colaboração e interação, num ambiente de compartilhamento de histórias, enquanto o aspecto lúdico dos games concorre para a gamificação do campo educacional.

Though the work of designers, educators, philanthropists and health and humanitarian organizations, there has been a clear rise in Social Impact Games since 2000. These games, which represent a diversity of cultures, are spearheaded by the annual Games for Change Conference in New York City, which is currently in its 12 th edition. Every year, it presents different social impact styles and inter-disciplinary media crossings from politically militant LARP, interactive documentarians as well as counter-prejudice board games. Researchers can now observe this phenomenon with political governance concerns since the US Office of Science and Technology Policy posted a call on their blog asking citizens to propose 'Games that Can Change the World' in December 2013. 1 In parallel with these movements, a context of rapid technological evolution has encouraged increased citizen feedback and participation in all sorts of accessible and creative ways. Youths now interact and have the option to 'word up', interfere and be more active regarding online messages thanks to the evolution and mobility of technology. The gaming world is definitely gaining possibilities for online participation in this regard, from massive multiplayers games to modding, hacking and machinima. Since games are now identified tools for values, awareness and creativity Impact and conductors: could projects like Citizen Science be the future of gaming and social participation? Could projects like Citizen Science be the future of gaming and social participation? Can the playful attitude of gamers mesh with global citizenship and volunteer engagement? 2 Taking inspiration from Zooniverse, Citizen Sort, Foldit, and the going MMOS project by Eve Online game designers, this paper will look more closely at this as of yet untapped power to act collectively from the perspective of motivation by citizens and players to forecast the future of crossing participatory design disciplines.

This paper describes the pervasive game unexceptional.net. Unexceptional.net is a unique pervasive game that is story-driven where the story evolves through multiple media channels interacting with the player. The game interacts with the user on a cellphone and a PC, and the game provides unique gaming experience by introducing gameplay elements through comics, web hacks, Blogs, a 3D client, a transaction visualizer, a phone client and an applet client. The paper describes the process of building this game through integrating various open source software and running multiple student projects. Further, the paper reveals challenges in building multi channel pervasive games and identifies how this was solved in the unexceptional.net project. The contribution of this paper is the description of a novel pervasive game and the experiences from designing and implementing this game. Categories and Subject Descriptors

This paper presents an analysis of the performativity of an augmented reality application for mobile phones entitled Zombies Run! by Six to Start.

According to Max Brooks, author of World War Z, the fastest zombies “move at the rate of barely one step per 1.5 seconds” (2003), however as Daniel W. Drezner observes, there has been a recent proliferation of films and videogames that have sought to quicken the steps of the undead (2011:28). The slow, eerie dragging of feet along the ground in Night of the Living Dead and Resident Evil has been replaced by the relentless sprinting of 28 Days Later and Left 4 Dead. This aspect has also migrated into the everyday world with events such as Run For Your Lives, “the world’s first interactive zombie-infested obstacle race experience” (2012:n.p.), which provides runners with the opportunity to incorporate a narrative of escape within their exercise. It is within this intersection of the fictional framing of narrative with exercise that Zombies Run! is located.

Acting as a combination of a mobile phone fitness application and a radio play, Zombies Run! encourages the player to find a new reason to exercise, by aurally layering a zombie apocalypse over the real world with the aid of GPS.  As ‘Runner 5’ they must depart their home ‘base’ and collect supplies, whilst being fed aural updates as to locations of zombies in their vicinity. On their run, zombies may give chase, and it is up to the player to outrun them, spurred on by the sounds of the undead approaching.

As a researcher of pedestrian performance, I will analyse how the performativity of my running enhanced my receptiveness towards the narrative of the game and to what extent it bypassed sensations of engaging in routine exercise.

Pokemon Go is a game app that successfully introduced augmented reality (AR) to mass consumers due to its user friendly game design, as the AR game app offers ease of use, the free-to-play (F2P) marketing model, and the childhood nostalgia factor by referencing the well-established Pokemon manga, toys, and media franchise that has become globally popular since 1995. However, academics and game designers have been researching and creating augmented environments with augmented reality technology for decades, focusing on the use of AR technology to enhance the social experience of working in private and public sectors beyond entertainment, such as journalism, surgery and medicine, archeological exploration, and other uses (for example, see Geogia Teehs Augmented Environments Research Lab bibliography for a list of scholarly research on AR design and use cases). Due to the popularity of Pokemon Go, more AR apps will proliferate in the mobile market, and become regular staple installs on mass consumer devices. Several implications and forecasts can be made for the future of education given the popularity of Pokemon Go. Since the majority of students are mobile device consumers, this means that in the very near future, students will be using augmented reality (AR) apps, and later on virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) apps (as they become more affordable), as an inextricable part of daily life. Given that the use of mobile devices in education is becoming a trend, as more digitally connected educators are encouraging students to use mobile devices to conduct research and complete assignments, educators will need to begin considering the educational implications of AR, and how to utilize AR apps for educational purposes, such as the inclusion of AR apps usage as part of the requirements for achieving digital citizenship literacy.

Abstract
Pervasive games defy Johan Huizinga's classic definition of play as being something outside ordinary life with their own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and an orderly manner. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman develop Huizinga's concept of the magic circle and discuss its function as a boundary between the real world and the game world. However, pervasive games seem to form a distinct category of games or types of play that breach both the spatial and the temporal confines of the magic circle. Pervasive games are of particular interest for the way in which they make use of the natural or the built environment as a play-space in a distinct and sometimes alarming overlap with the real world. This chapter offers some definitions and examples of some popular pervasive games, briefly tracing the evolution of treasure hunts, assassination games, live-action role-play and alternate reality games, all of which more-or-less confound the notion of the magic circle. 

Keywords
Alternate Reality Games, ARGs, Assassination Games, Games, LARPs, Letterboxing, Live Action Role-Play, Magic Circle, Pervasive Games, Playful Public Performance, Reality Games, Role Playing Games, RPGs, Smart Street Sports, Treasure Hunt, Urban Adventure Games.

Smartphones estão cada vez mais presentes no dia a dia de nossa
sociedade, seja para trabalho ou lazer. Nessa plataforma móvel, há um crescente número de jogos eletrônicos que usam os sensores e funcionalidades disponíveis no celular para possibilitar sua jogabilidade, como uso de GPS para Jogos Baseados em Localização, uma categoria de Jogos Pervasivos Móveis. Por outro lado, existem outras categorias de jogos pervasivos que requerem funcionalidades especificas que o celular não dispõe diretamente, como detecção de proximidade entre usuários e uma localização mais precisa, rápida e disponível que o GPS.
Adicionalmente, tecnologias de sensoriamento e de beacons para Internet das Coisas (IoT) estão cada vez mais baratas e disponíveis, estas que são muito usadas em soluções de microlocalização e posicionamento em diferentes contextos de aplicação. Em Exergames Móveis, uma categoria de jogos pervasivos onde a jogabilidade ocorre em um ambiente outdoor e tem ritmo de jogabilidade acelerado e com constante interação entre múltiplos jogadores, uma solução de localização mais precisa que o GPS vê-se necessária. O desenvolvimento desses jogos inclui execução de sessões de jogo e de seus componentes, assim como interoperabilidade entre diferentes tecnologias. Dessa forma, nesse trabalho, apresentamos como contribuições uma estratégia de localização usando Fingerprinting com beacons Bluetooth LE (BLE) e uma API para requisições e eventos comuns de localização. Analisamos a estratégia de localização em testes com diferentes configurações, através do uso de um Middleware para Jogos
Pervasivos com gerência de Sessões, e avaliamos a API de localização com abstrações da jogabilidade de diferentes jogos pervasivos.

This paper charts the distinctive challenges of designing mobile experiences for cyclists and presents two studies of mobile cyclebased experiences: one a heritage tour; the other an exploration of a city at dusk involving recording and listening to personal stories. and observations are drawn on to derive eight lessons for designing cycle-based interaction including: cycling proficiency, physicality, impact of the environment, media and hardware design, collaboration, and safety. The conclusion is that design has to respect the distinctive nature of cycling as a mode of transport and needs to carefully interweave moments of interaction with it.

Two technology trends address the rising costs of healthcare systems in aging societies: Serious Games for Healthcare and Ambient Assisted Living Environments. Surprisingly, these concepts are rarely combined and the users’ perception and use of Serious Games in Ambient Assisted Living environments is insufficiently understood. We present the evaluation of a serious game for stimulating cognitive abilities for elderly with regard to technology acceptance (based on the UTAUT2 model), performance and preference for an interaction device (tablet, table, wall). The results suggest that acceptance of serious games is independent of gender, technical expertise, gaming habits, and only weakly influenced by age. Determinants for acceptance are perceived fun and the feeling that the users can make playing the game a habit. Performance within the game is explained by age and previous gaming experience. All investigated interaction devices were rated as useful and easy to learn, although the wall-sized display had lower approval levels. The article concludes with guidelines for successfully introducing serious games for healthcare to residents in ambient assisted living environments.

Cross media games focus on a wide variety of gaming devices including traditional media channels, game consoles as well as mobile and pervasive computing technology to allow for a broad variety of game experiences. This paper introduces cross media games. It addresses challenges of cross media games and points out game design, technical, commercial and ethical aspects. A gaming scenario illustrates cross media specific game elements and game mechanics. Initial results gained in a paper-based version of the gaming scenario are presented. The paper concludes with an outlook.

Reference
Papangelis K, Metzger M, Sheng Y, Liang HN, Chamberlain, A. (2017) ”Get off my lawn!” - Starting to Understand Territoriality in Location Based Games. In CHI ’17, Denver, USA, 2017. Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI 10.1145/3027063.3053154

Abstract
With the increasing popularity of mobile video games, game designers and developers are starting to integrate geolocation information into such games. Although popular location-based games (LBGs) such as Ingress and Pokémon Go have millions of users, research still needs to be carried out to fully understand the ways in which such games impact upon a player's interaction with other players and their physical surroundings. Consequently, there is limited knowledge on how user behavior can be addressed and drawn upon as a design resource to further engage and motivate players to play. To further understand this, we developed a LBG called CityConqueror and have conducted an in 'the wild' study. This initial study starts to unpack the ways that human territoriality can be expressed in LBGs to facilitate player motivation, engagement and can support the integration of the game in the player's daily life. Based on our findings we propose a series of design implications for LBGs. The primary purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the importance of territoriality and the way that this can be drawn upon as a resource for design.

O presente estudo examina o processo de espacialização produzido pelos alternate reality games. Partimos da premissa de que estes games acompanham a tendência percebida na fase atual da cibercultura, representada por metáforas como internet pingando no mundo real, internet das coisas e download do ciberespaço, popularizada pela disseminação das tecnologias de computação ubíqua e pervasiva. A hipótese sustenta que a espacialização produzida por estes games cria uma camada de informação que se ajusta aos sítios urbanos, criando uma nova tipologia de espaço e reconfigurando o sentido inicial destes lugares. O domínio criado por estes games pode ser explorado por empresas (buzz marketing) e pela indústria de entretenimento (narrativas transmidiáticas). Para desenvolver nossa discussão, apresentamos uma análise dos alternate reality games, com base em uma revisão de conceitos ligados a espaço, lugar, mídias sociais e jogos eletrônicos.

Museums are amongst the group of institutions that has developed the least in turn with modernization of digital technology. They rely on stationary physical objects as points of interest for their exhibitions, without much implementation of contemporary digital technology. The purpose of the paper is to investigate and design Mixed Reality games implemented in the museum context, using particularly smart devices as the platform of deployment, as a means to encourage young adults in particular to explore more exhibits and locations. Through an iterative design process, we develop two prototypes of Mixed Reality games one analog and one digital. The prototypes are tested at the IT-University of Copenhagen, mimicking museum conditions using local test subjects. Subsequent interviews form the basis of documentation for a qualitative analysis of the tests. We found that an Augmented Reality Treasure Hunt game was an effective means, of encouraging students to experience a larger number of exhibits and artefacts in an unintrusive way, as well as promoting cooperation, exploration, and portraying a familiar place in a different perspective.

This paper is based on exploratory interventions in a small city in the southeastern part of Sweden. The interventions were inspired both by the art movement of Situationists and site-specific games. The activities were also supported by a diversity of theoretical perspectives. During the winter 2016 eight women explored by developing and implementing playful means and methods what a city, understood both as a social and material space, could mean for a group of women recently moved to the city. Through the playful approach the project opened up room for participatory design and abled the group to formulate eight rules, also available for other city explorers in other cities.

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.

Resumo: O presente artigo discute a relação entre jogos eletrônicos, cibercultura e Geografia da Comunicação, buscando entender as funções do espaço e do lugar no processo de mediação. A hipótese sustenta que o espaço tende a oferecer a base para a criação de um lugar temporário, que pode ser concebido como importante mediador. Para desenvolver a discussão, utiliza-se como referencial os jogos de realidade alternativa (ARG) e as mídias locativas, consideradas expoentes da atual fase da cibercultura. Os ARGs configuram um formato popular na indústria do entretenimento e carregam em si a lógica da Geografia da Comunicação. A pesquisa adota como referencial metodológico o estudo de caso, usando como objeto o ARG CodeRunner (2012).

Edutainment may be considered a developing contemporary research field particularly as new and open source game development environments are made available to the research community. Nevertheless, most edutainment scenarios are usually limited in terms of interactivity, design and aesthetics, a fact that may be attributed to the task complexity, which requires an integrated approach addressing all related fields. This work introduces a conceptual/operational framework for the development of edutainment scenarios, which is both game-based and rich-media oriented. The proposed framework, which for the main part must be considered an educational effort, combines theoretical background -within the fields of human computer communication, interaction/educational design and entertainment studies- and practical solutions and techniques regarding software and digital games development, for the creation of custom edutainment scenarios. These abstract and more or less theoretical scenarios due to the seamless embodiment of technical practices may be easily developed as fully fledged products, be them games, applications or any kind of digital media that provide the unified service of education and entertainment. In such a case the end product (a digital system) permits the user to interact with the environment in a game-like manner, which enhances learnability and contributes to knowledge acquirement as the underlying objective. The framework, although not a rigid one but rather subjected to ad hoc adjustments, consists of welldefined stages, which include modern educational theories and state of-the-art development environments. This paper describes in details the proposed educational framework for the edutainment scenarios and presents a recent case study that validates its effectiveness. Despite the fact that the framework is still under development in a continuous feedback process with respect to the scenarios conceived by higher education students who utilise it, the results achieved so far are rather encouraging in terms of creativity, interaction design and aesthetics, thus addressing in a satisfactory manner the above mentioned deficiencies which –in our opinion- characterise a large portion of commercial edutainment scenarios.