Code Hunting Games: A Mixed Reality Multiplayer Treasure Hunt Through a Conversational Interface

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an online multi-player game that challenges players with abstract coding puzzles that are tied to a geographical location. The proposed system transposes the classical scheme of "treasure hunt" games into a mixed-reality game, where players must physically move in order to advance in the game, while at the same time interacting with a chatbot through an online messaging system. The implementation of the online game is described in detail and an overview of different deployments of the system is given, including a large-scale deployment during the European CodeWeek 2017. We discuss details of the proposed system, including lessons learned during the development and operation of the game. We also argue that mobile games like the one proposed can be successfully adopted for many different purposes, from entertainment to education.

A scoping review on the use, processing and fusion of geographic data in virtual assistants

“…Tourism‐related scenarios clearly stand out (10/27, 37%). A large proportion of these cases utilize geoinformation resources for user positioning (Ali, Le, Kim, Hwang, & Hwang, 2019; Chen, Wu, & Wang, 2019; Garrido, Barrachina, Martinez, & Seron, 2017; Grazioso, Cera, Di Maro, Origlia, & Cutugno, 2018; Klopfenstein, Delpriori, Paolini, & Bogliolo, 2018a; Massai, Nesi, & Pantaleo, 2019) to identify points of interest (POIs) near the user (i.e. traveler, tourist, etc.).…”

“…A third application domain is education (Cai, Yu, & Chen, 2013; Doumanis & Smith, 2015; Eiris‐Pereira & Gheisari, 2018; Klopfenstein, Delpriori, Paolini, & Bogliolo, 2018b), often combined with entertainment or gamified aspects (Doumanis & Smith, 2015; Klopfenstein et al, 2018b). The use of geoinformation resources is varied, ranging from space‐time immersion in a building information modeling (BIM) environment (see Liu et al, 2017 for a general description of BIM in geospatial scenarios) to improved communication skills in a construction scenario (Eiris‐Pereira & Gheisari, 2018), to better understanding the concepts around spatial operations (Cai et al, 2013), to gamified assistants to promote code literacy as a treasure hunt game (Klopfenstein et al, 2018a), and to improved learning of cultural narratives through embodied conversational agents (Doumanis & Smith, 2015).…”

“…SpaceBook, CitiCafe, MIRob, or PeopleBot). Among these 12 named virtual assistants, only four (SpaceBook—Bartie et al, 2018; Paval—Massai et al, 2019; TITERIA—Garrido et al, 2017; Trip 4 All—Signoretti et al, 2015) have to do with tourism‐related activities, followed by recommendation or decision‐making support (Loki—Ronzhin et al, 2019; CitiCafe—Atreja et al, 2018), healthcare (MIRob—Bandara et al, 2018; PeopleBot—González‐Medina et al, 2019), and education (CAGA—Cai et al, 2013; TreasureHuntBot—Klopfenstein et al, 2018a). Finally, Diana (Tsai, Chen, & Kang, 2019), which is related to disaster management, and Satnav (Antrobus et al, 2019), which explores relationships between driver workload and environmental engagement‐associated navigation systems, are categorized differently, even though they could still be seen under the recommendation‐related application domain.…”

Massive Remote School Trips: A Case Study

“…The cards also allow to create more complex sequences of code, with the addition of repetition and conditional cards. Published under the name of "CodyRoby", the game is available under a Creative Commons license and has been adopted in a variety of other games and interactive systems [33,34], spanning the range between fully-unplugged and online activities.…”

Adapting a Conversational Text Generator for Online Chatbot Messaging

“…Users show a growing interest in chatbots, not only for small talk, but also as aids for productivity tasks, entertainment, and communication [4]. Successful chatbot applications in real-world usage include customer assistance, conversational commerce, ELIZA-like "chatterbot" conversations [14], virtual assistants, which may exploit contextual information or known personal preferences [1], multiplayer games [13], or emphatic learning companions for kids [26].…”