Creating scalable location-based games: lessons from Geocaching

Abstract

Location-based games seek to move computer gaming out from behind the PC and into the "real world" of cities, streets, parks, and other locations. This real world physicality makes the experience fun for game players, yet it brings the unique challenge of creating and orchestrating such a game. That is, location-based games are often difficult to create, grow, and maintain over long periods of time. Our research investigates how location-based games can be designed to overcome this challenge of scalability. We studied the well-established location-based game of Geocaching through active participation and an online survey to better understand how it has succeeded in maintaining user involvement and growth over the last decade. Findings show that Geocaching benefits by having players directly create game content, including both lightweight and elaborate creations. Geocaching has also made it simple for players to perform game orchestration by monitoring game content, other players, and even non-players. We then characterize location-based games according to various attributes and suggest how the lessons learned from Geocaching could be applied more generally to the design of other location-based games and in which cases they should not be applied.

City knights: Spatial realism and memorability of virtual game scenes in pervasive gameplay

“…Spatial expansion is an intrinsic quality in pervasive games [1], which may take place both in physical and virtual arenas and span through the globe [28]. The characteristics of space, location or "hybrid space" [31] become even more meaningful when pervasive games are location based.…”

Explorations of geocaching in the virtual world of second life

“…In Geocaching, players themselves create the game content through a flexible yet well-defined structure [2]. This content-creation model has caused the game to grow to include a large volume of content, accessible around the world [3]. It has also meant that players have formed a "community" that includes customs for hiding and finding geocaches [2].…”

Villains, architects and micro-managers

“…The term game orchestration is therefore used to describe the creation and guiding of experiences for players as a game is being played [2,7]. The notion of orchestrating games has existed in various forms over many years.…”