Hybrid Reality Games Reframed

Abstract

Hybrid reality games (HRGs) employ mobile technologies and GPS devices as tools for transforming physical spaces into interactive game boards. Rather than situating participants in simulated environments, which mimic the physical world, HRGs make use of physical world immersion by merging physical and digital spaces. Online multiuser environments already connect users who do not share contiguous spaces. With mobile devices, players may additionally incorporate interactions with the surrounding physical space. This article is a speculative study about the potential uses of HRGs in education, as activities responsible for taking learning practices outside the closed classroom environment into open, public spaces. Adopting the framework of sociocultural learning theory, the authors analyze design elements of existing HRGs, such as mobility and location awareness, collaboration/sociability, and the configuration of the game space, with the aim of reframing these games into an educational context to foresee how future games might contribute to discovery and learning.

Can massively multiplayer online gaming environments support team training?

“…Choi and Hannafin (1993) expand on this by stating that the theoretical underpinnings of situated cognition center on the role of context, content, facilitation, and assessment. Further research (e.g., de Souze e Silva & Delacruz, 2006;Klabbers, 2006;Squire, 2005) has continued to support this idea.…”

“…LARPs are usually set in a virtual context of fictional reality, and game play is governed or supervised by a game master (the instructor or facilitator). Hybrid reality games transform physical spaces into interactive game boards (de Souza e Silva & Delacruz, 2006). They make use of the physical context by merging the physical world and digital spaces.…”

Estudio y evaluación de contenidos didácticos en el desarrollo de las habilidades espaciales en el ámbito de la ingeniería

“…El grupo ISI de la Universidad de Málaga, proponen dos aplicaciones para la didáctica musical, en una de ellas proponen un piano virtual, que al colocar los dedos sobre el teclado virtual, la tecla que se oculta por el dedo reproduce el sonido de la tecla, en la otra se propone un pentagrama virtual, sobre el que los alumnos colocarán las notas virtuales (Peula, Zumaquero, Urdiales, Barbancho, & Sandoval, 2007). Otros trabajos de RA dentro de este campo los podemos encontrar descritos en (Bobick, Davis, & Intille, 1997), (Bobick, y otros, 1999), (Billinghurst, Kato, & Poupyrev, 2001), (Cheok, y otros, 2002), (Cheok, y otros, 2006), (De Souza e Silva & Delacruz, 2006), (Garzotto & Forfori, 2006).…”

Identifying and classifying learning entities for designing location-based serious games

“…De Souza [2] has observed that location based game activities produce learning that is social, experiential and situated. Learning, however, is related to the objectives of the game designers.…”