Mapping the Beach Beneath the Street: Digital Cartography for the Playable City

Abstract

-Maps are an important component within many of the playful and gameful experiences designed to turn cities into a playable infrastructures. They take advantage of the fact that the technology used for obtaining accurate spatial information, such as GPS receivers and magnetometers (digital compasses), are now so widespread that they are considered as 'standard' sensors on mobile phones, which are themselves ubiquitous. Interactive digital maps, therefore, are are widely used by the general public for a variety of purposes. However, despite the rich design history of cartography digital maps typically exhibit a dominant aesthetic that has been designed to serve the usability and utility requirements of turn-by-turn urban navigation, which is itself driven by the proliferation of in-car and personal navigation services. The navigation aesthetic is now widespread across almost all spatial applications, even where a bespoke cartographic product would be better suited. In this chapter we seek to challenge this by exploring novel neo-cartographic approaches to making maps for use within playful and gameful experiences designed for the cities. We will examine the potential of design approaches that can producte not only more aesthetically pleasing maps, but also offer the potential for influencing user behaviour, which can be used to promote emotional engagement and exploration in playable city experiences.

La deriva paralela como método en la investigación basada en las artes

“…Esto depende en gran medida de la forma en que se formule la pregunta de investigación. Pero especialmente de la manera en que se proponga el juego (Coulton, Huck, Gradinar y Salinas, 2017), pues es en lo lúdico de la propuesta donde tiene mejor cabida el azar. Una suerte de negociación constante entre las pautas del juego, las directrices de la pregunta de investigación, los estímulos que sorprenden y atraen a quienes investigan contemplando; los distractores que les interpelan; los obstáculos que les interceptan e interrumpen, dificultan o llegan a impedir el paso; y los libres accesos por donde sí pueden circular.…”

Map Symbols in Video Games: the Example of “Valheim”

“…Video games constitute complex technological systems that combine numerous spatial, physical, and social issues. Geographers and cartographers are dealing with the topic of "cartography and games" (Garfield 2012;Coulton et al 2017;Edler and Dickmann 2017;Edler 2020) more and more often, describing the technical aspects of game and component production. The discussion about a constantly increasing impact of games on cartographic visualisations manifests itself through increasing popularity of virtual reality and augmented reality environment (Hruby et al 2019;Büyüksalih et al 2020;Keil et al 2020;Walmsley and Kersten 2020;Zagata et al 2021).…”

Games and Play in the Creative, Smart and Ecological City

“…The playable city aims to subvert the increasingly prevalent smart city discourse of openness, civic responsibility and accessibility via the process of playful art installations Sicart, , 2015. Playable cities seek to subvert or hijack particular forms of infrastructure (Nijholt, 2017, p. 10) -akin to historically situated artistic and avant-garde practices such as the Situationist International dérivé (Alfrink, 2015;Coulton et al, 2017;Rauscher, 2016). Whereas these practices deal with the immediate architectural materialities of city spaces, playable cities take a similar view of the underlying software infrastructures.…”