Designing Scalable Location Based Games that Encourage Emergent Behavior : Special issue on Ambient and Social Media Business and Application (Part I)

Lund, Kate and Lochrie, Mark and Coulton, Paul (2012) Designing Scalable Location Based Games that Encourage Emergent Behavior : Special issue on Ambient and Social Media Business and Application (Part I). International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence, 4 (4). pp. 1-20. ISSN 1941-6237

Abstract

In general location based games have failed to achieve wide scale adoption that many predicted and the only such game that can truly claim wide scale success is Geocaching. Arguably this is partially due to fact that the majority of these games draw their inspiration directly from video games rather than the way users engage with public spaces. The authors present the design rationale behind the development of a Location Based Game, Big Game Huntr that was created specifically with player engagement with space at its heart. Presented are the lessons learnt from transitioning this game from being event based to one in which global participation could be facilitated.