Community generated location based gaming

Recent research in this field has led us to the conclusion that there is potential opportunity for emergent Location Based Games that deviate away from players physical movement and encourages them to consider their location and its environment [1, 3]. The aim of this research seeks to generate a wider community that is specific and relevant to game play, with the aim to maintain and achieve longevity with an active following [8]. Some Location Based Services such as Geocaching1 have succeeded in making a significant impact upon the wider public reaching an estimated 3-4 million users worldwide [2, 8, http://www.geocaching.com]. This success can be attributable to the notion that Geocaching focuses on the players location and proximity rather than their physical action [7, 8] as seen in many other LBGs. The downsideto many types of LBGs is that they effectively remove one of the success factors seen in Geocaching, which is discovery and exploration of the specific location. LBGs are commonly independent of precise location, which is often deliberate as it makes games more scalable. This is why games like Foursquare [http://foursquare. com] or the Booyah Society [http://www.booyah. com] have become increasingly popularamongst players, as they try to connect the virtual game closer to real world location, through players capturing the locations they regularly visit as part of the game play. This capturing is then relayed to their ‘friends’ to generate social capital using established social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Thus these games have a relatively simplistic game mechanic and their primary role would appear to serve as a means of informing their friends of their location which identifies them more closely to previous ‘Friend Finder’ services such as DodgeBall [4]. In this regard this type of gaming appears to be primarily aimed at young urban professionals with very active social lives that involve going out regularly. This inevitably means that such games offer little to families or groups who might use Geocaching as a means of engaging in highly social outdoor planned activities [2, 6, 7]. We attempt to draw on the positive attributes of these games and combine them to provide an allround positive experience that presents flexibility and encourages social interaction. Furthermore, as there is little competitive element to Geocaching it lacks the required characteristics that are needed to categorise it as a game rather than a general activity [9]. We therefore believe there is an opportunity for creating a LBG that builds upon the motivations of Geocaching but accommodates competitive play. To this end we have created Big Game Huntr which can be regarded as a toolset for user generated location based games. Big Game Huntr encourages emergent behaviour by promoting self-expressed design and creation of events [5], which can be shared within the community of registered players. The game premise requires participants to capture photographs of specified objects or actions to gain points and can be played either as a single group or amongst teams. The social capital generated within these games can also be fed into existing social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Activities such as Geocaching rely on fixed pre-defined locations, whereby physical caches are already established in a position for players to locate. Big Game Huntr introduces the flexibility for players to design and create events in Mark Lochrie Kate Lund Paul Coulton Infolab21, Lancaster University Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Mark Lochrie, Kate Lund, Paul Coulton