Learning About Cultural Heritage by Playing Geogames

Context-aware and location-based information systems with conventional or AR visualization are a well-proven means for enhancing the experience of a tourist visiting a cultural heritage site. A less explored way for achieving immersion in the spatial environment is provided by location-based games which offer the additional advantage of being entertaining. In this paper we describe a subclass of location-based games, Geogames, which are characterized by a specific spatio-temporal structuring of the game events. We show that the spatio-temporal structuring permits to easily integrate educational content into the course of the game, making Geogames an ideal medium for edutainment. We report on our experiences with using the game GeoTicTacToe for teaching school children. Furthermore, we present a didactical workflow and four example didactical patterns that permit to exploit the edutainment potential of Geogames. The outcome of two empirical case studies indicates that enriching Geogames with educational content does not take the fun out of the game.