avouris eee 2012b
DESCRIPTION
On Design of Location-based Games for Learning (Invited Talk at EEE Workshop, Barcelona,TRANSCRIPT
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On Designing Location-based
Games for Learning
Nikolaos AvourisUniversity of Patras, Greece
EEE Project Workshop,Univ. Pompeu Fabra,
Barcelona, September 12, 2012
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The UPatras HCI Group
• Activity: Emphasis on Interactive Software Design and Evaluation
• Size: 15+ researchers and support group
• Infrastructure: Tools for interactive applications design, development and evaluation (Usability Laboratory )
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Location-based games• Multiplayer games in which the play is affected
by the players’ location. They involve embedding location specific and contextual information in physical spaces, so to create an interlinked physical and digital space . This is achieved through the use of mobile devices, wireless and sensing technologies.
• Alternative terms used are hybrid reality games(emphasis in the interlinking of physical and digital realities), augmented reality games, or pervasive games (emphasis on the extension of game in temporal, spatial and social dimensions).
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Location-based games & learningDe Souza & Delacruz (2006) claim that location-
based games facilitate learning :• Social learning
– Multiuser activities content is created through communication and collaboration
• Experiential learning– The game provides opportunities for action and
reflection on action• Situated learning
– Activity in relevant physical location
term used= augmented reality games
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Location-based games & learningSchrier (2006) proposed an evaluation
framework for location-based games based on so called 21st century learning skills:
http://www.p21.org/
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Location based games architecture
user profiles, historical datauser profiles, historical data
Object jObject j Object iObject i
Run-time supportRun-time support
Physical Space
Game EngineGame Engine Virtualinformation
space
Virtualinformation
space
1 2
(1) Interaction between players(2) Interaction with objects in physical space(3) Interaction with game engine
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From [Avouris&Yiannoutsou 2012]
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Interactivity modalities for location-based games
• QR codes/ NFC scanning• Image recognition • Gestures• Location-based instructions encoding
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Scanning interaction modalities
QR codes (quick response codes)
(From Derby Museum, Connection to QRPedia)
NFCtags (Near Field
Communication)Source: NFC at Museum of London, Nokia (Youtube)
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Gesture interaction modalities
Scan an image (GoogleGoggles)
Source: Google Goggles at the Getty Museum (Youtube)
Gesture-based interaction
Source: RExplorer(Youtube)
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Location-based instructions encoding for progressing narration
http://www.whaiwhai.com/en
• Ruyi from
whaiwhai(youtube, TGR)
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Location-based games spaces
the game-virtual-physicalspaces are linked through technology
Physical space
Virtual (digital) space
Narrative space or game space
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Location-based games: examples
• The most cited (first generation) location based games: Savannah [Benford, 04], [Benford, 05a],
[Benford 05b], FeedingYoshi [Bell, 06], Mobilegame[Schwabe 05], [Göth, 04], UncleRoy [Benford, 06], Camelot[Verhaegh, 06], [Soute, 07], [Soute, 10], CitiTag [Vogiazou, 07],
[Vogiazou, 05], Relive the Revolution (RTR), [Schrier 06],
[Schrier 05], CityExplorer [Matyas 07], [Schlieder 06], Hitchers[Drozd 06], Mogi [Licoppe 08], [Licoppe 05], Jindeo [Licoppe 06],
Riot! [Blythe 06], Frequency1550 [Raessens 07],
MobileHunters [Lonthoff 07] and AlienRevolt [De Souza08].
From [Avouris&Yiannoutsou 2012]
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Location Based Games Classification
Ludic traditionTreasure HuntsAction gamesRole Playing Games
Pedagogic traditionParticipatory SimulatorsSituated Language LearningEducational action games
Hybrid traditionMuseum GamesMobile fiction
From [Avouris&Yiannoutsou 2012]
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Location-based games: examples• The most cited (first generation) location
based games: Savannah [Benford, 04], [Benford, 05a],
[Benford 05b], FeedingYoshi [Bell, 06], Mobilegame[Schwabe 05], [Göth, 04], UncleRoy [Benford, 06], Camelot[Verhaegh, 06], [Soute, 07], [Soute, 10], CitiTag [Vogiazou, 07],
[Vogiazou, 05], Relive the Revolution (RTR), [Schrier 06],
[Schrier 05], CityExplorer [Matyas 07], [Schlieder 06],
Hitchers [Drozd 06], Mogi [Licoppe 08], [Licoppe 05], Jindeo[Licoppe 06], Riot! [Blythe 06], Frequency1550 [Raessens
07], MobileHunters [Lonthoff 07] and AlienRevolt [DeSouza 08].
From [Avouris&Yiannoutsou 2012]
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Savannah [Benford, 04], [Benford, 05]
Role playing simulation game, players move in the Savannah, try to survive as a lion
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Savannah [Benford, 04], [Benford, 05]
Reflection phase interface
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Location-based simulation games: Environmental DetectivesA place-based game created byMITtargeted at high school anduniversity students. Studentsplayed the role of environmentalengineers presented with an environmental emergency. Thegoal was to locate the source of aspill, identify the responsible party, design a remediation plan, andbrief the authorities on any healthand legal risks -all within two hours
http://education.mit.edu/ar/ed.html
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Situated Language Learning HELLO [Liu &Chu, 2010]
The students played a game in which they used a mobile device to practice listening and speaking during their free time, to perform a treasure hunt game in the campus.
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Educational action games: MobileMath [Wijers, 2010]
• Like an action game: This game involves teams of players who compete on a playing field, with the goal to cover as much area as possible by constructing squares, rectangles or parallelograms using mobile phones with GPS receivers. This is done by physically walking to and clicking on each vertex (point).
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Games with not explicit pedagogical goal (e.g. in sites of culture) Ghost of a Chance
• Role Playing Game, Players were asked to interpret weekly challenges by creating and mailing artifacts to the Museum.
• Entered into the museum’s collection, these items represented a player-generated gallery collection that unlocked further clues in the game’s narrative.
http://ghostsofachance.com/
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Ghost of a Chance
Smithsonian American Art MuseumUser-submitted imagesfrom the "Ghost of a Chance" interactive multimedia game atthe Smithsonian American Art Museum
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Harnessing the social power: Crowdsourcing games
• Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing taskstraditionally performed by specific individualsto an undefined large group of people orcommunity (crowd) through an open call
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Freeze Tag!
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Crowd sourcing tasks• Stating preferences, voting on interesting
objects, comments etc.• Tagging: unstructured text associated with
objects• Debunking, criticizing: arguing against other
peoples’ ideas, tags etc.• Recording personal stories: personal
memories associated to a museum object• Linking objects or categorising: grouping of
objects or associating them with themes (e.g. card sorting, museumscrabble)
[M.Ridge, Everyone wins: Crowdsourcing games & Museums, MuseumNext, May 2011]
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Crowdsourcing games• They are fun and engaging• They are productive• Have high learning potential with sense of
ownership of new knowledge (information and skills)
• The museums learn too and adapt to their audience
• Help players acquire, test and master new skills
[M.Ridge, Everyone wins: Crowdsourcing games & Museums, MuseumNext, May 2011]
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Ookl tell your own story
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ookl: citizen curator
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Location-based Games
Design Guidelines
[Ardito et al. 2011]
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Collaborative study of U.Patras and U.Bari 2010-2011 (network TwinTide)
• Followed a ‘case study methodology’• Analysis of published papers of 3 mobile
games• Identified game design issues (317 issues)• Through focus group analysis the issues were
reduced to 94 related to design of location-based games and learning
• Card sorting techniques for grouping the issues in 5 design dimensions
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Design Dimensions (Ardito et al. 2011)
• Game General Design, which refers to issues related to the overall game design process;
• Control/Flexibility, which is a basic dimension of system usability, that with respect to the games considered in this paper, also refers to helping players to be aware of the effects of their choices on the game execution;
• Engagement, which informs on how to provide an experience that captivates the players, by providing hints on how to structure the game, which tools to adopt, etc.;
• Educational Aspects, which informs on interweaving of learning content into the game context, so that the game can have a valid learning influence on the players;
• Social Aspects, which concerns the interaction among the players, role allocation etc. (the underlying assumption is that social activity, e.g. competition, can act as a motivational factor).
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#1. Game General Design
Consider to include a game master (e.g. tutor, supervisor, coordinator) and her role: e.g. enforcing the rules, narrating the story
1.8
Consider to include activities/events that are not part of the game, but happen in the real world (e.g. the ceremony of change of the guard at noon)
1.7
Consider to extend the game experience beyond the game session (e.g. participating in a web community)1.6
Consider the social conventions of the place (e.g. not laughing in a church)1.5
Perform formative evaluations and pilot studies to check if tasks’difficulty is appropriate for the intended players1.4
Create a multidisciplinary design team (including e.g. HCI, cultural heritage, educational experts)1.3
Minimize changes to the physical place (e.g. modifications to the physical structure, installation of special equipment like projectors, big displays, etc.)
1.2
Exploit metaphors from real-life games, activities, stories1.1
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#4. Educational Aspects
Include a debriefing phase after the game to allow players to reflect on the game experience. Design it as an individual/collaborative game/activity that supports players to clarify and consolidate the game experience
4.5
Balance between competition and knowledge acquisition. Too much competition may have a negative impact on knowledge acquisition
4.4
Tasks should require players to link areas, locations, physical objects to concepts, topics, etc. 4.3
Game should emphasize either vertical or horizontal exploration of a place/topic, i.e., deeply exploring a limited space (or few objects or a specific topic) vs. more superficially exploring a broad space (or many objects or several topics)
4.2
Consider to include a pre-game activity to prepare players (e.g. some lessons in classroom explaining the historical context in which the game is set)
4.1
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Validation of the guidelines: The Pompeii Design Workshop
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The Pompeii Design Workshop
A location-based game design workshop structured in order to follow the use of guidelines and other background designers’ knowledge for structuring design activity of location-based games
http://hci.ece.upatras.gr/pompeiigame/
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The Pompeii Design Workshop
• The participants were organized in groups of 3 to 5. Each group worked out the idea anddescription of design for a location-based gamefor the site of Pompeii. They used theworksheet and supporting background material.• The workshop so far has been run in 4 cases in Greece, Italy and France. •26 (3 to 14) designs were produced during these sessions. [Sintoris et al. forthcoming, 2013]
http://hci.ece.upatras.gr/pompeiigame/
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The Pompeii Design WorkshopMaterialOne instruction card for the participantsOne map of Pompeii, showing the location of siximportant placesA description of the six places, in the form of text withphotos (print on single-sided A3 sheet)Two concepts cards, that describe in some detailconcepts that might be intersting learning topicsA Worksheet, where the designers record their design. The instructions printed on the worksheet are intentedas guides and one should insist on "filling" them outwith vigor.
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Pompeii workshop: The worksheet• Title Have you thought about a title? • What are the components of the game. The actions of the players, the rules
and mechanisms. The tools the players have, the aims and behaviours. As anexample think of scrabble: The tiles with the letters, the points according torarity of a letter, the board, tha randomness of the tiles.
• The objective• What is the aim of the game? What will you explain to the players that they
have to do? How will the player know about success?• The rules What are the basic rules? How are the guide the game to the end?
Are there roles? Is there a narrative?• Use of tools & technology How will the smartphones be used? As
information screens, communication, barcode scanners, GPS, maps, radar, compass, flashlight...?
• Mechanisms How are the rules enforced? How is the game paced? Is thereimmersion in the atmosphere of the game? What about playercommunication? Awareness of the actions of the other players? Competion? Cooperation? Deception?
• Location and real-world objects How are they involved in the game? Howare the players interacting with them?
• Behaviours and aesthetic result How do you expect the game to evolveover time? How will the players feel playing it?
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Design of location based games
Reflection on our own experience:
• MuseumScrabble – museum game
• InvisibleCity RvS – city game
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MuseumScrabble: linking exhibits
• Task to build connections between exhibits and themes/concepts that can be linked to more than one exhibit with different strength according to its relevance to the theme
• The concepts may be embeded in a narrative that the players have to follow
• Game is played by groups playing against each other
• Players fight for resources (exhibits) as they capture the exhibits not allowing the opponents to use it.
http://hci.ece.upatras.gr/museumscrabble/
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MuseumScrabblelink exhibits to themes/concepts
[Youtube: museumscrabble]
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Design rationale
• MuseumScrabble is based on the idea of thepopular Scrabble word game. In Scrabble, theaim is to arrange tiles (letters) in meaningfulsequences (words).
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From a board game to location-based game
• In MuseumScrabble, the constructs letters that can be arranged to form words, have been replaced by topics and exhibits. They can be linked using special sentences, the hints.
• A topic is a concept or field of knowledge or category, related to parts of the museum collection or the themes of the museum. Examples are geography, feminism, religion, art etc.
• Each topic contains several hints. A hint is a short sentence that can be applied to exhibits in the museum related to the topic.
• The challenge to the players is to link an exhibit to a relevanttopic by discovering which exhibit fits the particular topic-hint pair in a meaningful way.
Evaluation of MuseumScrabble: [Sintoris et al. 2010]
49http://hci.ece.upatras.gr/bms/
• New game flow• New narrative• Different kind of
exhibits – historic period
• Strong link to non exhibited objects
New version: Benaki Museum Scrabble
[Karpathiotaki et al. 2012]
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53Flow of Mafia game
54Flow of RvS game
55Flow of RvS game
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à Learning
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Adding digital content in the city
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Real-world testing
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Mission tasks may be contributed through a web site (e.g. a school teacher can design a specific version of the game for a school party)
contribution of tasks/riddles by the players
[Sintoris et al. 2011 ]
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Game content editor (google+ app)
Rubén Muñoz and Christos Sintoris, 2012
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Active participation of the public is a mission for institutions of culture
Nina Simon: The Participatory Museum
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Player-created/adapted Games
By developing their own Games students canshow what they have learned, and they canalso “explore various hypotheses” using thegame (Klopfer, 2008).Director view vs Actor view in Frequency 1550(Akkerman et al. 2009)User configuration of game elements is a tool for learning (Yiannoutsou et al. 2011).
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New authoring tools to involve players in game creation adaptatione.g. Taleblazer
• TaleBlazer is a new rich Internet application from MIT's STEP lab toauthor smartphone location-basedaugmented reality (AR) games. For location-based AR game building.
• Features :– Visual blocks-based scripting– Interactive data layers and sampling -
create models for player exploration anddiscovery of scientific topics.
– Conditional dialog creator - interact withcharacters in new ways
http://education.mit.edu/projects/taleblazer
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The way ahead
• Patterns for migration of traditional games to location-based games
• Narrative dimension in contextualizing digital space and linking to physical space
• User participation in game design and adaptation, methods and tools, the social trail
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refsC. Ardito, R. Lanzilotti, D. Raptis, C. Sintoris, N. Yiannoutsou, N. Avouris, M.F. Costabile, (2011).
"Designing pervasive games for learning", Proceedings, HCI International 2011, July 2011, Orlando, Florida, USA. LNCS-6770 (PART 2) pp. 99-108, Springer.
Sintoris, C., Dimitriou, S., Yiannoutsou, N., Avouris, N.: Invisible City: Rebels Vs Spies. http://www.webcitation.org/5xE2OsK8U (2010)
Sintoris C., Stoica A., Papadimitriou I., Yiannoutsou N., Komis V., Avouris N. (2010). MuseumScrabble: Design of a mobile game for children's interaction with a digitally augmented cultural space, International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction, 2(2), 53-71, April-June 2010.
de Souza e Silva, A., Delacruz, G.C.: Hybrid Reality Games Reframed: Potential Uses inEducational Contexts. Games and Culture 1(3), 231–251 (2006)
Avouris N., Yiannoutsou, N., (2012), A review of mobile location-based games for learn-ingacross physical and virtual spaces, Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol 18.
Schrier, K.L. “Using Augmented Reality Games to Teach 21st Century Skills.” ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Educators Program. SIGGRAPH ’06. New York, USA: ACM, 2006.
Yiannoutsou, N. & Avouris, N. (2010). Reflections on use of location-based playful narra-tives forlearning. Proc. of Mobile Learning (pp. 149–156). Porto, Portugal: Iadis Press.
Yiannoutsou, N., Avouris, N., (2012). Mobile games in Museums : from learning through gameplay to learning through game design, ICOM Education, vol. 23 (2012).
Huizenga, J., Admiraal, W., Akkerman, S., & Dam, G. T., Mobile game-based learning insecondary education: engagement, motivation and learning in a mobile city game. Journalof Computer Assisted Learning, Vol. 25, (4), 2009, pp. 332-344.
Klopfer, E. (2008) Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Yiannoutsou N., Sintoris C., Avouris N, End User configuration of game elements: Game construction as learning activity, IS-EUD 2011
Akkerman S. et al, Storification in History Education: A mobile game in and about medieval Amsterdam, Computers & Education 52 (2009)
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ευχαριστώ
hci.ece.upatras.gr/avouris