Burgomaster and Pedro - A Pervasive Multi-Player Game for Rural Tourism

Michael SchmitzDFKI GmbH

Saarbrucken, Germanymichael.schmitz@dfki.de

Mohammad Mehdi MoniriDepartment of Computer Science

Saarland UniversitySaarbrucken, Germany

momo5001@stud.uni-saarland.de

Abstract

Pervasive Games have the potential to add new qual-ities to otherwise possibly tedious or uninspiring areasand let users interact with their environment in novel andenjoyable ways. The spreading of wireless communicationinfrastructures and low cost programmable mobile devicesequipped with positioning systems and cameras span alarge and growing open playground for pervasive gamingapplications. In this work we describe the game Burgomasterand Pedro, the result of an interdisciplinary project for thestate Ministry of Environment to promote development andtourism of rural areas. It is a multiplayer game that requiresits players to explore villages in order to �nd real and virtualobjects, which have to be delivered to given destinations.It also allows to hide from or seek other players, sinceobjects that are being delivered can be stolen by competitors.GPS positioning, wireless communication and visual markerrecognition are the key technologies in this game that isdesigned for playful engagement with rural environments.

1. Introduction

The Ministry of Environment of the Saarland statein Germany faces a common problem of several statesin the country: Villages or rural environments in generalare becoming less attractive as a place of residence andparticularly younger generations tend to move to urbanareas. As a result, buildings remain empty, demographicissues arise due to the age-shift and sustaining infrastructuresuch as public transport become relatively more expensivefor local governments.

Different approaches over the past decade attemptedto improve quality of life in and attractiveness of villages.Some of the main goals were to increase the identi�cationof the citizens with their home village and to establishrecognition and acknowledgement from outsiders. Mostof the activities so far involved architectural measuresand landscaping, such as improving and extendingthe marketplace or renovating notable buildings withlongstanding traditions. The work described in this paper isrooted in an ongoing measure that approaches this problem

�eld from a different angle: It generally aims at virtualsolutions that augment existing areas with an additionallayer of new qualities, such that resources are not bound toone location (useful if a measure turns out to be ineffective)and to provide more �exible means for solutions that mightalso appeal to a younger target audience.

There are many digital tourist guides that providecontext-aware information to tourists and visitors [2], [7].Some believe that integrating gaming experience in physicalspace adds another dimension to the tourist experience [8].We therefore utilized the so called Pervasive Game Flowmodel [4] to reach our tourism related objectives, whichresulted in the prototype of a novel multiplayer game. Webelieve that our game is suitable for visitors/tourists, sinceit will familiarize the players with the village, its importantbuildings and potentially also inhabitants, whereas citizenscan achieve enjoyable experiences as well, because theirknowledge about the local conditions will enable them toplay the game on a different level.

Pervasive Games are now being researched for acouple of years now with the PerGames symposium 1

as the main event for the community. Besides increasingresearch efforts, which is for instance re�ected by theIntegrated Project on Pervasive Gaming (IPerG)2 projectthat is part of the EU funded Sixth Framework Programme,there is also a growing economic attention by the industry.Other prototypes of pervasive, serious games within thecontext of tourism are [3] and the well known REXplorer[1], where players encounter ghosts to learn about thehistorical background of the city. A novel component isthe interaction metaphor of casting a spell that requiresthe player to wave the mobile device in certain patternsthrough the air. This project is similar to our efforts sinceit also combines gaming concepts with touristic activities,but the focus of our project included the multiplayer aspect,the interaction between users and geographic environmentand a gaming experience that still adheres after the game isalready played several times, such that players will promote

1. http://www.pergames.de2. http://www.pervasive-gaming.org

2009 Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications

978-0-7695-3588-3/09 $25.00 © 2009 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/VS-GAMES.2009.37

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2009 Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications

978-0-7695-3588-3/09 $25.00 © 2009 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/VS-GAMES.2009.37

205

2009 Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications

978-0-7695-3588-3/09 $25.00 © 2009 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/VS-GAMES.2009.37

205

2009 Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications

978-0-7695-3588-3/09 $25.00 © 2009 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/VS-GAMES.2009.37

205

it and possibly return with friends.

In the remains of this paper we describe thegame concept, our prototypical implementation and �rstexperiences with the game.

2. Burgomaster and Pedro

2.1. Game Concept

The basic game principle behind Burgomaster andPedro is similar to a classical treasure hunt: The overallgoal of the game for each player is to gather more pointsthan others, by ful�lling missions from either Burgomasteror Pedro (see �gure 1). The points can be earned by �ndingan object, delivering it to the speci�ed destination or stealingfrom other players. At the very beginning of the game theplayers will move to their individual start points, equippedwith smartphones. Now, a round starts with the choicebetween two random mission, either from Burgomaster orPedro. The Burgomaster provides missions that concern thehistory of the village, while Pedro's tasks deal with currentevents, people and the environment, such that player's canchose their missions according to their personal interest. Themission statement describes the object, the destination anda short story around it that relates to the village. Dependingon the total amount of players, each player can have up totwo competitors, seeking to accomplish the same task. Nowthe smartphone's display shows the location of the object,the player and her competitors on the map and the gamestarts. Players can hide themselves from their competitorsby moving slower than a given speed threshold. Whenevera player collects an object, competitors will see on theirdisplay that this player is virtually carrying the item. Nowthe competitors goal is to steal the object from the carrier bystaying within a 10 meters radius of her for several seconds.If an object changes its possessor, the new owner will beinvulnerable to stealing for 20 seconds, after which he willbe the new aim of the competing players until eventuallyone will reach the destination. There are as many objects asthe number of players in this game, and the game is over ifall the objects have been delivered to their destinations.

A design bene�t of Burgomaster and Pedro is thatwe can link the game story to the local environment andhistory of a region, such that the players can learn aboutspeci�c buildings, places and their background, whichcan be controlled by appropriate mission descriptions. Byplaying this game, a tourist can become familiar with themain sights of a village or other historically relevant places.It is also feasible to include local shops into the gameand promote local specialties, e.g. by providing a task that

Figure 1: Two screenshots with mission statements (German).

requires to buy a piece of the local cheese in a certain shop.

2.2. Game Architecture

Each player carries a smartphone with a built-incamera and GPS receiver to provide the main requirementsof our game implementation: positioning, ability to readvisual tags and an internet connection.

The implementation is based on client/server architec-ture and the communication between components is realizedusing GPRS over GSM network. The clients run on thesmartphones carried by the players and handle the gameinteractions, while the server hosts the game logic, receivesdata from and sends instructions to the clients. The smart-phone's camera is used whenever a player wants to pick upor deliver an object, in this case the player takes a picture ofan ARToolKitPlus tag [10], which is attached to immobile

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Figure 2: A player �collecting� a mission target with the smart-phone camera.

Figure 3: Screenshot of the server interface showing the currentgame state.

objects or buildings in the village (see �gure 2). Each ofthese tags has an individual identi�cation number which isassociated to the start or end point of a task. The serverregisters all relevant tag readings and position changes fromclients and distributes the new game states to all involvedplayers, basically the direct competitors.

The server not only exchanges the appropriateinformation with the players but also displays the usefulinformation to game spectators online. The display ofthe server consists of four parts: map, graph, news andplayer-states (see Figure 3). On the map the viewers cansee the positions of players and the start or end point of thecurrent task for each player. The graph shows the playersand their selected tasks, so if two players have selected thesame task, there will be two incoming edges from each ofthem. The news part displays important events from thegame �eld, e.g. that an object has been delivered or stolen.The player-states part shows the individual information

Figure 4: Game client showing map with player and target position,mission status and current score.

according to each player, such as the sum of points gainedby the player or if she is currently carrying an object.

In addition to the visual output of the game (map, mis-sion brie�ngs etc., see �gure 4) we added speech synthesison the client side that enables the player to keep track ofgame events without looking at the display, which we believeis useful, since players have to observe their environmentthroughout the game..

3. Experiences and Conclusion

We informally tested a prototype of the system witha group of students during the development phase on theuniversity campus, focusing on functionality and stabilityof the overall system. The participants were further askedto comment on the playability of the game: In generalthey enjoyed the game and are keen on playing a laterinstance of it with more people. They were fond of agame that involves physical activity and exploration ofthe environment with several other players. The graphicalpresentation and multi-modal feedback also seem to bebene�cial aspects. A main problem we faced during thetests was inaccurate GPS information, received by theintegrated GPS receivers in our test environment, whichmade it dif�cult to provide exact positions on the map.Using external GPS devices already increased the accuracy,but further improvements on the localization algorithm,e.g. as in [9], will be bene�cial as well. Certainly this userfeedback only indicates positive facets and potential areas oftechnical enhancements, but more formal evaluations withthe particular target group and environment will be required.

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In our �rst design we intended to use heart ratemonitor to observe pulse rate of the players during thegame for the invisibility mode, thus players with a lowpulse turn invisible on the competitors map, such thata player could alternatively try to succeed by sneakingthrough everyone else. We assume that this feature wouldgive the gamers a totally new feeling of the game andpossibly higher engagement. While other game researchersachieved intriguing results using heart rate monitors forgame interaction [6] [5], at the time being such deviceswere either too expensive for a large scale multiplayer setupor just not compatible with standard smartphones. Thereforewe decided to stay with off-the-shelf hardware and leavethis extension open for future versions of the system. Thenext step would be to deploy the game in a nearby villageto evaluate its potentials in a more open and real scenariowith user groups that we intended to address with this game.

Acknowledgments

This project is partially funded by the Saarland StateMinistry of Environment. The authors would further like tothank Paul Goletzko for the design of graphical elementsof the user interface.

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