Shapes, marbles and pebbles: template-based content creation for location-based games

This paper presents the TOTEM framework for supporting the content creation and structuring for location-based games. Shapes (templates), Marbles (instances) and Pebbles (raw data) build the conceptual background while two integrated tools support the overall workflow: TOTEM.Designer, a web-application that allows for desktop-based authoring and TOTEM.Scout, a mobile app that allows for in-situ authoring. The TOTEM framework supports different user roles and allows inexperienced users to collect and create content. All data can be exported and easily added to external games

A framework for the design and analysis of socially pervasive games

Pervasive games have the potential to create large social impacts on players and non-players alike. However, this can only happen when the game becomes integrated and accepted within a social community - or in other words, is socially adopted in its target environment. A socially pervasive game must also adapt to allow people to play at their own convenience. In my research I describe Powell’s Pervasive Play Lens (3PL), a framework for the design and analysis of socially pervasive games. 3PL is a powerful model that elaborates the magic circle to illustrate the concentric boundaries of play that surround socially pervasive games, helping designers understand when and how a person and a community might adopt a new pervasive game. This 3PL framework and theory have been applied to develop and refine Snag’em, a human scavenger hunt that has been applied to help students learn professional networking skills in several conferences over three years. I present my findings in a design research narrative that details the complex and rich social environments for Snag’em and the evolution of it’s design over several iterations. This narrative illustrates the application of 3PL and how designers can predict and measure how particular game elements create affordances that increase the acceptance, adoption, and adaptability of socially pervasive games

Code Red: Mobile, a live/synthetic test bed for firefighter training

The State of Victoria, Australia is prone to disastrous bushfires. The Country Fire Authority of Victoria is the principal bushfire response organisation. Local brigades of mainly volunteers learn how to fight fires through classroom learning and field exercises. The CODE RED: MOBILE test bed features Live/Synthetic elements, where ‘Live’ firefighters participate in an exercise where a virtual or ‘synthetic’ bushfire is delivered to them in the field on an iPad3 in the 7scenes game framework (7scenes.com). A model of the Hanging Rock Reserve, with a bushfire undergoing a wind change, was made in the Sandbox2 game editor (crytek.com). This was a model of the real world location of the exercise. Firefighters were divided into two groups: one group received the information about the bushfire’s progress as dynamic-static movies, and the other group saw static screenshots from the same movies. Both were annotated with further information. This media supported with maps and textual information, was delivered at the real world location of three stages of the bushfire undergoing a wind change at the Hanging Rock Reserve. This experiment showed that either form of media was suitable for training firefighters in a mobile learning and decision making exercise using a mobile device. The participants carried GPS and their movements were tracked. Spatio-temporal analysis was used to detect problems with the design of the exercise, and to find participants with aberrant behaviour or difficulties with the exercise. Fractal analysis of the tracks uncovered five Domains of Spatial Scale. Three of the domains at different spatial scales revealed where participants were walking through open areas in relatively straight paths, in another domain they had to find ways through gateways and over bridges, and at another they were meeting the boundaries of the exercise and turning sharply back, or recrossing their tracks. This data is valuable for the analysis and design Live/Synthetic exercises: at various spatial scales particular exercises can be made more difficult or easier to complete depending on the fitness or expertise of the participants. The research proposes that emergency organisations would benefit from Live/Synthetic exercises using mobile devices, for joint or individual training of firefighters and Incident Management Teams