Enhanced reality live role playing

Live role-playing is a form of improvisational theatre played for the experience of the performers and without an audience. These games form a challenging application domain for ubiquitous technology. We discuss the design options for enhanced reality live role-playing and the role of technology in live role-playing games

Mobile Awareness

Awareness is a significant aid in understanding the activities of others, as well as creating a context of ones own activities. For example, being aware of each otherâs presence, or absence, provides important information for people who work together in collaboration. As the majority of awareness applications of today are stationary and dedicated to the tasks people are assumed to conduct at their desks, they are insufficient in mobile situations. In this thesis, we propose one solution to the problem: How can we, through information technology, pro-vide awareness support for mobile users? Inspired by existing ideas and appli-cations, we have drawn design implications for a novel approach to mobile awareness support. We propose the Interpersonal Awareness Device (IPAD) concept, which accommodates a class of information technology devices with the aim to strengthen awareness between people in a mobile setting. To explore the IPAD concept, we constructed a prototype, the Hummingbird. This is a small portable device designed to support awareness of presence between group members frequenting the same physical space. In doing this, we faced challenges in both conceptual and physical design issues. Our method incorporated a prototyping approach, allowing us to model our ideas and per-form hands-on evaluations of their validity during the entire development pro-cess. When we performed user evaluations of the Hummingbirds, the objective was to incorporate them into various real-life situations and study how they affect groups. Our results clearly show that they effectively contribute to the group membersâ awareness of each other, but also that they were used differently depending on the setting they were used in

Interfacing the Narrative Experience

INTRODUCTION I have a research interest in interfaces to games that are played, not on computers, but in the physical environment and that ultimately transform the world into a game board for computer games. Of specific interest to this agenda are activities that are narrative and social in their nature, not only in the interaction between people, but also in people's interaction with the physical world. Having spent time role-playing in online environments, in awe of their mechanisms for story generation and interactive game worlds, I still have to argue their failure to provide convincing and truly interactive environments for narrative experiences. Put differently, the unmistakable division between character and player, and between character environment and player environment in online role-playing, characteristically fail to induce a desirable level of suspension of disbelief. In contrast, live role-playing games offer particularly relevant examples of games where the physical wo

Live Role-Playing Games: Implications for Pervasive Gaming

Abstract. Live role-playing (LRP) games stand as powerful metaphorical models for the various digital and ubiquitous forms of entertainment that gather under the term pervasive games. Offering what can be regarded as the holy grail of interactive entertainment – the fully immersive experience – LRP games provide a tangible and distributed interface to a gaming activity that is emergent, improvised, collaboratively and socially created, and have the immediacy of personal experience. Supported by studies of LRP games, specifically aspects of costume, set design and props, we outline the interface culture specific to LRP and in which ways this culture may inform the design of pervasive games.

Supporting Group Collaboration with Inter-Personal Awareness Devices

or wearable device designed to support awareness and collaboration between people who are in the physical vicinity of each other. An IPAD is designed to supply constant awareness information to users in any location without relying on an underlying infrastructure. We have constructed one such device, the Hummingbird, which gives members of a group continuous aural and visual indication when other group members are close. We have used the Hummingbirds in several different situations to explore how they affect group awareness. These experiences indicated that the Hummingbird increased awareness between group members, and that it could complement other forms of communication such as phone and e-mail. In particular, we found the Hummingbird to be useful when a group of people were in an unfamiliar location, for instance during a trip, where no other communication support was available. We argue that IPADs such as the Hummingbird may provide important functions in modern work situations