Interweaving mobile games with everyday life

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Interweaving mobile games with everyday life
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Introduction

• Impact of embedding play into daily lives
• Location based game
• Long-term game
• Wide-area game
• WiFi technology Coverage and Security
  characteristics

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Ubiquitous computing

• Computing present everywhere
• Integrate computer into everyday life
• Replace the current notion of desktop computers.
• Remote controlled lighting, automated sprinklers,
  automated refrigerator

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Seamful design

• Key goal for ubiquitous computing
• Impact of variability and uncertainty
• Remove, manage, hide, reveal
• Exploit, to serve a specific purpose
• Treasure, an example of seamful design.

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Design of the game

• Mobile multiplayer game
• Players use system intermittently
• Played over long period
• Played in teams of size 4
• Explore public and private networks

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Rules of the game

• Collect points by feeding Yoshis
• Each Yoshi desires five fruits
• Players first collect seeds from Yoshis
• Plant these seeds in plantations
• More points for feeding several fruits
  simultaneously.

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Yoshi looks like
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The plantations
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Count of fruits and basket
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Swapping fruits
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Technology

• Runs on 802.11 equipped PDAs
• Yoshis are secured wireless points
• Plantations are unsecured wireless access points
• Manually upload scores
• Swap fruits between players

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Game setup

• 4 teams played in 3 different urban areas
• Glasgow1, Glasgow2, Derby, Nottingham
• Played the game from Tuesday through Monday
• Varied relations amongst team members
• Varied professions
• Compensation for participation as well as for the
  winning team

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Modes of play

• Change patterns of everyday life
• Augment daily routines
• Most successful teams employed both these
  techniques

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Impact on patterns of everyday life

• Advantage of playing at work
• Hampered performance, since players enjoyed
  playing
• Playing during commute
• Planning activities keeping the game in mind

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Friendship and collaboration

• Scores depend on
• Collaboration
• Time spent with team members
• Exchanging information with team members
• Important aspects of successfully embedding the
  game into daily life
• Extent of encounters between teammates
• Managing interactions with non-players

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Impact of location

• Game played in varied locations- business
  districts, cities and suburban areas
• Availability of WiFi
• Easier to play in business districts
• Temporal and spatial variation
• Location based problems

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Conclusion

• First detailed study of long-term location based
  game
• More qualitative data
• Scoring depends on ability to fit the game into
  everyday life
• Evidence of viability of seamful design

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Future work

• Scores depend on characteristics of environment
  (on luck..??)
• Improvement in the level of skill involved
• Make the game time-limited
• Limit the opportunities to harvest and feed
• Exhausting plantations after a while
• Run games in areas of similar WiFi distributions

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Questions

• Any other conditions that might affect the game?
• Effect on socialization?
• Uploading scores manually?
• Setting up a team game more difficult than
  individual games?