- Jason Linder: Associated with the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, United States
- Wendy Wu: Also associated with the same college as Dr. Linder. Has also collaborated with several other researchers in a variety of other topics including robotics, computer visualization, and animation.
Summary
The interest of this paper lies in the concept of alternate reality gaming, in which elements form the real world are pulled into a game and vice versa. The main reasoning for exploring this aspect in gaming is largely due to the use of interactive software as a form of entertainment that means something more than inputs vs. feedback. Some of the examples that were cited in the paper were the use of alternate reality gaming in education, military training, and political/social expression. This paper sought to investigate player feedback in how these elements of alternate reality gaming can improve their experience.
The main experiment was divided into five different parts, each with a different game prototype (all called "probes"), with the last being a full-fledged title developed with the results in mind. The first type was a city simulation concept that would task players with adding buildings via taking pictures of existing ones around the subjects' real life and evaluating how these buildings would work in their perceived cities. The second experiment involved having a game character improve via the performing of real-life activities, and evaluating whether these activities in any way were heightened in enjoyment by involving the game. The third experiment was set in an office setting with cubicles, as players were tasked with moving from one end of a hallway to another and recording the top people in three different categories: fastest, most points, most trips. The fourth experiment revolved around real-life office cubicles becoming "territory" that one could win and sell off for virtual profit via the completion of a variety of different tasks, from answering personal questions to performing helpful activities around the office to doing silly things as well. Player interaction and their reactions were recorded and evaluated.
The final game in the study was a much more elaborate title named "Forest". This game was developed in collaboration with with the San Francisco non-profit organization Friends of the Urban Forest. In this game, players were asked to become involved in Friends of the Urban Forest with the game app as part of a complement to the experience, with people earning virtual "leaves" (the game currency) via a variety of activities including documenting existing trees around the San Francisco area by taking pictures of them, identifying what kind they are, volunteering in efforts to plant new trees, among cite potential locations for the planting of said trees among other activities. A secondary part of the game that was conceptualized but not actually implemented was one in which the same app would let players spend the earned leaves to place the trees that the player "collected" (or rather, documented in real life) into a virtual forest, with the player required to keep said forest pruned and maintained. The concept was proposed to potential users and they were able to try out the completed app to give feedback.
Related Work
Currently, concepts of alternate-reality gaming have been researched thoroughly for a variety of different topics. The ten most relevant papers in this field include:
- Evaluating enjoyment within alternate reality games
- Participation, collaboration and spectatorship in an alternate reality game
- Alternate reality games: a realistic approach to gaming on campus?
- WeQuest: scalable alternate reality games through end-user content authoring
- An enjoyment metric for the evaluation of alternate reality games
- Designing alternate reality games
- Designing the future of collaborative workplace systems: lessons learned from a comparison with alternate reality games
- The ABC's of ARGs: Alternate Reality Games for Learning
- Alternate reality games and groupwork
- Game design for promoting counterfactual thinking
The work in the papers that were presented above shows a considerable interest in observing the concepts behind and reactions to Alternate-Reality Games. It can also be observed that several papers contained different applications that the researchers perceived would be useful in their respective fields, such as education, authoring, and collaboration. The related work that was found highlights that while this concept of the blending between Alternate-Reality Gaming and the idea of Gamification is not entirely new, it is still in its infancy and its effects continue to be explored by researchers constantly.
Evaluation
The evaluation of these experimental games were entirely subjective. There wasn't any attempt to present findings in an objective or empirical way, and no graphs of results or interpretations were provided to make up any data that was gathered. The authors seemed to be most focused toward how the people playing these games reacted and how receptive they were of the ideas that were presented to them.
The first game, the city simulation title, saw people interested in taking photos of buildings that they personally enjoyed, even though there tended to be no feedback as to how the buildings being cited would come together to create a cohesive city. The authors attributed this seeming lack of focus by the fact that the proposed game itself had no game play of its own. They postulated that people would create a more focused experience in general should a game be built around this concept, but they concluded that people were definitely interested in creating a city populated by buildings that they collected information about.
The second game, the adventure title with upgrades directly linked to real-world activities, had a relatively more mixed reception that varied in feedback depending on the activities that the players chose themselves. Some players showed a significant interest in performing everyday activities by pretending in the back of their mind that they were themselves the character. Boarding the subway as part of a "stealth" mission, for instance, would make players feel playfully sneaky even if they made no change in their outward behavior. By contrast, players who chose to perform tasks like reading newspaper articles would find the link between the game and real life considerably more detached, leading to a lessening of the enjoyment.
The third game, the office game surrounding the traversal of a hallway, proved popular with people to the point where the players were focused on the metric that was the "fastest trip". Eventually, people would sprint down the hallway and other people in the office would join in. Once it was observed that certain people held unbeatable records, the players moved on to the other two (most points and most trips) to populate that leaderboard.
The fourth game, the second office game surrounding the concept of territorial control of cubicles, was found very intriguing by many players and considered more popular than the third. People would often discuss strategies among themselves and would rarely outright lie to the computer to get more points, although some did skirt around the rules (questions involving posting of passwords, for instance, would have players post their password only to change their account password seconds later).
The Forest game that was developed in collaboration with Friends of the Urban Forest was found popular as well among people who were interested in the local flora as well as the people who were already involved. Overall, researchers found a general positive reception to all four of the probes as well as the Forest game, with some more successful than others, but it heightened the interest of the researchers in pursuing this concept more in the future.
Discussion
I personally think that the idea of alternate-reality gaming is one of the most entertaining and has the most potential of all types of gaming. Marrying the ideas between the virtual and the real can, for instance, be used to a strong effect when applied to education, as many students feel detached between schoolwork and their life outside of it. Alternate reality gaming can help change this perception and educate children much more easily through much more engaging ways.
The concept of the Forest game I also found to be very intriguing, in that an app mixed with its own FarmVille-style game has great potential in helping people become involved with local charities and non-profits. I believe that this idea should be further explored with anyone who seeks to find increased interest and participation among a particular population.
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