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LEGs offer a broad palette of fresh game experiences.
Game designers can offer players dramatically different user experiences by
varying any of these aspects of LEG design: The targeted aspect of
the player's location:
- Paying attention to the players' relative locations could
create opportunities for face-to-face social connection.
- Tracking the player's proximity to specific real world
locations could make the glory of the location part of the game.
- Focusing instead on proximity to virtual entities could
foster the player's imagination during a fantasy game.
- Puzzle games could make play from the player's repeated
visits to the same locations.
- A game could make the player's location the focus of the entire
game, or one feature in a larger game.
The game's use of real-world space and time:
- Vacationers might be willing to commit significant blocks of
time and distance to LEGs that help them have fun exploring a
new city.
- College students might prefer a game that they can play in the
time and space between class.
- Fitness-conscious players might choose games that reward
them for breaking a sweat.
The junction between real and fantasy worlds:
- A history-buff LEG might make use of landmark buildings to
help the player to imagine a real-world location as it was in
the past.
- A fantasy-world exploration LEG might populate the virtual
world randomly with characters and allow real-world happenstance to
determine whether and when the player meets them.
- Players might populate their virtual world with objects
that they create and share.
The expected level of GPS performance:
- High levels of GPS precision and accuracy allow a smaller
physical game scale.
- Slow or infrequent updates require a larger physical game
scale.
- Because it takes time to travel the real world, larger games
mean slower gameplay.
Further Reading
Karen Schrier, in
Student Postmortem: Reliving the Revolution notes the "authentic
experience" had by players of a history-based LEG.
The creators of Can You See Me Now?
discuss the how GPS data reliability affected the player's
experience in their experimental LEG.
Future Location Based Experiences, published by the Joint
Information Systems Committee, describes location-enabled games as
an exciting prospect with the potential for new forms of learning. |