=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1952/Smart_Beetles
|storemode=property
|title=Smart Beetles: Towards A Geogame For Smart Citizens
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1952/Smart_Beetles.pdf
|volume=Vol-1952
}}
==Smart Beetles: Towards A Geogame For Smart Citizens==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1952/Smart_Beetles.pdf
Smart Beetles: towards a Geogame for Smart Citizens
Francisco Ramos Nacho Miralles
Institute of New Imaging Institute of New Imaging
Technologies Technologies
Universitat Jaume I Universitat Jaume I
Castellon, Spain Castellon, Spain
francisco.ramos@uji.es mirallei@uji.es
Abstract
Smart cities make use of information technologies to improve performance and quality of urban services, to decrease costs and to optimize
resources. However, many citizens do not know all the services and advantages that a smart city offers to them. In this work, we created a
geogame to involve them in different cities and, by playing with real services, increase their knowledge about smart cities.
Keywords: geogame, 3D, basemap, smart city, citizen, videogame.
1. Introduction 2. Game Overview
Nowadays, we can encounter many location-based games In this game, users (or players) visit a set of cities. They are
designed to take into account user’s location by using GPS as immersed into real scenarios, that is, with real cities and real
localization technology [1][2][3]. Most of them might be services, testing their knowledge by learning more about a
classified as geogames [4]. However, this type of games specific city and/or service at the same time that they are
usually lacks of the 3D rendering component, that is, they are playing.
not using such a powerful feature, which could bring players Aiming at sustaining interest in the experience over time,
to a better user experience. Moreover, from the perspective of for each level, leaderboards with best players will be
game design research, these games do not present a clear and available.
specific spatial level structure, which would enable us to have Apart from the usual elements existing in many games such
a better understanding of the geographic environment of each as leaderboards, settings and other functionalities and assets,
geogame. this game offers some unique features that we proceed to
In this context, the contribution of this paper consists in explain.
defining and implementing a geogame that features: 3D As previously commented, one of the objectives of this
rendering of cities, specific spatial level distribution and game is to provide a manner to better know cities. Therefore,
structure, integration of different gamification techniques such the different levels are connected to real data and services of
as leaderboards and a successful integration of libraries and the selected city, which gives a more immersive experience to
tools (such as Unity3D, OpenStreetMaps and ESRI City the users as they observe realtime information while playing.
Engine) with a common objective. As an example, we might have a level where traffic
conditions are connected to the game. In this level, the player
Figure 1: Smart Beetles Spatial Level Distribution. should visit some checkpoints, in the shortest time possible.
Conceptually, the level selector. However, the traffic service for this city, at that time, informs
us that some streets have slow traffic conditions. Therefore, if
you cross the streets with slow traffic, you will be slowed
down, as it occurs in real life.
3. Potential Players
Our target players are people interested in knowing better a
city, tourists or even casual players only interested in
competing to other users, within this virtual environment. In
general, users play in different cities in the world, and services
such as traffic conditions or information about bus stops, to
name a few, will be connected to the corresponding level.
About skills, players should know what is a bike lane, bus
stop, metro station and, in general, all the concepts related to
transportation, traffic and general services offered by a smart
city.
AGILE 2017 – Wageningen, May 9-12, 2017
4. Geo-narrative 6. Game Mechanics
In this game, levels are mapped to cities. Thus, players Essentially, the game here described, is a competitive and
should first select a city. After that, we defined different levels pacman style game [7]. Players start the game and a set, or
for the selected city. Figures 1 and 2 show the visual group, of cities appears. Sublevels, from a given city, offer
representation for the mentioned selectors. different missions, which are strictly related to city services.
As an example, the level “Valencia”, could offer three Once all the sublevels have been passed, another city can be
sublevels: activated and so forth.
Sublevel 1: players must cross some checkpoints in the
shortest time possible. 6.1. Mission
Sublevel 2: players must arrive to a given place, but
traffic conditions are present, they might modify the In brief, the objective is common in every sublevel, which
consists in collecting some existing items, located in particular
player’s speed if a “slow” street is crossed.
places of the city, in the shortest time. However, it is possible
Sublevel 3: players must pick some items up and metro
to find some dynamic elements trying to make your mission
stations could be used to save time.
difficult. Currently, this game is offering only one sublevel
As commented before, this game is directly connected to
where items are located in well-know places of the
geographic environments such as cities. It is important to
corresponding city.
underline that players can enable different modes of
locomotion, which has implications in scores and
leaderboards. It is possible to play at some levels by selecting 6.2. Rules
a mode of locomotion. Available locomotion modes are: Levels and Sublevels have a specific order.
pedestrian, bike, car and bus, but in order to simplify the A player is represented as a beetle (just for fun), and
narrative we can suppose the pedestrian mode is enabled and movements are bound to the accelerometer sensor,
never changes. optionally we consider to bound them to the GPS
sensor.
Figure 2: Sublevel selector from a given city. Sublevels always show 3D Buildings and a
basemap, see Figure 3.
Levels are defined by the city, the objective: to
cross checkpoints as fast as possible, best route
avoiding traffic jams, use as many bike lanes as
possible, best route by using bus lines and so on.
Scores are calculated in seconds. Fastest players are
ranked in higher positions. See Figure 4.
Figure 3: Smart Beetles level in San Diego.
5. Geocontent
This game has been designed to exploit specific features of
the cities included. Therefore, it is not relocatable to other
cities or regions. Moreover, geocontent is previously created
and totally bound to a particular city.
Therefore for a given city (level), we define an extent to
limit players’ movements, Thus, in that context, the
geocontent will consists of: 3D models of buildings, a 2D
basemap and, depending on the sublevel, specific information
from the city, which is used to build the sublevel and set the
mission and the objectives.
AGILE 2017 – Wageningen, May 9-12, 2017
Figure 4: Leaderboard in San Diego.
7. Conclusions
In this work, we presented an initial version of Smart Beetles,
the first level of this game is freely available in App Store[5]
and Google Play[6]. Currently, we are working in the
integration of realtime services in the game.
This geogame was implemented using Unity3D,
OpenStreetMaps and ESRI City Engine. Moreover, the
company pixelder.com is collaborating in the dissemination of
this work.
References
[1] Thomas, B., Close, B., Donoghue, J., Squires, J., De
Bondi, P., Morris, M., Piekarski, W.: ARQuake: An
outdoor/indoor augmented reality first person
application, ISWC, 2000.
[2] Björk, S., Falk, J., Hansson, R., Ljungstrand, P.: Pirates!
- Using the Physical World as a Game Board. Interact
Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 2001.
[3] Flintham, M., Anastasi, R., Benford, S. D., Hemmings,
T., Crabtree, A., Greenhalgh, C. M., Rodden, T. A.,
Tandavanitj, N., Adams, M., and Row-Farr, J.: Where
on-line meets on-thestreets: experiences with mobile
mixed reality games. In Proceedings of the CHI 2003.
[4] Schelieder, C., Kiefer, P.,Matyas, S.: Geogames: a
conceptual framework and tool for the design of
location-based games from classic board games.
INTETAIN 2005. LNAI 3814, pp. 164-173.
[5] Smart Beetles, iOS. http://smartbeetles.com/ios
Accessed online on 6th of February 2017.
[6] Smart Beetles, Android. http://smartbeetles.com/android
Accessed online on 6th of February 2017.
[7] PacMan. Namco Bandai Games Inc. (June 2, 2005).
"Bandai Namco press release for 25th Anniversary
Edition" (in Japanese). bandainamcogames.co.jp/.