Interactive Players. LBMGs from a Design Perspective Ilaria Mariani Davide Spallazzo Politecnico di Milano Politecnico di Milano Department of Design Department of Design Milan, Italy Milan, Italy ilaria1.mariani@polimi.it davide.spallazzo@polimi.it into a hybrid world where the boundaries between the real ABSTRACT Adopting a player-centered approach, this contribution and the digital spheres are blurred. delves into the relationship and interactions LBMGs Relying on an existent literature mainly characterized by an activate among people (between players, and among players approach that privileges case studies analysis, and and non-players), with the device, and with the spaces speculates about LBMGs impact, this contribution raises wherein the play activity takes place. In consequence, it from the need of an investigation that punctually unpacks taps into three different levels of implications: social, different typologies of interaction that such games include technological and spatial. It reports on some empirical and can trigger. Specific attention is due to the fact that they advances gathered from a three-years analysis on three BSc move outside the traditional frame of the screen, having courses and a total amount of 44 Location Based Mobile different degrees of response and interaction with the real, Games deliberately designed for prompting challenging three-dimensional world. From a theoretical perspective, interactions between the digital world and physical this contribution reaches out to the disciplines of Game elements in the real space. Taking advantage of the Studies, Communication Design and Interaction Design, potentialities of being situated and technology-supported, tapping into transversal practices of interaction that link they enhance and facilitate immersion and sense of agency theoretical assumptions and their translation into practice. within the game. What emerges is a novel interpretation of LBMGs players as “interactive agents”, engaged in The reasoning unfolds a three years empirical research in meaningful interactions with other persons, with the space the Politecnico di Milano, School of Design, educational and with technology. context, that has as its linchpin our research intention to question the tenet that LBMGs should exclusively rely on Author Keywords digital/mobile components. We asked about 180 design Situated Play; Location-Based Mobile Games; Narrative- students of the BSc course “Augmented Reality and Mobile Based Games; Social Engagement; Technology-Supported Experience” (a.y. 2013/14, 2014/15, and 2015/16) to Games; Spatial Awareness. conceive and craft LBMGs that mix digital contents and ACM Classification Keywords physical artefacts, and address societal issues. During the K.8.0 General: Games; K.4.m Computers and Society: span of time of this investigation we collected 44 LBMGs Miscellaneous; J.5 Arts and Humanities: Arts, fine and that flash out the consistent links between real and digital performing. spaces. In so doing we explored the forms of interactions that players activate in such less-mediated situated INTRODUCTION experiences. What characterizes this field of investigation is Ranging from uncommon topics to unusual gameplays, we the spread tendency to consider and design LBMGs as are now being witnesses to the flourishing of play practices technology-sustained games [19] – as said, utterly that break our ordinary conventions to trigger perspectives digital/mobile reliant. However, we consider worthwhile to that differ from the ordinary. Location Based Mobile challenge this assumption, exploring how games can take Games (LBMGs) expand outside the traditional gamespace advantage of technology, being technologically supported (board or screen) [10] and open up to contextual play [19], rather than strictly and wholly dependent. Such an activities, where players are geo-located and transported approach has further relevance because it opens up a richer design space, of which designers can take advantage of – this in terms of communication activated by in-game elements, artifacts and activities. In parallel to the technological perspective and the potential benefits of a game that mixes physical and digital elements, it lies an important reasoning on the advantages of GHITALY17: 1st Workshop on Games-Human Interaction, April 18th, 2017, including narrative as a core game component. Whereas not Cagliari, Italy. Copyright © 2017 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying every game is narrative-based, stories are notably relevant permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and for some typologies of games [16]. Among the others, copyrighted by its editors. pervasive, persuasive, adventure games, LARP and ARG recognize and confirm the central role of narrative; LBMGs movements in the urban space. The mobile device, instead as well as urban games, on the opposite, generally tend to of being the main mean of the play activity, becomes the relegate narrative to a design possibility. In the light of this main trigger for contextual narratives. In this sense, these reasoning, here we do not question whether or not games LBMGs differ also from urban games, by attributing a are narrative, but how narrative-based LBMGs activate relevant and essential role to mobile devices. interactions – for example attributing the device the role of METHODOLOGY storyteller. The LBMGs discussed in the following strongly The reflections here presented are part of a larger research rely on stories (games of progression, using Juul’s activity based on an empirical research we conducted terminology [16]) able to affect the way players interact analyzing the processes of both designing and playtesting with the game itself, in particular through the three 44 persuasive LBMGs. Over three years, a total amount of perspectives presented above: socially, technologically, and 180 students were asked to face actual societal problems or spatially. taboos, and evolve them into concepts to be translated into Adopting a player centered approach, we delve in particular LBMGs. Our aim was to study how these games function as into the relationship and interactions these games trigger engaging systems able to entertain players and convey among people (between players, and between players and information in the meanwhile. Ranging from exploring non-players), with the device, and with the surroundings, design as a process of enquiry, to assessing playing as a namely the space wherein the play activity takes place. In way to acquire knowledge, we observed and analyzed our consequence, it taps into three different levels of sample of persuasive LBMGs conducting ethnographic implications: social, technological and spatial. What analysis and interpretive research. In order to lessen biases emerges is a novel view on LBMGs players, here framed and weaknesses of the chosen methodology [11, 7], we and discussed as “interactive players” a category that differs applied a mixed methods approach, collecting multiple from those of digital games and urban games, by virtue of forms of data relying on a triangulation of different our peculiar way of intending LBMGs themselves. In a methods. During the iterative cycles of design that spanned spectrum ranging from urban games to video games, being over three consecutive months for each academic year, we physical-digital its two polarities, we set the LBMGs here ran interpretative ethnography and participant observation discussed close to urban games, mixing a small digital [27,12]. In parallel, we conducted rapid ethnographies, component with a paramount physical one, whereas the shadowing, questionnaires and informal interviews with most common commercial LBMGs (e.g. Ingress, Pokémon students – in turn as designers or players (see Figure 1). GO) set closest to the digital pole. Especially conducting moderate participation [12], we Rather than using the space as interchangeable background, understood on the one hand how designers crafted the we propose a stricter relation with the surrounding space, games embedding their point of view, on the other how aiming at taking full advantage of its potentialities. As it players received games and made sense out of them. In commonly happens in urban games, every place acquires doing so, we grasped an important amount of insights meaning in the play activity and within the game narrative, regarding the relationship between initial expectations and being steps of a story that progresses according to players’ effective players’ perceptions. Figure 1. Strategies and tools used to observe games and collect results. RESULTS characteristic common to urban games, which, on the The results discussed in the following are mainly gathered contrary, do not provide players with technology mediated from our direct observation of players during the playtests social engagement. Different considerations should be and from the informal interviews that followed, albeit made about commercial LBMGs, as Ingress and Pokémon useful reflections are triggered by some of the Go, that mainly pertain to the category of video games and questionnaires we collected. Data gleaned portrait a novel from which infer the model of social engagement, category of LBMGs player, that we define “interactive” at characterized by the mediation of technology [10]. In doing large, since s/he is characterized by a threefold active so, the kind of social engagement they commonly trigger interaction: with others, with technology, with the can be defined as “alone-together”, a sense of social contact surroundings. that springs by feeling surrounded by other, albeit Reviewing how LBMGs are designed and played, with a unknown, players [13]. consistent shift from the digital realm towards the physical When designed capitalizing on the cultural capital of play one – as previously discussed – brought to rethink the way in public spaces [24], taking advantage of the potentialities players are engaged socially, spatially and technologically. of creating partially technology-mediated game Hence, a functional way to frame the three typologies of experiences, LBMGs offer designers the unique opportunity interaction, according to which we will analyze and discuss to provide players with different social configurations players’ interactiveness, is: during the play activity. In particular, wittingly embedding 1. Player to others/persons the way of playing typical of urban games, they can fully exploit in-person social contacts as well as the context 2. Player to space wherein they take place. As a matter of fact, designers can 3. Player to device provide players with a personal play activity or, on the contrary, to require the continuous collaboration of a team Acknowledging that games are complex systems, and that a of players to proceed. Other games could ask a team to split consistent literature investigated the varied degrees of in order to complete quests, or players to socialize with interaction between the player and the game non-players and even unknown persons [26], namely [21,14,2,17,22], our focus here is on the specific way in strangers [25]. which LBMGs can activate player’ interactivity, distinguishing themselves from the other typologies of Furthermore, designers can impact on the quality of the games. Hence, we resonate on three typologies of social interaction the game triggers. For example, they can interaction, not reciprocally excluding, that coexist at a force players to go a step further from the common in- different extent during each game session, that portrait a person social relation between players, and get engaged in a more comprehensive and holistic view of the player, direct physical contact. In addition, such interactions also differing from that of video games and commercial LBMGs give room for challenging implicit social norms. This is as well as from that of urban games. what happen in the game Keep (the Date) Safe [1] aimed at Player to Others/People: interaction between players or sensitizing players on the pros and cons of the most between players and non-players common contraceptive systems. Players, in the role of “Interacting with other players is one thing that makes the couples, face diverse stereotyped scenarios, ranging from game bigger than just a casual on-screen experience” [19]. the new year eve party, to the home-without-parents night, and are involved in activities and mini-games that In-game social interaction occurs between players, and/or frequently ask for transgressive social behaviors, e.g. between players and non-players, and its dynamics strongly playing twister in a public space. Designers took advantage depend on the typology of game as well as by its design. In of the direct social engagement between players, this sense, by virtue of their nature, partly digital and partly challenging them to go far beyond the comfort zone – from physical, LBMGs provide designers with the opportunity of 1 to 1.5 meters –, and invade that space that proxemics [15] conceiving complex social interactions, engaging players in would define as personal. The embarrassment of touching a multitude of varied experiences. or being touched by non-intimate persons is further Likewise video games, LBMG players can dialogue and increased by being in a public space. This condition was have social relationships with other players, ranging from taken in due account by designers that employed the twister being more or less mediated by the technological device game activity as a metaphor for an intercourse, and (e.g. chat or voice chat, instant messages, calls), to directly embedded the possible consequences of “unprotected sex” sharing the play activity with other players (in-person play into three oversized dice (contraceptive, pros and cons, activities as challenges, quests, etc., that involve more than venereal disease) to roll after every in-game sleeping-with- a player in the meanwhile). What features LBMGs as someone occurrence. pervasive games is their potential ability to involve players In parallel LBMGs become trigger of social engagement in richer, in-person social engagement with both other with non-players, passers-by not (formally) taking part to players and non-players they may encounter. A the game. In The Infection [3] designers involved players in unexpected contacts with non-players. Created to sensitize costumes and game kits, and is required to move around towards STDs – Sexually Transmitted Diseases – the game following the features (actual limits) of their character. In uses smartphones and several game (physical) elements to this LBMG, the urban space and some of its architectural transform the playground into a fictional world where four barriers are integrated into the game serving to nurture bosses – symbolizing four diseases – must infect as many experience-based knowledge and awareness, in which people as possible. Among others, one of the missions asks players meaningfully step [18]. players to increase the amount of their disease-fellows by If on the one side, the space can serve to convey sticking adhesive labels – the viruses – to unaware passers- information, on the other, it can become servant to the by without being caught. Another quest requires players to activity of playing. In this case, play can be appropriative stop random non-players and ask them to explore their body and take over the context in which it takes place [23]. SOS- looking for the stickers/viruses. Players are engaged not Rescue Squad [20] works on the concept of appropriation only in direct social relations with unknown persons, but [19,23], as several physical element, including the urban also in overcoming the boundaries of the comfort zone space itself, are appropriated in the game – often without discussed above. From a non-player perspective, the letting non-players know. For instance, in a quest, players activities of this game resulted into situations of surprise are asked to circumscribe spaces with tapes to keep passers- and amusement, that triggered curiosity. Stickers have been by far away. The game becomes a way to temporarily used on players and non-players as game mechanics, as modify the way people interact with spaces. As a matter of well as means to spread knowledge in an unconventional, fact, once players encircle a bench with tape, they cause a unexpected way. shift of meaning. From being a space with a social function, Player to Space: distributed narrative and situated the bench assumes the role of a space of non-sociality. meanings Using to advantage the fact of being narrative-based, these Player to Device: smartphone as storyteller LBMGs use distributed and situated narratives shaped as The last typology of interaction here discussed is player to small fragments of storyline related to the space wherein device, an exploration on how the smartphone entered the the game is taking place. To progress and complete the play activity. The discourse is not focused on issues story (and the game), players are asked to explore the pertaining the field of HCI or UI Design, but rather on the surroundings, interacting with the urban space that conveys role of the smartphone as storyteller, a narrator specific meanings and serves as a source of in-game accompanying players through the game. This typology of information, rather than being mere playground. From a interaction takes place between players and digital player-to-space perspective, the mobile device is the game characters, as manifestation of the game system. element that to different extents allows players to activate As a matter of fact, the analyzed LBMGs are in great part spaces and make them interactive. designed relying on a distributed situated narrative [19], Since the diffusion of mobile technology, several authors employing the device as provider of narrative contents, explored how games can extend, integrate and digitally- triggered where they are needed, and spread across the overlay the physical space. Particularly relevant to our urban space as playground. The device acts as storyteller, a reasoning are the rumination advanced by Montola, Waern digital guide across the story and the urban space, that and Stenros [19] and De Souza e Silva [9] who investigated provides players with pieces of the narration, following the the way games interact with people and the surroundings, progression of the game and players’ movement in the and how players interact with the public spaces because of urban space. The situatedness of the narration implies a mobile gaming (play in public [19]). As a matter of fact, strict relation between the places and the story. In doing so, each place takes part to the game as a physical space mobile technology nurtures the layer of the fictional world wherein players move and act, and as a literally meaningful continuously hybridizing the real and the digital realm. In (being a repository of specific in-game meanings) setting this sense, mobile technology functions as bridge between for the fictional world, overlapped to the physical one the two worlds. thanks to the mobile device. In doing so, such LBMGs The analysis of the LBMGs, object of the study, highlighted encourage players towards situated meaning-making, where diverse strategies of use of the smartphone. Some set the having contextualized experiences is a source of further device in the role of omniscient narrator, out of the story, an understanding. external, neutral entity that guides players, provides hints in The Fellowship of the Umbrella [5] is a LBMG about the proper location of the clues and proposes dilemmas to physical disabilities that echoes the cultural capital of play be solved. It is the case of The Lost Papyrus [4], a LBMG in public spaces [24]. Employing a fairy-tale fictional about Alzheimer's disease aimed at inform players about the world, it uses some metaphors to transpose (and expose) impact this illness has on the everyday activity of sick some obstacles that disabled persons daily face, making people and of those who live with them. Structured as a players physically experience impairments. Wearing a metaphor of the disease and its degeneration, the game specific role, every player is specifically equipped with involves four players in the role of an expert archaeologist and his brave assistants, exploring a still undiscovered tomb to find a renowned papyrus and facing more and more As a matter of fact, the image of the player that emerges is difficult quests that symbolize the degeneration of the far from that of the most renowned commercial LBMGs illness. The mobile device is interpreted in the game as a (e.g. Ingress, Pokémon GO), as well as from common video powerful tool, a quite magical machine that guide players games. The player here portrayed engages directly with from outside the story. other persons, through in-person, non-technologically mediated interactions. In commercial LBMGs the direct Other times the mobile device becomes a personified social engagement is a choice given to player – just think storyteller and enters the story as a character. In The about Pokémon GO –, while the cases discussed above Treasures of Captain Torment [6], the device actually frequently require social interaction to proceed in the game. embodies the spirit of the Captain that guides players to his The progression is not only due to the mix of technology treasure, across a story dealing with the very common, but and space (geo-location) but also to the social interaction often ignored, mental condition of depressed people. As with persons, being them players or non-players. active character of the story, the spirit of the Captain communicates with players through the mobile device, Another remarkable difference is that the space wherein telling stories, providing hints and testing the bravery of his players move becomes something more than a mere fellow pirates with questions and quests. The device is here background for the gameplay, acquiring meaningfulness in both storyteller, narrative voice, and character of the story, both the physical and in the fictional world provided. Places with his personal aims to be reached with the help of are involved in the story for what they really are (e.g. a players. bench, a tree) and for what they become in the story (e.g. a dangerous place to be evacuated, a space-time portal). Thus Other games interpret the mobile device as guidance, we could talk of situated meaning, since the physical authoritative voice, that guides players not only across the characteristics of places, as well as their agency on players, game but also towards a specific behavior. The 10 are exploited by game designers to trigger a continuous Commandments [8] sets players in the role of a girl who negotiation of meaning between real and unreal, creating must attend a casting, and the device provides her with ten also a sort of narrative friction between what players see commandments to be followed in order to have a “perfect and the game fictional and digital overlay. LBMGs can slim body”. Facing daily activities, players are continuously indeed work on a twofold level: in terms of physicality, proposed a dilemma to be solved, making direct or indirect they challenge players as bodies moving, walking, running; reference to the commandments. What players do not know in abstract terms, they require players to interpret the is that the commandments are based on real online blogs surroundings and its elements as part of a fictional layer which claim the so-called Pro-Ana behavior, presenting that can be accessed via mobile device. anorexia as a positive philosophy of life. By choosing to respect the commandments, players lose energy; by not The mobile device is what makes this kind of LBMGs obeying the sense of guiltiness is fomented. In both cases similar to the commercial ones, since they both exploit players are destined to fail. Designers exploited here the location-awareness as the main means of progression in the power of mobile device as authoritative voice, game, but, at the same time, its employment is rather disconcerting players with a final plot twist that questions different. Instead of being the “place where everything the role and credibility of the narrative voice. happens”, the mobile device acquires the role of storyteller, trigger of actions that are only partially performed on the CONCLUSIONS The cases presented and discussed take advantage of the device itself. The smartphone becomes a means of urban gamut of features and potentialities of LBMGs to design exploration and social engagement. Expanding a concept by games that intensify and accent meaningful interactions, not De Souza e Silva [9], digital and physical spaces can be only with the game itself as a system, but also with people designed to resonate, encouraging a more social-, digital-, and location-aware experience. (players and/or non-players), mobile device, and space. Furthermore, they are characterized by the inclusion of It is evident that the games here presented shift LBMGs challenge-based, distributed narratives that enhance and towards urban games. Nevertheless, we claim that some facilitate immersion and sense of agency within the game: differences can be traced back to the background in the once again the game prompts players to challenge their design field of the students who crafted them, and of those comfort zone, pushing their own boundaries. Being who guided them. These games have been designed as LBMGs, this mainly regards social and spatial interactions. artifacts able to maximize the interaction of their users The analysis we proposed stems from a player-centered (players) with other persons, with the space and with the standpoint and aims at portraying LBMG players as device, that is what normally interaction designers do. “interactive agents”, engaged in meaningful social, spatial Starting from a design standpoint, these games have been and technological interactions. A model of interactiveness designed with an accent on the physicality of the interactions, thus characterizing players as interactive made possible by the way these games have been designed, agents, physically engaged with what surrounds them, and that is, as said, closer to urban games than to video games. not only with the device. Designing LBMGs as artifacts closer to urban games and 12. Kathleen Musante DeWalt, and Billie R. DeWalt. aimed at stimulating richer interaction of players at the 2010. Participant Observation: A Guide for three levels we highlighted – person, space, device – clearly Fieldworkers. AltaMira press. implies a shift in how LBMGs are commonly played. 13. 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