Location-based Serious Gaming

Closed Computer Science Master Thesis No Affiliation

Tasks

Artwork at the Hubland Campus (Ennepersche Minimalfläche, photo by Julia Breunig, Sonnenzeichen, photo by Wolfgang Keller)

Assignment

The master thesis consists of the design, development and evaluation of a mobile, location-based educational game. A location-based game is a type of pervasive game in which the gameplay evolves and progresses via a player’s location. Thus, location-based games must provide some mechanism to allow the player to report their location. On mobile devices, this is through some kind of localization technology, for example by using satellite positioning through GPS. “Urban gaming” or “street games” are typically multi-player location-based games played out on city streets and built up urban environments.

Game

The game to be developed should allow for usage of mapping data from the OpenStreetMap project. In addition to buildings, streets and terrain information, the map should contain additional points of interest (POI), that allow the user to explore certain objects in his vircinity, such as artwork or cultural heritage objects.

These objects should be annotated with additional multimedial data, such as images, movies or text, and be explorable on the mobile device based on the physical location of the user.

Learning should be supported by a serious gaming approach that triggers motivation of the players. The system should be extensible by supplying curricula that contain information about objects as well as educational trails to support exploring of the surrounding.

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