For more information on the workshop visit the workshop website.

Here are some impressions:

At the Unconference Session on October 22nd, 1:30-4:30pm, the Geogames team presents lessons learned from designing location-based games since 2004. The Neocartographer game, a prototype which was developed within an ongoing cooperation with ESRI, is used as a running example to illustrate design challenges and possible solutions. Part of the session takes the attendants outside to compete in a real playing event! Further details about the Geogames session will be announced on-site.

Olga Yanenko, member of the Geogames team, is present at the ESRI EMEAUC from Monday 21st until Friday 25th. If you need more information or are interested in participating in the Geogames event or just want to chat about gamification and GIS, please write an email to and we will get back to you.

The fifth International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications was hosted at Bournemouth University, UK between the 11th and the 13th of September 2013. The conference brings together researchers, developers from the industry, practitioners and decision-makers which aim to advance the state of the art in all of the technologies related to serious games.

The short paper by Dominik Kremer (member of the Geogames team), Christoph Schlieder (head of the Geogames team), Barbara Feulner and Urike Ohl (partner from Geography Didactics at the University of Augsburg) describes spatial choices of Geogame players in an educational context based on a study of GPS tracks collected during a playing event.

Spatial Choices in an Educational Geogame

Abstract. Geogames are location-based games played in outdoor environments. Many use a time out mechanism to balance game play. Little is known on how this affects player motivation in learning experiences. We report evidence from an explorative empirical study which indicates that the perceived choice of a player has impact on the enjoyment of the learning experience. We identify the spatial choices of the players from their GPS
tracks and describe game design decisions that affect the number of spatial choices available to a player.

UPDATE

A video of Christoph Schlieder’s talk is now available on Youtube!

Christoph Schlieder: Learning to Understand Geodesigns by Playing Geogames

Abstract. The Playful Approaches to Geodesign Project (PlayGeo) at the University of Bamberg, Germany, applies concepts and technologies from location-based games to education in a general curriculum on spatial thinking. A collection of Geogames is created in which the players explore outdoor environments using GPS smartphones to access information, to complete documentation tasks, and to analyze spatial problems. The project uses ArcGIS for Android technology to build a game platform which assists educators to stage a Geogame in their local geographic environment. We present first lessons learned from the project and describe two scenarios for playful approaches to the early stages of the design process, that is, to understand an existing urban design (design reading games) as well as to discuss and evaluate a design (urban usability games). Based on an empirical study of a design reading game, we identify success factors for the playful approach to Geodesign.

One or more playing events will also be organized for interested people. This time the CityPoker game was chosen for demonstration. In CityPoker two players or teams start with a given poker hand and try to improve it by moving around in an outdoor environment to find cards hidden in caches.

If you need more information or are interested in participating in the Geogames event or just want to chat about gamification and GIS, please write an email to and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Several test runs of the new Neocartographer game developed at the University of Bamberg will be performed on-site. We would appreciate to find some volunteers that are interested in playing this game.

Are you interested in participating in the Neocartographer test game at the ESRI DevSummit or just want to chat about location-based games? Please send a short message to and we will keep you informed.

Christoph Schlieder & Olga Yanenko:
Location-based Games in Education and Tourism

Abstract. Location-based games introduce an element that is missing in interactive console games, namely locomotion in outdoor environments such as an urban neighborhood or a natural park. These games are particularly interesting for educational projects with school children because they not only connect the players socially but also connect them with the geographic environment. Most location-based games use GPS as positioning technology and let the players communicate with mobile handheld devices such as smartphones. The talk concentrates on this type of games, especially on game designs that combine strategic reasoning with sportive types of locomotion. Research issues are illustrated with case studies from educational and touristic applications. The game relocation problem is presented as a major challenge. It arises from the fact that a location-based game design exploits specific features of the geographic environment. Relocating the game to a different environment therefore involves more or less complex spatial analysis, for instance, of pedestrian paths between points of interest.

Visit the USC homepage for more details. The talk is also available online.

The main objectives include the testing of Geogames developed at the University of Bamberg, the automated visualization of game flows, the development of location-based Android and web applications, the investigation of technical possibilities of ESRI’s ArcGIS and ArcGISonline for the creation of Geogames and the exploration of applications developed at the APL.

Learning to read a changing urban design.

The lightning talk presents first results from the Geogames and playful Geodesign project. Two game scenarios are described: (1) exploration games for learning how to make use of an existing spatial design (e.g. a campus game for freshmen), (2) feedback games in which the players report what they experience as the strengths and the weaknesses of a design (e.g. an urban usability game). The talk argues that such playful approaches do enrich the learning experience in a general curriculum on spatial thinking and are especially useful where learning at a younger age (10+) is concerned.

The game has been designed as a playful introduction to geospatial analysis, more specifically, to the concept of Voronoi neighborhood. However, there is also a game variant in which the players do not need to familiarize themselves with that concept. Neocartographer balances reasoning and action in an intricate way and is generally played as a pedestrian game. It takes a few minutes to get acquainted with the rules and the smartphone interface. With the game itself lasting about half an hour, Neocartographer is an ideal choice for applications where temporal constraints are tight such as a tech demo in the context of a scientific conference.