Geogames Team » Neocartographer

Geogames events in summer 2014

Dominik Kremer — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 14:19:12 +0000

Two Geogames events took place (rather space) in summer 2014 so far:

– Peter Kiefer (ETH Zürich) presented at the ifgi Summer School 2014 on Gamyfing Spatial Collaboration using our CityPoker Designer and staging a game.

– Barbara Feulner (Augsburg University) staged a Neocartographer event with school kids evaluating urban public spaces in Augsburg

Geogames at the ESRI EMEAUC 2013

Ольга Яненко — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 11:27:23 +0000

The Geogames team of the University of Bamberg is present at the ESRI Europe, Middle East and Africa Education GIS Conference. The conference takes place on October 22nd and 23rd at the ICM Munich. An Unconference Session about Geogames organized by the team on Tuesday, Oktober 22nd.

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.

Geogames at the ESRI International Developer Summit 2013

Ольга Яненко — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 09:10:01 +0000

Olga Yanenko, member of the Geogames team, is going to participate in this year’s DevSummit taking place March 25-28 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. One of the objectives of this visit will be to explore the possibilities of GIS and related technologies for the development of mobile location-based applications. Another aspect is focused on location-based services and gamification research in general as well as networking activities to strengthen the interconnection of researchers and developers in this special area.

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.

The Neocartographer Game

Ольга Яненко — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:14:06 +0000

In Neocartographer, two players or teams of players compete, each trying to outperform the opponent in a mapping contest where a player gains an advantage by being the first to contribute a piece of information about a geographic location. The game belongs to the genre of configuration games, where players occupy spatial regions until they reach a winning configuration. In contrast to most of these games, Neocartographer challenges its players by requiring them to reason about spatial distances.

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.