Have a look at her prezi!

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.

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.

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.