Pervasive gaming:from special to mundane
In the early 2000’s the idea about digital pervasive gaming was somewhat limited, as there was a lot of technological obstacles, which made implementing pervasive elements into practical use either difficult or expensive. Pervasive games could mean, that if you wanted to play them you would have to...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Language: | English |
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University of Oulu
2014
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| Online Access: | http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201405281553 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:fi:oulu-201405281553 |
| Summary: | In the early 2000’s the idea about digital pervasive gaming was somewhat limited, as there was a lot of technological obstacles, which made implementing pervasive elements into practical use either difficult or expensive. Pervasive games could mean, that if you wanted to play them you would have to have a plethora of different devices with you, depending of if you needed a GPS for navigation, laptop for data search or just some contraption for virtual reality or just a camera to take photos with. And on the top of that, accessing the internet on the go was, if not impossible, potentially very expensive and not necessarily easy, depending on your location.
Gradually the technology has begun to evolve in more versatile direction. Today a good cellphone can replace most of the devices that were cumbersome to lug around ten years ago. 3G and 4G internet connections can provide an access to the internet so, that it is possible to access the data sources almost anywhere, were you in the city or in a forest. Of course there’s still gaps in the networks, but at least there’s lesser need to find a phone outlet.
Pervasive gaming is not just for location based outdoors activity anymore. Thanks to the advancements of technology elements enabling pervasive gaming have also found their way to home game consoles, MMO games and many kinds of social platform games.
Pervasive games come in many different shapes and forms. The elements used can be simple social interaction, where the player informs the social network when the game is played or what kind of achievements is done in the game, thus trying to lure in more gamers or they can be more massive style of a games, where not only social activity is a must, but also where and when the game is played has an effect as well. The game can use specialized controllers, such as motion or voice or the player can just simply stream the gameplay to the web, enabling others to spectate and comment the gameplay.
The designers need to ask themselves what kind of features they want to use and what kind of devices the players need in order to use these kind of pervasive features. There are also questions of the player security, be it actual physical wellbeing of the player on the real life location of the game or information security of the data gathered during the game.
This thesis tries to provide some theoretical insight on what pervasive gaming has been, is now and where it is heading. There are some speculation about how pervasive elements should be designed and used as well points the designers should take a note of. |
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