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Chase and Catch - simple as that?: old-fashioned fun of traditional playground games revitalized with location-aware mobile phones

Published: 29 October 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Fun in gaming is a difficult, however paramount, topic. Some games are fun, some are not. Some games are ancient and common to both man and animals, for instance Chase-and-Catch (C&C). These games are physically intensive, short in duration, and confined to a specific area. In our research we explore transitions from traditional playground C&C games to their digital counterparts. The rationale is simple; modest augmentations of old-fashioned gaming concepts might prove to be a rewarding avenue for designing successful location-based games. We present a straightforward C&C game, FoxHunt, where location-aware mobile phones are used for hunting virtual foxes. Based on field studies with a total of 220 players, we present and discuss evidence of a very high fun factor, independent of age, gender, playing conditions, and inclination towards sports and physical exercise. We argue that C&C games deserve to be treated as a separate genre within mobile, location-aware gaming.

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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      ACE '09: Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology
      October 2009
      456 pages
      ISBN:9781605588643
      DOI:10.1145/1690388
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 29 October 2009

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      Author Tags

      1. FoxHunt
      2. GPS
      3. fun
      4. location-based gaming
      5. mobile
      6. player awareness
      7. user experience

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      • (2024)Procedural content generation in pervasive games: state of affairs, mistakes, and successesInternational Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications10.1108/IJPCC-11-2023-031420:3(345-364)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2024
      • (2020)GeoMakeIt!: A Platform for Developing Location Based Games2020 15th International Workshop on Semantic and Social Media Adaptation and Personalization (SMA10.1109/SMAP49528.2020.9248444(1-6)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2020
      • (2019)What are we talking about when we talk about location-based games evaluation?Proceedings of the 18th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3357155.3358449(1-13)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2019
      • (2019)A Review of Design Interventions for Promoting Adolescents' Physical ActivityProceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/3311927.3323130(161-172)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019
      • (2017)O-MopsiACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications10.1145/311593513:4(1-25)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2017
      • (2016)Exertion GamesFoundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction10.1561/110000004110:1(1-86)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2016
      • (2015)Expanding social mobile games beyond the device screenPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-015-0845-019:3-4(495-508)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2015
      • (2013)Realizing Large-Scale Street Games Using Heterogeneous Future Internet TechnologiesProceedings of the 2013 9th International Conference on Intelligent Environments10.1109/IE.2013.27(165-172)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2013
      • (2012)iFitQuestProceedings of the 14th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services10.1145/2371574.2371630(359-368)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2012
      • (2012)Developing adaptive exergames for adolescent childrenProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/2307096.2307162(339-342)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2012
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