The Drop: Pragmatic Problems in the Design of a Compelling, Pervasive Game

In The Drop: Pragmatic Problems in the Design of a Compelling, Pervasive Game, Ian Smith, Sunny Consolvo, and Anthony LaMarca discuss the technical, social, and business challenges faced while creating and implementing a pervasive game. It has some similarities with my Building a mobile, locative, and collaborative application.

The Drop is a capture the flag type of game. The description of its scenario is not the most interesting part of this paper. The pragramtic issues are relevant for moving pervasive game away from labs and implement them in the real world.

• Player movement: prevent physical collisions between people
• Location systems: do calibration only in areas where the enhances accuracy is valuable
• Boundaries and maps: understand the game limites
• Organizational issues and business model: what space would allow such a game