Pervasive Gaming in the Everyday World

Kalle Jegers, Mikael Wiberg, “Pervasive Gaming in the Everyday World,” IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 78-85, Jan-Mar, 2006.

SupaFly is a everyday-world pervasive game used in this empirical study that examine the reality of pervasive gaming.

The intend of pervasive is to be played anytime and anywhere. However this study shows that players did not play in a mobile fashion (changing locations and contexts) but in a rather immobile way in their home. They also played the game mainly at evenings and nights at home during their leisure time.

The authors plan a longitudinal, ethnographical approach to address the following question in an everyday life context:

• In what situations do people choose to enter the game?
• Do people play alone or when they get together?
• Is there any learning effect (for example, do people internalize the SMS commands over time)?
• Does the cost of sending SMS messages create a barrier to long-term playing of the game?

Relation to my thesis: Pervasive games offer often advanced platforms to study how users deal with spatial uncertainty. Interestingly now pervasive game are moving away from controlled settings and entering everyday world. However players barely took advantage of the offered place-independence. Moreover, it is still unclear whether location is sufficient to successfully integrate the physical and virtual world. Location matters… hmm well… yes but….