Abstract
This book scrutinizes pervasive games from a technological perspective, focusing on the sub-domain of games that satisfy the criteria that they: make use of virtual game elements. In the computer game industry, the use of a game engine to build games is common; the major incentive for employing a reusable game engine being reduced development time and cost. If pervasive games are to reap the same benefits, then engines for pervasive games must be available. But, current game engines do not support pervasive games that, move the game beyond the computer screen, out into the physical world, unbound by scheduled play times and possibly involving unknowing bystanders. Since the computer game industry is already rich with game engines, this book investigates: (i) if a game engine can be repurposed to stage pervasive games; (ii) if features describing a would-be pervasive game engine can be identified; (iii) using those features, if an architecture be found in the same ‘product line’ as an existing engine and if that architecture can be extended to stage pervasive games (iv) and, finally, if there any challenges and open issues that remain. The approach to answering these questions is two fold. First, a survey of pervasive games is conducted, gathering technical details and distilling a component feature set that enables pervasive games (see Chap. 2). Second, a type of game engine is chosen as candidate in the same product line as a would-be pervasive game engine, supporting as much of the feature set as possible. The architecture is extended to support the entire feature set and used to stage a pervasive game called Codename: Heroes (see Chap. 3).
The conclusion of this book is also two fold: the resulting feature set, is verified to coincide with the definition of pervasive games and related work seems to corroborate the set. Second, because the sub-domain of games in question makes use of a persistent virtual world, a virtual world engine is selected as candidate in the same product line as a would-be pervasive game engine. Codename: Heroes was successfully implemented, reaping the benefits of using the selected engine; development time was low, spanning just a few months. Codename: Heroes was staged twice, with no stability issues or down time. And, finally, a set of challenges and open issues is summarized (see Chap. 4).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
“The behavior of a game can be controlled, in whole or in part, by data provided by artists and designers rather than exclusively by software produced by programmers” (Gregory, 2009, original italics).
- 2.
A system combining the virtual and the physical enabling a real-time interactive three dimensional environment (Oppermann, 2009).
- 3.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away” (Dick, 1978).
- 4.
- 5.
“The collection of object types that make up a game is called the game object model. The game object model provides a real-time simulation of a heterogeneous collection of objects in the virtual game world” (Gregory, 2009, original italics).
- 6.
“A device is a combination of a hardware component and a software component, sending or receiving data. The software component may contain a driver, a library, or a software development kit” (Appelt, Ohlenburg, Greenhalgh, Oppermann, & Åkesson, 2008).
- 7.
“The ‘diegesis’ of a story consists of whatever is true in that story. Diegetic elements are ‘in the story’; non-diegetic elements are not.” (Bergström, 2011, original italics)
References
Adams, E., Rollings, A. (2006). Fundamentals of game design (game design and development series). Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Appelt, W., Ohlenburg, J., Greenhalgh, C., Oppermann, L., Åkesson, K.-P. (2008, April). Deliverable D7.7: Final software delivery of WP 7.
Bartle, R. (2003). Designing virtual worlds. Indianapolis, Indiana, USA: New Riders Publishing.
Bass, L., Clements, P., Kazman, R. (2013). Software architecture in practice (3rd). Addison-Wesley Professional.
Bell, M. (2007). Guidelines and infrastructure for the design and implementation of highly adaptive, context-aware, mobile, peer-to-peer systems. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow, Faculty of Information and Mathematical Sciences, Department of Computing Science).
Bell, M. W. (2008, July). Toward a definition of “virtual worlds”. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(1).
Benford, S., Magerkurth, C., Ljungstrand, P. (2005). Bridging the physical and digital in pervasive gaming. Communications of the ACM, 48(3), 54–57.
Bergström, K. (2011). Framing storytelling with games. In Interactive storytelling (pp. 170-181). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vancouver, Canada: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Branton, C., Carver, D., Ullmer, B. (2011). Interoperability standards for pervasive games. In Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on games and software engineering (pp. 40–43). New York, NY, USA: ACM.
Broll, W., Ohlenburg, J., Lindt, I., Herbst, I., Braun, A.-K. (2006, October). Meeting technology challenges of pervasive augmented reality games. In Proceedings of 5th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on network and system support for games (p. 28). Singapore: ACM.
Crabtree, A., Benford, S., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh, C., Flintham, M., Anastasi, R., … Steed, A. (2004). Orchestrating a mixed reality game ’on the ground’. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 391–398). CHI ’04. Vienna, Austria:: ACM.
de Souza e Silva, A., Sutko, D. M. (2009a). Digital cityscapes. (Chap. Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces: An introduction to the Field, pp. 1-20). USA: Peter Lang.
de Souza e Silva, A., Sutko, D. M. (Eds.). (2009b). Digital cityscapes. USA: Peter Lang.
Dick, P. K. (1978). How to build a universe that doesn’t fall apart two days later. Retrieved from http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm
Dow, S., Lee, J., Oezbek, C., MacIntyre, B., Bolter, J. D., Gandy, M. (2005). Wizard of oz interfaces for mixed reality applications. In CHI ’05 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1339–1342). New York, NY, USA: ACM.
Flintham, M., Anastasi, R., Benford, S., Drozd, A., Mathrick, J., Rowland, D., … Sutton, J. (2003, November). Uncle roy all around you: Mixing games and theatre on the city streets. In Level up conference proceedings. University of Utrecht: DiGRA.
Flintham, M., Benford, S., Anastasi, R., Hemmings, T., Crabtree, A., Greenhalgh, C., … Row-Farr, J. (2003, April). Where on-line meets on the streets: experiences with mobile mixed reality games. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 569–576). CHI ’03. New York, NY, USA: ACM.
Greenhalgh, C., Izadi, S., Mathrick, J., Humble, J., Taylor, I. (2004, September). ECT: A toolkit to support rapid construction of ubicomp environments. In Proceedings of workshop on system support for ubiquitous computing. Nottingham, UK: Springer Verlag.
Greenhalgh, C., Izadi, S., Rodden, T., Benford, S. (2001). The EQUIP platform: Bringing together physical and virtual worlds.
Gregory, J. (2009, July). Game engine architecture (J. Lander M. Whiting, Eds.). Wellesley, Massachusetts: A K Peters.
Hall, R., Novak, J. (2008, April). Game development essentials: Online game development. Clifton Park, NY, USA: Delmar Cengage Learning.
Hansson, P., Åkesson, K.-P., Wallberg, A. (2007, February). Deliverable D11.9: Second generation core platform.
id Software. (1996). Quake.
ISO. (2011). ISO/IEC 25010:2011 systems and software engineering – systems and software quality requirements and evaluation (SQuaRE) – system and software quality models.
James, D., Walton, G., Mills, G., Welch, J., Valadares, J., Estanislao, J., DeBenedictis, S. (2004). 2004 persistent worlds whitepaper.
Johannesson, P., Perjons, E. (2014). An introduction to design science. Springer International Publishing Switzerland.
Jonsson, S., Waern, A. (2008). Art of game-mastering pervasive games, the. In Proceedings of the 2008 international conference on advances in computer entertainment technology (pp. 224–231). ACE ’08. New York, NY, USA: ACM.
Jonsson, S., Waern, A., Montola, M., Stenros, J. (2007, June). Game mastering a pervasive larp. experiences from Momentum. In Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on pervasive gaming applications (pp. 31-39). Salzburg, Austria: PerGames.
Lewis, M., Jacobson, J. (2002, January). Game engines in scientific research. Communications of the ACM, 45(1), 27–31.
Montola, M. (2012, September). On the edge of the magic circle: Understanding pervasive games and role-playing. (Doctoral dissertation, School of Information Sciences).
Montola, M., Stenros, J., Waern, A. (2009). Pervasive games. theory and design. experiences on the boundary between life and play. Burlington, MA, USA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Nieuwdorp, E. (2007, April). The pervasive discourse: An analysis. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 5.
Oppermann, L. (2009, April). Facilitating the development of location-based experiences. (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Nottingham).
Paelke, V., Oppermann, L., Reimann, C. (2008). Mobile location-based gaming. In Map-based mobile services- design, interaction and usability (Chap. 15, pp. 310–334). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Söderlund, T. (2009). Digital cityscapes. (Chap. Proximity Gaming: New Forms of Wireless Networking Gaming, pp. 217–250). USA: Peter Lang.
Ståhl, O., Drozd, A., Greenhalgh, C., Koivisto, A. (2006, August). Deliverable D6.7: Second phase release of the IPerG platforms.
Ståhl, O., Ohlenburg, J., Greenhalgh, C., Nenonen, V. (2007, Aug). Deliverable D6.8: Final release of the IPerG platforms.
Stenros, J., Montola, M., Waern, A., Jonsson, S. (2007a, May). Deliverable D11.8 appendix c: Momentum evaluation report (Tech. Rep.)
Stenros, J., Montola, M., Waern, A., Jonsson, S. (2007b). Play it for real: Sustained seamless life/game merger in momentum. In Situated play (pp. 121–129). Tokyo, Japan: DiGRA.
Suomela, R., Räsänen, E., Koivisto, A., Mattila, J. (2004). Open-source game development with the multi-user publishing environment (MUPE) application platform. In Entertainment computing – ICEC 2004 (pp. 308–320). Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Thompson, M. K., Weal, M. J., Michaelides, D. T., Cruickshank, D. G., Roure, D. C. D. (2003). MUD slinging: Virtual orchestration of physical interactions. ECSTRIAM03-007.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nevelsteen, K.J.L. (2015). Pervasive Games with Persistent Worlds. In: A Survey of Characteristic Engine Features for Technology-Sustained Pervasive Games. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17632-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17632-1_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17631-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17632-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)