Locative play

Game mechanics

Game overview

Urban Games

Alternate Reality Games (ARG)

Gamers Profiling

 

A location-based project can be subdivided into three different sections: exposition, interaction and challenges - to help you structure your game concept.

 

Exposition

First Contact

How do you get people to play the game? How do you get them involved? Which media channels do you use? (blogs, SMS, email)

Immersion & Narrativity            

Do you use a narrative to get the players immersed and how do you use/proportion it during the game?

Identity

What identity does the user have in the game and how is it represented? MMORPG-style or are you you?

Location

Do you use the entire city or a street or square?

What makes the game specific for this place or can it be played in different places as well?

 

Interaction

GamePlay

Gameplay is a set of game mechanics and is often also used to categorize:

classic games reinterpreted locatively
strategy [capture the flag]
role playing [narrative in place]
remote operator driving human avatar
collect objects from environment
trade or interact with other players as you come across them
perform specific task and record
always-on ladder competition

Game Mechanics

sharing, messaging, notes, leaving, marking, demarcating, tracking, logging, opinions, trading, collaboration, gaming, searching.

racing, shooting, commanding, hiding, trading, escaping, finding, stunts, role playing, learning

turns, action points, auction or bidding, cards, capture, catch-up, dice, movement, resource management, role-playing. tile-laying

Acting, Action Point Allowance System, Area Control, Area Enclosure, Area Movement , Area-Impulse, Auction/Bidding, Betting/Wagering, Campaign/Battle Card Driven, Card Drafting, Chit-Pull System, Co-operative Play, Commodity Speculation, Crayon Rail System, Dice Rolling, Hand Management, Hex-and-Counter, Line Drawing, Memory, Modular Board, Paper-and-Pencil, Partnerships, Pattern Building, Pattern Recognition, Pick-up and Deliver, Point to Point Movement, Rock-Paper-Scissors, Role Playing, Roll and Move, Secret Unit Deployment, Set Collection, Simulation, Simultaneous Action Selection, Singing, Stock Holding, Storytelling, Tile Placement, Trading, Trick-taking, Variable Phase Order, Variable Player Powers, Voting

examples see at BoardGameGeek

Virtual/Physical

What happens in the virtual world and what in the physical?

Duration & Time

How long does the game take? 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month?

Can the game only be played at a certain time of the year?

Is it a night or day game?

Replay

Can the game be easily replayed? If so, is there a connection between previously played sessions?

Devices and Connectivity

What hardware do you need and do you have to be online during the game? If so when?

Realtime/Live

Do you use realtime communication/media and why? Do you need multi-user realtime communication?

Mobile/Web

Does the game take place on the mobile device or also partly on the web?

Users: how many and how?

What is your user setup? One-on-one, team against team, everbody for himself? How many users in total?

Together/Alone

Is playing a team effort or do you play solo?

Media Usage

For what reason do you use which media?

Technology

Which technologies do you use? You can combine any from the list below and any other you can think of.

GPS / RFID / Chalk / Semacode (Shotcode) / Bluetooth / Wifi

Map Usage

Do you use a (paper?) map or other ways of navigation? Do you really need a map at all?

Intensity

Is user interaction continuous or spread out? (like tamagotchi)

Chance

Is there anything happening players don't have any control over?

What's the element of surprise?

 

Challenges

Goals

This is the most general sort of victory condition, which can be broad enough to encompass any method of winning, but here refers to game-specific goals that are usually not duplicated in other games. An example is the checkmate of a king in chess.

Piece elimination

Some games with capture mechanics are won by the player who removes all, or a given number of, the opponents' playing pieces.

Puzzle guessing

Some games end when a player guesses (or solves by logic) the answer to a puzzle or riddle posed by the game. The player who guesses successfully wins. Examples include hangman and zendo.

Races

Many simple games (and some complex ones) are effectively races. The first player to advance one or more tokens to or beyond a certain point on the board wins. Examples: backgammon, ludo.

Structure building

The goal of a structure building game is to acquire and assemble a set of game resources into either a defined winning structure, or into a structure that is somehow better than those of other players. In some games, the acquisition is of primary importance (e.g. concentration), while in others the resources are readily available and the interactions between them form more or less useful structures (e.g. poker).

Territory control

A winner may be decided by which player controls the most "territory" on the playing surface, or a specific piece of territory. This is common in wargames, but is also used in more abstract games such as go.

Victory points

The winner can be decided either by:

* The first player to reach a set number of points.
* The player with the most points at a predetermined finishing time or state of the game.

 

Game Modes

Which game modes do you have in your project? Game modes are different states that have impact on the gameplay.

Levels

Do you have different levels in your concept and how does it impact how players play?

Forms

How do players play?

* multiple teams head-to-head

* teams mobile or with web-player help

* one against one

* one against many

* by yourself

* by yourself or a team/group against the 'system'

* mobile against web