Author Bios
Christian Lipcoppe - Christian is a Professor of Sociology of Information and Communication Technologies and the head of the Social Science department at Telecom Paristech in Paris, France.
Yoriko Inada - Yoriko is also a professor in the Department of Social Science at Telecom ParisTech in Paris, France.
Summary
This paper reported a comparative ethnographic study of a proximity based mobile video game (called Dragon Quest 9) in Japan. The Nintendo DS game terminals may ‘recognize’ one another and allow players to exchange game resources when they are close to one another. Players who are within about 20 meters of each other may participate in multi-player gameplay. When within the same range, a window pops up on the screen with the name of the other player’s game character and description. When this occurs, the player may go to the place in the game called ‘Rikka’s Inn’, where the other player’s avatar appears. By clicking on it, the player’s profile and tag message appear. During the event, some of the resources of the player who has just appeared may get transferred to the initial player. The game only allows three connections of this type at any one time, and the screen needs to be refreshed before allowing three more to occur. There are specific incentives in the game for users to assemble in groups. For example, the cellar and first floor of the inn, which usually remain hidden, may appear when there are several players close by whose avatars have entered the inn.
It is, however, possible to ignore interaction requests from players, unlike the real world where such a thing is obligatory. One issue that arises is that it is very simple to identify possible persons withing the game in the "real world", and players lose their anonymity.
Related Work
Diaz, L., Ekman, U. (2011) Introduction to Mobile ubiquity in public and private spaces
De Cindio, F., Foth, M. (2007) Digital cities 5 : urban informatics, locative media and mobile technology in inner-city developments (Workshop)
Drucker, S., Gumpert, G. (2010) The Urban Communication Infrastructure: Global Connection and Local Detachment
Gordon, E., Silva, A. (2011) Net locality: Why location matters in a networked world
Waltz, S. (2010) Toward a ludic architecture: the space of play and games
There is no directly related work, so it would seem that this is in fact a novel idea.
Evaluation
There was no formal evaluation completed, other than observation of players participating in the game. There arose certain subsets of the population who played the game very frequently and subsets who were not so fond of the proximity feature, thus did not play.
Discussion
Seems like an interesting idea, but also has some drawbacks.
Related Work
Diaz, L., Ekman, U. (2011) Introduction to Mobile ubiquity in public and private spaces
De Cindio, F., Foth, M. (2007) Digital cities 5 : urban informatics, locative media and mobile technology in inner-city developments (Workshop)
Drucker, S., Gumpert, G. (2010) The Urban Communication Infrastructure: Global Connection and Local Detachment
Gordon, E., Silva, A. (2011) Net locality: Why location matters in a networked world
Waltz, S. (2010) Toward a ludic architecture: the space of play and games
There is no directly related work, so it would seem that this is in fact a novel idea.
Evaluation
There was no formal evaluation completed, other than observation of players participating in the game. There arose certain subsets of the population who played the game very frequently and subsets who were not so fond of the proximity feature, thus did not play.
Discussion
Seems like an interesting idea, but also has some drawbacks.
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