Beg, Borrow and Steal: Make a Simple GPS Game

This 3-hour tutorial introduces the process of rapid location-based game development. Starting with a simple game mechanic, borrowed from a well-known game, we show how easy it is to create a fun, new game that’s playable almost anywhere outside. The goal is to get a GPS game up and running as fast as possible, because iterative playtesting outside is essential to location-based game design.

The theme of this tutorial is “Beg, borrow and steal.”

• Borrow a game mechanic from a proven game. (Add your own unique game design idea to make it pop.)
• “Steal” from previous code examples provided by the community. (But be sure to give attribution where appropriate.)
• Beg for playtesting help from your friends. (And then give back to the community when you’re done.)

Tutorial Sections by Hour

1. In the first hour, introductory topics include location-based game design principles, portable vs. anchored games, and some successful game examples. Then we pick a game concept and do a quick design on paper.
2. Next we introduce the mscape toolkit and show how to implement the game in it. We give a detailed walkthrough of the steps necessary to build the first working prototype of the game as fast as possible.
3. In the final hour, we show how playtesting provides invaluable insights that help you improve the gameplay in the real world. Through the playtesting we identify some specific problems and then we present the solutions. Lastly, we extract a few lessons from the process that we can use on our next game.

Software platform

The mscape platform is a software toolkit for building, playing, and sharing discreet location-based games and rich media experiences for handheld GPS devices. Each “mediascape” can be opened in the editor so that everyone can see how it’s built. The non-commercial beta version of the software is freely available for download and use. And mscapers.com is a community-driven, sharing web site where many examples of games, tours, and other experimental locative media can be downloaded.

Speakers

Patrick Goddi and Josephine Reid are Senior Researchers for HP Labs. Kurt MacDonald is an independent game designer.

Brief Outline

• How to borrow from physical world games and video games.
  • Looking for game mechanics that are active, physical and social.
• Portable versus anchored games.
  • Anchored games must be played at a specific location. The design integrates the local environment into the gameplay.
  • Portable games can be played anywhere. The design focuses on the relative movement of the players in an arbitrary space.
• Adopt a mechanic.
  • Pick something simple and familiar (and fun)
  • Get people moving and help them understand “regions”
  • Give the player feedback: audio and visual
• We choose “Whack-a-mole”
• Build it
  • 3 holes
  • Player places holes, any number of configurations, some easy, some hard
  • Time limit to run to each hole before “mole” hides again
  • Whack as many moles as possible to get the highest score
• mscape Implementation
  • Define objects:
    • Regions and pins
  • Define rules/logic for objects
    • On Enter region and exit region
  • Define events
    • GPS fix, region enter, region exit
    • “Mole” alert sound and picture
  • UI Design
    • Drop in images and video
    • Add audio for feedback on events
• Play test
  • How big are the holes to start?
  • Use GPS error to increase the size of the holes?
  • What’s a reasonable and challenging time limit?
  • What happens when there are more than 3 holes? 4? 5?
  • Is there a way to make this game multiplayer? Or more social / competitive?
• Share your game with the world!