urban_history_play

Thesis by Marlene Mee Ahrens, mmah-270779 Louise JĂŚger Leidersdorff McHenry, ljlm-260979 Supervisor, Adriana de Souza e Silva Digital Design & Communication, IT-University of Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2011

ABSTRACT In Danish cultural history museums today, the experience can feel static, dull, and outdated. Furthermore, the user group consists primarily of women over the age of 50. Accordingly, there is a need to transform the museum experience by making it more interactive and relevant in the eyes of broader target groups. Specifically, a new user group of 18-35 year old adults who embrace the rapidly growing trend of smartphone technology, could be attracted to the museums through an updated approach to history dissemination.

The objective of this thesis is to design a location-based mobile game on the existing platform builder, SCVNGR, which utilizes smartphone technology. It is suggested to move the museum experience outside of museum walls and into the urban space of Copenhagen in order to connect historical elements to their original physical locations and create a mobile hybrid museum experience that provides a layered playful approach to obtaining local historical knowledge and a greater sense of belonging to Copenhagen.

Literature within the fields of location-based mobile games and museum spaces will be examined. Based on this literature study, and in collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark, a prototype of the game, the Gold Horn Thief, is designed, incorporating fictional and factual elements inspired by the historical theft of the Gold Horns. The prototype is tested on test participants within the projected target group, and results of this testing suggest that the game will succeed in providing a layered playful approach to obtaining local historical knowledge and a greater sense of belonging to Copenhagen among 18 to 35 year olds with smartphones.

This project has made it possible for the National Museum to develop a final version of the Gold Horn Thief and thereby have an opportunity to attract new user groups to the museum. The results of his thesis work will also inform other Danish museums how games such as the Gold Horn Thief can be designed on the SCVNGR platform with limited resources.

Keywords: Location-based mobile games, museum spaces, SCVNGR

Marlene Mee Ahrens & Louise JĂŚger Leidersdorff McHenry Supervisor: Adriana de Souza e Silva

ABSTRACT Oplevelsen på kulturhistoriske museer i Danmark kan ofte føles statisk og gammeldags. Brugergruppen bliver også stadig ældre, og består i dag primært af kvinder over 50. Som følge heraf, er der et behov for gøre museumsoplevelsen mere interaktiv og vedkommende for en bredere brugergruppe. På baggrund af en moderne tilgang til historisk formidling formodes det, at man kan tiltrække en ny brugergruppe bestående af 1835 årige, der er brugere af smartphone-teknologi.

Formålet med dette speciale var at designe et lokationsbaseret mobilspil ved brug af den allerede eksisterende applikationsplatform, SCVNGR, der gør brug af smartphone-teknologi. Det foreslås at flytte museumsoplevelsen ud af museets fysiske rammer og ind i byrummet for at forbinde historien med dens oprindelige fysiske kontekst. Derved skabes et mobilt hybrid-museumsrum, som tilbyder en mere legende og flerdimensionel tilgang til at opnå lokalhistorisk viden, der kan skabe et stærkere tilhørsforhold til København blandt spillerne.

Litteratur om lokationsbaserede mobilspil og museumsrum vil blive gennemgået, og på baggrund af denne litteratur og i samarbejde med Nationalmuseet udarbejdes der en prototype af spillet, GuldHornstyven.

Spillet vil indeholde både fiktive og faktuelle niveauer, som er baseret på tyveriet af Guldhornene. Prototypen er blevet testet af personer indenfor spillets målgruppe. Resultatet af testen viser, at det er lykkedes Guldhornstyven at tilbyde målgruppen, repræsenteret af test-deltagerne, en mere legende og flerdimensionel tilgang til at opnå lokalhistorisk viden samt at styrke gruppens tilhørsforhold til København.

Dette speciale har muliggjort for Nationalmuseet at udarbejde en endelig version af Guldhornstyven, og derved givet museet muligheden for at tiltrække en ny brugergruppe til museet. Dette speciale illustrerer også overfor andre danske museer, hvordan et spil som Guldhornstyven kan designes på en SCVNGR platform med begrænsede ressourcer.

Keywords: Lokations-baserede mobilspil, museumsrum, SCVNGR

Marlene Mee Ahrens og Louise Jæger Leidersdorff McHenry Vejleder: Adriana de Souza e Silva

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis work would not have been possible without the guidance and help of several individuals, who in one way or another contributed to this project.

First and foremost, we wish to thank our thesis supervisor Adriana de Souza e Silva, Ph.D and Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, who has supported and guided us with great knowledge, patience, and overview throughout our process.

Personal Acknowledgements I wish to thank my family and friends for their patience and support, but foremost I would like to thank Daniel Smedegaard Buus for being a great help and solid rock of serenity and happiness.

Marlene Mee Ahrens

Our design partners, firstly the National Museum, represented by Charlotte S.H. Jensen, for sparring as well as their openness to our design ideas.

History students, Ditte Jensen and Thorbjørn Bornhøft, for their thorough work in archives and literature.

I wish to thank my family and friends for their support and guidance, but foremost my husband, Albert Jerome McHenry and son, Callum Leidersdorff McHenry for their unlimited love and patience throughout this project.

Albert Jerome McHenry, for proofreading and writing guidance.

Louise Jæger Leidersdorff McHenry

Illustrator Lea Letén, for contributing with original drawings to the prototype.

Our test participants, for their willingness and constructive feedback in the testing process.

Marlene Mee Ahrens & Louise Jæger Leidersdorff McHenry

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction 11

3.3 Implications of LBMGs: Layered Playful Spaces and Local Knowledge 37

1.1 Thesis Purpose 12

3.3.1 Framing the Layering of Spaces 37

1.2 Aims and Research Questions 13

3.3.2 Creating Local Knowledge 39

1.3 Thesis Structure 13

3.3.3 How LBMGs Create Local Knowledge 42

Chapter 2: The Museum. Spaces and Experiences 15

Chapter 4: Concept Description and Development 45

2.1 The Museum Space 16

4.1 Designing the High Concept 46

2.1.1 The Physical Museum 16

4.1.1 Design Partners 47

2.1.2 The Online Museum 17

4.1.2 The Target Group 50

2.1.3 The Hybrid Museum 18

4.1.3 Choosing an Application Platform Builder 51

2.1.4 Applications, Towards the Mobile Hybrid Museum 19

4.1.4 The Gold Horn Thief 55

2.2 The Danish (Mobile) Hybrid Museum 21

4.2 Developing Content 57

2.3 Museum Experiences 23

4.2.1 Mapping the Game Space 57

4.2.2 Game Structure 58

4.2.3 Our SCVNGR Application 58

4.2.4 The Historical Layer 59

4.2.5 Time-Span 59

Chapter 3: Location-Based Mobile Games 27 3.1 Describing LBMGs 28

3.1.1 Botfighters 28

3.1.2 Mogi 29

3.1.3 Can You See Me Now? 31

Chapter 5: Design Motivation 61

3.1.4 Geocaching 31

5.1 The Gold Horn Thief as a LBMG 62

3.1.5 Foursquare 33

5.1.1 Collaborative Social Action 62

3.2 Defining LBMGs 34

5.1.2 Mobility 62

3.2.1 Expansion of Game Spaces 34

5.1.3 Location and Time-Span (Magic Circle Expansion) 63

3.2.2 LBMGs Require Players to be Mobile 36

5.1.4 Designing a Layered Playful Space 64

3.2.3 LBMGs as Collaborative Actions 36

5.1.5 Creating Local Knowledge 64

5.2 The Gold Horn Thief as a Museum Experience 65

Chapter 7: Urban / History / Play? 85

5.3 Game Mechanics in the Gold Horn Thief 66

7.1 Museum Spaces 86

5.3.1 The Narrative Game System 66

7.1.1 Introducing a New Target Group 86

5.3.2 The Goal 67

7.1.2 A Mobile Hybrid Museum? 86

5.3.3 The Conflict 67

7.1.3 Museum Experiences 88

5.3.4 Uncertainty 67

7.2 The Gold Horn Thief, a location-based game? 90

5.3.5 Core Mechanics 68

7.2.1 Collaborative Social Action 90

7.2.2 Mobility 91

Chapter 6: Testing 71

7.2.3 Expansion of Game Space 91

6.1 Test Participants 72

7.2.4 Layered Playful Spaces 92

6.2 Test Design 72

7.2.5 Creating Local Knowledge? 93

6.3 Testing in rounds 73

7.3 The Final Game: What We Have Learned 95

6.3.1 Test Round I 73

6.3.2 Test Round II 74

7.4 Ideas for the Future 97

6.3.3 Test Round III 75

7.5 The Gold Horn Thief’s Aims and Contributions 98

7.3.1 SCVNGR as a Museum Application? 97

6.4 Observing Playing Participants 75 6.5 Interviewing Participants 76

6.5.1 The Overall Game Experience 77

6.5.2 A Layered Playful Space 79

6.5.3 Local Knowledge 80

6.5.4 The Museum Experience 81

Bibliography 100 Illustrations and Models 106 Appendix I: Game Overview 108 Appendix II: Game Characters 110

6.6 Background Variable Survey 84

Appendix III: Content Examples 111

Appendix IV: Game Map 112

6.6.1 The Test Group 84

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Introduction: An addition; awakening; basic principles; beginning; commencement; debut; essentials; exordium; first taste; foreword; initiation; interpolation, intro; launch; opening

CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION “The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression”

their museum visit?

Brian Sutton-Smith

These ideas and questions sparked in our minds when we watched a Ted Talk by Seth Priebatsch, the designer behind the smartphone application SCVNGR, who very enthusiastically talked about placing a game layer on top of the world. We were inspired by his expression of the need to create more opportunities for adults to have playful experiences within their everyday spaces. So why not play a little more? As Sutton-Smith suggested, it is depressing not to.

Imagine this: You are visiting a cultural history museum. When you enter the building, there are two separate rooms to choose from; one is familiar to you: it has artifacts neatly exhibited in glass boxes with description notes accurately placed by each artifact. Adult visitors are slowly walking around, looking at the displays of cultural history. The other room is different. You see children running around, touching, interacting, and playing with artifacts. You hear laughter. The room looks fun, but you do not enter this fun room, because you are not a child. Instead, you put on your solemn face and walk slowly around looking carefully at the artifacts, reading the descriptions, while displaying your best donot-talk and do-not-touch etiquette. You see a strange looking artifact. “Woodshop tool, 1665” the description reads. You can see it, and you can read how old it is, but you have no idea how it was used, and you cannot learn anything about the type of person originally using it. On your way out you peek into the other room again and see children building wooden boxes using copies of the woodshop tool. Ahh! That is what it was used for, you think. And then you go home.

1.1. THESIS PURPOSE The museum experience has traditionally been a passive one. Visitors could not actively interact with information and artifacts inside the museum, and their agency was limited to choosing on which exhibition to focus and which one to pass by quickly. Nowadays, museums are competing with popular culture like movie theaters and amusement parks to attract visitors. Therefore, they must reevaluate the way they offer experiences not only to preserve their user group, but also to attract new target groups.

However, it is our perception that most Danish museums are reluctant of developing new experiences due to budget limitations and concerns about new technology.

An increasing number of museums around the world are trying to develop dynamic platforms for content generation and sharing of the museum experience or information. Visitors are no longer confined to the exhibition halls of the museum; rather, they can choose to take an audio walk in the streets in order to experience history where it actually took place. Our aim with this project was also to take history out into the streets and present historical facts in an alternative way than the traditional museum. We accomplished this by placing a playful layer of digital information on top of the physical world and presenting historical information where it originally took place.

Although the narrative above is somewhat exaggerated, experiences like this are at the heart of how we feel when visiting most Danish museums - and for that matter, most museums anywhere in the world. There is no interaction, no fun, and often not even an attempt to place the items inside the glass boxes in a context that could enhance the understanding of the artifacts being presented. We are secretly envious of the children’s museums, where they are allowed to play and to laugh. But why should adults not be allowed the same kind of playfulness and enjoyment during

Because games can entertain, motivate, and engage players - in other words, make it possible to activate players’ imaginations and emotions, we have decided to design this museum experience as a game experience.

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We have chosen the smartphone as a platform for the game as it provides a number of features that induce and enable interactive opportunities.

The smartphone is a personal and portable technology. It has GPS, which makes it location-aware, a camera, and easy access to the Internet, and it is therefore perfect for creating a digital experience that takes place out in the streets. Smartphones are also being adopted by an increasing part of the world’s population. As of July 2011, there are around 1,000,000,000 Android users and 41,152,350 iPhone users worldwide (Shankland, 2011 & Number of iPhones Sold, 2011). In Denmark, more than half of all new phone purchases are smartphones, and about 15% of the Danish population already own one (Sand, 2010).

In cooperation with the National Museum of Denmark we designed the game, the Gold Horn Thief, in the application builder SCVNGR. Within the game, players walk from location to location in Copenhagen trying to catch the Gold Horn thief. While visiting locations such as Nytorv, Assistenshuset, and Skt. Peders Stræde, they search for clues and complete challenges in order to collect enough points to excel in the game and reveal the thief and his whereabouts. The Gold Horn Thief is a dual museum experience in the way that it provides both a fictive narrative built on real historic events as well as offers factual insight into Copenhagen’s history and buildings.

While designing the Gold Horn Thief we have explored the following research questions:

With a smartphone and a plethora of applications available, it was possible to locate an application that could serve as a building platform for creating a playful museum experience. By using SCVNGR as a gaming platform, our goal was to prove to museums that developing a more mobile museum experience need not require extensive funding or coding skills.

− How can we create a museum experience that takes history outside the traditional museum and places it in the urban environment where it originally took place? − How can we create a location-based mobile game that is also a museum experience? − How can we create a playful layered historical experience for adults? − Can a museum game experience make people reconnect to their city and enhance their sense of belonging to their city? − How can we create an engaging and exciting game on an existing platform and thereby demonstrate to museums that such an experience can be developed on a limited budget?

1.2 AIMS AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS The aim of this thesis is to develop a museum experience in the form of a location-based mobile game that can facilitate interaction with the urban space by placing a playful digital layer on top of the physical world. We aim at increasing visitors’ interest in local history by taking this history out of the confined space of a museum and placing it back into its original context. The aim is to stimulate visitors’ imaginations and encourage their playfulness through entertainment and engagement. Our original assumption was that such an experience would help make visitors see their city and its well-known streets with different eyes. They would acquire a new, historical perspective, which would consequently make them feel a stronger sense of belonging to their city.

1.3 THESIS STRUCTURE In order to answer our research questions, we first studied literature on the construction of museum spaces. In chapter 2, we address different types of museum spaces, from a traditional physical museum space, to a virtual museum space, and a hybrid museum space. In this chapter, we build on this museum space research and add our own definition, the mobile hybrid museum space, which refers to the museum space we are working within when designing the Gold Horn Thief. We also explore the three contexts surrounding a museum experience: the personal, social, and physical while adding a technological context in order to take these contexts into account when designing the Gold Horn Thief within a modern museum space.

To achieve these aims, we researched the construction of museum spaces, explored the possibilities and limitations of the location-based mobile games, and examined how museums could use their resources in-house to create a game for smartphones using an application builder, rather than creating an application from scratch.

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Because we are working within the world of location-based gaming using the application SCVNGR, we explore the literature on location-based mobile games in chapter 3. In order to place the Gold Horn Thief within this world of location-based mobile games as well as derive motivation for our game design, we describe examples of the most prominent games within this genre throughout the last decade, including Botfighters, Mogi and Can You See Me Now. We also explore defining characteristics of location based-mobile games, such as expanding the game space, mobility, and collaborative social action among players in order to find inspiration for our own game. Within the process of designing the Gold Horn Thief, we have worked with connecting original knowledge (history) to specific locations, and we have asked players to navigate the urban environment while interpreting our digital history layer, which is provided through SCVNGR. Therefore, we will explore the following two implications of playing location-based mobile games, that are relevant to the Gold Horn Thief: creating a layered playful space and creating local knowledge.

how the final game could be improved. Testing showed that some issues regarding gameplay could be adjusted, but overall, the test was a pleasant experience for the participants.

Finally in chapter 7, we discuss whether we have succeeded in reaching the aims for the Gold Horn Thief and reflect upon which improvements can be made to the game in order for it to be realized as an attractive offer to visitors at the National Museum. Lastly, we present an agenda for further work as well as deliver suggestions to how a game could have been designed without the limitations of a building platform.

Based on this literature review, we then began development of the Gold Horn Thief. In chapter 4, we provide a description of the game concept, which is designed around the theme of catching the Gold Horn thief; we provide the content within the game, and we present our design process as well as how we worked on generating content and developing the narrative in cooperation with the National Museum.

In chapter 5, we present our motivation behind designing the game structure in the Gold Horn Thief, including how we have used a narrative and game mechanics to motivate players, discuss design choices, such as atmosphere and other narrative descriptors, and explain how our literature studies have affected these choices.

After designing our game concept and creating a functioning prototype, the experience was tested in order to account for technical issues as well as evaluate the museum game experience. Our test design and the results of the tests are presented in chapter 6. The prototype of the Gold Horn Thief was tested on participants inside the target group in order to gauge how this group reacted to the experience and receive their input on 14

Ask anyone what a museum is and most people will come up with an answer including a building and paintings on the wall. Or old stuff in displays.

Jasper Visser

CHAPTER 2 : THE MUSEUM. SPACES AND EXPERIENCES Most people remember visiting museums as children, and most can recall their favorite museum. But whether a science museum, a history museum, or an art museum, all of the visits might have had one thing in common it was oftentimes a quiet and not very interactive experience. Still today, when visiting museums, children generally hold their parents’ hands and move silently from glass box to glass box viewing exhibited artifacts.

And even when these children grow up to be adults, these experiences feel alike. But today, with the emergence of mobile technology and the introduction of the Internet, the way people experience museums is changing.

ancient history artifacts, art, taxidermy of animals, and other specimens (Kulturarvstyrelsen, 2010).

Within museum spaces that use the gallery exhibition form, such as art museums, the physical space has in the last 50 years widely been referred to as the white cube. Art theory scholar Simon Sheikh (2009) suggests, “… the white cube, with its even walls and its unobtrusive artificial lighting - a sacred space that (despite its modern design) resembles an ancient tomb, undisturbed by time and containing infinite riches.” (para. 3). Sheikh’s choice of words, ”ancient tomb” and ”undisturbed” are illuminating when it comes to the traditional physical museum, a museum, which can seem stuck in time and not developing or expanding their ways of dissemination when it comes to interaction with visitors and integration of technology.

In this chapter, we present an overview of different types of museum spaces to illustrate how they have developed through time: The physical museum, the online museum, the hybrid museum, and the mobile hybrid museum. We examine examples of these museum spaces both internationally and in Denmark. In addition, we investigate the current state of Danish museums in relation to their use of mobile technology, both within governmental, business and museum initiatives. Finally, to understand how a visit to a museum is constructed, we look at the actual museum experience from a visitor’s perspective using a model to organize the four contexts within a mobile hybrid museum experience; personal, social, physical and our addition, the technological context. And in connection to these contexts, we will emphasize the different types of motivations for visiting museums.

The experience of the traditional type of museum takes place within a confined physical space, where the artifacts are taken out of their original context and exhibited. Take the example of the Workers’ Museum in Copenhagen; here, industrial machines are displayed far away from the factory floor from which they came and in no close proximity to other machines that the original workers used in the same workflow and context.

This setting can make it difficult for visitors to appreciate the use and relevance of the machine.

In the traditional museum, visitors move around in the physical space, and they have no ability to transform the exhibit. Of course, traditional museums have some level of interaction, since visitors are free to move around the space, as well as determine the pace and order at which they experience the exhibit. However, aside from visual stimulation and audio walks, the traditional museum offers few options for visitors to interact with artifacts. Furthermore, visitors are expected to act or behave in a certain way: no touching, talking, picture-taking and so forth.

2.1 THE MUSEUM SPACE 2.1.1 THE PHYSICAL MUSEUM The physical museum was the first type of museum, and it is probably the type of museum that the majority of visitors are most familiar with.

Physical museums are confined spaces, in which collections of artifacts are exhibited. Artifacts are most often displayed on walls, in glass boxes or in set-ups that aim to convey the context of an artifact - for example, a typical living room set-up from the 1700s, complete with tables, chairs, pictures, books, etc. In Denmark, the physical museum dates back to 1621, where the Danish scientist Ole Worm started creating a collection of Danish

Having in mind the traditional museum space, Adriana de Souza e Silva (2005) suggests, “Because their artifacts were supposed to be admired, museums developed as impersonal, neutral, and silent environments.” (p. 11) As de Souza e Silva implies, there is an etiquette or a way that one 16

is “supposed” to behave in a traditional museum. Thus, the traditional physical museum can be a static place, where visitors are expected to see, not touch, and are often expected to come up with their own narratives about the artifacts. Oftentimes, artifacts are accompanied with only a short, numbered note that provides a description, such as “a gentleman’s brown silk jacket, circa 1830 (item 8),” and “a copper teapot, circa 1650 (item 19)”.

2.1.2 THE ONLINE MUSEUM With the surfacing of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, new possibilities arose for museums to expand their spaces into the online environment.

The first online museum spaces were remote from the physical space in that they were most often accessed when the visitor was not physically in the museum. Visitors were generally in front of a personal computer and therefore separated from the museum’s physical environment. According to de Souza e Silva (2005), virtual (online) museums can be divided in two types. One type is meant to compliment the museum’s collections, for example by providing a more thorough description of the artifact’s context or by providing pictures from different angles. This type of online museum is also associated with a physical space and/or a specific exhibit, such as a guide to an exhibit. An example of this is the site of the British museum, Museum of the History of Science, which in 1995 was among the first British museums to create a virtual museum. The website had a list of collections, and within every collection, the site showed pictures of exhibited items (Science Museum, n.d.). This online museum focused on including high-resolution pictures of its physical artifacts on a remote website, which was meant to provide users with a more in-depth look at exhibited artifacts, such as photos of an artifact from behind or from within.

ILLUSTRATION 1: Traditional exhibit of artifacts, the National Museum

Even so, visitors have to use their imaginations to determine the context around the artifact. How was the axe used? Who used it? Who made it?

And so forth.

Even though the traditional museum space has existed for hundreds of years, there are still many museums that utilize this form of dissemination, and though it can be presumptive to forecast the future of museum spaces, this space will probably be around for a long time.

ILLUSTRATION 2: Example of online museum exhibit at www.natmus.com

As Jonathan Bowen (2003) comments, these pictures were “…rivaling the view available in the museum itself.” (para. 24). In other words, using several photos to document artifacts from different angles provided users 17

with a view that would not be possible in the physical museum space and that potentially some users might prefer.

the traditional museum form, but history has shown that this tends to be incorrect (de Souza e Silva, 2005). Museum forms are still expanding and developing, and often, online museums complement physical museums, rather than replace them.

The second type of virtual museum, according to de Souza e Silva (2005), is not necessarily linked to an existing physical museum space. This category of online museums is represented by a website that includes pictures of artifacts which are impossible to exhibit in a physical space, either due to the character of the artifact or the location. An example of such an online museum is the Danish website museum at www. webmuseum.dk. The museum was launched in May 2011, and it offers a platform for documenting and disseminating the World Wide Web’s history, including websites, images and movies. This museum provides users with a collection and view into web history that would not be possible in a physical space. Visitors have the opportunity to explore some of the earliest web pages from 1992 up to present time, an option that technically would be impossible in a traditional physical museum. In a traditional museum, the physical space limits the amount of artifacts, but within a virtual museum, there are almost no limits to this number, only those of server size (de Souza e Silva, 2005). As is evident with the previous example, online museums might contain thousands of web pages as exhibited artifacts; one could even think of one single museum holding documentation of all existing art in the world (de Souza e Silva, 2005).

2.1.3 THE HYBRID MUSEUM In the past decade, museums have evolved into more of a hybrid form that involves physical and digital elements. With the advent of new ubiquitous technologies that can be installed in the physical museums space, such as QR-codes1, RFID-tags 2, etc., a new type of museum space has emerged. de Souza e Silva (2005) distinctively calls this new type of museum the hybrid museum. The hybrid museum type has two main characteristics: (1) It merges the borders of physical and virtual spaces by means of the visitor’s presence and mobility, and (2) it promotes direct interaction and communication among visitors and the museum space (p.16).

Museums have become more interactive in many new and innovative ways, and visitors also feel more empowered in their museum visit experiences. One example is Amsterdams Historich Museum’s A’DAM. In the beginning of 2011, the museum featured an exhibit called The Man and Fashion Exhibit, which utilized RFID-tags to create a participatory, individualized, and interactive experience in the physical museum space.

At the start of the exhibition, visitors created a personal profile, which got linked to their A’DAM ID card. When visitors walked around the exhibition, they swiped their ID cards, and the RFID-tag registered the visitors’ personal preferences related to fashion, clothing, and self-image. At the end of the exhibition, all the data collected revealed a specific profile of the visitor and compared it to the results of other visitors.

There has been a lot of discussion within the museum community about whether online museums enhance or detract from the value of the traditional museum. As mentioned previously, online museums offer many choices for visitors, because there are no spatial limitations to the number of artifacts it may contain. Online museums also offer ways to get a closer relationship to artifacts. An example is the painting of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris. In the physical museum, visitors are not allowed to be in close proximity of the painting. In fact, visitors must remain at least ten feet away (New York Times, 2007). The museum’s website offers users the opportunity to zoom in closely on a photo of the painting and see every brush stroke, therefore achieving an alternative experience, an experience that would be impossible in the physical exhibit. Some museum professionals were worried that online museums would replace

The RFID-tag technologies made visitors interact with the exhibit, as they had to make personal choices and swipe their cards accordingly. As the head of the museum’s Social Media and Web Department, Hester 1 QR-code, Quick Response Code, is a 2d barcode that has either a URL, text, or other

information encoded in it. It can be read by a scanner or a smartphone with appropriate software (Steinbrueck, 2011).

2 RFID, Radio Frequency Identification, is a small tag, a microchip combined with an antenna, which can store and receive data. The RFID-tag can be read by a scanner up to 100 meters away (Prosign, n.d.).

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Vatican Museum’s exhibits. The Vatican Museum Tour also provides general practical information about the museum and a link to the museum website (iTunes Apple, 2011). But other than the audio guide, the application does not offer much else that could not just as well be found in a material pocketbook guide. Some museums have designed applications that transcend conventional museum guides. A good example is the application Tate Trumps. Tate Trumps was introduced in August 2010, and it was developed partly by the company Hide and Seek and the Tate Museum in London. The Tate Museum holds British art from the 1500s to the present (Tate, n.d.). By going to the museum and downloading the application to their smartphones, visitors are invited to join teams and choose to

Gersonius (2010) remarked, “…the visitors themselves become part of the exhibition.” (Billings para. 5, 2010). We believe, that becoming an active part of the experience probably made the visitors feel more engaged with the exhibit and the museum. The experience of the hybrid museum is dependent on the mobility and the presence of the visitors in the physical space, but also in the online space via their online profile’s movement.

Even though this type of experience is a very modern way of museum dissemination, we still consider this to be under the term, the hybrid museum, since the technology used is installed in the physical museum space. Referring back to the definition of the hybrid museum, this experience creates interaction with exhibited items and also interaction among visitors.

2.1.4 APPLICATIONS, TOWARDS THE MOBILE HYBRID MUSEUM With the development of mobile and locative technology and the diffusion of smartphones, phone applications have become largely available to the public, and museums are increasingly embracing this technology. As a result, the world of museum applications is quickly expanding. As of March 2011, there are 181 iPhone applications and 34 Android applications that are associated with museums (Outhier, 2011). This takes the idea of hybrid museums one step further into what we would like to call the Mobile Hybrid Museum. The mobile hybrid museum adds an extra layer of interactivity to the hybrid museum because it includes a mobile element, such as a personal smartphone, that visitors use to interact with the exhibition, and it allows the possibility of taking the experience outside of the museum and into urban space, while moving between different locations and sharing it with friends and family through social networks.

ILLUSTRATION 3: Tate Trumps, screenshots

experience the museum in one of three modes: Battle Mode, Mood Mode, or Collector Mode. Battle Mode challenges the visitor to imagine what would happen if a specific artwork comes alive and starts attacking other artworks. Mood Mode encourages more contemplation; it impels the visitors to be aware of what kind of feelings different artwork awakes in them, as they have to seek out the artwork they find most exhilarating, menacing, or absurd. In the Collector Mode, visitors have the opportunity to construct their own art gallery with their favorite pieces. When all players have chosen specific artworks that they think will win them the

Today, most of the available museum applications are museum guides (Outhier, 2011). The majority of these guides are meant to provide visitors with varying information of artifacts, and among other things, the possibility of taking audio tours in the exhibits. As of yet, there are no examples of these applications in Denmark, but an international example is the Italian application, Vatican Museums Tour. The application is replete with photos, text, and audio guides, and it directs the visitor through the 19

game within their chosen mode, they meet up with other players in person and have a quick “card game” to find each winner within the chosen modes (Hide and Seek, n.d.). According to the development director at Hide and Seek, Margaret Robinson (Mascioni, 2011), the application has gotten a very positive response from visitors who on average have spent between one and one and a half hours playing the game (para. 9).

This museum is one that visitors will visit periodically throughout their life to experience the art, just as most Danish children probably will have visited the National Museum together with their school teacher, grandmother, and yet again several times throughout their adulthood. Tate Trumps creates the opportunity for the visitors to achieve a much different experience than they have before. Compared to the traditional museum experience, this game experience provides an alternate way of engaging with the artwork.

ILLUSTRATION 4: Streetmuseum, screenshots

history into perspective for users. Streetmuseum visualizes what passing of time has done to a specific location, making the time lag an essential part of the experience. The time lag can intuitively create a sense of similarity and difference between a previously lived life or situation and a current one (Brandt 2009, p. 80). For example, for a user to be standing in a square that he or she crosses everyday, it could put things into perspective when realizing what a different life the people in the image must have lived, just by looking at their means of transportation, clothing, etc.

Whereas Tate Trumps creates a different museum experience inside the walls of the traditional museum, the application Streetmuseum takes visitors out of the traditional museum space. Streetmuseum was launched in May 2010 and developed by the Museum of London and the company Brothers and Sisters. Streetmuseum is not a game application per se in that there are no teams, players, or chances to win, but rather an application, which creates a different experience inside and of the urban space. The application makes use of augmented reality, which allows visitors to see superimposed images of older versions of buildings on their smartphone screens while pointing the phone at the physical building. For example, one could be standing at Piccadilly Circus seeing the hustle and bustle of modern life and traffic, but on the smartphone screen one would see an image of that same location from 1850 complete with people, horse carriages, and buildings as it all looked then.

The use of mobile and locative technologies connected to the Internet in museum spaces changes the way visitors interact in and with museums. As mentioned earlier, the traditional museum experience is a less interactive and quieter one. However, the hybrid museum has made it possible to interact at a different level both with the space but also with fellow visitors, as illustrated by the example from Amsterdam. And with this very new introduction of the mobile hybrid museum, an extra layer can be built on top of the museum experience. This museum space provides visitors with the advantages of engaging in a completely new museum experience, including the advantages of merging the border between physical and virtual space, experiencing within the physical context (like an urban space), and providing the opportunity to connect to visitors’ social networks.

Streetmuseum utilizes geo-tagging and Google Maps to lead the visitor to various locations in London. It features more than 200 locations where both information and images are available (Museum of London, 2010).

The museum writes that the application provides “a different outlook on London” (Museum of London, 2010). In addition, it probably helps to put 20

2.2 THE DANISH (MOBILE) HYBRID MUSEUM Most museums in Denmark are still very traditional and have not deviated from the traditional museum space. But increasingly, Danish museums are embracing new digital technology and designing new spaces both in and out of museum buildings, and government, businesses, and museum professionals are partaking in this development. For example, The Heritage Agency of Denmark, a government agency under the Cultural Ministry, completed a report in 2006, which included recommendations for the future development of Danish museums. A substantial part of this report focused on how to implement digital dissemination experiences and improve online presence by making more user-friendly websites and virtual museums, as well as creating a presence on social media platforms. A list containing hundreds of digital museum projects created over the last five years can be found on The Heritage Agency of Denmark’s website at www. kulturarv.dk. However, most of these can be categorized within the virtual or the traditional museum types, since the majority are online exhibits and museum guides, and these do not offer ways of integrating technology into the experiences. It is important to note though, that when the recommendations were written in 2005-2006, hardly any Danish museums were using ubiquitous technology or smartphone applications in their dissemination.

ILLUSTRATION 5: 1001 Stories of Denmark, screenshots

the website, but none of them have been able to create interaction with visitors on the location. All of them have only one story connected to their profile, which is registered by the person who uploaded the location in the first place and not the general users.

Not only the government, but also businesses are taking an interest in expanding the museum space in order to include more digital experiences.

For example, the Cultural Fund of Nordea, a Danish bank, is supporting the National Art Museum with 22 million Danish Kroner. The funds are to be spent over a period of five years in order to make the museum a frontrunner in regards to digital art dissemination (Gundersen, 2010).

So far, the National Art museum projects include an improved website, online exhibits, online games, video production, and an improved online database. The intent for all of this is to design a museum space both online and offline that increases the users’ appetite for art. Though all of these initiatives are commendable, they do not make use of the possibilities that mobile technologies have to offer. For example, the National Art museum has five games integrated on the website, but the games seem detached from the museum’s exhibits and artwork, and the level of dissemination is low at best. While these games could be accessed from a smartphone through a browser and create a level of entertainment at the website, they do not create any interaction in the exhibits or between visitors. It is

The Heritage of Agency of Denmark has also created the application 1001 Fortællinger om Danmark (1001 Stories of Denmark). It is a locationbased application paired with a website service that tells stories of Danish heritage. The application communicates the heritage of specific places via text, pictures, and occasionally, audio files. The target groups for this application are foreign and Danish tourists. The content is provided partly by The Heritage Agency of Denmark and partly by local experts and amateurs that govern the different places. Other than visiting specific sites it is also possible to follow different themes, such as World War II or The Social Welfare State. The theme pack offers specific locations and stories relevant to the theme (Kulturarvstyrelsen, n.d.). This application is not necessarily designed to be a museum application, but museums are slowly starting to use this service probably because it offers a platform for interaction with the users. Fifteen locations are tagged with “museum” on 21

poignant that the funds are not being used to create a different experience in the physical museum space but rather seem to be focused mainly on the virtual part of the museum.

hunt, which ran in Horsens in 2008-2009. The walk was a collaborative project between the city of Horsens, the local city museum, and a theater group. To explore the walk, users had to scan QR-codes with a smartphone and in turn receive video clips and audio files that guided them forward in the story and activated the next “scene” in the drama (Katapult, n.d.).

The users took on the character of Kristian, who is on his way to his sister’s funeral when he suddenly gets a strange phone call from a girl named Anna. Anna says she has a message from his dead sister. The game takes players around the city while they try to find more information about the sister. As a consequence, it provides players with information about Horsen’s history and the people who used to live there, such as the famous seafarer, Vitus Bering, who was born in Horsens in 1861 (Den store danske, n.d.).

A game that does explore the mobile hybrid mobile museum experience, and which is an example of a museum initiative, is Mulighedernes Land (The Land of Opportunities). This game was one of the first of its kind in Denmark when it was implemented in 2005. The game is an interactive role-playing game at the open-air museum, Frilandsmuseet. Mulighedernes Land is facilitated through the combination of a cell phone and a separate gps-device that the museum lends to participants. The game is targeted at students between the ages of 12-16 who visit the museum on school excursions. The players can choose among eight fictional characters - young boys and girls on the verge of growing up in the end of the nineteenth century. The eight characters are from different social economic levels and environments. Examples include the character of Jens, a poor young shoemaker with an abusive and alcoholic father, or the young woman, Thyra, born into wealth, residing at the local watermill household and whose only worry is to find a suitable husband (Nationalmuseet, n.d.).

Groups of two to four students share a character and must work together to decide how to help the character move forward in his or her life (Nationalmuseet, n.d. & Tripledesign, n.d).

One user who experienced the walk remarked, “In the experience I had, I did not really notice the surroundings. I was more focused on listening to the story on the headphones.” (Bitcsh D’Souza, 2010, p.49, translated by authors). It seems that this experience was mostly focused on the evolving drama, rather than the connection between history and the physical space.

So the users might learn about the history but not necessarily be able to contextualize it.

Although Danish location-based experiences are helping to move the Danish museum tradition towards the direction of mobile hybrid museums via the modern dissemination of history and the espousal of technology, there are currently no location-based mobile games that aim to provide a historical experience while changing visitors’ perceptions of both the museum experience and the space in which it takes place.

And while existing Danish location-based experiences seem to fail in connecting museum visitors with their surrounding space, our game aims to strengthen these connections by making players aware of their surroundings. Possibly, what was missing from the previously mentioned game experiences was to understand the museum experience from the visitor’s perspective. Therefore, to get a better understanding of how an interactive visit to a museum is constructed, we will explore the museum experience from the visitor’s perspective in the next section.

The game engages the students in that it prompts them to make choices for the characters, which in turn teaches the students how the different choices would have affected different people living with different social economic levels in that era. It also illustrates how being born into a specific social economic level would have affected the outcome of one’s life. The students identify more easily with the characters as they are the same age and have a stake in the development of the characters’ lives (Nationalmuseet, n.d.).

While Mulighedernes Land is a game within the museum space of an outdoor museum, the mobile experience Gama takes the user outside of the traditional museum space and creates a story in the urban space.

Gama was a dramatized city walk and a form of psychological treasure 22

2.3 MUSEUM EXPERIENCES According to John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking (1992), the experience of going to a museum is perceived differently from visitor to visitor. While two visitors might be at the same museum, at the same exhibit, at the exact same time, they might leave the museum with very different conceptions of their experiences. One visitor’s experience might have been pleasant another’s disappointing. In their research, Falk and Dierking (1992) seek to understand museums from a visitor’s perspective. Why do people go to museums? What do they do while there are there? What do they remember afterwards? Falk and Dierking build their research on interviews with over 2000 individuals over a period of six years. The interviews were conducted before, as well as months and years after the museum visits (p.

115).

Personal Context

Interactive Experience Social Context

The model to the right is Falk and Dierking’s proposed way of organizing the context of the differentiated museum experience. It is an attempt to present a more consistent picture of the full museum experience and of the different contexts that play into the full experience and therefore affect every visitor. Understanding these contexts can aid in the design of a museum experience; understanding that the museum experience is composite and complex, and that it does not just consist of the time spent in front of the artifacts, helps to promote the need for individualized experiences and the opportunity for visitors to have more influence on their experience.

Physical Context

MODEL 1: The Interactive Experience Model, Falk and Dierking, 1992.

wrong side of the bed, the visitor could start the experience in a negative mindset that could potentially last throughout the whole experience. And within this context, it could be challenging for the museum to alter or entertain the visitor into a different mindset.

Besides a visitor’s personal context, most visits to a museum happen within a social context. Falk and Dierking’s (1997) research shows that most visits to a museum occur in groups, but even in the rare situation that a visitor attends an exhibition alone, there will always exist some kind of interaction with other visitors and/or the museum staff, and this will also affect the experience. For example, a visit with an old grandmother is a very different experience than a visit with a child. A grandmother might take on the role of teacher and be reminiscent of “the old days”, attempting to control the experience towards her focus. Here, a child will likely be more passive and might not have the same patience to immerse him/herself in each artifact.

Whether the museum is very crowded or completely desolate will also affect the context of the experience. A crowded room can feel noisy and jam-packed. For some, this could feel uncomfortable, but for others, a crowded room might add life and the possibility for interaction.

According to Falk and Dierking (1992), the museum experience is an interaction among three contexts: personal, social and physical. The visitor’s personal context is unique. It is based on his/her own knowledge and experiences. The personal context also includes the visitor’s motivations and concerns, and this is part of shaping how he/she enjoys and appreciates things, as well as how he/she seeks self-fulfillment. This means that a visitor arrives at the museum with a personal agenda or expectations for what the outcome of the museum visit will be. So, if a visitor starts the experience in a foul mood, it will have an effect on the final experience. For example, if a visitor has had a huge argument with a spouse, has missed the bus, been late, or in general gotten out of the 23

Finally, the physical context is the actual physical space of the museum. It includes everything that occurs or is felt inside the physical space of the museum. For example, there might be benches to sit on if a visitor gets tired, the exhibit room might too cold or too warm, or there might even be a weird odor in the room. All of these physical characteristics of the building will affect the visitor’s experience. Of course, the artifacts that belong to the exhibit will also affect the visitor’s experience.

Personal Context

Social Context Mobile Hybrid Experience

According to Falk and Dierking (1992), the full visitor experience is created by the interaction among these three contexts. “Whatever the visitor does attend to is filtered though the personal context, mediated by the social context, and embedded within the physical context“ (p. 4). In other words, one cannot separate the contexts from each other since they are connected and continuously evolving. However, it can be difficult to apprehend or to account for everything that affects the experience, the full magnitude of the experience so to speak, since a visitor’s experience starts even before he/she enters the museum space. Moreover, as the experience is affected by all three contexts, elements such as a chilly room, a screaming baby, or a fight with a spouse become part of the full experience.

Physical Context

Technological Context

MODEL 2: The Mobile Hybrid Experience Model

Interacting with the technology by swiping the RFID-cards and the way in which technology enabled the mobility of the visitors became part of the context. Visitors could not have received a personal profile and would not have had the same individualized experience without the use of the RFID-technology. However, the technological context does not always complement the visitor’s experience. For example, the Head of Social Media and Web Department at A’DAM, Hester Gersonius remarks: “…some visitors were swiping their cards over the screens with the instructions on, rather than over the pillars where the readers are embedded...” (Billings 2010, para. 7). Therefore, if the technology used is unfamiliar to visitors, it could become a hindrance and detract from the full experience.

Falk and Dierking’s model (1992) is sufficient for explaining the traditional museum experience within a physical space, but the model does not account for the new types of museum spaces such as hybrid museums and mobile hybrid museums. Therefore we propose a change to the model, by the addition of the technological context.

The emergence of technology within the museum experience has created an extra context to the experience. The type or level of technology within an experience will also affect the visitor. So, the technological context refers to the kind of technology used within the experience. At what level does it affect the visitor? Is it an essential part or merely a complementary part of the experience? Is it installed in the exhibition or is it more mobile, like a smartphone? The previously mentioned case from Amsterdam, A’DAM, is an example of a museum experience in which the technology used played an integral part in enhancing the visitor’s experience.

But the visitor’s experience is not only affected by the contexts in which it happens; it is also affected by whatever own expectations or agendas that the visitors arrive at the museums with. These expectations can influence the experience both during and after a visit. For example, most of us have experienced going to see a movie in the cinema that has gotten great reviews and then leaving the cinema disappointed, because it did not live up to our expectations. And vice versa, going to see a movie that 24

a friend said was bad and being surprised in liking it probably because the expectations were lowered. If we can understand why visitors come to museums, it might make it easier to design a more individually suited experience, such as a location-based game that can be played on a personal cell phone. According to Falk (2010), “Visitors come (to museums) to fulfill specific, personal identity-related needs.” (Slide 7) Falk makes those needs visible through descriptions of visitors’ motivations and expectations or visitors’ agendas. Falk’s (2010) research shows that the agendas that visitors have had before the visit influence the outcome of the visit, as well as how well the content of the visit is retained not only immediately after the visit, but also down the road. Falk (2010) describes five visitor agendas:

shapes what he or she does in the museum, but it also shapes how this person stores the museum experience in the future (Falk, 2010). Falk’s interviews with visitors six months after their visits reveal that some of them remember or retain more from their experiences at the museum than others. In other words, different agendas will lead to different levels of how well the knowledge acquired in the museum will be retained.

Specifically, Falk’s research shows that Explorers remember most from their experiences six months after the event, while others like Facilitators hardly remember anything but whom they went to the museum with. By learning about these different agendas, museums can customize different experiences to meet the needs of different visitors. For example, Falk (2010) suggests that custodians could propose different experiences or exhibits to the visitors at the entrance of the museum to cater to the different agendas that visitors arrive with.

1. The Explorer: This visitor is motivated by personal curiosity. The explorer comes by own merit and incentive.

2. The Facilitator: Other people motivate the Facilitator. For example, facilitating parents bring their children to a museum to give them a meaningful experience. Similarly, a family member or friend might pull people into the museum experience.

3. The Experience Seeker: The desire to see and experience things motivates the Experience Seeker. It can be due to the reputation of the museum or because it is a tourist attraction, or even the cultural thing that “everyone” visits while they are in this city.

4. The Professional: This visitor is motivated by specific knowledge related goals. The content of the visit may relate to the visitor’s work life or serious hobby.

5. The Recharger: Wanting a restorative or contemplating experience motivates the Recharger. This visitor could feel that the experience will help them focus on a busy life, make them feel refreshed or make them appreciate their life.

In designing the Gold Horn Thief, we considered Falk’s contexts and agenda types (in addition to our technological context) in order to make the museum experience more explorative. If we can change the visitor’s agenda by introducing meaningful game play, at least during the museum visit, we should be able to help the visitors maintain the content of their experience, or in other words what they learned from their experience.

Understanding that there is more to the museum experience than just looking at an artifact and that the several contexts make a difference in the full experience is valuable when we want to design a game that expands the traditional museum space.

Games like Tate Trumps and the application Streetmuseum inspired us in the process of designing the Gold Horn Thief. Just as Streetmuseum puts a digital layer on top of a physical space, thereby changing the interpretation of the physical space, we have developed a parallel experience by including a fictional layer on top of Copenhagen. Similarly, the game mechanics used

by Tate Trumps motivated visitors and provided a different experience than the one they would have had in the museum previously. The game experience also made visitors use a more exploratory approach in their visit. Therefore, we incorporated similar aspects, as they could affect the way visitors perceive the full experience.

Falk’s (2010) research, which is based on interviews before and after museum visits, has shown that the majority of museum visits can be categorized as one or a combination of these identity related agendas.

Visitors with similar agendas tend to have similar experiences in the way they derive meaning from the museum visit. A visitor’s previous agenda 25

The world of location-based mobile games (LBMGs) is growing fast within the museum industry, and in Denmark, more and more museums are starting to adapt to more digital and mobile experiences. In the next chapter, we will explore LBMGs and evaluate which affordances the technology has that can be utilized in the design of the Gold Horn Thief.

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There is always a blur to when you are in a fictional world and when you are in the factual world - or everyday world.

Blast Theory

CHAPTER 3 : LOCATION-BASED MOBILE GAMES In the previous chapter, we defined and described the experience of going to a museum. We explained how museum space has changed from being solely a physical museum space, to a virtual space, and then to hybrid and mobile hybrid spaces. In this chapter, we focus on a different kind of experience, which also takes place in a mobile hybrid space. We explore the space in which location-based mobile games (LBMGs) take place.

LBMGs and, consequently, the process of designing our own game, the Gold Horn Thief.

Then we explore two implications of playing a LBMG that we aim to achieve with the Gold Horn Thief: the creation of a layered playful space and the creation of local knowledge. A layered playful space emerges from placing a fictional world on top of the physical world. Being able to create a layered playful space is essential, because our game takes place in the context of the mobile hybrid museum space. Our game experience is layered, as players will move in physical space in present time while also walking in the footsteps of a historical character. Finally, with the Gold Horn Thief, we also aim to create local knowledge (Gordon, 2008). Having local knowledge about specific locations is what creates a sense of belonging to a geographical place. With the Gold Horn Thief, we aim to enhance Copenhageners’ sense of belonging to their city by the creation of local knowledge while playing the game.

Firstly, we describe some of the most notable LBMGs in the last decade, namely Botfighters, Mogi, Can You See Me Now? (CYSMN?), and Geocaching. Botfighters is relevant because it was the first commercial LBMG, and Mogi was a great success in Japan, where it was launched.

Furthermore, the two games are pertinent because they were the first to create a digital game layer while asking players to navigate both the game world and real world simultaneously. The hybrid reality game (HRG), CYSMN?, is significant because it also operates with a digital layer on top of the real world, but instead of letting players move around in the street, players are playing online while professional performers are moving around in the streets. We also describe Geocaching, a non-commercial LBMG, which also was among the first LBMGs. Created in 2000, Geocaching is still maintained by the players themselves. Geocaching resembles a classic treasure hunt that starts and ends on the same day, enabling players to discover new places while searching for a “treasure” (caches). This is noteworthy, as it resembles the experience we wished to provide players in the Gold Horn Thief. Finally, we describe one of the most popular LBMGs today, Foursquare. As of June 2011, Foursquare has nearly 10.000 million users (Foursquare, n.d.). Foursquare is a LBMG but also functions as a review-based location-based service1 (LBS) wherein users can leave tips and recommendations about bars, cafés, restaurants etc.

3.1 DESCRIBING LBMGs In Sweden, people have chased robots through their local neighborhoods using their cell phones. In Japan, people have collected beautiful butterflies on their way to work using their cell phones, and all over the world, people have been using GPS enabled devices to search for digital treasures hidden in physical space. All of these people have had the experience of playing a LBMG - a gaming experience in which the game board is transferred from game boards or computer screens to city streets. In order to play a LBMG, the player must have a cell phone or GPS device that is location-aware and connected to the Internet.

3.1.1 BOTFIGHTERS

We use the description of these prominent games to define LBMGs based on de Souza e Silva and Sutko’s (2008) arguments which highlight three main characteristics of LBMGs: they expand the game space, they are mobile experiences, and they require collaboration among players. de Souza e Silva and Sutko’s (2008) definition guides our understanding of

Botfighters was the first commercial LBMG released by the Swedish company It’s Alive! in 2001. Botfighters was a multi-user game where the objective was to locate and destroy other players. To enter the game, players created a robot via a website, and this robot acted as their player avatar. On the website, players could also arm their robot with various weapons and equip it with shields to protect it (de Souza e Silva, 2009). The objective of the game was to go out on streets and locate other players’

1 Location-Based Service is an information or entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device (Wikipedia 2011).

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robots in order to engage in battle with them. If a player was victorious, he or she earned credits and advanced on the high-score list. With these credits, players could buy new weapons and shields, increasing their ability to win future battles.

shootout or run away and organize. The damage caused depends on the type of weapon used, the efficiency of the target’s shield and other preferences held by the players.” (pp.37-38) In order to make the game more challenging, the game designers had also scattered virtual objects for players to discover and collect from different locations across cities. As Struppek and White (2007) noted, “When gamers walk around a certain corner, for example, they might discover a first aid kit; or when standing at an intersection, a hidden gun.” (p. 226) When Botfighters was released, cell phone technology was still at an early stage with monochrome displays that could only show simple black and white graphics. The phones did not have GPS and therefore had to rely on Cell ID2 to locate other players. According to Rashid et al. (2006), playing the game after its first release was difficult: “Botfighters use of SMS and its crude location accuracy means that it suffers from delay and limited levels of social action as players (are) physically distributed over large areas.” (p.

9) The technology therefore played a role in the execution of the game and affected the game experience. Two years later in 2003, the LBMG Mogi was launched in Japan, and this game did enable the use of cell phones and GPS.

ILLUSTRATION 6: Botfighters - Robot, web screenshots and mobile screenshot

3.1.2 MOGI

Players could choose to hunt a specific player by sending a text message (SMS) with the word, “hunt,” followed by the name of the other player.

Similarly, sending a text message with the word, “search,” plus the other player’s name could locate a player. If players did not choose to hunt a specific robot, they would receive a text message with a given mission to hunt and kill a specific robot. Sotamaa (2002) describes an actual fight like this: “When the opponent is within range, the actual battle starts with a “shoot” message. Simultaneously, the target is aware that s/he is being hunted because of the radar warnings sent by the system. This allows opponents to choose whether to take part in the

Mogi was invented by Mathieu Castellis and released only in Japan in April 2003. It went live with the Japanese service provider, KDDI, and it could only be accessed using specific phone models sold by KDDI (Rashid et al, 2006). The aim of the game was to find and collect virtual objects, which were visible on the cell phone’s screen. These objects were placed at different locations all over Japan. Each item was part of a specific collection, and the objective was to complete a full collection to earn more points. However, an object could only be collected when 2 All cellular phone systems effectively track a user’s whereabouts. The location of the cellular user must be estimated against some known framework, such as locations of the base stations of a cellular phone network. Cell-ID is the unique number used to identify each base station and place. Cell identification is the least accurate compared to triangulation and GPS. 29

players came within 400 meters of it. Objects and other players could be located in two ways,- either by GPS or by Cell ID. Using GPS, players could locate objects and other players with an accuracy of three to ten meters, whereas cell triangulation had a margin of error of up to several hundred meters (Licoppe & Inada, 2009). Players were advised to use GPS only when looking for a particular item. According to Rashid et al. (2006), this was “most likely to reduce heavy battery consumption.” (p. 9) Mogi players could locate objects and other players using two interfaces: a web interface, where players could see the location of all players and all hidden objects, and an interface on their cell phone. Licoppe and Inada (2006) described the cell phone interface as such:

Players could pick up an object by clicking on its representation on their radar. From the menu of the cell phone interface, players could exchange objects with other players or make all of their objects visible to them.

Through the menu, players could also access the leaderboard, showing players’ accumulated points. In addition, players could send text messages, which were only accessible within the game. Finally, players could also create lists with their favorite Mogi friends and participate in live chats using the web interface (Licoppe & Inada, 2009).

Aside from the use of GPS technology, what set Mogi apart from Botfighters was the gameplay itself; Mogi was a non-combative game without role-playing, chases, and killing of other players. Furthermore, as Joffe (2007) writes: “User base: much wider in age and gender-balanced than most games, Mogi is closer to casual games in terms of audience.” (p.224) The messaging and chat functions further differentiated the game from Botfighters, where the only interaction between players was the battle itself. In fact, in Mogi, players created teams to help each other gather full collections. One player from a team could for instance discover a desired object through the website in an area remote to his own location and then direct another team member, who was closer to this area, to pick it up. Thus, the allegiance to the group could be a motivation factor in itself (Terdiman, 2004). According to Joffe (2007), it is emotions that are triggered by the social element that set Mogi apart from other LBMGs: “A strong sense of ‘reality’ and ‘feeling connected’ comes from seeing and being seen by other users.” (p.224) This sense of feeling connected is what Licoppe and Inada (2009) describe as mediated proximity, which occurs “between individuals who cannot see one another in the usual, embodied way.” (p. 105) Thus, the social element is more prominent in Mogi than Botfighters.

“It features a map of all game-related resources within a radius of 500 meters. Such a map represents the player’s environment with his or her pictogram in the center of the mobile screen surrounded by that of each of the other players and virtual objects within that range. The closest Mogi friend is indicated at the bottom of the screen with the person’s distance even if it /he/she is more than 500 meters away.” (p. 103)

Both games are also characterized by having placed a digital and fictional layer on top of the real world. In Botfighters, it is in the form of robots; in Mogi, it is objects. Both games are also characterized by their on-going, unending gameplay. These games were always on. Perhaps the most notable feature of the two games is that they both asked players to move within the real world in order to play the game.

ILLUSTRATION 7: Mogi web screenshots and mobile screenshot

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Both Mogi and Botfighters were commercial games backed by investors hoping to make money from them. Concurrently, with the launch of Botfighters in 2001, an artist group named Blast Theory premiered the game CYSMN?.

goal was to avoid the runners as long as possible. If a runner got within five virtual meters of a player, the player was “caught”, and thereby out of the game. A player’s scores were based on how long the player had managed to stay in the game. Runners were connected via GPS receivers and handheld computers (Benford, 2003). The runners could also communicate through audio, and online players could hear this audio stream via the Internet, which provided them with “…real-time descriptions of the experience of running through the streets, including reports of traffic conditions, accounts of local street scenes and the sounds of the physical action involved in tracking players down.” (Benford 2007, p. 258)

3.1.3 CAN YOU SEE ME NOW? CYSMN? was created in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Nottingham. According to the creators (Benford et al, 2003), the aim of CYSMN? was not to earn money, but rather to “…create an engaging public experience to show how you can use location based wireless technologies to create new kinds of artistic experiences.” (p. 34) Simply put, the purpose of the game was to explore the possibilities of new technology in creating game experiences.

Similar to Mogi and Botfighters, CYSMN? also had a digital layer put on top of the city. The major difference between CYSMN? and the two other games is that in Mogi and Botfighters, players were themselves moving in the streets, whereas in CYSMN?, players were moving only online, while performers were moving in the physical streets and providing players with an idea of the city space via audio. Thereby, the audio served as a window to the action on the streets, and it was an integral part of the experience that created tension and excitement (Flintham et al, 2003).

Another difference between CYSMN? and the two commercial LBMGs, Botfighters and Mogi, is the game duration. CYSMN? had a definite ending; the game lasted from the moment when players entered the game until the moment they were caught. In Mogi and Botfighters on the other hand, players could play the game in-between their other daily activities since the games were on-going. Since our game, the Gold Horn Thief is a museum experience, it will be played within a well-defined time-span of a museum visit. It will begin and end at the National Museum.

ILLUSTRATION 8: CYSMN? web screenshot, player, and portable GPS device

CYSMN? was a classic game of “catch me if you can.” However, the players being chased played online, while it was performers who were running through the actual city streets. In the version that was staged in Sheffield, England in 2001, there were up to 20 people playing online and four runners in the streets at a time (Blast Theory, n.d.). The runners in the streets were professional performers. Players could see themselves as avatars on the map together with other online players and runners. Online players used arrow keys on the computer’s keyboard to run around in the streets. They also had the possibility to view and send text messages. Their

3.1.4 GEOCACHING Another type of LBMG that takes place within a well-defined time-span is Geocaching. Geocaching is a type of treasure hunt usually played with a GPS device. Players search for treasures in the shape of a so-called cache, and the game therefore ends when the cache is found. Geocaching differs from the other LBMGs described previously by not having a fictional layer. This difference is probably a result of the fact that there is no game 31

designer, company, or artist group behind it; Geocaching is a LBMG that was created, or rather emerged, by coincidence.

has been played with GPS devices throughout the last ten years, but new applications have been created, so that players today may choose to play using smartphones as well (Groundspeak n.d.(c)). Today, multiple types of caches exist. An example is the multi-cache, which is a series of caches, where each cache gives players a hint that will help them find the next cache. Players must find more than one cache before being led to the final cache, which is the only one that will be a physical box. One of the more spectacular types of a geocaching game is the Cache In Trash Out Event.

Here, players collect litter along specified trails and properly dispose of it while searching for a cache. This type of cache provides players with a fun experience while contributing a meaningful service. Another type is the mystery or puzzle cache, in which players must solve a puzzle in order to obtain the coordinates of the cache (Groundspeak n.d.(b)). This brings Geocaching even closer to a traditional treasure hunt.

Geocaching started in May 2000, when Dave Ulmer, a computer consultant, decided to test the accuracy of the new improved GPS system by hiding a navigational target, a container, in the Oregon woods. He then posted it on an Internet GPS users group and called it Great American GPS Stash Hunt. Within the first month, one of the members of the user group, Mike Teague, began gathering the online posts of coordinates around the world and documenting them on his personal website. A mailing list called the GPS Stash Hunt was created to discuss the activity. Among the subjects discussed was the name; people wanted to replace the name “stash” due to the negative connotations, and one of the proposed names was “geocaching” (Groundspeak n.d. (e)).

The game is basically a treasure hunt where players are given the coordinates of a location where a cache is placed, and then use their GPS to find it. A cache is a small box containing at least a logbook, but sometimes also small trinkets. When players find such a box, they write their geocacher name and the date in the logbook. If the cache contains items, they are allowed to take something with them, provided that they leave something of the same or greater value (Groundspeak n.d.(b)). Often, players have left a traceable item, such as a geo-coin or travel bug, which has a unique tracking ID that makes it possible to track the item on its journey all over the world (Groundspeak n.d.(f)). If players take or leave something, it should also be noted in the logbook. After finishing the game, players should also log their findings online by recording the date of its finding on the affiliated webpage (Groundspeak n.d.(d)). If they have taken a traceable item, it should also be noted. In addition, they can choose to write comments about their experience and upload a photo. Of course, in order to play Geocaching, players must first create a profile at www.

Geocaching.com. With such a profile, players can search for existing caches or hide new caches.

ILLUSTRATION 9: Geocaching map, cache and travel bug

As previously mentioned, Geocaching differs from Mogi and Botfighters by not having a digital fictional layer. This is possibly due to its history. It was created by coincidence, it grew from user interest, and its users ensure that it lives on; it is users that continue to create and bury caches and users who continue to search for the treasures, log their findings, and perhaps pass on a travel bug to a new cache. This user-driven game system is probably

More than four million people worldwide have participated by finding or hiding a total of 1.4 million caches (Groundspeak n.d.(b)). The game 32

one of the reasons that Geocaching, as opposed to Mogi and Botfighters, still exists. In fact, the official Mogi homepage at www.mogimogi.com redirects their visitors to the official Geocaching website. Another reason is probably the simple gameplay that Geocaching employs. A treasure hunt is a universal concept that both children and adults can understand.

even more points when they check-in at this venue. Players can also write comments about venues and upload photos. These comments and photos will be visible to everyone who checks-in at that specific venue. Foursquare can therefore be described as a combination of a game in which players compete for points and mayoral positions with their friends, as well as a LBS that offers user-generated content in the form of recommendations, tips, and warnings for other players visiting a particular venue.

Geocaching also differs from the other LBMGs in that it is played both in the city and in the countryside; Mogi, Botfighters, and CYSMN? were mainly played in urban environs. One feature that Geocaching, Mogi and Botfighters do have in common is that they all encourage players to venture out, discover new places, and interact with other people. Similarly in the Gold Horn Thief, players have to move around in Copenhagen in order to play the game and one of the aims of the game is to provide players with a new perspective to their city by providing them with historical aspects of particular streets and squares. In addition, the game will also share an element of searching and finding; players must find a thief.

Up until this point, Geocaching is the only LBMG that has been described, which is still being played in 2011. However, there is another LBMG that is currently being played by millions, Foursquare.

ILLUSTRATION 10: Foursquare recommendation page, personal page, and friends page

3.1.5 FOURSQUARE

Foursquare has no digital layer in the form of digital objects or a story, like Botfighters and Mogi. Therefore it is a LBMG with very simple gameplay.

What is noteworthy however is that Foursquare is not only a LBS and a LBMG with simple gameplay, but also a platform on which others can develop games. Foursquare has an open API that allows everyone with programming knowledge to build on the Foursquare platform; at www. foursquare.com one can find and download games that are built on top of Foursquare. Among these games is City Warfare. A game where players move around the city and place virtual water balloons that will detonate at a later time. One can also choose to fight against zombies, and the number and kinds of zombies will differ depending on how many and what kind of Foursquare users are in the vicinity. Thus, Foursquare is a multifunctional application serving as a LBS, a game, and a building platform. The Gold Horn Thief is also built on a platform, albeit another one that does not

While the previously described LBMGs were launched almost a decade ago, Foursquare was launched in 2009 in the US (Foursquare, n.d.).

Foursquare is both a Location Based Service (LBS) and a game that has gained great popularity among an increasing number of smartphone users (Foursquare, n.d). It is currently being played all over the world. As with Facebook, players connect to friends and other people in their networks, who are then able to follow their activity. Players can check-in at different locations, or “venues” (Foursquare, n.d). Each time players “check in”, they earn points. As players’ points are counted, they can see their place on a leaderboard that shows the scores of all the player’s friends. This can motivate players to check-in in order to beat their friends and advance on the leaderboard. Players who check in most often at a specific venue also become the “mayor” of that venue, and this entitles them to earn 33

require coding skills. This platform will be presented in chapter 4.

LBMG, which normally takes place in only one space, yet with a digital layer on top.

All these games illustrate the variety and differences within the genre of LBMGs. Some have a fictional digital layer on top and some do not. The very first commercial LBMG, Botfighters, did not have GPS as part of the game, and Geocaching was originally played with a GPS device and not a cell phone. Games such as Mogi and Botfighters are embedded in daily life without definite time-spans, whereas Geocaching and CYSMN? are experiences completed within a defined time-span. But what defines LBMGs? What do they all have in common? This will be explored in the following section.

Collaborative actions among multiusers is another defining feature that is characteristic of HRGs but not LBMGs. LBMGs can include simultaneous collaborative action, but it is not a defining feature. A game such as Geocaching for example does not require simultaneous social action among players in order for players to play the game. One can venture out alone to search for a cache that someone buried a year ago.

In the following section, three of the above definitions will be explored.

More specifically, we address how LBMGs expand the magic circle, how mobility defines LBMGs, and we discuss social aspects of LBMGs.

3.2 DEFINING LBMGs According to de Souza e Silva and Hjort (2009), the most distinctive characteristic of a LBMG is that it uses location-aware technology. They write, “Although LBMGs might have an online component, the games take place primarily in the physical space and on the cell phone screen.” (p.

614) In order to get a more varied and in-depth understanding of LBMGs, we started from a definition of Hybrid Reality Games (HRG) proposed by de Souza e Silva and Sutko (2008). This definition is systematic and entails three characteristics that are also applicable to LBMGs, and thereby serves as a good starting point for an exploration. de Souza e Silva and Sukto (2008) propose four defining characteristics for HRGs. They:

3.2.1 EXPANSION OF GAME SPACES Huizinga originally described the concept of the magic circle in his book about play, Homo Ludens. The magic circle is a special place in time and space that players create together through the process of playing. This space has to be demarcated before playing. Huizinga (1993) describes this process with the following words: “All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand, either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course… All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.”

(Translated by authors p. 18)3

1. “expand the game environment out of the traditional game space;” 2. are “mobile activities, so the player moves around while playing the game;” 3. are “collaborative actions among multiusers;” 4. “take place simultaneously in at least two different types of spaces.” (de Souza Silva & Sutko 2008, p. 449)

In other words, spaces that shield the players from the outside world are created, enabling participants to play unrestrictedly within, adhering only to the rules defined by the act of playing itself. Salen and Zimmerman (2004) have utilized the concept of the magic circle to define a game space

In an HRG, the game takes place simultaneously in two different spaces; the virtual space and the physical space. For example, CYSMN? is an example of an HRG where players online play together with performers in the streets in real time. This feature is not a defining characteristic for an

3 “Hver eneste leg bevæger sig inden for eget ’spillerum’, eller legeplads, der enten med vilje eller ganske af sig selv i forvejen er afstukket, konkret eller blot symbolsk. Ligesom der formelt ikke er forskel på leg og kulthandling, da kulthandlingen udspiller sig i de samme former som legen, således er et indviet område ikke til at skelne fra en legeplads.”

34

rather than a space for play. They utilize the magic circle to emphasize that a game space is also separated from everyday life and that it is this separation that enables a game to be governed by its own rules. They write, “Within the magic circle meanings accrue and cluster around objects and behaviors. In effect, a new reality is created defined by the rules of the game and inhabited by its players.” (p. 96)

surrounding play is often fuzzy and permeable. However, LBMGs, together with other game types such as pervasive games, challenge this perception of games as always taking place firmly placed inside the magic circle both spatially and temporally.

According to de Souza e Silva and Sutko (2009) and Montola (2005), one of the defining characteristics of LBMGs is that they expand the magic circle spatially, and sometimes also temporally. LBMGs expand the magic circle spatially by not having a well-defined physical game space, such as a board, a screen, a playing field, or another agreed-upon space for play. Montola (2005) notes, “…spatial expansion indicates that socially constructed location of the game is unclear or unlimited.” (p.1) This was the case for players in Botfighters, where every street was a potential battleground.

Unlike a football player, who has to stay within the football field, players of LBMGs have no well-demarcated or well-defined game space in which to play. In order to play Botfighters, players had to leave the computer screen and navigate an undefined geographical area in order to find and shoot other players - the entire city became their game board. According to Montola (2005), LBMGs can take place anywhere, and it is this uncertainty, which is part of what makes them fun: “One captivating factor is exactly the uncertainty on what locations are actually gaming areas.” (p.1)

Hereby, games are confined to a demarcated space. The game space is often a physical space, such as a computer screen, a game board, or a playing field, but the boundaries are not necessarily tangible. In a classic hide-and-seek game for instance, the magic circle is demarcated by the area that is agreed upon before starting the game. If the game space is not demarcated, it would not leave the finder a fair chance of finding everyone.

As mentioned above, the magic circle also creates a temporal space that is demarcated from everyday life while the game lasts. A board game is for instance finished when there is a winner; a football match is over after 90 minutes. Within the duration of the game, the player is presumably immersed in the game and no longer adheres to the rules of everyday life but rather a different set of rules defined by the game. Thus, the magic circle demarcates games from everyday life both spatially and temporally by creating a space where players are immersed in the game and adheres to the rules of this game.

Rodriguez (2006) points out that Huizinga’s definition of the magic circle implies that the borders of the magic circle can be permeable and fuzzy when applied to an activity, such as playing with toys. Rodriguez (2006) states, “Our relationship to toys and other playthings often exhibits a fluid relationship.” (p.7) This understanding of the magic circle as permeable is, according to Salen and Zimmerman (2004), contradictory to a game space: “With a game, the activity is richly formalized. The game has a beginning, a middle, and a quantifiable outcome at the end. The game takes place in a precisely defined physical and temporal space of play.” (p. 95)

LBMGs can also expand the magic circle temporally. Montola (2005) notes that the magic circle “expand(s) temporally from the explicit play sessions; the socially constructed game session is interlaced and mixed with ordinary life.” (p. 2) Mogi, Botfighters, and Foursquare expand the magic circle temporally. They do not start or end. It is up to the players to choose when to take part in the game. If Mogi-players choose not to log in and search for items, then someone else will probably pick these items up. The game always continues and players choose when to take part. Many people play these games on their way to school, or work, or while on the way to another errand (de Souza e Silva, 2008). Thus, the activity of playing these LBMGs is actually woven into players’ daily activities.

According to Salen and Zimmerman (2004), a game space is always placed within a magical circle, whereas the border demarcating the magic circle

On the other hand, other LBMGs, such as Geocaching and CYSMN? are experiences that are completed within a specific time-span. CYSMN? ends 35

when a player gets caught and Geocaching is over when players have found a cache. However, one can always search for another cache - this would just be a new round of the game. In other words, the activity is not entwined with other daily activities and does not expand the magic circle temporally.

vicinity. Theoretically, one could play Mogi and just pick up treasures alone, but this would probably not be as entertaining. Instead, it is the interaction and collaboration with others, in addition to the mediated proximity, that are major contributors to the excitement of playing Mogi. Players help each other find objects as teams by using cell phones and the webpage.

3.2.2 LBMGs REQUIRE PLAYERS TO BE MOBILE

Contrary to Mogi and Botfighters, Geocaching is a game that can be played alone. Unlike Botfighters, one does not need to find other players to play with, and unlike Mogi, players are not encouraged to collaborate with other players while searching for the items. It is possible to go out and search for a cache alone, although one can imagine that many venture out in pairs or groups. Thus, playing the game, or hunting the cache, is not necessarily a collaborative action, and players do not need to interact in real time in order to complete the game. On the other hand, it is a collaborative action to keep the game alive. Some players spend their time creating and hiding new caches, and all of the players visit the Geocaching website and log their findings, and often, they also share their experiences of searching for the cache. Many players also partake in sending the travel bugs and geo-coins around the world.

According to de Souza e Silva (2009), in a LBMG, “one needs to move in order to create meaningful play.’” (p. 415) In both Mogi and Botfighters, the real world becomes a game board. Both games encourage mobility and exploration of the streets over large geographical areas through the distribution of imaginary items. Players can “pick up” these items virtually when they are physically present at certain geographical locations. In Mogi, some specific items are only available at certain times during the day, so players not only need to go to a certain place but also to go there at a certain time, if they want to pick them up (de Souza e Silva, 2006).

Physical mobility is therefore necessary if one wishes to play a LBMG. In order to play, players must navigate in a double reality, where at least two sets of rules intertwine. That is, the rules and realities of everyday life are mixed with the game rules, and players must manage and adhere to both rule-sets. When playing a video game for instance, the goal is that players “disappear” into a parallel world, allowing them to become immersed in the game’s elements. In a LBMG however, players move around in the physical world. In order to play, they must follow the rules of the game, while simultaneously adhering to the rules of normal behavior on the streets. For instance, players should adhere to the rules of traffic in order not to get hurt (Mäyrä & Lankoski, 2009).

All of these actions are collaborative social actions, but they are carried out asynchronously; whereas the social action in Mogi and Botfighters is carried out simultaneously. Foursquare is also a game that players theoretically can engage in without having co-players, but it probably would not be very entertaining to earn points if players had no “friends” on the leaderboard to compete with. However, just as with Geocaching, this action does not need to take place simultaneously.

So, LBMGs are characterized by collaborative, though not necessarily simultaneous, social action, mobility and spatial expansion. These characteristics make LBMGs suitable for creating layered playful spaces that can change the way players perceive a locality and re-see them with fresh eyes but also to create local knowledge, which will be discussed in the following section.

3.2.3 LBMGs AS COLLABORATIVE ACTIONS As opposed to the collaborative action in HRGs where players are working together simultaneously with a player playing online while another is playing on the streets in real time, LBMGs do not necessarily include collaborative teamwork in real time. However, social action and collaborative action plays an important part in many LBMGs. Botfighters for instance, would be impossible to play if there were no other players in the 36

3.3 IMPLICATIONS OF LBMGs: LAYERED PLAYFUL SPACES AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

the everyday actions of people; it is material space without reflections attached. Lefebvre (1991) describes it as follows: ”The spatial practices of a society secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it.” (p.38) In other words, experienced space or spatial practices is the material of everyday life and routines that are not reflected upon.

LBMGs can turn players’ everyday surroundings into a playful space, thereby allowing them to rediscover their well-known neighborhoods. The experience provided by playing a LBMG can also enable players to develop a feeling of emotional attachment to a specific area through the knowledge of that area. This feeling of attachment to an area has been termed local knowledge (Gordon 2008). In the next sub-sections, we address what we consider two important implications of playing LBMGs in relation to the Gold Horn Thief: the creation of a layered play space and the development of local knowledge.

The second layer is called perceived space or representations of space. This layer encompasses all the signs and significations that enable people to talk about and to understand spatial practices. This includes for instance, street signs and city maps. According to Lefebvre (1991), this is “the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers, as of a certain type of artist with a significant bent – all of whom identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived.” (p.38) Thus, perceived space is a reflection of material space that enables us to understand and discuss material space.

3.3.1 FRAMING THE LAYERING OF SPACES A prerequisite for playing LBMGs is that players have to be mobile and navigate in a dual reality adhering to several sets of rules as previously described. In order to conceptualize how players manage to accomplish this, we find it useful to utilize Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad to gain an understanding of space as a concept. Lefebvre (1991) was the first to conceptualize space as a reproduction of social practices and as being layered. His conceptualization contributes to an understanding of how space works in LBMGs.

The third layer is imagined space, or spaces of representation. It is a mental invention that brings new meanings or possibilities to spatial practices.

Examples include a utopian plan, an imaginary or constructed landscape, architectural models, or paintings, which represent an idea of how things could be. Lefebvre (1991) notes, “This is the dominated – and hence passively experienced space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects.” (p. 39)

Spaces are more than their physical representation. Human beings perceive space and interpret what they see through their culture and the knowledge available at any time period in history. This meaning or understanding has changed throughout history with the different prevailing ideological paradigms (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 46). Space is hereby a social construction created by humans. Lefebvre (1991) conceptualizes spaces as layered in a triad.

The difference between representations of space and representational space is that the representations of space needs to follow certain logics, whereas representational space is not bound by logic: “Representations of space are certainly abstract, but they also play a part in social and political practices: Established relations between objects and people in represented space are subordinate to a logic which will sooner or later break them up because of their lack of

The first layer is called experienced space or spatial practices, and consists of physical object such as houses, trees, and streets, but also the flow of traffic. It also comprises cars and humans moving from place to place. It incorporates all the flows of actions of everyday life and the physical surroundings wherein these everyday activities take place; it is 37

consistency. Representational space, on the other hand, need obey no rules of consistency.”

(Lefebvre 1991, p. 39)

empty cup used in play. And they can refer to the “imaginative contents” of the cup. This is due to the human ability to frame a situation.

Goffmann (1974) described the concept of framing as schemas that help humans locate, perceive, identify and label different phenomena and events (p. 29). These schemas help humans create meaning in a sociocultural sense (Mäyrä & Lankoski, 2009). Mäyrä and Lankoski (2009) argue that location-aware games mirror children’s play in the way they manage and relate to issues of communication and framing, because “Participation in hybrid reality play involves the ability to maintain and negotiate between multiple frames of reference, all layered within the same situation.” (p. 130)

Simply put, the representations of space include the language and symbols that people use to understand and reflect upon material space, but they are also the language of the architect, who creates a new building, thus shaping and changing material space.

The layering of spaces provides an important framework to understand how players of LBMGs experience reality when playing. It explains how players of LBMGs are capable of being present in more than one space at the same time. In LBMGs, the material space consists of the physical world, such as houses, streets, squares and vehicles, but also the physical artifacts of the game. In the case of Botfighters, the material space is the physical city, the servers, and the cell phones used for playing the game and the same goes for Mogi. The representations of space can for instance be a treasure map used for a treasure hunt or the screen on a player’s cell phone that provides the visual interface that gives players a spatial overview of the game world. The visual interface is a representation of space. The two spaces, material and representations of space, are interdependent of each other. Mogi players cannot find the items without their visual interface, and it is impossible to play Botfighters without receiving text messages. But if the map or the text messages does not refer to a physical place in an experienced space, it is also impossible to play the game (de Souza e Silva & Sukto, 2008).

In fact, what defines the magic circle is one’s choice of frame. Players decide when to frame a situation as part of everyday life and when to frame it as play. He or she can choose to take on a lusory attitude, which Salen and Zimmerman (2004) describe as “the state of mind whereby game players consciously take on the challenges and obstacles of a game in order to experience the play of the game itself.” (p. 574) People change their perception of space according to the frame they place on the experience.

A good example of this is shopping. A person may go through a shopping street everyday in order to go to work. This is a not a playful experience per se, but when the same person walks down this street to shop for new clothes for example, the person will now take his or her time to study the shop windows searching for something they like. Their framing is no longer “to hurry to work”, but to “discover and find new clothes”, which probably makes them walk down the street at a more leisurely pace while focusing on shop windows. Hereby, walking down the street becomes a different experience.

Finally, the representational space is the game layer. It is the narrative of the game. It is this layer that turns ordinary people with cell phones into robots and text messages into bullets (Sotamaa, 2002) and enables beautiful butterflies to suddenly appear in the middle of Tokyo.

The layering of spaces and the ability to frame is what enables LBMG players to understand and enjoy the experience of turning well-know neighborhoods into new and exciting worlds. When playing Botfighters for example, neighborhoods are turned into battlefields, where players hunt down other robots and engage in battle. Players decide to accept the imagined space of the game and thereby accept the playful layer on top of

But how can people navigate between spaces? Studies of infants have shown that from an early age people are capable of merging imaginative elements with physical objects (Mäyrä & Lankoski 2009). From a young age, people understand the difference between an empty cup and an 38

experienced space.

a direct association to the IT-University would probably not even know this café existed. On the other hand, if only one or a few people know something, it is considered a secret. For instance, a secret within the IT-University environment could be that it is much faster to print PDFdocuments from the printers on the third floor than from those on the other floors.

However, game play is not detached from ordinary life in LBMGs. de Souza e Silva (2009) writes that “although expeditions in the city with only one purpose of playing the game are possible, most of the game play in location-based based mobile games occurs during the customary daily displacement of people.” (p. 415) In other words, the playful experience takes place in familiar surroundings. It changes the way players perceive this space. Thus, the LBMGs have the ability to turn the dreariness of the daily commute into a playful experience. de Souza e Silva and Sukto (2008) suggest that HRGs “reconstruct our city spaces by merging different experiential layers and might therefore be useful applications for citizens to navigate their cities in unusual and unexpected ways.” (p. 458) Players experience a city space that is layered and this enables them to have a playful layered experience. This playful layered space also enables players to see their local neighborhood from a different perspective, while also helping to create local knowledge.

However, according to Wellman (2002) the concept of local knowledge, which is bound to a geographical space, is becoming obsolete.

Communities are no longer defined spatially. Instead individuals belong to communities defined by their interests rather than their location.

According to Wellman (2002), preindustrial social relationships were based in villages, towns or neighborhoods where everybody knew everybody and the community was based on geographical affiliation. Today, people often do not know their neighbors. Instead they socialize with work colleagues, with people whom they share interests, or people they play soccer with.

Communities are thus defined socially rather than spatially.

In today’s world though, some physical places still matter according to Wellman (2002). He writes: “Place - in the form of households and work units does remain important - even if neighborhood or village does not.

People go from somewhere to somewhere to meet someone.” (p. 4) In other words, place is still relevant in the form of a workplace or one’s home, but according to Wellman (2002), the space in-between has become obsolete. People are moving between places of importance to them without attributing any significance to the spaces in-between: “…home and office often function in private spaces that do not involve surrounding local areas. Social closeness does not mean physical closeness.” (p. 4)

3.3.2 CREATING LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Local knowledge is the emotional attachment or a sense of belonging to a place based on a shared knowledge among a group. It is the knowledge that makes one feel like a local. Gordon (2008) defines local knowledge as “a commonly held understanding of custom spaces or politics shared by a group of people with shared interest in a given space.” (p. 2) Local knowledge is created when a group of people shares knowledge of everything - from the best shortcuts or best restaurants to active religious and cultural practices. So, local knowledge is social in its origin. If only one person knows about a shortcut it would not be local knowledge, but when everybody living in the neighborhood knows about it, it becomes “the connective tissue of a local community.” (Gordon 2008, p. 2) It is this shared information that gives people a sense of attachment to a geographical space.

Gordon (2008), however, disagrees with this point. He argues, ”People still live in streets, in neighborhoods, in cities.” (p. 11) One could argue that they are both right. People may live in a place without forming an emotional attachment to it, and they may live their life without interacting with their neighbors and thereby never get the chance to acquire local knowledge. They may just use their house or apartment as a place to sleep. However, that does not preclude other people living in the same

An example of local knowledge could be the knowledge shared between students and teachers at the IT-University - for example, that coffee is sometimes served in the student-driven café, Analog. Anybody without 39

neighborhood from interacting with each other and thereby creating local knowledge together. One could imagine that the hard working bachelor might not take advantage of the local recreational facilities very often, whereas the family with children and pets use local areas. They meet their neighbors when walking their dog and when their children join up to play.

In other words, it is an individual choice if one wants to engage in one’s local area, interact with other locals, and take part in the creation and maintenance of local knowledge. It is something one chooses to take part in actively.

be useful specifically at this locality. This also changes the way people use the Internet. From being a place that was separate from everyday life and a place one immersed into, the infinity of information on the Internet has now become part of peoples’ everyday lives.

This is what Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011) call network locality, or net locality. Net locality is a result of this technological development where Internet access has moved from static interfaces to mobile interfaces, and the local becomes increasingly important when defining our networked interactions. Most people carry their smartphone devices with them. They are always available and at hand, and with new location-based applications such as Tripadvisor, a user-driven recommendation service, information about good restaurants, interesting sights, or other relevant information about peoples’ exact location will be brought to them through their smartphone. Because smartphones are equipped with a GPS, people do not even have to bother opening their web browser and search for the location-based information themselves. The GPS enables the locationbased application to find all the relevant information for a current location automatically. The Internet’s global infinity of information is now brought to the user organized around location. As Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011) write, “Geography becomes the organizational logic of the web.” (p.

3)

In the beginning of the 2000s, the way people created local knowledge began to change. People started to engage with their neighbors and get local news through many channels. The daily chatter in the street in the neighborhood was supplemented with a Facebook-group, a mailing list, or the local online newspaper. However, the most recent change in people’s interaction with their neighbors and their neighborhood has come about through the development of mobile technologies.

Today, many people own smartphones that are location-aware and enable people to be online constantly. This development is changing the way people access the Internet. People are increasingly accessing the Internet from mobile interfaces instead of static interfaces like a desktop computer.

According to de Souza e Silva (2006b), “Static interfaces are defined as large-sized desktop computers, head mounted displays, that is, every type of interface that allows connection to digital spaces but does not allow a high degree of movement in physical space while connected.” (p. 268)

Foursquare, is an example of an application that works in the context of net locality. Within Foursquare, peoples’ comments, recommendations, and warnings about a specific place can be read. One only needs to open Foursquare and press refresh, and all the available information about venues in the proximity of the user is presented. This information can influence the way people perceive their physical surroundings. Net locality, is the awareness that physical spaces are changing due to the way the web is organized around location (Gordon & de Souza e Silva 2011).

Static interfaces create a disconnection between the digital and the physical world. Yet, with the development of mobile technologies, users are now able to use mobile interfaces that ”allow connection to the Internet while moving through physical space.” (p. 268) de Souza e Silva (2006b) also describes how, as early as 2006, many Japanese cell phones came with an always-on connection to the Internet. Since 2006, this trend has also reached Europe and the United States with smartphones that are always online. This change enables people to access local information at the locality where they are and therefore browse for knowledge that can

Through the last decade, people started sharing considerable amounts of information online on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, and this information is increasingly location-aware. On these three networks alone, hundreds of millions of people are sharing their 40

experiences, thoughts, links, and photos daily. On Flickr people have for a long time been able to tag a picture with the geographical location of the picture, so viewers know if they are viewing a cornfield in Nebraska or in Denmark, which is something one would not necessarily be able to extract from the picture itself. Twitter and Facebook have recently added functionalities that enable users to share their location; Twitter has added a small “compass” that allows users to share locations the exact moment of posting a tweet. Facebook has added a check-in feature that allows users to share locations and include a short comment. So, sharing of locations seems to be a popular feature that is applied to basically every social service at the moment. In fact, when the most recent, Google+, launched in July of 2011, it featured a check-in service as well.

In other words, creating local knowledge by navigating net locality is part of reinforcing one’s own feeling of belonging or nearness to a specific place in a globalized world, where users are constantly being bombarded with a myriad of stimulation from various media.

An example of the practical and social implications of net locality can be extracted from an example from Twitter, where a Twitter user takes a photo of his iPad, a cup of coffee, and a salad. He then uses the photo as part of a tweet, which says, “Good food, good coffee, good e-book.”

(Posted on www.twitter.com 05.21.11. Translated by authors). He then tags this tweet with the location of the café Granola.

This enhanced focus on sharing geographical location is the essence of net locality. By mapping a location through check-ins or photo-tagging, users contextualize their existence in a global framework. This act reinforces the significance of the locality in a global context. They are placing themselves within the placeless infinity of the Internet and through this mapping of location, they are navigating within net locality. According to Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011), “Location constructs the framework through which identity can be formed. It positions the user within a network: not just as a member of an online community, but in relation to the network more generally.” (p. 12) By sharing and tagging information such as a picture or a status update with a location, people actively choose to attach information, and hereby meaning, to a geographical space. This act also creates local knowledge because it enhances the information available about this specific place. An example of this is the “tips” function in Foursquare described in section 3.1.

ILLUSTRATION 11: Instagram posted on Twitter

This is an example of sharing location associated with local knowledge.

However, by sharing his location, he could also achieve something more than creating local knowledge. One outcome could be that a friend might see his tweet and decide to join him. Instead of reading his book, he may end up talking to his friend and showing his friend his holiday pictures, or discussing his latest blog post, or perhaps a current political issue; if they happen to be unsure of facts, they can look them up on his iPad, settle the discussion, and move on to the next topic. Or maybe they end up discussing food; he can then document his recent achievements in the

Net Locality plays an important part in creating local knowledge, and this knowledge can enhance one’s sense of belonging or affiliation with a place, which is an important part of one’s identity. Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011) write, “The radical visibility of located data creates the potentiality for users to experience meaningful nearness to things and people.” (p.12) 41

Foursquare is an example of an LBMG that can help create local knowledge among its players. As described in the previous section, Foursquare is an example of net locality through the “check-in” function. In Foursquare, players can also choose to take a picture or leave a comment; and people often choose to do so - especially if the venue is notably good or bad. For instance, a venue like Café Dyrehaven in Copenhagen has 21 tips, which are mostly about the delicious food and cozy atmosphere. Thus, Foursquare encourages players to visit new places, gain a greater knowledge about places, and share this knowledge with other Foursquare players. When players choose to share their knowledge in the form of tips and pictures with other Foursquare players, this knowledge becomes local knowledge.

kitchen, and they can look up recipes. If he has a notebook-account such as Evernote, all his recipes may be just a few clicks away on his iPad. All these are aspects of net locality. The availability of information is flowing constantly, and instant access to personal data becomes a part of constructing and enhancing the social interaction with a friend in a different way than before. This is an example of how the Internet, through net locality, becomes a part of most everyday situations of peoples’ lives.

It illustrates one of Gordon’s (2008) points: More and more of people’s personal information, such as photos, documents, or favorite recipes items, which Gordon (2008 p.14) calls stuff, has moved into cloud services rather than being stored on a hard disk. Instead, peoples’ stuff is stored on a server somewhere. This alters the way people perceive what is local.

As Gordon (2008) writes, “It makes any situation potentially local, as each user has access to her intimate stuff kept near on distant networks.” (p. 14) This stuff is available everywhere. You no longer have to invite people over to show them your holiday photos in a physical album or maybe even as an old-fashioned slide show. One can bring all of one’s stuff into every social situation, making everywhere suddenly local.

A LBMG such as Geocaching can also create local knowledge - albeit in a different way than Foursquare. Because players who have been on the same treasure hunt in the same area searching for a specific cache have all been exploring the same area, they all share knowledge of this specific location. Each cache placed at a location has its own page on the connected website, where players get the specific coordinates of the cache. In addition to this information, the creator of the cache has usually also written a supplemental text about the area where the cache is hidden.

So, all players searching for a specific cache have read its page on the website and obtained relevant knowledge. An example is a cache hidden at Garnisonens Kirkegård, a military cemetery in Copenhagen. The creator of the cache has written a few lines about the history of the place, thereby also adding historical knowledge to the experience of searching for the cache (Groundspeak n.d. (a)).

The emergence of net locality has changed the way we experience place and perceive space, but it has also changed the way people interact with each other. Net locality is a “state” one is experiencing and actively taking part in. Net locality can be part of this process of creating local knowledge, and local knowledge can give people a sense of belonging, and the feeling of nearness, which is an important part of one’s identity.

When players have found a cache, they log their finding; some also write about or include pictures of their experience searching for the cache. Just as with tagging and sharing one’s location, players logging their findings is part of a net locality. By sharing experiences of searching for the cache, they are also creating local knowledge that is shared with the rest of the players who have searched for and found this cache or are planning to do so.

3.3.3 HOW LBMGs CREATE LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Local knowledge is important because it gives people a sense of belonging and contributes to their sense of identity. Due to their characteristics of mobility and collaborative social action, LBMGs can help players feel linked to a geographic space. Through playing a LBMG, players can discover new neighborhoods, explore well-known ones, and share these experiences with the other players.

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In this chapter, we have described some of the most notable LBMGs and considered their differences in design and function in order to get inspiration for our own game. We have explored three characteristics of LBMGs, including magic circle expansion, mobility, and collaborative social action. When designing the Gold Horn Thief, we were especially inspired by the narrative layer in games such as Botfighters, as well as the aspect of a treasure hunt in Geocaching. The concepts of mobility and spatial expansion of the magic circle were also especially relevant in the design of the Gold Horn Thief.

Furthermore, we aimed to develop a LBMG that creates both a layered playful space as well as local knowledge. To achieve this aim with the Gold Horn Thief, we applied a narrative layer that presents historical knowledge in a layered and playful way. In order to create local knowledge, we took advantage of the mobility of LBMGs and presented historical facts to players at the exact locations where history took place. In the following chapter, we will present the Gold Horn Thief and the process behind creating the game. We will also present our chosen platform builder, SCVNGR, and explain how its features have been utilized in the Gold Horn Thief.

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Through the iterative design process, the game designer becomes a game player and the act of play becomes an act of design.

Salen & Zimmerman

CHAPTER 4 : CONCEPT DESCRIPTION AND DEVELOPMENT The Gold Horn Thief is part game-experience and part historical-museum experience. The game is built on the application platform SCVNGR using available functions. Players embark on a hunt through the streets of Copenhagen in search of the thief who stole the Gold Horns, trying to catch him before he escapes with, or worse, melts the horns.

thinking in regards to designing characters, mapping the game space, and creating dramatic effects. These are topics, which will be addressed later on in this chapter.

In the previous chapters, we identified elements which would assist in designing the game and motivate players. In the first part of this chapter, we present our game concept, target group, and choice of application in order to provide an understanding of the experience of playing the game and using the SCVNGR application. We describe the process of designing the Gold Horn thief and introduce our design partners. The description of our process is not delivered in chronological elements, rather we have highlighted certain aspects in order to provide an understanding of the process and design methods used, as well as provide an understanding of what impact this has had on the experience. We have aimed to have a fairly iterative process, since the design methodology that it represents has been an effective tool for us in other academic design projects. In the last part of this chapter, we will describe the content development choices at a more practical level to provide insight into these choices, including: the method used to design and limit the area of the game space, how we have structured the game and employed the SCVNGR features, and lastly, the considerations behind the time span of the game.

We find the real story surrounding the Gold Horns and their theft very intriguing. The original horns were from the Germanic Iron Age ca. 400450 A.D. In 1639, a local farm girl close to the city of Møgeltønder in South Jutland found the first horn. The second horn was found only a few feet from the first, though almost a hundred years later, in 1734 by a smallholder. In 1802, the horns were stolen from the Royal Art Chamber by the goldsmith Niels Heidenreich, who melted them into jewelry, coins, and gold pieces. In the mid 1800s, and again in the 1970s, replicas were made from drawings of the original horns; these replicas are exhibited at the National Museum today (Nationalmuseet. Guldhornene, n.d.).

Due to the historic value that the horns represent, the story of the theft is important in Danish history. We chose to use this story firstly, because it is a crime story that could provide the possibility of creating dramatic elements, and it is directly connected to artifacts that are exhibited within the museum building. Secondly, the story is well suited for a LBMG since it has many physical locations connected to it, such as the crime scene, the home of the thief, and the jail. And thirdly, it is our perception that a majority of Danes are acquainted with the Gold Horns; and yet, most may not be familiar with the true story surrounding the theft - some might not even know that the Gold Horns exhibited at The National Museums are replicas.

The process model presented on the pages 48-49 presents an insight into the design process as well as an overview of elements and methods. It is illustrated in the model that different stages in the process have not been sequentially developed; in fact, they have been overlapping and ongoing to a certain extent.

4.1 DESIGNING THE HIGH CONCEPT

The Gold Horn Thief is framed by a fictional narrative, though based on the real story of the Gold Horn theft. It entails solving the crime and catching the thief, Niels Heidenreich. We decided to build a game based on a real story, due to the potential for connecting the narrative to both real artifacts within the museum and locations in the urban environment. The reasoning behind making the game narrative fictional rather than keeping the game one hundred percent factual is that it opens up for creative

The process of designing the game advanced over several months from March to June, 2011, and was a combination of freer concept design methods, such as brainstorming and sketching, as well as a more controlled convergence, such as input from museum professionals and potential users. The process of designing the concept around the game started with different types of associative techniques.

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Initially, an open brainstorming using post-its was performed to generate a multitude of ideas without analyzing them. Then, affinity diagramming was used to organize thoughts and themes within the content of the brainstorming. This initial stage of the design process helped us focus on deciding to make a museum experience motivated by a narrative and game dynamics.

Nationalmuseet, (the National Museum). The National Museum dates back to 1650 and is most likely the largest museum in Denmark, with 12 subdivisions in Copenhagen, the Northern part of Zealand, and in Jutland.

When it comes to the online experience, the museum is definitely a forerunner for Danish history museums with a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, You Tube and Foursquare. But when it comes to merging digital experiences with physical space or on-site, the museum is lagging behind its international colleagues. Inside the walls of the main building, the museum is still very traditional, and as previously mentioned in chapter 2, the “no-touch” and “quietness” etiquette of the traditional museum space prevails. Most of the exhibits present artifacts behind glasses and without the possibility for visitor interaction. A couple of the exhibits offer touch screens with additional information about the artifacts or the era, and some have audio tracks to set a specific mood, but this is pretty much the extent of digital integration in the physical museum space.

In the first stages, we had several overall themes or structural frameworks for our game. Ideas such as a love story between a current person and a historic character, which focused on illustrating the difference between life in Copenhagen now and then, and the murder of…, which focused on solving the murder of a famous historical person, were discarded due to choosing the Gold Horns as an overall topic. We quickly decided that making a crime story was the direction we wanted to follow We both enjoy crime stories and have experienced how solving a crime, looking for clues, solving riddles and having a specific goal can motivate and push a chosen narrative forward, which will be addressed in chapter 5. At this stage in our process, we also decided to include design partners in order to utilize expert knowledge and receive feedback, as well as opening the possibility of making a game that would end up getting played by real players.

As noted, the museum has a much stronger presence online, which was further cemented in 2010 when the museum launched its first-time, limited Facebook reenactment project, Ida Charlotte Finnelstrup. The museum created a fictional Facebook profile for Ida Charlotte to carry out the reenactment. The person, Ida Charlotte, embodied the characteristics of girls from the upper class living in Copenhagen in 1772. While she might have been fictional, the way she dressed, acted, made decisions and so on was built on historical facts. Fans of the profile got to participate in her everyday life by following status updates, as well as picture and video posts, while they also had some influence on the choices she would make in specific situations. The goals for this project was to attract new user groups, make them participate, and engage them with history - specifically the chosen decade (Andersen, 2010). While this experience did seem to engage users, it was disconnected from experiences or artifacts enclosed within the museum walls and also did not contextualize history within a physical space.

ILLUSTRATION 12: Affinity diagramming

4.1.1 DESIGN PARTNERS The National Museum In designing our game, we worked with the leading museum within cultural history and what is probably considered Denmark’s main museum,

Throughout the design process, we had meetings with museum representative, Charlotte S. H. Jensen, who is the web editor in chief of the 47

February 2011

Application Research

March 2011

Design Partner Meeting: Choose Choose Research the National Platform Game Theme Museum Builder

April 2011

Meeting: the National Museum

MODEL 3: Process Model 48

Choose Meeting: Recruit History Game Theme the National Students Museum

Meeting: History Students

Meeting: History Students

May 2011

Observation Trip

June 2011

Meeting: Choose Observation History High Concept Trip Students

Lock Concept

Produce Content: Screenplays, video files, illustrations

Literature Studies

History Research

Narrative Work

History Student Research

Concept Development

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Pre-Test

Test

Game Adjustment

Test

Game Adjustment

Test

National Museum. The meetings were set up as brainstorming sessions, where we presented the status of our process, received feedback, and then developed on those ideas collaboratively with the museum. Quite early in the process, it was Jensen who first mentioned the possibility of using the Gold Horns theft as a potential story, and thus this theme was chosen as a frame for all further development of concept and content. Using the story of the theft gave us the opportunity to combine a dramatic story, the urban space, and an actual artifact exhibited at the museum. Originally, it was our intention to keep the game’s theme open for a longer period during the process, but by choosing a theme early on, we were able to consider different versions of narrative and spend more time developing content.

relevant locations and people in cooperation with the museum, we started doing research with the assistance of the history students. The research was deducted from Danish archives, books, articles, and the Internet.

4.1.2 THE TARGET GROUP As described in the introduction, part of the purpose of our game was to attract a new user group to the National Museum. We did not choose a target group within a structured segment system, such as GallupKompas, a Danish segmenting tool; instead, we defined our target group focusing firstly on age, average museum visits, and technological and cultural consumer lifestyle. Because it is not within the scope of this thesis to carry out a target group study, the target group definition is based our own deductions and projections.

The museum also facilitated a meeting with curator Morten Axboe, who has researched the Gold Horns for more than 30 years and studied replicas and several archives. The meeting revealed a wealth of details on the theft and the people involved in it, and it was used as a starting point for further studies in archives, books, and online research. It was during this meeting that we learned that there might have been an accomplice to the theft. At this point in the process, the public did not know this theory of an accomplice, and as of June 2011, this theory has only been published in the history magazine Skalk. It is therefore still not known by the more general public. Subsequent to this meeting, we started mapping out relevant locations and historical characters as well as stereotypical characters for the historical period that could have a relevance to a coherent narrative and suitable physical game board.

According to a report by The Heritage Agency of Denmark (Kulturarvstyrelsen, 2010), which profiles the typical museum guest at the Danish museums, younger age groups are the least frequent visitors at the museum, whereas age groups above 50 are the most frequent visitors (p. 31). When looking specifically at the cultural history museums, this tendency is even clearer. The age group from 14-29 accounts for only 12 percent of visitors, whereas visitors above 50 account for 54 percent. The age group between 30-49 accounts for 34 percent of the visitors (p. 31).

Therefore, our aim was to design a game for adults between 18-35 years old; partly because this age group does not visit museums very often, and partly because we were hoping to help create a positive spiral; if more of this age group would visit museums due to playing the Gold Horn Thief, they would probably demand similar experiences in the future.

The role of the museum in our design process has been part content provider via meetings with Jensen and the interview with Axboe, and part sparring partner in choosing the overall theme of the narrative.

Besides age, we also defined the group by cultural lifestyle and geographical placement:

History Students In the process of developing the content, we quickly realized that the historical research would take a substantial amount of time were we to do it solely on our own. We placed adds in relevant forums and employed two history students to aid us in researching historical characters, buildings, and general history surrounding our narrative. After mapping out a list of

The target group is constituted of 18-35 year olds living in the city of Copenhagen. Part of this group may be very interested in the dissemination of history, but for the most part, visiting a cultural history museum is not a priority, because they do not usually enjoy experiences 50

within the traditional museum space. They are of a curious mind and interested in new experiences, and since they own a smartphone and are familiar with new technology, a playful location based gaming experience might peak their curiosity.

institutions, in just one year since it was launched in 2010 (Van Grove, 2011 & Outhier, 2010). The drawbacks to choosing an existing platform to build on is that museums have to adapt their game to whatever features are pre-scripted, and this limits the scope of the game. For example, museums cannot add an augmented reality feature if desired, since it is not yet built into the platform.

The Gold Horn Thief was not designed with children in mind, so the content is not adjusted to this segment. However, this does not prevent children who are old enough to take part in playing the game with an adult; therefore, they become a secondary user group. Another secondary user group is museum guests who own a smartphone and are curious to try a museum experience outside of the traditional museum space. Eventually, tourists are also going to be a possible user group, but this will require that the National Museum is willing to invest in translating content to other languages.

Among existing application builders, our options were 7Scenes at www.7scenes.com, Tersus at www.tersus.com, and SCVNGR at www. scvngr.com. Though 7Scenes is a platform builder that is very suitable for storytelling, it was discarded, as it is primarily a Dutch application and most users are Dutch (7Scenes, n.d.). There is also no indication that any organizations or businesses in Denmark are building on 7Scenes. Moreover, 7Scenes does not have social media integration -unlike SCVNGR, which connects to both Facebook and Twitter.

4.1.3 CHOOSING AN APPLICATION PLATFORM BUILDER To be able to make a functioning prototype of the game, we decided to choose an exiting platform and application builder. The motives for choosing an existing application to build our experience, as opposed to building a new application from the ground up, are several. By building applications from the ground up, museums are likely to achieve the benefit of full control of the design process and design applications that are tailored to specific needs, wants, and users.

But the situation today is that most museums have very limited funds and personnel resources for projects like this. Therefore, the choice was made to find an existing application with pre-scripted features. The benefit of this was the possibility of developing a project on a limited budget, which suits the situation of many Danish museums. Furthermore, with an existing application, there was the prospect that the application possibly would have a good user experience and usability already built in. The time span of the project could also be shortened since focus can be on designing content and not features. Another benefit is that users might already know and be familiar with the application. For example, within the United States the SCVNGR application is downloaded ca. 5000 times a day and has hit one million users - both private and within more than 650 different

ILLUSTRATION 13: 7Scenes screenshot, Tersus screenshot, SCVNGR screenshot

Tersus, though also a platform builder that could have been another possibility, neither offers to integrate social media nor has an established user base. Additionally, it is more of a programmer’s tool; for example, there are more functionality possibilities within the builder, and it is open source. One must also have programming knowledge to use it. The final 51

choice of SCVNGR as an application was approved by the museum. In addition, Jensen had prior knowledge of the application from a private project.

The designers behind SCVNGR call it “…the game layer on top of the world” and want to create engaging experiences through the application (SCVNGR. About Us, n.d.). The game layer on top of the world refers to the implication that through this application, wherever the users are, there is always a game going on and they can always connect to a location, complete a challenge, and earn points. Kellian Adams (2010), head of Museum Education at SCVNGR comments, that within museums, the experiences can oftentimes be very passive and that SCVNGR “…is a way of becoming part of the experience; it is fun, it is exciting, and you learn a lot…” (Federal News Radio 2010, min.1:25) SCVNGR is a game (and a building platform) and it utilizes game mechanics to motivate and engage its players, but as described previously, it also creates a social experience.

In our game design, SCVNGR allowed us to build a layered space where historical information can be connected through challenges and locations and thereby facilitate a playful experience for players.

Nina Simon (2010), a participatory museum expert states, “…most mobile applications (as well as most audio tours) are made for solo experiences.” (para. 3) She proceeds to explain that most visits to museums happen in social groups and that, when surveyed, visitors say that their main reason for going to a museum is to get an experience with family and friends. SCVNGR can meet this condition by providing an opportunity to be social both within the application and within the gameplay. Within the application, users can connect to a broad community of users over time and also get an overview of players in real time through a leaderboard, activity board, and a social map. Regarding gameplay, it is not necessary for all participants in a group to have a phone to participate in an experience with SCVNGR, since challenges often can be solved as a team. Examples include challenges such as finding answers to questions within an exhibit or building a sculpture out of their bodies while a person on the team takes a picture of it.

After SCVNGR was chosen, the application’s features - and to a degree its limitations, helped shape the further development of content. The application’s features defined the way we could design the experience; for example, we could not input long text pieces, design nonlinear play, use augmented reality, or load information into QR-codes to use as a part of the narrative in order to move the players forward in the game. Initially, it was challenging with these limitations in the design process, but the restrictions forced us to focus on how we could design the best experience and utilize the features available within the application.

SCVNGR Features SCVNGR is a combination of a mobile application and a website. It is part LBMG and part mobile game building platform. This means that users can participate in a game, as well as building their own. The application is connected directly to Facebook, so users do not have to make a profile within the application; they can connect through their Facebook account and with their Facebook password. SCVNGR is similar to LBMGs such as Foursquare, in that users can check-in to different locations, gather points, receive badges, see where friends are, and share the adventures of playing the game with friends through Facebook and Twitter. However, SCVNGR

ILLUSTRATION 14: SCVNGR challenges

Lastly, SCVNGR works on all mobile devices via Android application, iPhone application, Mobile Web, and text messaging, which opens the game to all users with a cell phone (SCVNGR, n.d.). However, in this project we will focus on making a game firstly for the Android and iPhone operation systems.

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has some additional features, such as Treks, Challenges, and Rewards (See Illustration 15).

Finally, a Reward can be given after users complete challenges and receive enough points to activate the reward. In the United States, companies or businesses oftentimes use this feature to give out rewards, such as free items or discounts, within their business area. For example, a café could give a free latté as a reward. Users cash their reward by showing their phone to a staff member. This is a similar feature to that of Foursquare, where companies can award special discounts or rewards to users that hold mayoral positions at specific locations, though more difficult to achieve since only one person can hold the mayoral position at a time. The SCVNGR interface is set up in a way similar to the Facebook application interface, thereby making it fairly simple and intuitive for users who are familiar with the Facebook application to use the SCVNGR application.

The Trek feature lets users complete routes, or “treks” as SCVNGR calls them. Treks connect a location with a challenge in what can be considered a sort of themed path or scavenger hunt. A challenge can be several things: checking-in, taking a picture, scanning a QR-code, completing an activity, or doing a social check in (SCVNGR n.d.). One can also complete separate challenges without following a trek just by checking-in at a location. An example of a trek could be a black and white photo-trek in Tivoli Gardens where users have to take a black and white photo at each marked location, upload them, and add a comment about the photo. Within the free game building platform, users can build their own treks with up to four locations or challenges.

A Challenge can be part of a trek, but it can also exist individually. It is connected to a specific location under the feature Places, and in the SCVNGR application, there are four pre-scripted challenges for each location: • Check-In: The Check-In feature lets users check-in to their current location; this provides one point. The check-in can be seen by friends in the “Friends Feed” feature.

• Social Check-in: If users are at locations with other users, it is possible to perform a Social Check-in. Two users or more bump their phones together physically, thereby checking-in together. This provides users with two points per person they check-in with, e.g. two people give four points, five people gives ten points, etc.

• Say something: This feature allows users to leave a comment pertaining to specific challenges, locations, etc.

• Snap a picture: Users can add pictures to their check-ins, either documenting their challenge or the location.

ILLUSTRATION 15: SCVNGR challenge page, SVNGR home page, and Facebook homepage

Previous SCVNGR Treks In the United States, there are several SCVNGR treks designed by institutions such as museums, zoos, and galleries. Probably some of the most famous institutions are the Smithsonian Museums. The nine museums made a trek called GoSmithsonian Trek, which consisted of 70 challenges running from June 24th 2010 to July 24th 2010. To collect points, visitors had to decode clues, complete challenges, and find artifacts within the nine museum buildings. The challenges were disconnected in content

All challenges can be shared immediately through Facebook and Twitter. In challenges users can build themselves, it is possible to attach content such as video, audio, pictures, or text with a maximum of 160 characters, and QR-codes.

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but connected through the museums’ trek. The three visitors with the highest scores and with all 70 challenges completed won Ipads. In the 30day period in which the trek ran, 1186 people played and completed 8,985 challenges (Py-Lieberman 2010, pp. 1-3). The trek was received very well by players and seemed to accomplish SCVNGR’s intention of creating an engaging experience. One player noted, “(During the game) I had received a phone call, which I promptly hung up on, and a text; which I stupidly replied to (wasting precious battery with six museums still to go!)…”

(Winning an iPad from the Smithsonian! 2010, para. 9) Evidently, the player was so involved in the game that losing precious battery time or being interrupted became essential to avoid.

that at least 100 students played the game (Huntimer 2010, para. 3).

What the Joslyn Art Museum puts forward as a lesson learned from their work with SCVNGR is that the content and challenges should be focused towards the target group, it should be considered fun, and it should not have the purpose of testing the group’s knowledge. If this approach is followed, it creates the best condition to promote an engaging and interactive experience (Huntimer 2011, p. 6).

In Denmark, SCVNGR has not yet hit the mass market. As of May 2011, there are eight treks in the Copenhagen area. When this project began in February 2011, there where four treks. So there seems to be at least a gradual adoption of the application in Denmark. Currently, the treks available in Denmark are a combination of small treks made by users just for the fun of it and more organized treks made by institutions. The majority of treks have the purpose of sharing culture - such as Street Art in Copenhagen, a trek that takes users to six locations with street art and asks them to comment or take pictures.

Another example of a museum using SCVNGR is the Joslyn College Night Trek by the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. The trek ran for one night on October 22nd, 2010, between 7pm and 9pm. The College Night is a yearly event at the museum and is meant to attract young college students to the art museum. Just like the Smithsonian Museums, the challenges that were presented to the visitors did not have a narrative connection but were instead connected to an artifact or a location within the walls of the museum. The trek was geared towards college students between 18 and 25, and therefore, the museum took on a light and humorous approach to designing the content for the challenges, as is evident in this challenge description:

The most organized Danish trek is KØS Art hunt made by KØS (the Museum for Art in Public Space). The trek is clearly authored by KØS and was designed in connection to the street exhibit Walk this Way, which is a two-kilometer long exhibit in the city of Køge running from May 7th 2011 to September 18th 2011. The street exhibit showcases 16 Danish and international artists’ current artwork, which are all inspired by urban space. The trek itself starts within the museum building, which is also the only place where the trek is advertised to the public. The challenges within the trek consist of 10 activities, such as getting a pink toy soldier from the museum, placing it in the urban space, and documenting it via a photo, or having the users write a haiku and uploading it. The trek has the overall theme “street art”, but the challenges are separate in content just like the Smithsonian Museums’ treks and Joslyn Art Museum’s trek. Most of the activities are a “do-something” or “notice-something-and-take-apicture” challenge. The trek does not utilize all the possible features in the application, for example the QR-code option or audio files.

Challenge: Find “Three Guardian Figures.” We are taking applications for a guardian position. Put on your fierce face & pose for the camera.

Done Message: That was great! You will definitely be considered considered for the position (Huntimer 2011, p. 8).

The students would strike their most convincing pose and take a picture.

The intention with the trek was to get young students to visit the museum and interact with the artwork. The trek seemed to have fulfilled its purpose for the museum - 371 students attended the museum on this night and 57 registered as players, though due to teams forming, the museum projected 54

A common issue with the Danish treks is that all but the KØS trek have no author identified to validate specific aspects of the content, so users must trust that the experience they embark upon will be worthwhile. Also, the KØS trek is not even advertised or explained anywhere but in the physical space within the museum. Not even on the KØS website can one read about the game, its purpose, or its existence. So if a user is to open the application on a street in Køge and see the trek, the user would still not understand the purpose of the experience.

In developing the content and the framework around the Gold Horn Thief, we have taken the above investigation into consideration. While designing the trek, we focused on making a more connected trek through a fun narrative as opposed to using a more “lecturing” tone as learned from the Joslyn Art Museum example. Furthermore, we have applied what we have learned from studying the Danish treks and used the National Museum’s logo and monogram, as well as provided a short game presentation to verify our trek to the players.

4.1.4 THE GOLD HORN THIEF The organization of the game is a collection of physical locations organized as a trek. The trek starts at the National Museum, where the first location of the trek is assigned. The narrative gameplay itself starts at the next location in the trek, the Royal Art Chamber, today known as Rigsarkivet, (the National Archive). The first location offers a video file with a welcome message and an explanation of how the game is organized. Inside the museum, players are presented with a brochure that introduces both the application and the structure of the game.

ILLUSTRATION 16: (Top) brochure, back and front; (Botttom) brochure, inner pages 55

After this, Haagen moves on to Skt. Peders Stræde 24 to find out if any of the prostitutes have seen either Heidenreich or Jensen. He finds a prostitute who is willing to talk and has actually seen Heidenreich earlier that day. She sends Heidenreich on to the schnapps maker further down the same street at Skt. Peders Stræde 28.

The story takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1802. A thief has stolen the Gold Horns from the Royal Art Chamber. Players take on the character of the police director Hans Haagen, who has to find the thief before he skips town or - even worse - melts the horns.

At the game narrative’s first location, the Royal Art Chamber, Haagen meets the young man J.P. Gall (Please note the complete list of locations and game characters in Appendix I and II). He was the chief clerk of the art chamber’s keeper and the first to be called to the crime scene. He tells Haagen where the crime has occurred and that the Gold Horns, as well as other smaller gold pieces, have been stolen. He also informs Haagen that, at the scene of the crime, there were two keys in the door to the chambers that were probably left there by the thief.

At Skt. Peders Stræde 28, Haagen interviews the son of the schnapps maker who has run an errand to fetch Jensen for Heidenreich not long before this.

The boy sends Haagen to one of the town squares, Nytorv, where Jensen is supposed to meet Heidenreich.

At Nytorv, Haagen starts the search for both Heidenreich and Jensen but is quickly approached by the alderman of the goldsmith guild, Andreas Holm. Holm is livid about the theft and is convinced of Heidenreich’s part in the theft. He is upset with both Heidenreich and Jensen, who have been allowed to act as goldsmiths despite no proper training and previous incarcerations. At this point, Haagen gets a tip from one of his colleagues that the Gold Horns have been spotted at Ny Vestergade 10.

During the interview, he reveals - among other things, that he is an acquaintance of a former criminal, Niels Heidenreich, who has visited Gall at his work. Gall explains that Heidenreich might be living on the street Magstræde, but he is not sure. After the interview, Haagen takes the keys with him as evidence and decides to proceed to the town’s pawnshop to investigate whether any of the gold pieces have been pawned.

Back at Ny Vestergade 10, the National Museum, the game finishes. Players have to find the Gold Horns exhibited inside the museum, and there, they find out if they were able to catch the thief.

At the pawnshop Assistenshuset, Haagen interviews the manager, Johan Rubring Harbo, who informs Haagen that no one has been by to pawn anything relevant to the case. Since this visit did not reveal any new information, Haagen proceeds to Magstræde 19 to enquire about Heidenreich.

In the actual history, the Gold Horns were stolen in 1802, but it took the police over a year to catch Heidenreich, only due to the help of other goldsmiths. Heidenreich had sold impure gold, which led the goldsmiths to shadowing him and subsequently finding out that he was not genuine.

After being incriminated by the goldsmiths, he was arrested and interrogated for three days during which he confessed and was imprisoned.

In the meantime, he had melted the Gold Horns into other gold pieces, such as jewelry and coins, which he had used to pay off debts. He was released from prison in 1840 and died four years later.

At Magstræde, Haagens meets the schnapps maker, Lorenzen, who confirms that Heidenreich used to live in the same building as him but has moved several years ago. He believes Heidenreich now lives in Larsbjørnsstræde with his family. Haagen continues to Larsbjørnsstræde 18 where he encounters Heidenreich’s wife, Johanne Sophie Rosine Lukner. The wife explains that she has not seen Heidenreich all day but that he and her brother-in-law, Peter Jensen sometimes frequent a nearby whorehouse. When Haagen takes a chance and tries both keys from the crime scene in the front door to Heidenreich’s house, one of them works.

Narrative Descriptors Even though the theme of the game is a crime story, we have chosen not to make the atmosphere of the game too dark and gloomy. We have 56

designed a more old-fashioned historical tone with timeworn illustrations and classical music, as this complied with the more historical part of the experience. Since it was not possible to find illustrations of all the characters or stereotypical characters from the period, and because we wanted to create a consistent aesthetic expression throughout the game, we had illustrations of all the characters drawn. To create a connection to the locations, we placed the character drawings on top of photos of the locations. The photos were manipulated to look contemporary to the period, though not authentic, since the photograph was not yet invented in 1802.

The characters in the narrative were chosen on the basis of widespread research of the era, the theft, and Niels Heidenreich’s acquaintances and family. Some characters were chosen because of their historic connection to the theft, such as the thief, his wife, and the accomplice, while some were chosen to illustrate the era such as the schnapps maker Lorenzen and the pawnshop keeper, Johan Rubring Harbo. All the factual characters that were chosen to appear in the narrative were mentioned by their real name, such as the thief, Niels Heidenreich, the clerk, J.P. Gall, and so on.

In order to design a coherent narrative and make a sensible game map, we designed some characters that were stereotypical to the era. Within the game, we have not assigned names but rather given these stereotypical characters a generic title such as the prostitute or the schnapps maker’s son to distinguish them from the real historic characters (See Appendix II for a complete character description).

The audio files were all recorded with the same female voice that reads the narrative in a pleasant tone. In the background and in pauses in the narrative, a concert by Mozart is playing. The language in the recorded screenplays is kept current to make it accessible to all types of players, though the addition of old-fashioned terminology has contributed to the mood of the game.

4.2 DEVELOPING CONTENT 4.2.1 MAPPING THE GAME SPACE When designing the game space, all the locations connected to the theft and the thief were mapped out on a 2D map, to provide us with a sense of the size of the potential game board. Making this 2D map of the game board assisted in resolving which characters and locations could be incorporated into the narrative. For example, the location of the prison where the thief was incarcerated after he was caught was quickly removed from the possible list of locations, since it was too far from the other locations.

In connection with making the 2D map, we went on walks in the physical urban space. The first set of walks were focused on timing how long it would take to walk from location to location, as well as from the museum to the location furthest away. This was done in order to determine a realistic size of the physical game board. The second set of walks focused on exploring buildings, squares, and streets to decide whether some should be added or removed to our narrative. The walks gave insight into the differences in architecture and how well challenges designed off

ILLUSTRATION 17: Examples of illustrations in the Gold Horn Thief 57

ILLUSTRATION 18: 2D map

location would work in “real life”. Several of the challenges were designed when exploring locations, for example the challenge at Nytorv square, where players must find the outline of the old Town Hall building (See the final game map in Appendix IV).

4.2.2 GAME STRUCTURE Because this is a prototype and we did not have access to more than four files per trek, the game has been divided into four treks in the SCVNGR application; “GULDHORNSTYVEN 1-4”. There are nine locations, which have been described previously in section 4.1.4. At each location, players listen to a video file that contains the narrative followed by a description of a challenge. When completing challenges, players earn points (See complete list of challenge, locations, and points in Appendix I). After players complete the narrative challenge, they have the option of listening to an extra file and either completing another bonus challenge or moving on to the next location. The extra file contains historical information that is either connected to the location or the era, but not to the narrative. (An example of a narrative file and extra file screenplay is provided in Appendix III.)

ILLUSTRATION 19: The Gold Horn Thief, screenshots - 1) location map; 2) challenge screen; 3) location overview; 4) challenge page; 5) video example; 6) activity page

4.2.3 OUR SCVNGR APPLICATION We have chosen to use SCVNGR in quite a different way from most of the cultural institutions that we have investigated. As explained in section 4.1.3, institutions like the Smithsonian, Joslyn Art Museum, and KØS have used treks and built separate challenges, which are not connected in any way other than sharing a theme of history, art, or culture. With the Gold Horn Thief, we have built a fictional narrative layer on top of the default 58

functions in SCVNGR that connects all the locations and challenges in the trek. We have utilized the video file feature to upload files into a challenge in order to create a strong and immersive embedded narrative, and we have created challenges that relate to either the narrative itself or the location visited, based on the historical facts that we wish to present throughout the game. In other words, we have utilized the video file option differently than the other SCVNGR treks described. For instance, instead of just presenting a video of an artifact, a piece of art, or perhaps a historical phenomenon, we have used the video files to tell the narrative and provide both a visual and an auditory atmosphere for the game

square Nytorv on the game map. The content at this location could be:

4.2.4 THE HISTORICAL LAYER

The challenge could be to ask players to write the second sentence of the song. The Easter egg at this location point may not be a riveting historical fact, but could seem very amusing for Danes who have sung that song many times in their childhood. If players “collect” these Easter eggs, they will not earn points within our game, but they will receive points in the SCVNGR application, maybe earn badges, and have the opportunity to engage with the history of the city. The Easter eggs will be tagged within SCVNGR as connected to the National Museum, so players can verify that the information is valid.

“The famous Danish children’s song, Der bor en bager på Nørregade (There is a baker at Nørregade), is thought to originate from this street. In fact, there was a bakery at the square that we now know as Bispetorvet. The bakery building is said to have been destroyed in 1807, when the bell tower from Vor Frue Kirke, (Our Lady’s Church), fell into the building during the British bombing of Copenhagen”.

We have aimed to build a history game layer on top of Copenhagen, both by making a trek and connecting a historical narrative between nine locations. As described previously, we have also added an extra file at each destination with additional historical information about the corresponding location. The idea is to share historical facts, colorful anecdotes, or similar information about locations or the era. An example is the story about how the neighborhood Pisserenden got its name. In the 1800s, many breweries brewed beer and schnapps in the neighborhood streets. An essential part of these breweries were stables, where cows consumed the alcoholic waste product from the brewing process. These stables were normally placed on the second or third floor. Since the stables were located above street level, the cows urinated directly on the second and third story floors, where small channels were carved out so that the urine could run out the window and down onto the streets.

4.2.5 TIME-SPAN The maximum time span of the game is approximately two hours. Players have the option of not playing the extra files and not doing all of the challenges, which will put the game’s time-span at about one hour. We are aware that two hours can seem extensive for a game of this kind, but as this is a combination of a museum experience and a LBMG that is interactive and immersive, and given that players have a choice of the broadness of the game, we deemed it suitable to provide the option for allowing the experience to last longer than one hour.

Besides the trek, we propose to connect information to location points outside of the trek, though still within the scope of the game map. Designing such points outside of the trek is equivalent to what is commonly known as Easter eggs within the game world. An Easter egg is an intentional, somewhat hidden feature, story, or challenge that does not necessarily connect to or affect the game. The idea of the Easter eggs is the same as with the extra files - to share historical facts, anecdotes, or similar information about locations or the era. An example of an Easter egg is a location point on the street Nørregade, which is within proximity of the

This chapter has presented our concept of the Gold Horn Thief and how it was developed in collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark. We have described and illustrated our process, which has had iterations within the development of the game narrative up until the production of the final prototype of the game.

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We have defined the target group of 18-35 year olds for who the game is intended. This group is poorly represented at the Danish museums, and by creating the Gold Horn Thief, we aim to attract this new user group to the National Museum.

Furthermore, we have presented the game builder SCVNGR and examined its pre-scripted features as well as described how these features have created specific limitations, as well as the opportunity to focus on content development in the process of designing the Gold Horn Thief. In the process of designing the fictional narrative layer that connects the different locations in the Gold Horn Thief into one overall “theme”, we have used the SCVNGR application differently than other museums in Denmark and in the US, such as KØS, the Smithsonian Museums and the Joslyn Art Museum.

In the next chapter, we will address our motivation behind design choices.

We will explore how our studies within LBMG literature and museum spaces has shaped the Gold Horn Thief, as well as how we have used game mechanics in order to create a meaningful play experience.

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To experience real meaning, we don’t have to contribute something of real value. We just have to be given the opportunity to contribute at all.

Jane McGonigal

CHAPTER 5 : DESIGN MOTIVATION The process of designing the Gold Horn Thief has been guided by the knowledge described in chapter 2 regarding the (mobile) hybrid museum space and the contexts that affect the museum experience, as well as the knowledge described in chapter 3 concerning LBMGs, their characteristics, and the positive implications associated with playing LBMGs. Our aim has been to create a mobile hybrid museum experience through the addition of a layer of history on top of “present-day” Copenhagen through the SCVNGR application. This layer should also create a playful, exciting game by constructing a digital narrative based on historical facts and adding historical information to several locations within the application, thereby motivating users to experience the urban space in a new way and providing a greater sense of belonging to their city by creating local knowledge.

LBMGs may not compete in real time as in CYSMN? or engage in real time fights as in Botfighters, but the social component is still an important part of what makes many LBMGs entertaining and meaningful. Mogi would be a rather dull experience without the other players, and Foursquare would be a meaningless game without friends to compete with. Similarly, Geocaching would basically die out if people were to stop hiding, seeking, and logging caches.

In the Gold Horn Thief, there are also social components, although they are not as crucial as in the games described above. The Gold Horn Thief can be enjoyed and completed without any collaborative social action. This is a consequence of our game being both a LBMG and a museum experience.

Although most people visit museums in groups, some visitors do go alone; these visitors should not be excluded from playing our game. However, our expectation is that most people will play the game in pairs or groups, just as most visitors visit a museum in pairs or groups, as both Falk (1992) and Simon (2010) also note. When players experience our game together, they will probably interact and collaborate on the challenges and discuss the story. This aspect will be elaborated on later in this chapter, when the social context of our game as a museum experience is addressed.

In the beginning of this chapter, we will present how the characteristics of LBMGs have shaped our game design, including collaborative social action,, mobility, and expansion of the magic circle, and we will describe our design efforts to create a layered playful space and local knowledge. In the following section, we will address which considerations were taken in regards to the four contexts of a museum experience and how they could affect players within our museum game experience, the Gold Horn Thief.

Lastly, in order to provide insight into how we have approached designing a meaningful play experience, we will present the motivation behind designing the game structure within the SCVNGR application, including game narrative and core mechanics.

Another social component of our game is the possibility to share and compete with others for a prominent place on the leaderboard, just as in Foursquare, where the main part of the motivation to check-in stems from the desire to beat one’s friends and become “king of the leaderboard”.

Thus, the leaderboard and the competition that it evokes is a social component of our game. (The point system and how it is used to motivate players in the Gold Horn Thief and within SCVNGR will be elaborated on later in this chapter.) Another social component is the possibility for players to share their experiences and achievements in the game with their friends on Facebook and Twitter.

5.1 THE GOLD HORN THIEF AS A LBMG As described in section 3.2, LBMGs are defined by collaborative social action, mobility, and expansion of the magic circle. Our game design has been inspired by these three characteristics, as well as the LBMGs described in chapter 3. Our game design has also been influenced by our aim to provide players of the Gold Horn Thief with a layered and playful game space in order to create local knowledge.

5.1.2 MOBILITY Mobility is a defining characteristic of playing a LBMG. One cannot play an LBMG without moving from location to location. The point of a LBMG is usually to move around in order to find, collect, or fight something. Most

5.1.1 COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL ACTION Collaborative social action is an important part of most LBMGs. Players of 62

LBMGs are built around a search, hunt, or quest. In the LBMGs described in section 3.1, with the exception of CYSMN?, players are searching for or hunting something; in Mogi, players are hunting items to collect; in Botfighters, players are hunting robots to fight with; and in Geocaching, players are hunting for the treasures. In CYSMN?, it is the players who are being hunted.

everyday lives. With locations that we assumed players would visit often, such as Nytorv and the neighborhood Pisserenden, we found historical information that was meant to create a sense of drama, evoke interest, and create perspective, for example the story of executions and blood drinking at Nytorv. Within places where we assumed players did not frequent or had potentially never been before, we focused on the actual location, such as the library garden at Rigsarkivet, (the Royal Art Chamber).

Our game is also a hunt where players are trying to catch the Gold Horn thief, Niels Heidenreich. In its structure, it resembles a geocaching multicache hunt, where visiting one location reveals which location to go to next, and why. Technically, one can see all the locations at once within the SCVNGR application, but players must know which locations to visit first, as well as the logic behind visiting locations in the correct order. This is explained through the narrative. The challenges of the game are also often tied to the location where players have to go, such as the challenge at Larsbjørnsstræde, where players must take a picture of the keyhole in a specific door at the house where Heidenreich used to live. This challenge can only be completed at the specific location. Therefore, mobility is also crucial when playing the Gold Horn Thief.

As previously noted, many of the challenges in the game - and in particular in the extra files, require players to be at a precise location in order to complete the challenge, and not just in the vicinity of a location. The challenges are also designed to draw players’ attention to the specific location and to encourage players to explore this location. An example is the challenge at the square Nytorv, where players must take a picture of the place where the hexagonal tower of the old and now-demolished Town Hall used to be. As a result, their attention is drawn to the outline of the old town hall in the tiles of the square and thereby to the location itself.

(See Appendix I for complete list of challenges).

Consequently, the Gold Horn Thief is based on location, because the narrative and challenges are based on locations. This is unlike Botfighters, where the specific location was irrelevant because the game space was determined by where other players were located, or Mogi, where the location of the treasure was important, but it was not necessarily linked to the history and local knowledge of the location. As mentioned above, the Gold Horn Thief resembles a multi-cache geocaching game, where one must explore a specific coordinate or street address in order to find specific clues, or in the case of geocaching, caches. In the Gold Horn Thief, the form is typically finding a specific location and solving a challenge connected to this location.

5.1.3 LOCATION AND TIME-SPAN (MAGIC CIRCLE EXPANSION) Although mobility is important in the Gold Horn Thief, even more essential are the locations that people are moving to and from. As described in section 3.2, most games are fixed within the magic circle, the game space that determines both the time span and the space that a game is played within. LBMGs expand the magic circle spatially by moving the game from a physical game board or computer screen into the streets of the real world.

As a result, the entire city can become a game board. The Gold Horn Thief also takes place in the urban space, which has become our game board.

Especially, the locations play a pivotal role in players’ experience of the game play in the Gold Horn Thief. While the narrative in the game is built upon the actual story of the theft, it is also invariably linked to the history of specific houses and streets. Therefore, we have tried to choose interesting location points for the game: some, which we thought players would visit fairly often, and some, which players would visit rarely in their

As mentioned in the beginning of this section, some LBMGs also expand the magic circle temporally. Most of the LBMGs described, such as Mogi, Botfighters, and Foursquare, are ongoing games that expand the magic circle temporally. Mogi and Botfighters are played in between one’s other daily activities, and, as noted in chapter 3, often in connection with 63

Our aim with the Gold Horn Thief has been to provide players with an opportunity to experience the suspense of the chase through our narrative, as well as provide opportunities for a playful experience. In order to create a sense of urgency and suspense as well as to remind players of the goal of the game, feedback, such as “Quickly, you must hurry and catch the thief before he escapes outside the city limits,” was provided within the SCVNGR application after each completed challenge (See Appendix I, Game Overview).

commuting to school or work. Thus, this game is entwined in an everyday life. The intention of the LBMG we have designed is not to be entwined in players’ daily lives, but rather for it to be played from start to end, without interruptions. Instead of designing an ongoing game, we have sought to design a narrative for players to immerse themselves in. This does not preclude players from taking a break in the game, for example to seek shelter from rain or to get something to eat, but the experience should be completed the same day as it is begun. This resembles CYSMN?, which also is a game that is completed on the same day it is begun. Players play until they are caught, and getting caught finishes the game. This is also very similar to Geocaching, which is also an experience concluded the same day it is started. It is an experience demarcated in time.

An important part of creating a playful experience in the game is providing players with challenges that evoke their curiosity and spark their imagination, such as the challenge in which players are asked to imagine why the officer gives a prostitute a substantial amount of money, despite her only answering a few simple questions. As previously described in this chapter, some of the challenges also encourage players to explore a location in order to find something specific, such as the challenge in which players must examine all the front doors along Magstræde in order to determine which one is the only original door from the 1700s. Challenges such as this one also add to the playfulness of the game. (See Appendix I, Game Overview).

5.1.4 DESIGNING A LAYERED PLAYFUL SPACE When playing a LBMG, players can enter a layered playful space in which an imagined space is placed on top of the perceived and experienced space. Through players’ abilities to frame situations (Goffmann, 1974), they are able play a LBMG, and through their experience, they are able to experience well-known neighborhoods in a new and exiting way. Creating this situation is precisely what we sought to achieve with the Gold Horn Thief. Through our narrative, we have placed an imagined space on top of the perceived and experienced space. Whereas a game such as Botfighters invites players to enter an imaginative world of fighting robots and Mogi invites players to experience a world full of digital objects to be picked up, we are inviting players to step back in time and experience Copenhagen as it looked in the past and through the eyes of a detective hunting a thief. In the Gold Horn Thief, the imagined space is the narrative, and the SCVNGRmap and some of the content in the extra files are perceived space.

5.1.5 CREATING LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Besides the creation of a layered playful space, another aim for the game was to create local knowledge, which is knowledge about a specific location that a group of people share, and which makes them feel a greater sense of attachment and sense of belonging to a location. We aimed to give players of the Gold Horn Thief local knowledge and thereby strengthen their attachment to Copenhagen, by introducing them to information that may change their perception of their city or well-known streets and locations. For example, perhaps the next time they walk down the street, Skt. Peders Stræde, they may imagine the stench of urinating cows in the neighborhood, Pisserenden. By providing players with location-based information - such as background stories of buildings or the origins of particular names, while they are standing in the actual street, we are delivering digital information that can potentially alter the way they perceive this locality.

Experienced space is the streets and buildings among which the game takes place. In the Gold Horn Thief, players must also navigate between experienced space, perceived space and imagined space - albeit in a slightly different way than in Botfighters, because the content of the imagined space is focused on history rather than just a fictional adventure. The implications of this difference will be discussed in chapter 7.

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But players also take part in creating local knowledge, for example, when they are urged to examine historic details along Skt. Peders Stræde and take a picture of the one detail that they find most interesting. This action directs their attention towards the many historical details in the street and forces them to choose only one detail to take a picture of. Thus, they must feel and relate to the historical details in order to decide which one they like the most.

them before they embark on the experience, such as a foul mood, having been dragged there by a friend, or just not liking museum experiences in general. The social context includes everybody the player comes in contact with throughout the game and who might affect the experience, such as fellow players, bystanders, or staff. The physical context can take many forms; for instance, the player could be affected by cold weather, fatigue, or noises. And lastly, how well the technological context is created by the technologies used during the museum experience, which will influence the perception of the full experience.

In the SCVNGR application, all of these pictures and activities will be recorded and therefore visible to other players on the Activities page under each challenge. Here, players can also see what other players have produced in the game, such as pictures from the aforementioned Skt. Peders Stræde challenge. Over time, there will be quite a collection of pictures of many different historical details from that street, which will contribute to the production of local knowledge along Skt. Peders Stræde.

If players also “Say Something”, or make comments, about their experience at different locations, they add to the local knowledge of these locations, while simultaneously gaining more points within the game.

Of course, it can be challenging to take players’ personal moods into account as well as what private experiences might affect their experience when starting to play the Gold Horn Thief, but we have tried to make the entrance to the experience as smooth and accessible as possible.

Firstly, we have made the brochure that introduces both the functions of the applications and the organization of the game. Secondly, we have developed the welcome file with the intention of providing players with a pleasant start to the game experience.

Since the majority of the experience is moved outside of the museum walls and into the urban space, a player’s social context can also be challenging to manipulate. As the experience starts and ends inside the museum, it is important that museum staff is well informed about the game and can help players with any issues connected to playing it. While playing the game in the urban space, we can neither control interactions with people who are not participating in the game nor the population density on the street, which could affect the experience both negatively and positively.

5.2 THE GOLD HORN THIEF AS A MUSEUM EXPERIENCE Local historical knowledge can be presented in a museum and does not necessarily have to be shared at a specific location. For example, an exhibit could be dedicated to a specific neighborhood with information on architecture, general history, or historical figures. However, one could question whether it may be more effective to present knowledge about a specific location while visitors are actually standing at the actual location.

The flexibility of the mobile hybrid museum space allows us to move the museum experience out into the urban space and connect historical knowledge to the present context. Though this museum space includes a modern type of history dissemination, it is still relevant to take Falk and Dierking’s (1992) overall context organization of the museum experience into account when designing our game.

In addition, it is also difficult to control the physical context of the experience, but informing players how long the walk is and how long the experience could potentially last aids players in preventing issues such as sore legs, hunger, or tiredness. This allows players to make decisions individually about whether to eat first, take a break during the game, or maybe wait to play another day, if for example, the weather forecast calls for rain.

Though all visitors perceive experiences differently, their experiences can be organized among the four contexts: personal, social, physical, and technological. The personal context covers what players bring with 65

To a certain extent, the situation involving co-players playing the game has been controlled. Of course, we cannot tell players whom to share their experience with, but as noted in section 4.1.2, the game is designed for adult owners of smartphones. By using these parameters to manipulate potential game partners, we aim to make it more plausible to have players with more explorative agendas. For example, since the game is not designed for experiences between grandmothers and grandchildren, the experience should be more about having a playful experience and less about “pleasing a grandmother” or “teaching a grandchild.”

and Zimmerman’s (2004) definition of meaningful play:

We have chosen to center our experience on the technological context, as the game is facilitated through the smartphone application. The application is an essential part of the experience, but it should not be a hindrance. We cannot control issues such as network connections or old smartphones, but we have chosen an application, which we believe has a user-friendly organization. Furthermore, we have provided players with a very descriptive brochure, which contains an insert with illustrative screen shots and clear explanations. The use of smartphones in our experience is helpful in creating the interactive and layered playful experience that we aim to create, but the smartphone cannot stand alone. Creating a layered playful space and making players look upon their surroundings in a different perspective is what we believe can make a game such as the Gold Horn Thief successful.

Throughout playing a game, players must constantly make choices, and if the challenges, feedback, or the overall game system is not meaningful to the player, he or she will not be motivated to continue playing. Being mindful of meaningful game mechanics has motivated us while designing the game system framed by a meaningful narrative.

“Meaningful play in a game emerges from the relationship between player action and system outcome; it is the process by which a player takes action within the designed system of a game and the system’s response to the action. The meaning of an action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome.” (p. 34)

5.3.1 THE NARRATIVE GAME SYSTEM Salen and Zimmerman (2004) submit two broad structures for understanding narrative within a game: ȇȇ Players can experience a game narrative as a crafted story interactively told: An embedded narrative game. ȇȇ Players can engage with a narrative as an emergent experience that happens while the game is played: An emergent narrative game (p. 383).

Although understanding the four contexts has given us insight into players’ overall situation while playing the game, without the motivation to play within a meaningful game system, players will not engage with either the content, context, or location of the game.

The first structure is a manufactured one and is an experience that tends to resemble a media that has a narrative with a linear progression, such as a movie or play. All the elements are pre-scripted moments that are structured within the game system. The second structure is considered more of an improvised play experience where a narrative arises through the game. Both of these structures place the narrative within the context of interactivity.

5.3 GAME MECHANICS IN THE GOLD HORN THIEF Our research in the field of LBMGs and museum spaces has motivated our game design process. However, we have also found inspiration and tools for our game design in theories that describe game mechanics; we have employed these in order to create a playful and engaging game experience.

As we sought to design a game that would motivate players to want to take part in a meaningful and playful museum experience, we considered Salen

The Gold Horn Thief is an embedded narrative game within the context of interactivity. We have created a linear narrative context within which 66

the player acts. However, not only the backstory of the game is part of the narrative, but also the space, the rules, and the challenges. These are all foundations for interactivity and as such, become part of the narrative in our game. Though our game is definably an embedded narrative game, it also has elements of a more emergent character. Most predominant is the ending, which can be different for players depending on which QR-code he or she scans.

history of the city they live in, the buildings they pass, and the story of the theft of a national historic treasure. In the Gold Horn Thief, there is not only an overall goal, but also smaller goals or achievements to be reached within the whole game system, such as completing challenges, gaining badges, or becoming the leader on the leaderboard.

5.3.3 THE CONFLICT Goals in a game should not be easy to achieve. As Salen and Zimmerman (2004) state, “As players struggle toward the goal, conflict arises… From a narrative perspective, this element motivates and contextualizes player action.” (p. 387) The conflict can take the role of a villain, it can be a competing team, or it can be designed into the game system as a whole. In the Gold Horn Thief, the conflict plays out within several levels. The overall narrative of trying to overcome challenges while trying to catch the thief raises a conflict. Moreover, there is a conflict level in choosing between suspects. Is the guilty person the culprit the game initially implies, Niels Heidenreich, or could it be his brother-in-law, Peter Jensen? Another issue players deal with is what will happen if they do not catch the thief fast enough; will the thief melt down the Gold Horns and thereby eliminate any possibilities for players to save a piece of Danish history? These conflicts affect the choices that players make throughout the game. Choices, such as: ”should we hurry to the next location?”, “do we have time to solve this challenge?”, “who should we note as a suspect in the police report?”, and so forth. Conflict can also provide an option for a narrative context to frame certain obstacles that players must overcome (Salen & Zimmerman 2004, p. 387). For example, finding the location where the thief could be, finding the keyhole where the key that was used in the crime fits, and so on.

We have designed the narrative to provide motivation for players to move forward. Unraveling the story of the theft and finding the thief is part of the motivation for players to keep playing the game. Salen and Zimmerman (2004) state, “Without the pre-generated storyline, the game would feel like an abstract fetch-the-next-item quest.” (p. 383). This is definitely prevalent in our game, which, without the narrative, would be a walk in the city with no purpose or likely motivation other than learning about the city’s history. Salen and Zimmerman (2004) also note that for narrative play to be fully engaging, the core principles of meaningful play, such as goals, conflict, uncertainty, and core mechanics, are important (p. 385). We have tried to extract and achieve these basic principles in the Gold Horn Thief in order to get players to engage in, enjoy, and complete our game.

5.3.2 THE GOAL In narrative game design, it is fundamental to have a goal. Goals help players to determine their progress throughout the game (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). For example, within the Gold Horn Thief, players have the goal of catching the thief before he escapes with the horns or melts them, so they want to determine how close they are to reaching their goal.

Jane McGonigal (2011) also refers to this dynamic as the epic meaning (p. 98): the fact that there is a meaning or a larger cause to playing the game. Players want their actions to be meaningful. If the narrative has a clear goal, the player will sense that it is meaningful and engage with the game system. Obviously within the Gold Horn Thief, the epic meaning or goal does not transcend the game, since the Gold Horns were stolen and melted in 1802. However, the game does introduce players to somewhat of a meaningful experience as an effect of the game. We believe that most of the citizens of Copenhagen will find it meaningful to learn about the

5.3.4 UNCERTAINTY Uncertainty in a game can inject the game experience with drama and tension, which in turn can make it more exciting and engaging for players.

Salen and Zimmerman (2004) note, “Uncertainty is another quality of meaningful play. If a game is certain, if the outcome is known in advance, there is no reason to play in the first place.” (p. 388) In relation to real history, our narrative falls short since most players would know that the 67

Gold Horns were stolen. Furthermore, it would be very easy to find out who the culprit is with a smartphone in hand. This is part of the reason for making the narrative fictitious. With a fictional narrative, we can obtain a certain amount of uncertainty within the game system. In the real story of the theft, the thief was not caught until a year after the crime, but in the Gold Horn Thief, the narrative starts the morning after the crime with the prospect of catching the thief within hours. By using a fictional narrative, we could also incorporate the option of the accomplice - an accomplice who in true history is merely speculative, but one who is a new discovery for scholars researching the theft, as well as the general public.

the game; in fact, they can listen to the extra files and get the information without actually undertaking the challenge (See Appendix I, Game Overview). So the fact that players can see points building up after each finished challenge could motivate.

Comparable to the point system in SCVNGR is the badge and reward system. Players can receive badges in a similar way to Foursquare, for example when a certain number of challenges are completed. While playing the Gold Horn Thief, and if players are new SCVNGR users, they have the opportunity of receiving two badges; The Hello World Badge, which players then receive after completing the first challenge, and the 10 Challenge Badge, which they will receive after completing 10 challenges.

If players are already SCVNGR users, a 25 Challenge Badge or 50 Challenge Badge could be earned instead. The badges do not affect the scope or the outcome of the game, they are merely placed in the system to motivate and provide a sort of “pat on the back� to players.

5.3.5 CORE MECHANICS The core mechanics can be considered the structure behind what drives players in moment-to-moment activity. The mechanics drive players to move forward, interact with, and finish the game (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). Most of the other games described in section 3.1 also reward players with points. In Mogi, players receive points by collecting items, whereas in Botfighters, points are won by winning battles with other robots. In CYSMN?, players are rewarded with points based on the time they have managed to stay in the game. Within the Gold Horn Thief, we have default mechanics that are built into the application, as well as mechanics that we have added as a layer on top of the game through the narrative in our overall game system.

Along with the default mechanics that we cannot alter within the game system, we have designed features and mechanics that are meant to encourage and motivate players to keep playing. McGonigal (2011) writes about a blissful productivity (p. 53) that a game can encourage. When players are within blissful productivity, they are intensely absorbed and producing clear results. The clearer and faster players receive these results, the more blissfully productive they feel. To apply the concepts behind this theory, we tried to space and design challenges at locations that would keep players immersed. In the beginning of the Gold Horn Thief, the locations are spaced further apart, and the videos with information are a bit longer. In the first part of the Gold Horn Thief, we expect players to be motivated by the narrative and less worried about things such as walking distances between locations, hunger, weather, or other things that might interrupt their blissful productivity. The game takes players out to the border of the game map within the first third of the game period, and as players could tire towards the end of the game, the locations and challenges are much closer to each other (See appendix IV Game Map).

One of the most dominant features that can motivate players in SCVNGR is making points. Every challenge a player finishes rewards him or her with points. The points are added up, and within each location, a leaderboard is formed, as well as an overall leaderboard for the whole trek. (Though this overall leaderboard will not show in the prototype due to the four separate treks). This encourages players to complete all the challenges, including those presented in the extra file; it also encourages people to check-in, take a picture, and write a comment; all of which will reward them with additional points and make them advance on the leaderboard.

The point system is an example of a moment-to-moment activity that can motivate players. Players do not have to finish the challenges to complete 68

The idea of blissful productivity is closely related to the idea of the flow state. The Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi first introduced the notion of flow in 1975. Csíkszentmihályi (2000) describes flow as, “…the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement.” (p. 36) Flow is often referenced within game theory because the action of play is what Csíkszentmihályi calls, “…flow par excellence.” (p. 37) Though, just playing a game does not guarantee the experience of flow. The flow state within the game world is about balance; by creating a game that is challenging, yet achievable players will be more likely to stay in their optimal state and continue playing the game. If the game is too easy players will lose flow, if the game is too complicated the players will lose flow. Within the challenges that we designed in the Gold Horn Thief, there are different levels of difficulty and types of information in order to produce an experience inclined towards the flow state.

In this chapter, we have described how the three characteristics of LBMGs have inspired and motivated us throughout the design process. Our LBMG, the Gold Horn Thief, expands the magic circle spatially and moves players around the urban environment, yet without them having to experience the game simultaneously in a social collaborative action. The Gold Horn Thief is a LBMG placed within a mobile hybrid museum space, which players can interact with alone or in groups. Within this mobile hybrid museum space, it is our aim to create local knowledge, which we believe is best presented and created at the precise locality that it is connected to as opposed to being presented within a traditional museum space, where it is disconnected from its original context. The historical knowledge is presented in the form of a layered playful space applied on top of the urban environment and provided to players in a meaningful game system.

A narrative frames the system, and within this game narrative, we have aimed to motivate players by employing the game mechanics addressed.

We have also considered the four contexts in the overall experience to account for players’ individual situation while playing the game. In the next chapter, we will present how we have tested a game prototype to examine whether our aims have been accomplished through the design of our game.

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Design is a cyclic process that alternates between prototyping, playtesting, evaluation, and refinement.

Salen & Zimmerman

CHAPTER 6 : TESTING networks using Facebook and through our more professional networks using Twitter to seek both the cultural experience consumer and the gamer type. In addition, we used the National Museum’s Facebook and Twitter accounts to recruit the cultural experience consumer type, and we recruited from the group of Danish delegates participating in the Museum Next conference in Edinburgh in May of 2011 in order to get a museum insider to take part in our test. When seeking to recruit the cultural experience consumer type, we would put forward a statement like this; “Do you like trying new things and partaking in cultural experiences?”, and when seeking the gamer types, we recruited stating, “Do you like playing games, and would you like to try playing one in the urban environment?”

We ended up recruiting two gamer types, one museum insider, and seven cultural experience consumers. The reasoning behind having a greater number of cultural experience consumers in our test group is that the Gold Horn Thief is firstly a museum experience and secondly, a game experience.

Therefore acquiring useful feedback from these participants was of great importance. And with this greater number, we had a better chance of receiving constructive feedback. The participants are presented in model 4 on the following page.

As a part of our iterative process, we tested our prototype in several rounds. From previous academic design projects, we have understood the value of testing a prototype within a target group. Salen and Zimmerman (2004) also note, “… it is not possible to fully anticipate play in advance.” (p. 12) Therefore, we planned to test the prototype for the museum and game experience, as well as both technical and content issues. The prototype tested was a fully functioning first version of the game in the SCVNGR application, including video files and challenges.

In this chapter, we will present our test participants, our test design, and our results. In presenting our test participants, we explain why specific test participants were recruited, as well as how we recruited them. We address how our test was carried out in three rounds including observation, qualitative interviews, and an overall background survey. Then, we present the feedback deduced from test participants during personal interviews, observation, and digital surveys to provide an overall representation of how our game was evaluated. Due to time limitations of this project, issues regarding the Gold Horn Thief’s prototype that were illuminated in the last round of testing were not attended to. However, these issues will be addressed in the next chapter.

6.2 TEST DESIGN

6.1 TEST PARTICIPANTS

Before starting the recruitment stage, we prepared a test design, which included how to carry out the tests, how to observe and interview participants, and how to collect data. We tested our prototype on 10 participants. Half of the participants were observed during their game experience in order to gain insight into how the actual game experience developed, and the rest were sent to play on their own in order to test whether the game could actually be played without any contact with us, as well as to create a more realistic game situation. We tested in three rounds and over a period of three weeks; issues illuminated through the tests were dealt with before the next round of tests. The first two rounds dealt with more technical and content related issues, such as files not loading or pictures being too small to view on a smartphone screen, as well as evaluation of the challenges. In the first two rounds, four participants were tested. After these rounds, the prototype was considered ready for testing, and because of this, we employed the largest number of participants -

Since this was a prototype test and not a test of a finished game, we aimed to recruit participants both belonging to the Gold Horn Thief’s target group, which is described in chapter 4, as well as recruiting specific types of participants that were required in order to help evaluate different areas of our prototype. We sought to acquire a wide variety of participants that represented different types of contributors; the gamer, who would surely focus on the game elements in the experience; the cultural experience consumer, who would likely focus on the history experience; the SCVNGR user, who might comment on the use of the platform; and, the museum insider, someone in the museum business, who could comment on the presentation and possibly the representative accuracy of the game.

Seeking to cover these different types of test participants guided how and from where we recruited participants. We recruited through our private 72

Participant Type

Sex

Test Date

Test Round

Weather

The Cultural Experience Consumer

Female

05.28.11

1

Sunny

The Cultural Experience Consumer

Female

05.28.11

1

Sunny

The Cultural Experience Consumer

Male

05.28.11

1

Sunny

The Gamer

Male

06.12.11

2

Sunny

The Museum Insider

Female

06.18.11

3

Rainy

The Cultural Experience Consumer

Male

06.18.11

3

Rainy

The Cultural Experience Consumer

Female

06.19.11

3

Grey

The Gamer

Male

06.19.11

3

Grey

six in all, in the final round. We did not make changes to the prototype succeeding this final round, though issues with the experience after this final round are illuminated through our interviews and observations.

Tests were carried out during both sunny, warm weather and grey, rainy weather. Firstly, the participants tested the game, and then they were interviewed immediately after their test in order to capture their instant responses and feedback to the game. We interviewed participants in person to get more detailed and qualitative insights to their experience.

Subsequently to their interview, they were presented with a general survey in an email. The survey was designed to extract more statistical background data such as age, and museum and gaming habits. Data was collected in the form of pictures, video, an observation form from the observation of participants, audio tracks, hand written notes from the interview, and more statistical types of data from the survey. How the actual testing, observation, interview session, and survey were carried out will be addressed in the following sections.

6.3 TESTING IN ROUNDS

The Cultural Experience Consumer (SCVNGR User)

Female

06.19.11

3

Rainy

The Cultural Experience Consumer (SCVNGR User)

Male

06.19.11

3

Rainy

We decided to test in several rounds, providing for sufficient time inbetween rounds in order to make improvements on the game. The participants were greeted at the museum reception where they received the brochure, had to download the application, and thereafter embark on the game. They were asked to bring their own smartphone with either Android or OS system.

6.3.1 TEST ROUND I In the first round, three participants recruited through our network tested the prototype. This first round was considered a pilot test, and the purpose was to test for technical issues, for example whether the participants could navigate the application, and whether the game play and narrative made sense to the participants. Also, because most of our participants were of the cultural experience consumer type, we placed three of them in this first round to receive quick initial feedback on the Gold Horn Thief as a museum experience. Since this was mapped out as a pilot test, we observed and asked the participants questions concurrently while they played.

MODEL 4: Test Participant Overview 73

We appreciate that can it be complicated to conclude anything from the feedback of just one participant, but with this test round, we were not looking for final evaluation of our prototype; we were rather looking to both gain insight from suggestions involving the game experience and a greater understanding of how sufficiently we had balanced our game. This round gave considerable insight as to how much of our experience felt like a game experience and how much felt like a cultural history experience.

It was illuminated that we had not focused enough on the game experience, as the participant felt that several of our challenges were too easy, too similar, and tedious. All of the challenges in the extra files asked players to comment on questions, such as “What are your thoughts on what you just learned from the extra file?” According to the participant, it was too time consuming and inconvenient to address all of these issues. He noted that writing a lot of text on the touch screen was too slow and he did not care to complete many of these types of challenges. Instead, he asked for more challenges that made him explore the different locations further.

This made it clear that more challenges involving practical tasks, such as finding or counting specific objects, would be more easily accessible with the smartphone and provide a better game-oriented experience that engaged players at the different locations.

ILLUSTRATION 20: Test participants at the location, the Royal Art Chamber

This test round revealed a couple of technical issues with the order in which the content was provided in the application. It was not clear to the participants in which order to play the files or access the treks. Therefore, the content was reloaded into the application in a different organization and with clearer numbering. This meant spreading the trek to four instead of three treks. This provided a more understandable structure in which specific locations’ files were not separated into two different treks. The brochure that we provided was also fine-tuned in order to make it easier to understand how to play the game. It was mostly text pieces that were altered to make it more obvious to players how to access the treks within the application and how to move from challenge to challenge. We also added a SCVNGR icon to make it easier and faster to pick the correct application to download from the application store.

Following this round, we redesigned all the challenges in the extra files. Most of these were altered into challenges that called for a more investigative or exploratory approach, such as by looking at the tiles on the ground and discovering the place where the hexagonal tower of the old, now demolished town hall used to be, or counting and testifying to only the original number of windows at the Royal Art Chamber. We did keep one challenge that asked players to comment with their opinion, but instead of writing, we asked them to take a picture of the historic detail that they found most interesting.

6.3.2 TEST ROUND II Since the participants in round 1 were of the cultural experience consumer type, in round 2, we decided to test a gamer type recruited through our network in order to get more game-oriented feedback, as well as examine whether the changes we made after the first round of testing were sufficient. In this round, we also followed and observed the participant while periodically asking questions during the test.

As this participant was a new smartphone user and unfamiliar with the use of applications, this test made it clear that we needed an insert in the brochure with some explanations of the application’s general functions (See Illustration 21).

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6.4 OBSERVING PLAYING PARTICIPANTS The observation in round 3 was carried out by filling out a form while walking close to the participants during their test. We looked at behavior, outbursts, and noted observations that we thought participants might not likely notice themselves or had perhaps forgotten about after finishing the game. Immediately after participants had finished playing, they were invited into a separate room at the museum to answer questions about their experience. In order to assure that we observed all of the participants in a similar way, we created an observation form, which we filled out both during and after the test. The form focused on identifying the following topics: - - -

ILLUSTRATION 21: Brochure insert

6.3.3 TEST ROUND III

-

The process of testing and modifying the game was completed with test round 3. The purpose of this round was to evaluate our prototype and receive feedback for the final game. In this last test round, we tested six participants outside of our private network covering all of our participant types. The test round was performed over two days; the first day, we tested and observed two participants but did not ask questions during their tests. This was done to make sure that the participants could indeed complete the game without any contact with us, as well as to observe how a game situation developed without any interruptions. The next day, we tested the last six participants by sending them out on their own and interviewing them after their return to the museum. All of the participants were interviewed after the tests. All of the tests went according to plan, except for one, which was ended before the game could be completed due to a dead battery. All the feedback from this test round is presented in section 6.5 in this chapter.

Technical issues (It was noted if the participants seemed to have difficulty navigating the application, a slow network, downloading issues or difficulty with the volume of the video files.)

Physical behavior (It was noted if participants seemed agitated, happy, tired or similar.)

Players’ game approach (It was noted whether participants listened to both the narrative file and the extra file and how the challenges were dealt with.)

Outer elements (It was noted if outer elements, such as noise in the streets or weather, seemed to affect participants.)

Observing participants revealed quite a bit about the experience of playing the game, how easy it was to understand the structure of the trek, and when or why participants experienced frustration or excitement. Observing gave us an insight into how much time participants wanted to spend on challenges. For example, it revealed that searching for the door in Magstræde seemed very acceptable and leisurely for participants, as they strolled and seemed very relaxed. However, when they got further into the game, for example at Larsbjørnsstræde and Skt. Peters Stræde, where they had to find a plaque on a building, they seemed slightly agitated at spending too much time searching. If they were in a group, they split up while examining the street to save time. It should be noted that at this point in the game, players probably feel they are close to catching Niels Heidenreich and this could account for the sense of urgency.

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We also observed one test group that accidently went on a short detour due to misunderstanding the order of the trek; they found their way back again, and when they were interviewed later, they did not note this as an issue. But it made it clear to us that the trek should be reorganized as explained in the section, Test Round 1. Observing also gave insight into what part of the Gold Horn Thief created a sense of drama and amused participants. After playing several of the files, participants had outburst such as “wow”, “sick”, “that’s crazy”, “too funny” and “disgusting”. Files such as the file at Nytorv explaining the executions, and the file at Skt. Peters Stræde explaining the prostitutes’ situation seemed to create many of such outbursts. After participants returned from their tests, we used a semi-structured interview guide to execute a 30-minute interview with each test participant.

fill out a simple questionnaire. We interviewed all 10 test participants after their tests, though the first four interviews were less formal and lose in structure, because we had also asked questions during the actual testing.

We applied both open-ended questions such as, “Tell us about your experience today” and more direct questions such as, “Was the applications easy for you to use?” Two of the participants had to leave before their interview was completed. Therefore, they were also asked questions two weeks after their test. As the interview guide was designed to aid in illuminating issues discussed in chapters 2 and 3, these issues were organized under four themes: The Game The first theme was the game itself. It contained general questions about the game and the game dynamics used. Examples of questions asked during the interview included: - “How did you find the videos?”

- “How did you like the extra files?”

- “What did you think of the challenges?”

- “What motivated you to continue the game?”

Player Immersion The second theme was immersion, and the questions covered how well players immersed themselves in a game layer, which would take players back to the historic past while being in the present. These questions were designed to test whether the players were able to frame the layering of spaces in the game. The theme was chosen because of its relevance to our aim of providing players with opportunities to experience layered spaces while gaining a new perspective on well-known places. We believe players would experience a layered space, if they could immerse themselves in a story from the past while moving around in the present. Therefore, we asked participants if they became immersed into the narrative and could imagine what Copenhagen looked like in the past. Examples of questions included: - “How did the surroundings affect your experience?”

- “Were you able to immerse yourself in the history from the past

ILLUSTRATION 22: Test participants at the locations, Assistenshuset, Nytorv, and the National Museum

6.5 INTERVIEWING PARTICIPANTS Using a semi-structured interview method allows for a certain amount of flexibility so that specific answers can be investigated further and questions outside of the interview guide can be put forward within each interview situation. Our semi-structured interview was designed in order to collect qualitative data about the participants’ experiences while using the prototype. We believe this method provides an opportunity for us to better understand participants’ points of view as opposed to having them 76

-

to understand what the game was about and under what terms we were playing the game.”

despite all the noises from the present like traffic, etc.?”

“Did you imagine what the city looked like around 1800 while playing the game?”

”I am very positive. It was a new and different way of introducing historical events while using the urban space.”

Local Knowledge The third theme was creation of local knowledge. One of the aims of our game was to create local knowledge. Whether we have succeeded however, is quite difficult to measure directly. Therefore, we examined whether playing the Gold Horn Thief enhanced players’ sense of belonging to Copenhagen, and whether playing the game changed players’ perception of and relationship to some of the locations visited.

If the participants felt an enhanced sense of belonging to Copenhagen, this would indicate that we had created local knowledge. Examples of questions were: - “Do you feel that you know the history of your city better?”

- “Do you feel that your view on the places, you visited during the game has changed?”

- “Do you feel a stronger sense of belonging to Copenhagen after having played this game?”

“I really liked the idea, and I think it is great that you are walking around the city while experiencing…and it is a challenge, the way you have to solve a… should I call it a riddle?”

“Really I think it is a great way to get out. I think if I had to go for a walk, I would do this. This is a super excuse to experience something rather than just taking a walk.

All participants enjoyed the overall experience, and several of them were observed smiling and laughing while watching the videos. Some commented on the appearance and the atmosphere in the videos: “I liked the drawings of the people; it put a face to the characters.”

The Museum Experience The fourth and last theme was the museum experience; the aim was to inspect how the four contexts, the social, the personal, the physical, and the technological, affected participants during their experience. Examples of questions were: - “What was your motivation for playing the game?”

- “Who would you like to play this game with?”

- “Did the weather affect your experience?”

“The stories combined with the music felt very authentic. It created a scene. I liked it.”

One of the gamer type participants did not like the descriptors though.

He thought there should have been more focus on creating a crime story atmosphere:

6.5.1 THE OVERALL GAME EXPERIENCE

“That classical music and the pleasant female voice did not fit with a crime story. The classical music did not create a mood. It was more history storytelling. I would have liked a dark male voice, and crime music in the background. I also thought the illustrations were too cute.”

As described, the first theme in the interview session focused on the actual game and the players’ impressions of it. All of the participants had positive declarations of the overall experience and idea of the game: “Super professional! Downloading the app and beginning the game was as fast as lightning. It was easy 77

It would seem that the Gold Horn Thief simply did not live up to this specific gamer type participant’s expectations of a crime game atmosphere. This is understandable since the game is both a museum experience and a gaming experience, and the style of the videos focused primarily on the atmosphere of an era rather than the atmosphere of a crime story.

game, where players have to choose between two QR-codes in order to find out how the story ends. Feedback such as this further illuminated the balance between museum and gaming experience in the Gold Horn Thief, and this could either be addressed by changing the overall game structure in the final game or by making sure to market the experience as a cultural history experience rather than a game. Though this participant was not pleased with the gaming experience, the game elements in the Gold Horn Thief did seem to motivate several participants:

However, most of the participants were very positive about the narrative, and this affected their motivation throughout the progression of the game:

“ I really liked that I could only take one picture in that (challenge). It really made me think about what exactly I wanted to choose. I wanted to take two pictures, but the game would not let me. That was kind of fun.”

“The stories made me want to continue – it is exciting.

Well written and well narrated.”

“Yes, the story was told in a way that made me want to hear more. Especially because the story of the Gold Horns has been heard before, it was good with a new angle and new characters, that I had never heard of.”

“The gaming aspect definitely came to me, I wanted to get points. I listened to all the extra files cause I wanted the points and I also checked-in.”

“Well, I thought it was really great that it was a detective story. Because there is a goal and something you have to solve in the end, and that, I think, is the most interesting.”

“The points motivated me. I liked that I was competing with others to get the most (points).”

All of the participants appreciated the challenges and had a broad range of favorites and emphasized different ones, each seeming to have an explorative nature in common:

One of the gamer type participants thought the experience was too centered around the historical aspect and too little on creating a gaming experience:

”It was great that I had to take pictures and upload them. I like having to explore the streets and take the city as one’s starting point.”

“I think maybe the story is not quite me. I could feel that there was too much storytelling. I thought it was too much history dissemination and not enough game.

When I played the videos they were not always essential to completing the challenges, more meant to tell me about history.”

”I thought it was a lot of fun - especially, the ones where I had to find something. The one where you have to find a house with a number on it and the one, where you have to count the windows - I really like that!”

Again, these issues seem to be unique to the gamer type participants who both wished for more emergent gameplay similar to at the end of the

“It was actually quite fun to look at old doors and try and guess which one was the original. Some look like an 78

old door, some are old but not old enough. That was a lot of fun”.

“Yes, because history is being connected to physical objects in the street. For example land register no.

138, where you had to take a picture of the plaque or in Pisserenden, where you had to take a photo of the keyhole.”

So, all participants were generally very pleased with the experience.

However, both of the gamer types thought the gameplay was not prioritized highly enough, as to their perception of the Gold Horn Thief as a game. This issue will be addressed in the next chapter, as this is valuable insight into how possible alterations could be made in a final game version.

Nonetheless, all the cultural experience consumer types were very happy with the balance between gameplay and museum experience, as well as the type of challenges provided in the Gold Horn Thief. This suggests that the Gold Horn Thief could be a success when marketed as a museum experience.

This quote illustrates how we have created a layered experience that this participant reacted positively towards. It also suggests that the participant managed to frame the experience within the three layers described in chapter 3. The participant was able to connect to the experienced space, or the building itself, the perceived space, or the factual information about the building, and the imagined space, or the narrative that framed the experience, which was the reason the participant was taking the picture of the keyhole in the first place.

6.5.2 A LAYERED PLAYFUL SPACE

However, one cultural experience consumer type mentioned that he found it hard to immerse himself in the story:

Another theme explored in the semi-structured interviews was immersion.

The participants observed showed many signs of immersion. They all walked quite fast and were quite determined to reach the next location.

They also seemed to be very focused while playing, discussing gamecontent and challenges - for example, whether to pursue certain clues or not. At one location, which potentially could have been a dead-end, one player, upon receiving valuable information relevant to the investigation exclaimed, ”Good! It was not a waste of time to go here after all”. She was so immersed in the game that she had actually felt annoyed that she may have reached a dead-end, but instead she was relieved to get a new clue.

When asked, most of the other participants also experienced immersion within the narrative.

“I had a hard time immersing myself in the narrative because the city surroundings were screaming 2011.”

On the other hand, when listening to the factual extra files, he was able imagine what the city looked like in that era: “Especially the extra files were good at creating a picture of the year 1802”.

Thereby, the narrative story was not convincing enough for this participant, but the extra file with the location specific, factual information functioned well. One could argue that this could be a result of the fact that information in the extra file is more location specific and some of the buildings of that period are still visible, such as Assistenshuset, or that there is still physical evidence of history existing, such as the tiles showing where the demolished Town Hall once stood. However, the difference between 2011 and 1802 is significant, and no matter how well the game design is developed, it could be challenging to achieve an immersive

Technical issues affected some of the players’ abilities to immerse themselves in the narrative. However, when asked whether they could become immersed in the history and the era despite modern surroundings, most of our participants answered affirmatively: “I was not distracted by the noise. I could easily immerse myself into the story” 79

6.5.3 LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

experience for all players. Nevertheless, most of the participants tried to imagine what Copenhagen might have looked like in that era, and the Gold Horn Thief did create some strong images in their minds:

Most of the interviewed participants agreed that they would look upon the visited locations with a new perspective in the future and that their relationship to the visited locations had changed. One participant commented, that his perception of the square, Nytorv, had changed after the game:

“I especially imagined what it must have looked like after the great fire when only Assistenshuset was still standing there.”

“I have got a different view of Nytorv, where people apparently drank blood.”

“Yes, I tried to imagine what it must have looked like, but that was because the buildings were so wellpreserved.”

Within a two-week time frame between the testing and answering of our questions, one of the participants had noticed that she had changed her perception of at least two of the localities in the game:

In response to whether this experience had enabled participants to look at familiar streets with a new perspective, all of them expressed that it had to some extent:

“When I went to Skt. Peders Stræde again, I suddenly noticed a lot of details that I have never noticed before.

The same goes for Magstræde.”

“I have passed through Magstræde many times, but I have never noticed the fine houses or known that it used to be a toilet.”

This illustrates how this test participant had formed a new relationship to these specific streets in Copenhagen. Another participant noted that he had visited the street Magstræde plenty of times before playing the game, but had never noticed the beautiful old buildings. Thus, playing the Gold Horn Thief changed his perception of this location.

“It was great to get another perspective on the streets we were walking in. Instead of just focusing on a trendy café or something pretty, it was cool to walk through the streets and get an insight into what had happened in these streets in another era. It was cool because you were in the middle of it, instead of standing inside the museum reading about it.”

In the interview, we also asked whether participants felt a stronger sense of belonging to Copenhagen after having played the Gold Horn Thief.

The reason for asking this question was to examine whether the game had managed to give players insight that could reflect the development of local knowledge. Almost all of the interviewed participants answered affirmatively:

These comments illustrate that these participants had understood our history layer and applied it to the understanding of their city. However, though our participants were able to frame the Gold Horn Thief sufficiently, not all participants felt it easy to immerse themselves in the narrative. It is an issue that could be hard to address since we are asking players to imagine a space, which physically was very different from the modern space they find themselves in while playing. Yet, the test also revealed that providing the extra files did make player immersion possible.

”Yes, I sort of feel a greater sense of belonging to my city and all this knowledge makes me feel even more at home. It also makes the city more interesting knowing its history. Knowing that a place has a history and has played a different role than it does today gives a deeper 80

meaning to that place and to the city. I feel maybe a bit more like a Copenhagener - but I felt very much like a Copenhagener already before playing this game.”

we had never been there before. We stayed there for quite some time.”

“I wanted to help test the game because it is a thesis project, but I also thought it sounded really interesting.

I was a little bit afraid before hand that it would be laborious. But once we started playing, we realized it was super easy to play the game, and it was so fun! I was very surprised – in a good way!”

This quote illustrates that by projecting a layer of history on top of the perceived space as previous described, we in fact provide this player with a deeper understanding and greater appreciation of his city. In effect, the Gold Horn Thief contributed to enhancing his sense of belonging to Copenhagen. Almost all the other test participants had similar remarks: ”Yes, I have a different understanding and knowledge of the small streets that you don’t have as a tourist.”

All but one of our participants ended up playing the game with at least one companion; some were friends and some were spouses. Most of them decided on using one cell phone and playing the game as a team. All the participants that played with someone felt that the experience should be social as well as enjoyed in a group:

”Yes, definitely, and I think it is a great way to get to feel a greater sense of belonging to one’s own city.”

Test results from this theme definitely suggests that the Gold Horn Thief has been successful in providing players with insight that could reflect the development local knowledge. As most of the participants stated, they felt that gaining historical knowledge changed their relationship to Copenhagen as well as enhanced their sense of belonging to Copenhagen.

“Being together definitely made the experience better than if I had done it alone - very much so. I would have missed out on walking around and talking about the historical information and observations if I had been alone. Actually, we primarily talked about historical events as we moved around in the game.”

6.5.4 THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE

“Yes, the experience was teamwork for us, we discussed how to solve the challenges. I definitely would not have gotten out (of the house) on my own.”

As noted in chapter 2, there are several contexts that, when juxtaposed, create the full experience of a museum visit. One context is the personal agenda that visitors have when they arrive at the museum, and this context also deals with why they chose to visit in the first place. Our participants came with their individual agendas and motivations for trying the experience; some wanted to help us with our thesis work, while some thought is sounded like an interesting project. Many may have felt a certain amount of obligation upon starting their experience, but for the most of our participants, the feeling of obligation dissipated quickly during their test: “In the beginning we were like, argh, this could be boring, we don’t really want to do this. But then we went to the garden at the Royal Art Chamber…. WOW,

One even stated playing the game with someone else as a condition: “I would have rushed the game a little, maybe – and not observed throughout the route. I would probably have thought that it was a bit embarrassing to walk around and take pictures of keyholes and houses. I would not want to be pegged as tourist!”

The gamer type participant playing alone had a different take on the value 81

“No, the weather did not affect me. In the summer it is just nice to be outside – even if the weather was not perfect.”

of sharing the experience and thought that maybe it could interfere with his immersion in the game: ”When you are alone, it is easier to imagine what a different time would be like. It is easier to get absorbed. But it could also be a pleasant experience to walk around with more people. That is a more social experience. You can choose how you want to do it according to your mood.”

“As long as it is not raining, the weather is not a critical factor. Even in rain, it is possible to play – as long as you have an umbrella!”

Though all of our participants were smartphone owners, they all had a varied length of ownership; this meant that the technological context as well as experiencing through an application affected the participants differently. Though it was our observation that the majority of the participants had the SCVNGR application figured out by the second location, one participant stated issues with this area:

As the game takes place beyond the traditional museum space and in the actual urban outdoor space, the physical context becomes more palpable.

Elements such as weather, sounds, smells, and similar will have an impact on the experience. The participants that played the game in sunny weather all thought that the weather added a pleasant atmosphere to their experience. However, some participants that tested in less fortunate weather did think the poor weather affected their experience somewhat negatively:

“I have to get used to it, but I guess one can do that, I have also only had my iPhone for a month. I still think there were a lot of things: Where was it the map was?

Where did I get the challenges from? And I wondered if I could leave the application? I wanted to take some more pictures in that garden, but I did not dare close it.

I was afraid I would lose my points. But I guess it is more about getting to know my iPhone. I think by the last location, I finally had it down, completely.”

“It prevents me from taking my time. Of course, if the weather had been sunny or if it had not rained, then it would have been better, but actually, I don’t think it affects the experience in a severe way. The weather was not that bad. But I do not know if I would do it in February.”

A couple of participants had issues of a more technical character, which also affected their experiences:

”We walked the route in the rain, so of course we were more determined to get through the game faster than had it been warm and sunny.”

“I had a slow network connection, which tested my patience in loading the full- length video. This annoyed me a bit, to be completely honest. It was a barrier to getting the information I needed.”

But some just enjoyed having an experience outdoors and did not let weather conditions affect it; one even thought the grey weather added to the representation of the game narrative:

“Sometimes it could be a hindrance with the technology, but that was because of a poor network connection.

And at some point the GPS led us in the wrong direction.

“But the rain did not matter; we were prepared for the rain. It actually made it better; it fit with the crime story.”

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Other than that, it was helpful to have the GPS – especially if you are a tourist.”

“More fun – not as information heavy but a lot more engaging!”

“I actually visit museums a lot. I find it interesting. I do not always want to read - maybe I’ll read the first sentence or two, but I do not care to read the little stories next to them. And I really do not care to take a tour listening to long stories. Here, it was short stories that connected to the location we were at, and we were active and did not have to read anything. I really liked it.”

We observed that a couple of the participants had a hard time hearing the files due to noises in the street, and the volume level appeared to work best with iPhone 4. Participants’ experiences of the ease of downloading files seemed to depend on which cell phone company they had. Notably, half of the participants had no issues with downloading all of the files instantly: “I really had no issues. iPhone 4 works like a charm.

Or maybe it is my phone company? All of the files downloaded immediately.”

This last theme in the test illuminated how the different contexts have affected our test participants in ways similar to each other, as well as individually. Again, the individuality of how the contexts affect players reinforces the notion of how difficult it can be to take these contexts into consideration in the design process. For example, considering the weather regarding the physical context, the rain affected some participants very negatively and others quite positively. The same goes for the technological context, where some players experienced severe networks issues that affected their experience negatively, and some had no difficulties whatsoever with this context.

“I thought it worked very well, even when we downloaded the audio files. We had to wait a couple of seconds, but then it worked perfectly.”

Since the game experience is connected to the National Museum, we inquired about how the participants felt about this experience compared to what they perceived as a “traditional” museum experience: “This is less tiring and more fun, mostly because, you are two people working to solve a problem. It is more challenging and tangible. History is made concrete and you are relating to it in a more direct way, because you are standing right in it and you get a context and a story.”

Positively, our test illustrated that participants all perceived the Gold Horn Thief as an engaging and interactive museum experience, which furthered their interest in both history and the National Museum as a modern dissemination institution.

This final round of interviews provided significant insight into how players experienced our game. Suggestions for changes to the final game will be presented in the next chapter. After the test sessions, we sent emails to all participants, thanking them for their time and asking them to fill out a short survey with background information.

“It is interactive, so it gives me something back. There is not as much information as in a traditional museum experience, but it is more fun because it is a game.

Yes, and it places my city into a historical perspective, it makes it much more relevant to be standing in the museum afterwards looking at the Gold Horns.”

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6.6 BACKGROUND VARIABLE SURVEY

experience in a traditional museum space.

In order to determine whether our participants were relevant to our target group, as well as research background variables, such as age and gender, we provided all participants with a link to an online survey form, which was to be completed after the tests. The survey form was a short list of questions that, aside from background information, inquired as to participants’ regular behavior in regards to museum visits, use of smartphones, and use of games, both digital and analog.

Our participants were more comparable in regards to the duration of their museum visits. Two-thirds of the group answered that they spend one to two hours, while the remaining one-third spend two to four hours. This indicated that our test group was willing to spend at least two hours on an average museum visit.

In this chapter, we have presented the test design used in testing our game prototype. We have presented our test participant group as well as how we have recruited them in order to get different participant types that could aid in illuminating different elements in the Gold Horn Thief. In our test process, we have applied both observation and qualitative interviews to get a sense of the game situation, as well as to gain an insight into how our test participants experienced the Gold Horn Thief. In this chapter, the overall results of the evaluation of our prototype are presented; the deductions and solutions for the final game will be addressed in the next chapter. As a last part of our test design, we provided participants with a background survey, which showed that our test participants mainly fall within our target group, though a couple participants visit museums a bit more often than our projected target group. Within the following chapter, we will discuss possible changes to apply to the Gold Horn Thief before it is launched, whether we have accomplished our aims with the game, and what the game could look like in a future setting.

6.6.1 THE TEST GROUP Ten participants tested our game: five women and five men. Out of the ten participants, three women and three men between the ages of 2334 answered the survey. Demographically, they match our chosen target group.

Of the six who filled out the survey form, half of them had owned smartphones longer than a year, one had had a smartphone between six months and a year, and two had had their smartphones for less than three months. Half of the group had more than 15 applications on their phones, while a third of the group had more than 20. Our test group was also fond of downloading new applications. One-third of the group answered that they downloaded new applications each week, while the remaining two-thirds downloaded new applications each month. These two answers show that the group of participants was accustomed to downloading and using applications often. This indicates that they are not afraid of new technology but curious to use this technology. In this respect, they also matched our suggested target group.

The participants were also asked how often they went to museums that were not art museums. Here, the group was quite disparate. One of them went every month, one went once every three months, one went every six months, one went once a year, and the remaining two went even less frequently. Therefore, a few participants are at the border of our target group because they already visit a museum quite regularly. On the other hand, by being well acquainted with the traditional museum space, they could provide a more qualified comparison between our experience and an 84

Finish: To wrap-up; complete; culminatate; do it to a T; end; mop-up; perfect; realize; wind-up; wrap; round o; shot down; stop

CHAPTER 7 : URBAN / HISTORY / PLAY? 7.1 MUSEUM SPACES

In the previous chapter, we have presented our test design and the responses we received from test participants evaluating the prototype.

In this chapter, we will discuss our test results and apply these results to propose improvements to the Gold Horn Thief.

7.1.1 INTRODUCING A NEW TARGET GROUP As previously described in chapter 4 the target group of 18-35 year olds is not well represented within the general museum visitor group in Denmark.

We believe that making this new user group more receptive towards consuming museum experiences both within the more traditional museum space as well as in the mobile hybrid museum space represents a great value for the museums of today. Connecting with this target group could potentially encourage museums to create a more dynamic museum space.

The museum visitor group is very homogeneous today, since over half of the group is composed of women over 50.

In the first part of this chapter, we will discuss how the Gold Horn Thief has changed the museum experience at the National Museum by expanding the museum space into a mobile hybrid museum space while moving the experience out into the urban environment. We will address how, and whether, this experience has succeeded in attracting a new target group to the museum, and we will consider how the four contexts within a museum experience have affected participants during the testing of the prototype, as well as how sufficiently these contexts have been accounted for.

As noted in chapter 2, the social context affects all visitors’ overall experiences, and creating a more diverse visitor group will encourage altering the museum experiences. In the definition of museums by ICOM, the International Council of Museums (2010), it is stated that a museum is a “…permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.“ (para.

3) In essence, a museum should serve “all” of society and be open to the “whole” public, but at many Danish museums, only the traditional museum space is embraced; our research suggests that this is not a space that attracts our target group. The test participants call this space “boring” and “old-fashioned”. As revealed through our test results, the Gold Horn Thief has proven to be relevant and interesting to our target group, who are not frequent visitors at most Danish museums.

In the following sections, and because the Gold Horn Thief is both museum experience and game experience, we will discuss how we can improve the Gold Horn Thief as a LBMG by making revisions inspired by the three characteristics of LBMGs; collaborative social action, mobility and expansion of game space. We will also discuss how well the Gold Horn Thief has succeeded in creating a layered playful space and local knowledge among players.

In the third part of this chapter, we will list our suggestions for changes to our prototype in order to design a final game version of the Gold Horn Thief that can be launched at the National Museum. We will also suggest revisions to the Gold Horn Thief, which could have been possible had we been able to design the game without the limitations within the SCVNGR building platform or those, which arose out of our aspirations to create an appropriate balance between museum experience and game experience.

7.1.2 A MOBILE HYBRID MUSEUM? Part of the motivation behind designing a museum game has been that we felt that the museum experiences offered to this target group of adults were very detached and not very engaging - for example, how artifacts are often detached from the original context and not exhibited in a way that allows adults to interact with either the artifact or the story behind it. We wanted to change the museum experience by making it less static and more fun and interactive. In order to decide whether we could design

Lastly, we will provide a suggestion to how the Gold Horn Thief contributes to the development of both the world of museums and LBMGs, while concluding on the chapter’s content.

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the type of experience we wanted to achieve, we began this project by exploring the different museum spaces. We felt that by moving the museum experience from a more confined physical space into a mobile hybrid space (in this case, the urban environment) and framed by a game, we could make the museum experience more engaging and interactive.

More importantly, we could more easily connect historical facts to their original contexts and actual locality.

mobile hybrid museum space and place history within the locality where it took place, thereby providing a new perspective, we moved the experience outside of the museum walls and into the urban environment. As we have described in the previous chapter, by walking around in the urban space, all of the test participants felt that they had obtained a different perspective on historical knowledge than if they had just read the information on a description card at the museum.

It is not necessarily a new thing to combine gaming elements with a museum experience. As we have described in chapter 2, several museums, such as the Tate Museum in London and the National Art Museum in Denmark, are designing games that are meant as supplements to the more traditional museum experience. Yet, both museums have not succeeded in creating a game experience that provides dissemination of history as well as a gaming experience while appealing to adults. With the application Tate Trumps, the Tate Museum has designed a game that changes the interaction with the museums permanent exhibition and provides a solid game experience, but players learn nothing new about the artworks. The artworks are simply put into play as game pieces, but there is no additional information provided in the application. Similarly, several games are available to visitors on the National Art Museum’s website; yet they do not connect to artifacts or expand on their history. For example, playing the game where players have to splotch paint on different statues might provide a moment of entertainment, but it does not provide much additional insight into the artifact.

With the Internet becoming ubiquitous and more information being organized according to location, it is logical to move the museum experience out in the streets and thereby connect historical content to its original location. The historical content in the Gold Horn Thief becomes important to the game structure because it has guided the creation of the system of physical geographical locations in the game by matching the historical content to the relevant locations. For example, the “event� of the theft of the Gold Horns is connected to the location from where they were stolen, the Royal Art Chamber. In other words, net locality becomes how our game is structured in the urban environment.

The Gold Horn Thief is also expanding the museum space of the National Museum to include a mobile hybrid museum space, thereby utilizing how information is organized in net locality to enhance local knowledge at specific locations in Copenhagen. However, the Gold Horn Thief is not designed to eliminate the traditional museum space; it should be seen as a supplement - a way to connect to the museum and to further expand the traditional museum space.

Within the Gold Horn Thief, we have created an experience partly focused on gaming elements and partly focused on a museum experience. The game system and the history information have been designed to motivate adult players throughout their experience. The purpose of the game is to create a different museum space, where dissemination promotes retaining of knowledge, interaction, and entertainment. All of our test participants felt that this was much different than any museum experience they had previously encountered. Several of them noted that the combination of the interactive game element and the historic knowledge motivated them throughout the experience. In order to create an experience for the new

Smartphones can enable many different experiences within one space, in that a smartphone can connect the physical museum with online and location-based information, thereby creating a mobile hybrid museum experience. In other words, smartphones enable the possibility of merging two museums spaces. They allow visitors to experience the traditional museum space while interacting with other visitors and the exhibit through the Internet. Although one could argue that visitors walking around in exhibits using their smartphone might cause some interruption in the traditional museum space, since the traditional museum space 87

7.1.3 MUSEUM EXPERIENCES

does not include interaction with smartphone technology. One could imagine certain museum visitors feeling upset by visitors taking pictures or interacting with their phone in other ways while they are supposed to keep the aforementioned “do-not-touch” and “do-not-talk” etiquette that exists within the traditional museum space.

When designing the Gold Horn Thief experience we used Falk and Dierking’s (1997) theories of the three contexts, as well as our additional context, the technological context, within the museum experience, as instruments to take into account the full breath of the experience.

Understanding that a lot more plays into the experience when visiting a museum than just the action of “looking” at an artifact and learning about it shaped the way we approached the design process. We included the technological context because we were operating within the mobile hybrid museum space and we felt it was overlooked in regards to explaining the context of experiences in the more modern museum space.

Moving the museum experience into a mobile hybrid space made the traditional physical museum space seem much more relevant to our test participants because it connected physical locations in the urban environment to historical facts of the theft - information that had previously only been presented within the walls of the museum, in books, or online through a virtual museum. In fact, all participants commented that they wanted to actually go to the traditional “glass box” exhibit at the National Museum where the Gold Horns are displayed and examine the artifacts. They felt that seeing the artifact after playing the game was a more rewarding experience because they knew much more about its background and could connect its history to the physical locations, which they had just visited. Some commented that when they had seen the Gold Horns at previous visits to the museum, they had felt that the Gold Horns were just one out of many other artifacts, which made them uninteresting.

Social Context As Simon (2010) and Falk (2010) note, going to the museum is a social experience; nine out of ten of our test participants also preferred playing the game with at least one other person. The possibility of playing as a team will add to the social context of the experience; playing as a team means the possibility of using separate cell phones while pursuing the same mission. Playing as a team would allow players to split up to look for clues or to take more pictures for extra points. However, within the SCVNGR application, it is not a possibility to play as a team using separate phones. We observed, that in our prototype test, participants solved this issue by using only one cell phone within their team - seemingly without thinking anything of it. This became evident when they were asked about this during the following interview; they had not even considered it.

The testing of our prototype disclosed that participants felt that the Gold Horn Thief provided a much different museum experiences than what they perceived as a “normal” or “regular” museum experience. Some even commented that the experience had changed their perception of the National Museum as a whole, which they had previously considered “oldfashioned” and “boring”. They acknowledged that playing the game made them want to learn more about Danish history and to revisit the National Museum at another time.

We aimed to design a game that would be social within the game system just as most museum experiences are and as most LBMGs have some level of collaborative social action. We also believe that if the Gold Horn Thief is played alone, part of the social experience gets lost; that is, the experience of sharing as well as creating interaction with co-players. However, our test participants did relay that they thought of the experience as a social one, and they also stated that a big part of the experience was discussing the information provided in the game.

Since the Gold Horn Thief was successful at making a specific artifact (the Gold Horns) relevant and interesting to our test participants, it will be interesting in a future project to try to incorporate more artifacts into a similar game or trek. For example, one could imagine an experience where half of the time was spent inside the museum walls and the other half outside, thereby giving the chance to include, and promote, an interest in even more artifacts.

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Personal Context Visitors come to museums with their own individual backgrounds, intentions, and agendas. Our test participants’ personal agendas in testing the Gold Horn Thief could be compared to what Falk (2010) describes as the Facilitator, the person who, for example, gets encouraged to go to the museum by a grandmother of a friend. The test participants did not decide to take part in this experience solely due to their own interest in history, though some of the participants did decide to become testers because they wanted to have a different museum experience. As mentioned in chapter 6, wanting to help motivated most of the participants, though some were simply motivated by wanting to spend time with a friend or a spouse. So in a way, the participants were encouraged by us to try the Gold Horn Thief.

Therefore, they were affected by this “obligation” in the beginning of their experience, as several of them also mentioned during their interview. In designing the Gold Horn Thief, we were aiming to create an experience that could alter the agenda of the players into an exploratory agenda while playing the game. The results of the testing suggest that the Gold Horn Thief in fact does that, as several participants stated that their attitude changed while playing the game. As illustrated in chapter 6, players started the game feeling obliged to play the game, but as they interacted with the game system, they started enjoying it and felt engaged in the outcome of the game.

Physical Context Physical elements, such as weather conditions, smells, or players’ physical endurance belong to a context that can be difficult to control, as well as detrimental to the experience of visiting a museum, or in this case, playing the Gold Horn Thief in the urban environment. As previously described in chapter 6, the prototype was tested in both good and less fortunate weather – fortunately, weather conditions were not an issue for participants while testing the game, as they themselves stated in chapter 6. However, we have not been able to test the prototype in a sufficient number of types of weather. The tests were carried out in the month of June, so the temperatures were mild, even though it rained periodically during the testing of some of our participants. Therefore, it has not been proven or disproven whether the Gold Horn Thief would, for example, be appropriate in the winter in Denmark. However, one can imagine that it would not be very enjoyable to navigate a smartphone with cold fingers, standing around listening to files, or even just leisurely strolling the city in extremely cold weather. One test participant also noted that she would never take part in the Gold Horn Thief in February.

On one hand, it could be an issue to design a museum experience that is only suitable when the weather is pleasant, but as we see the game as a supplement to an experience within the walls of the museum, we believe it is acceptable. On the other hand, our experience could be even more enjoyable than an experience within museums walls in pleasant, summer weather. In that situation, the Gold Horn Thief provides visitors with an opportunity to enjoy museum experience in weather conditions wherein visitors might prefer to be outdoors.

If we can encourage a more exploratory approach to museum visits through the Gold Horn Thief, the experiences and the knowledge gained will stay with visitors much longer, as Falk (2010) has proved through his research. In our test, the test participants remembered specific dates, places, and historic characters after playing the game. In fact, the two participants who finished their interview two weeks after the test still remembered very specific details, such as dates and names of characters.

Technological Context How and what technology is used can play a significant role in how a museum experience is perceived by visitors. In the Gold Horn Thief, the use of smartphones has a significant placement within the overall museum experience, since the use of technology facilitates the experience within the mobile hybrid museum space. In some cases, the effect of using technology is controllable, in other cases it is not; in testing the prototype of the Gold Horn Thief, we tried to account for possible issues with the

It was not within the scope of this thesis to re-interview our participants six months after the test as Falk did within his research, in order to prove this theory within our game play, so it would be recommended to do further research on this.

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7.2 THE GOLD HORN THIEF, A LOCATION-BASED GAME?

application by informing test participants of the need for a smartphone with either Android or OS operating system, as well as a free data plan. But some matters are difficult to control, such as slow network speeds. Some of the test participants noted that slow connection speeds did interfere with their experience. For example, some of the videos were over one minute, and it took a little time to download them. The amount of time it took to download the videos depended on which cell phone network participants used. In order to account for this when producing the final game, the few movies that are more than one minute long should be compressed.

We have achieved numerous positive results with the Gold Horn Thief as a mobile hybrid museum experience. However, one question remains: How successful is the Gold Horn Thief as a LBMG? An important point when comparing the achievements of the Gold Horn Thief with the other LBMGs described in chapter 3, is that the Gold Horn Thief is both a museum experience and a LBMG, which is also why we have chosen to work with the SCVNGR platform to design this game. This has implications for the design of the game.

7.2.1 COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL ACTION

Another technology issue that was defined through testing concerned the audio volume. Some participants had no issues with sound, though all teams had to be in close physical proximity of each other to hear the narrator’s voice when playing the videos on the phone. Some participants commented that they thought using headphones could have solved this issue. In the final game version, it could be suggested to players when advertising the game that headphones would be recommendable as well as offered for sale at the reception at the National Museum. However, it is not our intention that players wear headphones while playing the game, since we believe that it will affect the social context too severely; more players might decide to use their own phone and they might decide not to play together since they are not listening to the files simultaneously. It could also detract from players’ interaction with the urban environment, since putting on headphones might cause them to “shut out the world”.

On the other hand, it could enhance the immersion level, since players would be able to focus on the game narrative and not be interrupted by background noises.

As described in chapters 3 and 5, all the mentioned LBMGs are characterized by the inclusion of some aspect of collaborative social action.

However, the Gold Horn Thief does not incorporate collaborative social action in the same way as Mogi, Botfighters or CYSMN?, due to the fact that the Gold Horn Thief is also a museum experience and must account for museum visitors who might want to visit the museum and play the game alone.

As previously described in chapter 5, in order to motivate players to engage in and be motivated in a game, it is necessary to create a meaningful game system. In the Gold Horn Thief, one of the pre-scripted mechanics in the game system is a point system and a leaderboard, which enables individual players to compete with friends to get a good placement on the leaderboard. With the exception of Geocaching, all of the games described in chapter 3 had a point system in order to motivate players. In Botfighters, players could arm their robots more effectively by earning more points, and thereby win more battles. In Foursquare, the points are the only builtin game mechanic that motivates people to check-in at venues. In the Gold Horn Thief’s current version, players can earn a fixed amount of points for each challenge by completing that challenge. Players can also earn additional points by taking advantage of pre-scripted features in SCVNGR, such as “take a picture”, “say something”, or “check-in” - and if possible, complete a “social check-in”. These mechanics and functions would probably not make much sense to players if there were no competitors. As one of our test participants noted, a motivating factor was earning points

Despite these technical issues, our test participants felt that playing the game with a smartphone application was very interesting. They were all familiar with applications, but only two had tried the SCVNGR application previously - though not within a museum setting. Several noted that the level of interaction that the application provided added to their experience.

They enjoyed being able to take pictures and add comments within the application.

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Thief apart from all of the other LBMGs described in chapter 3. Botfighters takes its starting point in a narrative where players imagine themselves to be robots, but players have a range of choices when playing the game and are not following a predefined path. Rather, they can choose for themselves which areas to search for other robots in. In Mogi, there is no narrative, but rather a digital layer that places digital objects in the real world, and this leaves players free to go and collect items wherever they want to. Thus, in these LBMGs, a player’s space for action in regards to deciding which locations to go to is much freer than in the Gold Horn Thief.

against co-players.

As described in chapter 4, we also plan to develop so-called Easter eggs, or additional files that are not part of the Gold Horn Thief’s narrative and which will be placed at locations that are not directly connected to the narrative. These Easter eggs would enable players who want to compete for points and earn a better placement on the leaderboard to visit even more locations and complete even more challenges.

Theoretically, social collaborative action could be created through placement of these Easter eggs; if players place Easter eggs themselves, the application would involve players directly in the creation of content, which would be similar to the gameplay in Geocaching and to some extent, Foursquare, where players add venues and tips themselves. This is actually part of the original idea behind the SCVNGR application – that all players should be able to make challenges for their friends and thereby help spread and develop the game layer on top of the world. A feature such as this would probably create even more engagement among players as seen with Geocaching, which still has a large group of dedicated players who search for and hide caches. However, letting players take part in this collaborative social action could create some problems concerning authentication of the information in the game. Since the Gold Horn Thief is also a museum experience, the knowledge presented shared in the game should be authorized by the National Museum.

If we had sought to design a LBMG covering the characteristics described in chapter 3 instead of designing a mobile museum experience as a game within the limitations of the SCVNGR application, we could have made design choices that would have enhanced the space of actions of the players in deciding where to move to next. For example, we could have made clues a more integrated part of the game and hid the next locations, thereby leaving more of the investigative work to players and enhancing the mobility of the game. Instead, we chose the embedded narrative, which, although it leaves players with less freedom in choosing their route around the city, it is effective when designing the game as a museum experience, Even though locations are fixed, players still have some level of freedom and can choose which routes to take between locations.

For example, going from the location of the Royal Art Chamber to Assistenshuset, players can choose to walk back through the government building square or they can choose to follow the canal, which would provide two different experiences of the city. Though, this semi-forced mobility structure of the Gold Horn Thief, is not necessarily a negative. As described in chapter 6, the embedded narrative proved to be the main motivation for test participants to continue playing the game. Players were motivated to move from location to location because of the embedded narrative.

7.2.2 MOBILITY Mobility is a characteristic feature of LBMGs, and one cannot play most LBMGs without moving around in the physical world. The Gold Horn Thief is also characterized by mobility - the game cannot be played without players moving around in Copenhagen. In order to encourage players to move around in the city streets - that is, walk three kilometers exposed to all kinds of conditions, such as inhospitable weather and noisy traffic, players need to be motivated. The linear embedded narrative described in chapter 5 is one of the ways we motivate players. This narrative moves players to specific locations in a specific order, which cannot be altered.

This linear order of locations is one of the elements that sets the Gold Horn

7.2.3 EXPANSION OF GAME SPACE As described in chapter 3, the magic circle is a concept that describes the space wherein a game takes places; this space is demarcated both temporally and spatially. As described in chapter 5, this version of the Gold 91

Horn Thief only expands the magic circle spatially but not temporally. The Gold Horn Thief expands the magic circle spatially because it takes place in the urban environment at different locations. These specific locations are pivotal for the game play, as players cannot complete most of the game’s challenges without being present at the locations.

signs, such as language and maps, that enable people to talk about and understand experienced space, and imagined space is a mental invention that inscribes new meanings or possibilities to experienced space. These inventions need not adhere to the logic of experienced space.

At first glance, one could say that the narrative story is the imagined space, the map in SCVNGR is the perceived space, and the streets are the experienced space. However, one could argue that it is not that simple.

For instance the imagined space is usually the narrative of the LBMG. For example, in Botfighters the imagined space turns all players into robots, and in Mogi, the imagined space ensures that objects appear in certain streets. The imagined space is characterized by not being bound by the logic of experienced space, whereas perceived space is always bound by the logic of experienced space. Thus, the imagined space is a layer wherein the imagination can run wild.

As also noted in chapter 5, the Gold Horn Thief does not expand the magic circle temporally. Depending on walking pace and possible breaks, the game can be completed in about two hours. However, placing the suggested Easter eggs at additional locations would enable players to continue playing (within the SCVNGR application) even after having completed the game itself. Players could finish the game at the National Museum one day and then a few days later decide to play one of the Easter eggs while on their way to a work or meeting with a friend. To listen to an Ester egg file and solve the challenges would probably take between five to ten minutes and could therefore easily be squeezed into one’s daily life.

Players’ motivation for doing so could be to move up on the leaderboard but also to have a constructive and playful experience in between other daily activities. This option would expand playing the Gold Horn Thief beyond the two hour-long experience; the game would become a LBMG that expands the magic circle temporally as well as spatially. However, playing the Gold Horn Thief in this manner would only be possible if players had already played the narrative. This is a prerequisite for players to be able to understand the context of the information and how the game is played. For example, players must know that historical information in the game is connected to the time period of the 1750s to the 1800s, and that they must first listen to a file and then solve a challenge. Thus, adding Easter eggs to the game would enable players to prolong and expand the game experience.

However, in the Gold Horn Thief, the narrative is, in many respects, still adhering to perceived space because we are projecting a picture of how it used to look rather than an imaginary world of adventure, as in Botfighters. The content of the extra files are not fictional but rather facts about experienced and perceived space as it was in 1800s. When players in Magstræde have found the oldest and only original door in the street, they are looking at a part of experienced space that, through the articulation of its existence and history in the Gold Horn Thief, becomes a part of perceived space. In fact, as suggested through our test results, what players find fascinating about this door is that it was also part of experienced space over hundred years ago and maybe also part of the perceived space of the people living in the 1800s. Although in that era, the door was probably perceived much differently than today. If it was part of perceived space it was most likely noticed for its carvings or its functionality, whereas today it becomes part of players’ perceived space because of their fascination of looking at something with such a long history. The players perceive the door with a different framing than it was perceived in the 1800s.

7.2.4 LAYERED PLAYFUL SPACES In the Gold Horn Thief, the narrative and the extra files are key components in creating a layered playful experience According to Lefebvre (1991), spaces are a social construction of the human mind, and they are perceived as layered in a triad, where experienced space is the material of everyday life and routines that are not reflected upon, perceived space are all the

If players choose to listen to the extra file on Magstræde, they will also learn other facts, such as, that it was the houses along this street that 92

were among the few remaining houses standing after the great fire of Copenhagen in 1795. Such facts may inspire players to imagine what these locations must have looked like in the 1800s - such as the test participant who imagined what it must have looked like, when large parts of the city were burned down and only Magstræde and Assistenshuset were still standing. By doing so, this participant moved into imagined space.

players with a playful historical experience and thereby, the opportunity to imagine Copenhagen in the past rather than a completely imagined space.

In order to succeed in creating a historical layered space that helps players imagine what Copenhagen used to look like in the past, players must be convinced by the narrative, so that they can frame their mind accordingly.

Thus, the game experience needs to be meaningful and immersive, but this can only be achieved if the layer created is meaningful to the players. As described in chapter 4, one way we sought to achieve this was by presenting players with information through a captivating written screenplay, which should help players imagine scenes and for instance give them an idea of the smells and sounds of the era. In order to examine whether we had succeeded in creating a layer that players could frame, we asked the test participants if they were able to immerse themselves in the game. The results of the test suggest that we succeeded, since most of the participants felt they were immersed in the narrative. However, some were more successful in imagining how the street looked in 1802 when listening to the extra files. This is probably due to the fact that the extra files are part of perceived space, whereas the narrative is part of imagined space.

However, it was not an imagined space in the form of a story about something that had never existed. Therefore it was not bound by the logic of experienced space, but rather a projection bound by the logics of the experienced and perceived space. Another example is the tiles at Nytorv, where the old and now demolished Town Hall used to be standing. Here, there are no original markers left, but players can see tiles that reveal the original outline of the building. These tiles are part of experienced space, yet become part of perceived space when players, through the extra file, are informed that these tiles mark the outline of the building. Then, players can move into imagined space and try to imagine what the Town Hall may have looked like while looking at the outline. To some extent, the content of the extra files are still part of an imagined space because the facts described are no longer visible or perceivable. However they are not “utopian ideas” that challenge the rationality of perceived space, such as for instance the imagined layer in Botfighters. Thus, in the Gold Horn Thief the narrative layer is not only part of imagined space but also part of perceived space, because the game presents historical facts that relate to experienced space.

The layering of spaces and the ability to imagine what a location in the Gold Horn Thief looked like in the 1800s enabled players to see well-known streets of Copenhagen through a different perspective. Many of the test participants enjoyed this, since it provided them with a chance to see locations from a perspective similar to that of a tourist visiting a foreign city.

Yet, there is an element of fiction in the Gold Horn Thief. The story about the theft is not completely true to historical events, but it still stays within the framework of the logic of that historical period. It is the amalgamation between experienced space, perceived space, and imagined space caused by the historical content in the game that separates the Gold Horn Thief from the other LBMGs described in chapter 3.

7.2.5 CREATING LOCAL KNOWLEDGE? Another aim of the Gold Horn Thief was to create local knowledge and hence enhance players’ sense of belonging to Copenhagen. One could argue that this could seem contradictory to the aim of enabling players to see well-known streets from a new perspective, such as the perspective of a tourist, since, oftentimes, a tourist does not have a sense of belonging to the city that he or she is visiting. However, we would argue that creating local knowledge is an inherent consequence for players who have played the Gold Horn Thief. In acting like a tourist by exploring (well-known)

Our aim with the Gold Horn Thief also differs from the other LBMGs described. The other LBMGs evidently aimed to provide players with a playful and layered adventurous experience, whereas we aimed to provide 93

streets and gaining a different perspective through the Gold Horn Thief, one can actually create a greater sense of belonging to Copenhagen.

Feeling and behaving like a tourist in one’s own city and gaining a greater sense of belonging to that city is thereby interconnected. For example, the participant, who exclaimed that he felt a stronger sense of belonging to Copenhagen after playing the Gold Horn Thief, even though he already felt like a “Copenhagener”.

with coordinates and background info about the cache. Players visit this website before going out to search for the cache, rather than acquiring this information at the location and thereby within its original context. Thus, the Gold Horn Thief is the only game among these LBMGs that presents historical knowledge to its players at their current location, and thereby contextualizes this knowledge in a way that makes it relevant to players.

So the question is whether “a sense of belonging“ can be formed from providing historical local knowledge rather than contemporary local knowledge - by presenting in-depth, historical knowledge rather than just useful, or trivial, tips about venues.

One of the ways in which the Gold Horn thief can create local knowledge is the information collected inside the SCVNGR application. As described in chapter 5, all players’ activities are stored and visible under the “Activites” feature, and some of the challenges in the game create local knowledge by enabling players to see the pictures and comments. An example is the challenge “Take a picture of your favorite historic detail in Skt. Peders Stræde”. This challenge creates local knowledge through the continuously growing collection of pictures of historic details that are chosen by many different players. Through these pictures one can explore the history of Skt. Peders Stræde from many different players’ perspectives. This also exemplifies net locality; the ubiquitous Internet enables players to access all these pictures detailing Skt. Peders Stræde while being at this location.

Thereby, they can experience Skt. Peders Stræde from many different angles and this enables them to gain local knowledge of it.

According to our test participants, they experienced an increased sense of belonging to Copenhagen after having played the Gold Horn Thief.

As described in chapter 6, almost everyone answered affirmatively to the question concerning whether playing the Gold Horn Thief had strengthened their sense of belonging to Copenhagen. It also changed their perception of locations, but more importantly, several of the test participants exclaimed that this knowledge provided an extra dimension into that location. One participant described a feeling of a “deeper understanding” of locations after having played the Gold Horn Thief, because he understood the difference between how locations were used in the 1800s and how they are used today. Another participant also pointed out that the historical knowledge she acquired at the locations was knowledge that tourists in Copenhagen probably do not have access to, and this made her feel a stronger sense of belonging to Copenhagen.

Thereby, our testing suggests that providing historical local knowledge can create local knowledge, which will enhance people’s sense of belonging to a location.

The primary way in which the Gold Horn Thief aims to create local knowledge is through the historical local knowledge players acquire while playing the game. This knowledge is different than the local knowledge presented in other LBMGs. In Foursquare, for example, the knowledge presented is local knowledge but of a more contemporary type that is perhaps useful, but does not necessarily provide an in-depth understanding of a place. In Mogi and Botfighters, players visit new neighborhoods or explore well-known ones, but they are not provided with information about the localities they visit through the game. On the other hand, Geocaching does present players with historical knowledge, as underlined in the example with the multi cache at Garnisonens Kirkegaard. Here, the creator of the cache gives background information of the location, but this knowledge only appears on the affiliated website

However, an important part of the definition of local knowledge is that one has to share the knowledge with a group of people. The group sharing knowledge presented in the Gold Horn Thief will consist of people who have played the game, though in theory, all the knowledge can be shared with other groups as well, including friends and family on Twitter and Facebook. If the Gold Horn Thief succeeds in connecting to its target group, 94

Museum Grant, which should allow us to produce the Gold Horn Thief.

While a marketing plan has not yet been designed to introduce the game to possible users, a prerequisite for receiving the grant is that the museum promotes the game though social and professional channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, their website, and appropriate blogs, as well as advertising the game in the information stand at the entrance of the museum building. Receiving the grant will mean that the game can be produced and launched at the National Museum this year, 2011. When the game is launched, it should only require minor adjustments, namely:

the group playing will be 18-35 year old Copenhageners. When playing the game, players can get a sense of the vastness of the group they share this knowledge with through the previously described “Activities” feature in the SCVNGR application. Though players can gain this insight, they will probably feel that, for the most part, they share this local knowledge with whatever game partners they have played the game with - and potentially other friends who have also played the Gold Horn Thief.

Local knowledge is also something that one chooses to acquire. Therefore, it requires a commitment of some kind. As described in chapter 3, one can choose to engage with one’s local neighborhood, but one is also free to choose not to engage. It is the same for Copenhageners. They can choose to acquire local knowledge about their city, or they can live in it without forming an attachment to it through local knowledge. People can choose to engage in their city in many different ways. One option is to take part in a combined LBMG and LBS like Foursquare. Or they could go to a website such as www.aok.dk, which provides various informative articles on Copenhagen, as well as user and newspaper reviews of different restaurants, cultural events, and attractions. However, when it comes to historical knowledge, Copenhageners will have to turn to cultural museums, such as the National Museum, or perhaps relevant websites.

Yet, going to the museum can feel like a static experience, and searching for local knowledge on the Internet requires a willingness to search for such information. Such engagement may be hard to come across.

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The game should be organized within one trek, which will allow only one leaderboard and determine a winner of the game. The museum has suggested offering a model of the Gold Horns from the gift shop to the 50 highest scores after a prearranged amount of time.

The extra file illustrations should be original drawings and paintings relating to the content in the files, as opposed to the prototype’s current extra files, which display an “extra file” logo.

Some of the videos should be shortened down to one minute or compressed, so that they will download faster to smartphones.

The prototype we have created is a combination of a gaming experience and a cultural history experience. Falk (2010) has concluded that different types of visitors have individual needs when it comes to museum experiences. Our prototype test revealed the same tendency. The test participants were all generally happy with the game, but when interviewed more thoroughly, it became clear that the gamer types preferred a lot less information and focus on dissemination than the cultural experience consumers. They were less interested in learning about their surroundings and more interested in the narrative and the type of challenges.

By creating the Gold Horn Thief, we present historical knowledge in a playful and interactive way and in its original and relevant context.

Thereby, we are making this knowledge easier and more entertaining for our target group to acquire while most likely increasing the size of the group of people who will access and share this historical knowledge.

When designing a museum experience like the Gold Horn Thief, we have had to be aware of constructing a balance between the gaming elements and content while still providing a level of dissemination that will create local knowledge and make players feel a stronger sense of belonging to their city. During the testing process we sought to cater to the player types’

7.3 THE FINAL GAME: WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED In order to provide Copenhageners with this new (and historical) local knowledge in the Gold Horn Thief, we must design the final game and acquire full access to the SCVNGR platform. In collaboration with the National Museum, we are in the process of applying for a SCVNGR 95

needs by making adjustments to the challenges and thereby making them more game oriented and exploratory. But as described in chapter 6, the gamer types still had issues with the game elements, such as the game descriptors and challenges.

experience while still maintaining the option of the history content.

For example, during weekends with many visitors, the museum could stage gaming events focused on this mode and have players or teams of players play against each other within a specific time frame. This would add a sense of urgency or “racing against time”.

The museum could offer a prize to the winning team.

We have learned from our process - specifically the testing process, that we cannot make both the gamer and the cultural experience consumer types equally happy. So while we do not wish to compromise the quality of the museum part of the experience or the balance between game and cultural history experience, we are proposing six ways that could create a higher level gaming experience:

4. Display a physical leaderboard screen, which could be installed in the front reception of the museum to motivate more gaming oriented visitors to collect points, get their name displayed, or see who is winning and how many points different players have. This is a likely possibility, since it does not propose functions that are not available in the application, and it could be done by projecting results directly from the connected website at www.scvngr.com.

1. Use more dramatic game descriptors relevant to the crime-solving story, such as gloomy music and shady looking character drawings, instead of focusing on the era as the cultural history element as we did. As one test participant also suggested, doing something like this could make the game narrative even more believable. This suggestion is within the scope of the SCVNGR application, as it is more of a descriptive alteration than a functional one.

5. Create a more emergent game play by, for example, offering different endings to the narrative. This could be a possibility within the scope of the Gold Horn Thief if it is done in connection with a feature outside of the application; players could show the receptionist at the museum their number of points, then he or she could hand players their final QR-code in order get the outcome of the game. Though outside of the scope of the application, one could imagine even more non-linear narratives, such as receiving completely different clues, locations, and characters according to how the challenges were solved and how the game developed.

2. Use augmented reality in order to make it more interesting to explore the city, as it provides the opportunity to place visual layers on top of the physical space. This is very relevant to our aim of creating a layered space with a history layer placed on top of a physical urban environment. However, this is outside the scope of the application.

6. Create even more game-oriented challenges. One of our gamer type test participants suggested making more math oriented challenges, such as “Find the correct door on Magstræde, add this door number with the door number of the door to the left and subtract the door number to the right, then enter the number“.

Though it is within the scope of the SCVNGR application and it would definitely provide a more complicated and perhaps gameoriented challenge, we believe that a challenge such as this would detract from the focus challenge; exploring the doors on the street and obtaining a historical perspective of the ages of the different doors.

3. Create different modes in the application that could potentially cater to different player types’ needs. One could imagine a “leisure game mode”, designed for the visitor motivated by wanting a cultural history experience. This could be centered on the historical part and independent of game elements, such as time and points.

Of course, all the game elements should not be removed; they should just not control or motivate the overall experience. There could be a “game mode” for players wanting to focus on gaming and competition. The outcome of the game could be dependent on both time and points, which could create a more intense gaming 96

7.3.1 SCVNGR AS A MUSEUM APPLICATION?

In order to create a game like the Gold Horn Thief, museums will not need to hire programmers or designers, though if they choose to use videos as we have in the prototype, they might need the services of a video editor in order to produce video content. However, with an Apple computer and the free software iMovie, museums can create video content to use in SCVNGR quite sufficiently, as we have illustrated with the prototype.

One of the aims of this thesis was to design an experience in a museum space while using a pre-scripted platform in order to prove whether a museum experience could be formatted within a reasonable budget and time frame. In the beginning of this process, it was uncertain whether it would be possible to create an engaging museum experience with the SCVNGR platform. Other SCVNGR museum experiences we have examined, such as those at the Smithsonian Museums and the Joslyn Art Museum, have been successful in making SCVNGR games that encourages players to interact with artifacts or artwork within separate challenges and locations in a trek. Yet no museums have attempted to make a game with an embedded narrative that covers an entire trek.

If one examines museum blogs, such as www.formidlingsnettet.dk, it becomes quite evident that several museums are interested in creating experiences within the mobile hybrid museum space using smart phone applications. However, they are discouraged by the amount of money and time resources it takes to development an application from scratch (Møller, 2011). It would make sense for the museum community to create experiences using the same application system, such as the SCVNGR building platform. Sharing an application would make it easier for visitors to access these experiences, and the museums could share their knowledge and practices with each other. Of course, some museums might feel that the pre-scripted features could be a limitation to the broadness of the experience. However, as we have proved throughout the test of our prototype, it is possible to make a museum experience within SCVNGR that is engaging and interactive to visitors, while not just being solely a museum guide or dissemination application. Several of the test participants noted that they wanted to try more SCVNGR treks; after trying the Gold Horn Thief, one noted that she had already seen some other treks in the application’s trek list that she was going to try. In other words, the Gold Horn Thief has paved the way for other cultural institutions to provide similar experiences using the SCVNGR application.

We have designed a game on the story of the theft of the Gold Horns and built part of the experience on the fictive narrative and part on factual information. The content was designed with the design partner, the National Museum, along with the help of two history students. We have produced the narrative and all the actual content including screenplays and videos ourselves. The prototype has been created without using the services of any programming or design professionals, and museum professionals at the National Museum have approved the content we have designed.

Through our interviews with museum curator Morten Axboe and Charlotte S. H. Jensen we discovered that the National Museum has all the knowledge and ability to create and design content in house, and we project that this is the case for most museums. At a museum like the National Museum, there are many curators with years of knowledge and experience in a myriad of museum dissemination subjects for example, our chosen subject, the Gold Horns, or others, such as the Monuments in Jelling, Jutland. These could be a natural subject for a trek, since the National Museum has already created a sub-site to their website and employed vast research and dissemination resources in this area. At any rate, the possibilities are many.

7.4 IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE As mentioned previously in chapter 4, even though we have targeted the Gold Horn Thief to a specific group of 18-35 year old Copenhageners, other target groups could likely play the game with success. Several of our test participants commented, that the Gold Horn Thief would be ideal for tourists as well, and that if they themselves were to visit a foreign city, they would like to play a game similar to the Gold Horn Thief in order to connect with the city’s history. This, of course, would mean translating all 97

content. It could also be attractive to test the game on children in different ages to examine if the Gold Horn Thief has a learning value and a potential use for the educational department at the museum. Furthermore, it could be interesting to test it on the major user group at the museum today women over 50. It could be noteworthy to study how they would respond to a museum experience in the mobile hybrid museum space, as they are accustomed to a more traditional museum space, especially in relation to designing even more of these experiences.

we have studied.

As the Gold Horn Thief is a combination of a LBMG and a museum experience, the game has also contributed to the museum world. We have considered museum visitors’ full context while playing the Gold Horn Thief and used these studies to account for issues within the personal, social, physical, and technological contexts when developing the Gold Horn Thief.

By making a playful experience with a historical layer, we have succeeded in changing our test participants’ personal agendas and making their approach to a museum experience more exploratory.

One could also imagine making several different SCVNGR treks catering to different target groups’ needs. As well as designing experiences with different history content and focusing on working together with the National Museum’s subdivisions, such as Klunkehjemmet, a fully equipped Victorian home from the 1880s that is only a short distance from the main museum building. Other subdivisions could also be connected through SCVNGR, and bike-treks could be designed in order to cover larger geographical areas. It would also be rewarding to try to collaborate with other Danish museums; one could envision making a trek that covered all of Zealand and connected history museums through the SCVNGR application, potentially in a similar way as the nine Smithsonian Museums.

Using mobile technology in a museum experience was novel to the participants in our test, and issues such as network problems and volume levels cannot be completely eliminated. However, it is not an element that should deter museum professionals from designing museum experiences, which are facilitated though smartphones. Our test participants responded very well to using a smartphone in a museum experience, and they enjoyed the level of interactivity it provided by using smartphone technology.

The Gold Horn Thief expands the hybrid museum space into a mobile hybrid museum space. In creating the Gold Horn Thief, we have also shaped a mobile hybrid museum space within the context of the National Museum. In doing so, we have changed our test participants’ perceptions of a museum experience, motivated them to engage in history dissemination, and changed their view of the National Museum as being “boring” and “old-fashioned”. This suggests, that a positive spiral could be initiated, in which this mobile hybrid museum space could attract even more differentiated target groups, change the dynamic of museums in the future, and provide a framework for making the content of museum experiences seem more relevant to museum visitors.

7.5 THE GOLD HORN THIEF’S AIMS AND CONTRIBUTIONS

By designing the Gold Horn Thief, we have contributed to the young world of LBMGs. Within the last couple of years, new possibilities for users and programmers to design their own games by using application platform builders such as SCVNGR or the open API of Foursquare have emerged, and the world of LBMGs is evolving. However, the Gold Horn Thief provides a different experience than many of the described LBMGs, since it is a novel idea to base a LBMG on a combination of a historical embedded narrative and location-specific, historical information. The Gold Horn Thief has been created within a LBMG structure in the SCVNGR application and is organized by this embedded narrative. The narrative has proved to be the strongest component in the Gold Horn Thief, and it has motivated players to move forward in the game. The embedded narrative is also what sets the Gold Horn Thief apart from other LBMGs that we have examined, and it makes it unique in comparison to the other SCVNGR museum experiences,

By designing the Gold Horn Thief, we have proven that a mobile hybrid museum experience can be developed, despite a museum’s limited resources. Hereby, we have proved that it is possible to create such an experience in a short time span without hiring application building experts 98

or accumulating additional costs.

While designing the Gold Horn Thief, maintaining a balance between a game experience and a cultural history experience has been considered.

Though we have designed the Gold Horn Thief as an LBMG and used a fictional narrative, we have kept focus on history dissemination, both within the narrative and the extra files. We have placed the historical information in a layered playful space in order to enable players to immerse themselves in the narrative and in the historical era. Our test results show that our test participants found the experience immersive and were able to imagine how the streets might have appeared in the 1800s. This suggests that they were able to frame and successfully navigate between the three spaces; experienced space, perceived space and imagined space.

Through this layered experience, our test participants were also able to experience well-known streets of Copenhagen and gain a different perspective. We believe, that gaining this new perspective is a part of the process of creating local knowledge among players.

The testing of our prototype suggested that historical local knowledge could enhance players’ sense of belonging to a place. Local knowledge is a chosen appropriation, and unlike present-day local knowledge, historical local knowledge requires considerable effort from Copenhageners to obtain. By creating a layered playful LBMG and museum experience that utilizes a technology already embraced by our target group, we have minimized this effort, and thereby made acquiring local knowledge more accessible.

Museums can use this thesis work as a starting point to create their own layered museum experiences, and thereby expand their museum to include a mobile hybrid museum space and attract new user groups who might enjoy urban history play.

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Sand, A. (2010, August 8). Dansk Android-popularitet overhaler i Phone.

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Sheikh, S. (2009, February). Positively White Cube Revisited. In E-Flux Journal 3 (2). Retrieved April 28 2011, from http://www.e-flux.com/ journal/view/38

Mascioni, M. (2011, March). Apps Expand Museum Horizons. Iphonelife. com. Retrieved March 21 2011, from http://www.iphonelife.com/ issues/2011March-April/AppsExpandMuseum

Simon, N. (2010, April 26). Where’s the Mobile Museum Project for Intact Social Groups?. Museumtwo. Retrieved March 22 2011, from http:// museumtwo.blogspot.com/2010/04/wheres-mobile-museum-project-forintact.html

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ILLUSTRATIONS AND MODELS Illustration 1: owned by authors

3. Retrieved from http://www.indiecade.com/index.php?/games/selected/can-you-see-menow 4. Retrieved from http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/press_pages/press_cy.html (copyright Blast Theory)

Illustration 2: retrieved from http://tidenstoej.natmus.dk/periode1/dragt. asp?ID=110 Illustration 3: owned by authors Illustration 4: owned by authors

Illustration 9: 1. Retrieved from http://www.geocaching.com/map/beta/default.aspx 2. Retrieved from http://cottagecaching.com/winter-geocaching/northumberland-is-greatfor-geocaching/ 3. Retrieved from http://franklin2.tbo.net/blog/?p=226

Illustration 5: owned by authors Illustration 6: 1. In F. von Borries, S. P. Walz, M. Böttiger, (2007), Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level, Basel: Birkhäuser (p.227) 2. Retrieved from http://www.brunosimoes.org/websites/DispositivosMoveis/ PervasiveGaming.html

Illustration 10: owned by authors Illustration 11: owned by authors

Illustration 7: 1. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/multime dia/2004/04/63011?slide=5&slideView=5 2. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/multime dia/2004/04/63011?slide=4&slideView=4 3. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/ multimedia/2004/04/63011

Illustration 12: owned by authors Illustration 13: 1. Retrieved from http://www.tersus.com/ 2. Retrieved from http://7scenes.com/ 3. Retrieved from http://www.scvngr.com/

Illustration 8: 1. Retrieved from http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/44/278 2. Retrieved from http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/press_pages/press_cy.html (copyright Blast Theory)

Illustration 14: 1. Retrieved from http://gigaom.com/2011/01/04/scnvgr-pulls-in-15m-for-real-world106

gaming-expansion/ 2. Retrieved from http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/2010/06/going-placesand-completing-challenges-with-the-gosmithsonian-trek-mobile-app.html 3. Owned by authors Illustration 15: owned by authors Illustration 16: owned by authors Illustration 17: owned by authors Illustration 18: owned by authors Illustration 19: owned by authors Illustration 20: owned by authors Illustration 21: owned by authors Illustration 22: owned by authors Model 1: In Dierking, L. D. & Falk, John H. (1992). The Museum Experience.

Ann Arbor Michigan: Edwards Brothers. (p.5) Model 2: by authors Model 3: by authors Model 4: by authors

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APPENDIX I : GAME OVERVIEW Location 1. The National Museum - Intro

2. Rigsarkivet

2.A Extra

3. Assistenshuset

3.A Extra

Story file/ Extra file Introduction to the game.

Background story on the police director.

The story of the crime.

Interview with the witness.

Challenge and type QR-CODE: Scan the QRcode

The story of the building and the museum collection.

SPECIFIC RESPONSE: How many new windows do you see on the building?

OPEN RESPONSE: Write down your list of suspects.

Interview with the keeper to see if any of the goods have been pawned.

The story of the building and how the business of pawnshops worked in 1802.

PICTURE: Take a picture of the crime scene.

OPEN RESPONSE: Would you pawn your possessions?

Why/Why not?

Feedback

Point

Great, now go to the crime scene. The Rigsarkivet building is the one you walk through to enter the garden.

Great, it will be added to the investigations report. Now listen to the extra file to gain more points and the go to Assistenshuset.

Correct: Good counting work, off to Assistenshuset.

3

Incorrect: This is not correct. Please count again.

Wonder if you are correct…Listen to the extra file and then follow your clue to the next location.

Thank you for your answer. But time is running out, so hurry to Magstræde.

4. Magstræde

Trying to find out if the suspect lives in the street.

2

4.A Extra

The story behind the name of the street and the big fire in Copenhagen in 1795.

5.

Larsbjørnsstræde

Meets with the wife of the suspect to find out where he is.

Tests a clue.

Meets a prostitute to interview her about the whereabouts of the suspect.

2

2

3

6. Skt. Peders Stræde 24

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SPECIFIC RESPONSE: Find the only original door on the street. Hint: it is curved on top.

SPECIFIC RESPONSE: One of the houses has two street numbers, the old is 31 but what is the new one?

PICTURE: Take a picture of the keyhole in the door.

OPEN RESPONSE: The money you gave the prostitute was a lot.

Why did you do that?

Correct: The door is the only original door on the street. It is from the 1730s and almost 300 years old.

Incorrect: Oops! That is not the correct door. Please try again and do not forget you only have three tries.

Super, on with the game. Hurry up to Larsbjørnsstræde.

Great, it has been added to the report.

Hurry on in your investigation before the thief can melt the horns.

You think so? Now, quickly on to the schnapps maker’s house.

4

3

4

3

6.A Extra

The story of the lives of prostitutes in the 1800s

7. Skt. Peders Stræde 28

Meets the son of the schnapps maker to try and find the suspect and the brotherin-law.

The story of all the alcohol making factories in Copenhagen at the time.

7.A Extra

8. Nytorv

Looking for the suspects, meets witness who further implicates both suspects.

PICTURE: Take a picture of the most interesting or funny historical detail on the street.

OPEN RESPONSE: How do you think it smelled in 1802?

Use your imagination.

PICTURE: Take a picture of the plaque on land register number 138.

Hint: it is close to the schnapps maker’s house.

OPEN RESPONSE: Do you suspect others than Niels Heidenreich?

That is great. On to the schnapps maker’s house.

3

8.A Extra

The story of the burnt down town hall and the square where the executions used to happen.

Do you think you can find the suspects at Nytorv? First listen to the extra file.

3

9. The National Museum. The Gold Horns.

No file

Great, now on to Gammeltorv/Nytorv

4

9.A Extra This is noted. You just received a tip from a colleague that the horns have been spotted at Ny Vestergade. Find the horns and you might find the thief. Do not forget the extra file!

2

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The true story of the theft and the new information of an assumed accomplice.

PICTURE: Find the outline of the old town hall on the ground. Hint: the tiles are a different color.

QR-CODE: Did you catch the thief and was it the correct one?

Scan the codes to find your answer.

OPEN RESPONSE: Do you think the brotherin-law was guilty?

And now on to Ny Vestergade to see if you can find the horns there.

4

Correct: Congratulations, you caught the thief, but he melted the horns. Did you let an accomplice go free?

Listen to the extra file to get the true story.

5

Incorrect: You did not catch either Niels Heidenreich or his brother-in-law, Peter Jensen. They both got away. Listen to the extra file to get the true story.

Great! Thank you for playing. We hope that you have enjoyed the experience. Best, the National Museum

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APPENDIX II : GAME CHARACTERS J.P. Gall: He was the Royal Art Chamber’s keeper’s chief clerk. As a boy, he had run errands for Niels Heidenreich the first time Heidenreich was in jail.

After Heidenreich was released, he visited Gall several times at the Royal Art Chamber. During one of those visits, he noticed all the books piled up in the chambers due to water damage, and that is how Heidenreich found out that he could enter into the royal library where the horns were kept. (It could also be that this information was given to him by Gall, but Heidenreich never revealed it to be so).

Andreas Holm: He was the alderman for the goldsmith guild and pivotal in pointing the suspicion in Heidenreich’s direction. However, as an alderman of the Guild of Goldsmiths, Holm probably saw the free masons within his field of work as a threat, and one can imagine that there has been some suspicion towards the quality of workmanship of the free masons.

Peter Jensen: He was married to the sister of Heidenreich’s wife. He was also in jail at the same time as Heidenreich. After Jensen got out of jail, Heidenreich gave him a recommendation, stating that they had been working together for seven years, during which Heidenreich had taught Jensen so that Jensen could get a license to work as a jewelry maker. However, some sources suggest that it was Heidenreich that had the limited ability within the jewelry field and that is was Jensen who had been an apprentice within the field. Since Jensen did extremely well after Heidenreich was put in jail for the theft of the gold horns, this could mean that Jensen was an accomplice in the theft and that he had helped Heidenreich with the work of melting and reusing the gold.

Niels Heidenreich: He was born in 1761 and grew up in Jutland. His parents divorced when he was 10, and his mother later remarried and gave birth to his two half sisters. He was known for being very bright and charming, and he discovered early that he was good at copying peoples’ signatures. He moved to Copenhagen as a young man and started dabbling in forgery and counterfeit money.

He was convicted the first time and was sent to jail in 1789. To no avail, he applied for pardon both in 1794 and 1796. He was finally released September 13th, 1797, when the government gave him a chance to resocialize by giving him a license to work as a goldsmith and watchmaker.

A charity foundation awarded him with 100 kroner (rigsdaler) to build a glassmaking machine to make reading glasses. He was working as a goldsmith, and it was through doing business with J.P. Gall that the theft of the gold horns happened on May 4th, 1802. On April 30th, 1803, he confessed to the theft.

Johanne Sophie Rosine Lukner: She was the wife of Heidenreich and born in 1776. They met in jail the first time Heidenreich was incarcerated and were married January 12th, 1798.

They had two children who died before adulthood. Lukner separated from Heidnereich in 1803, after he admitted to the theft. She was later put back in jail where she died in 1828.

The Prostitute (Fictive Character) A young prostitute in her twenties who works at the brothel in Skt. Peders Stræde 24, where Niels Heidenreich and Peter Jensen are frequent visitors.

She is vulgar and speaks her mind.

He escaped shortly from the jail on September 28 , 1803. This is the description from when he escaped: Medium height and weight, blue eyes, blond hair and eyebrows, chubby face, ordinary glasses. Has strong legs and broad shoulders and stands tall and dignified. th

The Son of the Schnapps Maker (Fictive Character) The son of the schnapps maker is about 10 years old and lives in Skt. Peders Stræde 28. He helps his father in the production but also likes to make extra pocket money by running errands in the street for people like Niels Heidenreich. He is polite and a bit timid.

He was released from jail in 1840 when he was 79 years old and was transferred to a work farm and later to a hospital where he died August 7th, 1844, at the age of 83.

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APPENDIX III : CONTENT EXAMPLES buy everything they needed. Some merchants walked around the city and offered their goods. Because each different item had a specific song, everyone knew which walking merchant was in the area.

The following is an example of a fictional narrative file from the location Larsbjørnsstræde 18, the home of Niels Heidenreich; At Niels Heidenreich’s newly built, yellow house, you meet his wife, Johanne Rosine Luckner. The couple married in 1798 and has been married for four, apparently tumultuous, years. She hisses when she says his name and does not speak fondly of him. She does not know where he is but snippily remarks, “That scoundrel is probably roaming around in Skt. Peders Stræde with my no good brother-in-law Peter Jensen, drinking schnapps and gallivanting with the whores.”

When asked the questions of whom Peter Nielsen is, she responds that he is married to her sister and that he also works as a goldsmith. The two of them are often together. “And they are both equally useless and unreliable” she hisses.

You decide to test the keys from the crime scene in the front door. And to your great astonishment one of the keys fits. Niels Heidenreich must be the culprit! But now, where is he?

Before 1795, the squares Nytorv and Gammeltorv were separated by the Town Hall, which was built in the 1400s. Behind the town hall (where Nytorv is now), there was a home farm called Rådhusgården, or Town Hall farm. The area surrounding this farm was filled with cattle, but because the cattle and the farming next the town hall was not to the liking of King Christian IV, he commanded that the area be cleared, and a new square, Nytorv, or New Square, took shape. This meant that an extra tax, which would finance the renovation of the Town Hall’s facade (and thereby be in the best interest of the citizens of Copenhagen, of course), would be imposed.

Before this, Nytorv was used for many purposes other than keeping cattle. For example, it was here, where people that had been sentenced to death were executed, and it always happened in front of an exhilarated audience. Many people at the time thought that drinking fresh blood could heal if one drank it, so when the executioner would hold up the severed head for all to see, sick people would flood to him in attempts to drink the blood oozing from the head. The last execution was enforced on December 7th, 1758.

During the fire in 1795, the Town Hall, which separated the two squares, burnt down to the ground, and it was not rebuilt. Instead, the current Town Hall was built in what we now know as Town Hall Square. Between the two squares, one can still see the outline of the old town hall, as the building floor plan is marked with different colored granite tiles.

The following is an extra file example with factual information from the location Nytorv; Gammeltorv or Old Square is the oldest merchant square in the city, and today there are still stalls at the square, though they do not quite sell the same items.

The era’s products were meats, fish, vegetables, clothing - anything the citizens needed. Every Wednesday and Saturday was ‘market day’, where the square flooded over with merchants and servants taking care of the household’s shopping needs. The women from Valby gathered close to the Caritas fountain, where they always sold milk, eggs, poultry and hare. Every square in Copenhagen housed different merchants selling specific products, so servants had to run all over the city to 111

APPENDIX IV : GAME MAP 1. Nationalmuseet, the National Museum 2. Rigsarkivet, The Royal Art Chambers 3. Assistenshuset

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4. Magstræde 5. Larsbjørnsstræde 6. Skt. Peders Stræde 24

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7. Skt. Peders Stræde 28

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8. Nytorv

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9. Ny Vestergade (the National Museum)

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