A Review of Location-based Games: Do They All Support Exercise,

Social Interaction and Cartographical Training?

Samuli Laato

, Tarja Pietarinen

, Sampsa Rauti

, Mauri Paloheimo

Nobufumi Inaba

and Erkki Sutinen

Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

Department of Language and Translation, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

Keywords: Location-based Game, Pervasive Games, Classification, Categorization, Software Review, Serious Games,

AR.

Abstract: Studies on location-based games ubiquitously report positive learning outcomes for the players. Particularly

these games are shown to promote exercise, encourage to social interaction and increase geographical and

cartographical knowledge. To find out whether these positive effects are game-specific or characteristic to all

location-based games, we conduct a software search for available location-based games on iOS and Android

platforms and evaluate if and how exercise, cartographical training and social interaction are supported. Based

on our results we were able to identify six sub-genres of location-based games, and the positive effects

associated with each genre. The most popular category in terms of number of games was scavenger hunts and

the most popular category in terms of active installs on Android and iOS was location-based MMORPG’s.

Presence of factors associated with immersion and mixed reality were paired with the popularity and positive

outcomes of the games. Cartographical practise, social interaction and exercise were supported the most in

the location-based MMORPG sub-genre, to which, for example, Pokémon GO belongs to.

1 INTRODUCTION

Location-based games saw an explosion in popularity

when Niantic launched Pokémon GO in July 2016.

Since then numerous companies have attempted to

recreate the phenomenon with games of their own,

with various degrees of success. Location-based

games (LBGs) by definition include gameplay which

revolves around the users, or in some rare cases

another object’s physical location (Rashid et al.,

2006). Most LBGs are also pervasive games i.e.

games where the game experience is located within

or mixed with the real world (Arango-Lopez et al.

2017).

LBGs in general have been identified as potential

platforms for future learning (Söbke et al. 2017),

because of a track record of positive learning

outcomes (eg. Chen and Tsai, 2009; LeBlanc et al.,

2017). The very nature of LBGs seems ideal for

serious games (SGs) (Abt. 1970) that promote

exercise or teach local geography. For example, the

currently most popular LBG Pokémon GO (See

Figure 1) has been identified to motivate exercise

(Alha et al. 2019; Althoff et al., 2016), improve

topographical knowledge and increase place

attachment (Oleksy and Wunk, 2017) and increase

social interaction (Sobel et al., 2017; Fettrow and

Ross, 2017, Finco et al., 2018). However, Pokémon

GO is mainly a game for entertainment, not an SG.

Figure 1: The main interface of Pokémon GO.

616

Laato, S., Pietarinen, T., Rauti, S., Paloheimo, M., Inaba, N. and Sutinen, E.

A Review of Location-based Games: Do They All Support Exercise, Social Interaction and Cartographical Training?.

DOI: 10.5220/0007801206160627

In Proceedings of the 11th Inter national Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages 616-627

ISBN: 978-989-758-367-4

Studies have reported similar positive outcomes

for other LBGs as well (eg. Stanley et al. 2010;

Chittaro and Sioni, 2012; Neustaedter and Judge,

2012) which lead us to form the hypothesis that these

outcomes are characteristic to any LBG instead of

being specific to the games analysed in above

mentioned studies.

In this paper, we first introduce the background of

the study by introducing the technical structure of

LBG’s and going through how they can be utilized in

education, with an emphasis on promoting exercise

and physical activity, practising geographical,

cartographical and topographical skills and

increasing social interaction. The background section

ends with a look at immersion and its impact on

players’ engagement and motivation and a brief look

at the risks of LBGs. We formulate our primary

research question as follows: “Are the three main

positive outcomes of playing LBGs characteristic to

LBGs in general, or should they be attributed to the

few games that have been studied?” and in addition

examine how immersive each game is, based on

indicators identified in previous studies. In the next

section we describe our research design for searching

the set of LBGs and for conducting an analysis based

on the data. We sort the games into sub-genres and

identify positive outcomes associated with each

genre. We follow our results section with a discussion

on interesting findings and finally conclude the paper

with ideas for future work.

2 BACKGROUND

As LBGs are a relatively new genre in games, the

terminology used in this field of research is not yet

consistent. Among the earliest work on LBGs and

their classification is a study by Nicklas et al. (2001)

who divide location-based games into three

categories: 1) Mobile games that do not rely on

accurate location data; 2) Location aware-games,

which can be played anywhere and require an

accurate GPS signal; and 3) Spatially-aware games,

which are usually played on small areas and rely on

identifying real world location for triggering game

events. This kind of thinking is outdated in the sense

that mobile games are no longer discussed as LBGs

and spatially-aware games are quite rare in

comparison to location-aware games. Sometimes the

term geolocation game or game with geolocation is

used in describing LBGs (Silva et al., 2017). Since the

vast amount of academic papers and even

dissertations (e.g. Wake, 2013) has applied the term

location-based game as a synonym for what Nicklas

et al. (2001) call location aware games, we adopt

LBG in our study as a term describing all games,

which, in one way or another, utilize the players’

location as part of the main gameplay.

Even though the term LBG is being adopted in

this study, a body of research on LBGs is done under

the term pervasive games (Arango-Lopez et al. 2017)

with 25,400 results on Google Scholar with the

keyword “Pervasive Games” in publications since

2015, in comparison to 33,000 results with “location-

based games”. LBGs are indeed in most cases

pervasive games meaning that the gameplay takes

place in the real world (Montola et al., 2009). In

addition to LBGs and pervasive games, other terms

used in research to describe some kind of a LBG

include AR-game, and mixed-reality games.

(Viinikkala et al., 2016). AR- and mixed-reality

games are often spatially-aware games as seen in

Figure 2. LBGs can include elements of AR and

mixed reality as they have been identified as means

of increasing immersion (Shea at al., 2017). The

integration of location-based gaming and AR

technology could emerge as ubiquitous, collaborative

and situated learning, and bridge the gap between

formal and informal learning (Wu et al., 2013).

Figure 2: An academically developed mixed-reality game

Wordsmith, which is also a spatially-aware game. The

game augments 3D characters to historical locations inside

the Turku Cathedral.

2.1 Technical Structure of LBGs

The most popular LBGs Pokemon GO, Ingress,

Draconius GO, Jurassic World: Alive, The Walking

Dead: Our World and Landlord Tycoon-Real Estate

Investing Idle are all based on a client-server

architecture. This allows, for example, multiplayer

capabilities, social features and a place to save player

A Review of Location-based Games: Do They All Support Exercise, Social Interaction and Cartographical Training?

617

data in the games (Capece et al., 2016). In addition,

running the game state on the server has the benefit

of decreasing the likelihood of players succeeding in

tampering of game files and other forms of technical

cheating (Smed and Hakonen, 2017).

The most common types of LBG gameplay

revolve around points of interests (PoIs) placed on the

game map, which the player needs to travel to and

interact with (Tregel et al., 2017). These points can be

created in several ways, some of which are better than

others. A random or even scatter of the points around

the globe have the following disadvantages:

1) Database capacity will be reserved for points

that are in the middle of the ocean, in places

where nobody will ever go to.

2) PoIs are not linked with the real world in any

way, thus decreasing the immersiveness of

the game.

3) PoIs might be located on private property, or

in dangerous inaccessible areas.

Using an algorithm that utilizes publicly available

data to, for example, filter out points on military

districts and oceans can already make an

improvement. In order to connect in game PoIs to the

real world, human resources can be utilized (Majorek

and Duvall, 2016) or the data can to a degree also be

created automatically (Tregel et al., 2017).

2.2 LBGs for Education

Parallel with the rapid invasion of technological tools

into education, learning is transformed increasingly

into fun-seeking activities utilizing educational

games (SGs) that foster the learning experience

through excitement and stimulation. From early on

LBGs have been seen as potential tools for education

as they extend the learning experience out into the

physical world and provide new advantages such as

accessing learning materials in the particular context,

collecting field data in-situ, personifying the learning

experience and deriving learning value from a

personal mobile phone (Benford 2005). Location-

based technology has been applied for educational

purposes for example by narratives such as a location-

based history game in medieval Amsterdam

(Akkerman et al., 2009), an interactive LBG for

teaching the English language (Chen and Tsai, 2009),

a game for learning about cultural heritage (Mortara

et al., 2014), and for games designed for museums

(Laine et al., 2009; Melero, Hernández-Leo and

Manatunga, 2015). Early findings from studies with

location-based SGs and AR simulations show

positive outcomes in player engagement,

participation and physical activity, but also

challenges (Dunleavy et al., 2009; Melero et al.,

2015). Overall there are a wide range of examples of

location-based and AR-technologies being used as

part of formal education such as students creating

their own AR games (Klopfer and Sheldon, 2010).

LBGs will also blur the border between formal

(context-free) and natural (informal; contextual)

education.

More recent studies on LBGs for education have

continued to focus on individual games. Instead of

academically developed SGs, the focus has shifted

towards commercially developed games and their

impact (Hamari et al., 2018; Alha et al., 2019). Söbke

et al. (2017) analyse the LBG Ingress and

demonstrate that the three most thriving reasons

players engage in that game and by extension to

LBGs in general are 1) being outdoors, 2) detecting

new spots in the local environment and 3) having a

common activity with friends. All of these reasons are

viewed as positive outcomes in addition to being

motivating factors for playing. Another study

provided additional evidence on how playing Ingress

increases on average the wellbeing of its players.

(Kosa and Uysal, 2018) Based on their findings

Söbke et al. (2017) propose a framework for

designing pervasive games, called Pervasive Game

Design Framework (PDGF). The framework

combines pedagogical objectives with assessment

and difficulty. Difficulty or challenge is also

identified as an important factor in increasing

learning outcomes for serious games (Hamari et al.,

2016) According to the model by Söbke et al. (2017),

possible pedagogical objectives need to be included

in the game flow without disrupting the core of the

game that motivates players. Integrating learning

objectives into the gameplay has also been studied

extensively in the field of SGs and has been found to

be paramount in building a successful lasting

motivation for the players. (Arnab et al., 2015;

Bedwell et al., 2012; Lameras et al., 2017)

2.3 Exercise and Physical Activity

In games that are based on moving around, exercise

is a natural and integral component. LBGs which

motivate players to travel to geographical points of

interests have been identified to result in rapid

increases of physical activity in the short-term,

however lasting effects depend on the games’

capability of retaining the interest of its audience

(Licoppe, 2017; Althoff et al., 2016; LeBlanc et al.,

2017). When comparing LBGs to health apps, the

user demographics are different. Thus, LBGs are

capable of reaching those demographics totally

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uninterested in health applications and able to

motivate them into increased physical activity

(Althoff et al., 2016). Some LBGs are designed for

the sole reason of exercise (Southerton, 2013), while

especially the spatially-aware games fixed to certain

small locations do not put any emphasis on exercise

(Viinikkala et al., 2016).

2.4 Geographical, Cartographical and

Topographical Practise

Location-based games are shown to automatically

support cartographical and navigational practise if

they contain a navigational interface based on real

world maps (Lammes and Wilmott, 2018). Examples

of these kinds of games are The Walking Dead: Our

world displayed on Figure 3 and Draconius GO

where the main gameplay revolves around navigating

to nearby PoIs using the navigational interface

provided by the game. The magnitude of the

cartographical training depends on how long the

game is being played, but also on the PoIs. If PoIs in

the game world are not linked to locations of the real

world, people are less likely to travel into locations

with a significance. However, the existing databases

of PoIs cover only certain areas, primarily cities, so

algorithmically created PoIs supplement playing in

rural areas better (Tregel et al., 2017). Randomly

created PoI’s also have the advantage of maintaining

some novelty in the game and, at best, encourage

players to travel to new and interesting places.

Games where PoIs are important real world

locations are tentatively more effective in increasing

players’ cartographical knowledge than alternatives

(Andone et al. 2017; Lammes and Wilmott, 2018).

Good examples of such games are Ingress and

Pokémon GO, which primarily utilize the same

database of PoIs (Tregel et al., 2017). The games

encourage players to travel to new places in different

ways, for example, in Ingress players are rewarded

medals for visiting unique PoIs and interacting with

them and encouraged to travel long distances in order

to create large triangles. The latter mechanic has also

been identified as important to the development of

geographical knowledge, as planning large triangles

requires looking at maps and seeking out key

locations via the map instead of the game (Söbke et

al., 2017) Pokémon GO on the other hand keeps a

map of all the gyms the player has visited, and is

found to increase place attachment via the jym system

(Oleksy and Wunk, 2017).

Figure 3: The Walking Dead: Our World.

2.5 Social Interaction

Multiplayer games by definition include social

interaction (Cole and Griffiths, 2007). In all other

kinds of games this interaction takes place online,

however LBGs change the playing ground by forcing

people to go outside and in the best cases, interact

with other players. Online multiplayer games have

been shown to include social interaction, however the

type of interaction is limited and can still make

players feel lonely (Ducheneaut et al., 2006). LBGs

on the other hand allow for face-to-face interaction

with other players and also interaction with people

who do not play the game at all. These properties have

been highly praised by studies on certain LBGs,

primarily Pokémon Go (Sobel et al., 2017; Fettrow

and Ross, 2017; Hamari et al., 2017). Some games

provide benefits for working together with other

players, while others focus more on the competitive

side. At launch in 2016 Pokémon GO was a

competitive game with minor team play elements, but

has recently moved towards positive social

interaction with recent patches including the addition

of raids, trading and friendship levels, which are all

game mechanics where the player benefits from

working together with other players (Finco et al.,

2018). Removing competitive elements might suit

LBGs seeking to establish positive social interaction,

but can also turn some players away due to the lack

of challenge. Furthermore, as studies on SGs have

A Review of Location-based Games: Do They All Support Exercise, Social Interaction and Cartographical Training?

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revealed challenges in social interaction with certain

problem types (Dunleavy et al., 2009) or with the

group size (Melero et al., 2015), more studies are

called for to define the type of interaction LBGs

should focus on so that the identified positive social

outcomes could emerge (Wang et al., 2018).

2.6 Immersion and Motivation

One big topic among LBG research and development

is immersion (Hamari et al., 2016). It is connected to

many of the aspects analysed in this study, including

the positive outcomes, players’ motivation and

audience retention. Immersiveness is difficult to

objectively measure as it is wholly dependent on

players’ perception of the game, and depends on a

multitude of factors (Kosa and Uysal, 2018; Wang et

al., 2017). In pervasive and mixed reality games

immersion is largely affected by how well the game

is able to blend with reality (Montola et al., 2009;

Viinikkala et al., 2016). Factors affecting immersion

in LBGs include accurate GPS tracking, use of real

world maps, AR features, a realistic story (Baker et

al., 2017), real world -based points of interests, social

features and taking into account the real world events,

for example weather.

Games must be motivating in order for players to

sustain interest long enough for the positive outcomes

to occur (Deterding, 2012). Digital games in general

are known to include addictive elements like instant

feedback (Rigby and Ryan, 2011). Still, motivation

and engagement are essential not only for

encouraging players to play the game, but also to

enhance the positive outcomes while playing.

(Muntean, 2011). How motivating a game is depends

mostly on the game design and implementation,

which includes everything from gameplay to content,

music and graphics, but also outside factors like

social relations revolving around the game. All these

elements have an impact on how motivating players

perceive the game. A possible way to estimate the

level of perceived motivation is to observe the

popularity of the game over time. Games that sustain

players’ interest over a long period of time are agreed

to be fun and engaging.

2.7 Risks of LBGs

Studies have highlighted several security and privacy

concerns associated with games that have access to

the players’ location, or revolve around the player

moving around in the real world. (Serino et al., 2016)

As LBGs blend the game with reality, in the case of

the most immersive games the boundaries of the

game and everyday life can become blurred

(Karpashevich et al., 2016). Players may alternate

their moving patterns based on in-game situation and,

for example, take longer to get home from work than

they normally would (Karpashevich et al., 2016).

Parents of the younger players of LBGs enjoy the

increased exercise and time their children spent

outside playing LBGs, but are worried about how the

game might encourage their children to wander in

unsafe territory or forget to pay attention to their

surroundings while playing (Sobel et al., 2017).

In addition to direct security concerns, LBGs rise

privacy issues. With the most popular LBGs featuring

a server connection where player location data is

stored, companies automatically have access to, for

example, the players’ location data (Hulsey and

Reeves, 2014). In addition some LBGs publicly

display players’ movement and interaction patterns,

which can be scraped and used to determine things

like where the player lives, works and spends their

freetime. The worst case scenario is that malicious

parties use the available location data for criminal

purposes, for example, to rob a player while they are

away from home playing a LBG or to corner and mug

a player in a convenient place. (Hulsey and Reeves,

2014; Karpashevich et al., 2016).

3 RESEARCH DESIGN

For finding a representative sample of LBGs, a

general search was opted for in place of a systematic

search (Kitchenham et al. 2009), due to the lack of

objectively searchable databases of games. Instead

we utilized previous research papers which list LBGs

(Alavesa et al., 2016) and games found on research

papers via the following research databases: IEEE

Xplore Digital Library, ACM Digital Library and

Scitepress digital library. From 15 academically cited

location-based games for education in 2012 six

spatially continuous games that fell to our criteria,

which we in this paper refer to as location-based

games, were Feeding Yoshi, CitiTag, CityExplorer,

Jindeo, hitchers and MobileHunters. When searching

for these games on Google Play Store in February

2019, we could not find any. As the games are old,

mobile platforms have since developed by huge leaps

and therefore we assume the old games are no longer

maintained and cannot therefore be added into our

current analysis. (Avouris and Yiannoutsou, 2012).

LBGs were also searched for directly from the

online stores App Store and Google Play Store using

the terms location-based games, list of location-

based games, pervasive games, list of pervasive

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games and the best location-based games. We used

the search engines duckduckgo and Google using the

following search terms and their variants: location-

based games, AR games, mixed-reality games,

pervasive games and GPS games. From these results

we obtained a few final additional LBGs by tracking

down games mentioned in Online Encyclopaedia of

Location-based games (2019) and other privately or

collaboratively created lists of LBGs.

3.1 Exclusion Criteria

We focused on games for the iOS and Android

platforms, as these two dominate the mobile market

at the moment, and provide the most widely spread

and popular platform for developing LBGs. In

addition to narrowing the platform down to iOS and

Android, we decided not to include games which are

discontinued or no longer supported. This decision

was done in order to be able to obtain all the relevant

information from the application, and also to provide

direct access to the games. The third exclusion criteria

was that the games were published within our

linguistic abilities. Therefore the available languages

covered were: English, Finnish, Japanese, Hungarian

and Swedish. Finally we decided to exclude games

which during our analysis proved not to be actual

games but rather platforms for creating games.

However, if the same app was used as a platform and

as a game, it was included. Before categorization,

duplicate games were removed and available games

requiring unavailable server side support were

excluded. Finally applications that supported an

activity but were not games as we understand them,

for example, Geocaching applications and their

variants, (Schlatter and Hurd, 2005) were excluded.

3.2 Data Collection

We looked at previous studies on taxonomies and

frameworks for LBGs (Söbke et al., 2017; Avouris

and Yiannoutsou 2012; Anastasiadou and Lameras,

2016; Alavesa et al., 2016) and combined elements in

order to determine what data to collect from the

games. In addition, based on the previous studies on

specific LBGs, we obtained factors in the game

design which were shown to support positive

outcomes and collected data to see if these factors

were present. Our data collection scheme was

therefore formed to be as follows:

1. Basic information:

-Name of the app

-Publisher

-Platform

-Year it was published

2. Immersive elements

-Includes AR features?

-Is based on a real map?

-How PoIs are determined?

3. Positive outcomes related

-Has a speed limit for moving?

-Includes multiplayer?

Due to the large scope of this study, we used

simple indicators for determining the results: a speed

limit for moving was seen as an indicator the game

wants to encourage the player to walk instead of

driving, and the incorporation of a real world map or

real world-based PoIs to the game was seen as an

indicator of increasing the players geographical and

topographical knowledge. If the game contained

multiplayer features, we recorded that it encourages

players to social interaction.

3.3 Creating Sub-genres of LBGs

Previous attempts on creating LBG characterizations

have failed to create LBG-specific taxonomies, but

instead, have produced general taxonomies that can

be applied to any type of a game (Alavesa et al.,

2016). Even though these taxonomies were found to

provide tangible results, they failed at grasping the

aspects which make LBGs unique among games. In

our method for constructing the genres we utilized a

grounded theory approach (Charmaz and Belgrave,

2007). We grouped games which shared similar

gameplay features together. Our aim was to use

collected data as an indicator to which category a

game belonged, but we used prevalent gameplay

features as the main (overriding) indicator for

determining the genre. Existing genres were utilized

where feasible (Nicklas et al., 2001). Games, which

were left alone in our grouping phase, we moved into

a category called miscellaneous, as a single game was

not large enough a sample to define a genre.

4 RESULTS

The final list consisted 184 LBGs. We excluded 128

games due to their unavailability (discontinued or

servers have been shut down), bugginess or the fact

that the game was not location-based. This left us

with 56 games. Currently the most popular LBG

among these 56 LBGs is Pokémon GO with over

100,000,000 installs on Android devices only through

Google Play Store. The second most popular LBG

Ingress Prime sits at 5,000,000+ installs through Play

A Review of Location-based Games: Do They All Support Exercise, Social Interaction and Cartographical Training?

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Store followed by Jurassic World: Alive (Figure 4),

Landlord Tycoon-Real Estate Investor and The

Walking Dead: Our World. Figure 5 shows the most

popular LBGs compared to each other in popularity

based on the amount of reviews on Google Play Store.

Figure 4: Jurassic World: Alive is currently the third

popular LBG. This is the main interface of the game.

The descriptive statistics of the data are presented

in Table 1. The most surprising finding was that only

two games, both developed by Niantic, based PoIs on

real world locations. Other games either randomly

placed PoIs on the map, utilized data to automatically

create the PoIs or did not utilize PoIs in their game

design. 80.4% utilized real world maps, thus linking

the game into the real world through cartography.

Only 16.1% of the games had a speed limit for

moving, which in our study was seen as an indicator

that the game designers want players to move by

exercising instead of driving a car. Multiplayer

features were present in 64.3% of the games in a form

or another, although there was large variance in what

ways multiplayer was emphasized. Even if a game

only included some basic leader boards or even minor

interaction with other players, it was classified as a

multiplayer game. Finally, AR-features utilizing the

mobile phone camera were detected in exactly ¼ of

the analysed games.

Figure 5: The amount of reviews on LBGs in Google Play

Store (February 2019).

Table 1: The results of collected data.

Is the game based on a

real map?

80.4%

Speed limit for moving?

16.1%

PoI’s match real world

locations?

4.0%

Multiplayer?

64.3%

Contains AR features?

25%

4.1 Sub-genres of LBGs

We discovered the following sub-genres of LBGs:

1) Scavenger hunt/treasure hunt

-Players do various tasks in the real world

and report them to others

2) Location-based MMORPG’s.

-Based on a real map

-Main gameplay consists of travelling to

PoIs and interacting with them.

3) Spatially-aware games

-Designed for a specific environment. Can

be inside buildings.

-Utilize solutions and technologies that take

into account that specific surrounding.

4) Geolocation games

-Named after Landlord Tycoon.

-Utilizes the users’ location in gameplay, but

does not accurately track user movement or

display a local map.

5) Movement -dependent games

-Game events trigger based on user

movement, not location.

6) Miscellaneous games

-Games which do not fall into any category

All 56 games were sorted into one of these sub-

genres. The first genre and the one with most games

was scavenger hunt -games, which is historically the

first category of LBGs to emerge (Pirker et al., 2014).

Scavenger hunt games, or treasure hunt games as they

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Figure 6: Learning outcomes associated with each genre.

are sometimes called, rely on users creating

temporary games, tasks and missions for each other

(Pirker et al., 2014 Kohen-Vacs et al., 2012). One

such task could be, for example, to travel to a certain

location and take a picture of oneself holding a stick

there. The scavenger hunt game platform provides

functionalities like GPS tracking, storing and

showing uploaded media, keeping a track of missions

and their completion and giving players in-game

rewards. The missions are often location-based, but

do not have to be. Examples of these kinds of games

are Scavify and Social Scavenger.

The second genre, location-based MMORPG,

was based on games like Pokémon GO, The Walking

Dead: Our world and Jurassic World: Alive. These

games dominated the popularity charts lead by

Pokémon GO and shared the following six

characteristics:

1) Collecting things while playing.

2) Immersion. At least the following methods

were utilized in order to increase immersion:

basing the game on real maps, choosing PoI

locations in a meaningful way, adding AR

features and creating storylines that mix the

game with reality.

3) A Map interface. Travelling to PoIs by

navigating on a 2D map of the real world

was identified as the central game mechanic.

4) Face to face social interaction based on

sharing the game world with other players.

5) Limiting the travel speed. Going too fast is

punished by limiting or completely

removing PoIs. This encourages walking

and also serves as a countermeasure for high

velocity GPS spoofing.

6) Freemium business model. (Wilson, 2006)

Even though not part of the game per se, all

games in this category utilized this business

model.

The third genre, spatially-aware games was based

on the definition of Nicklas et al., (2001) and all

games tied into certain places or areas were sorted

into this category. Examples include Oddfellow’s

Secret based on Manhattan and E-BIKEFEST

Mountain Quest created for the E-BIKEFEST event

on the Tirolean Mountains. The fourth category,

movement-based games based their gameplay on the

user movement. Rather than having PoIs on the map

to travel to, movement-based games either utilized

player movement as a gameplay element or based

occurring events on user movement. Examples of

these kinds of games include The Walk, Strut and

Zombies, Run! The fifth category, geolocation games

only showcased a single game: Landlord Real Estate

Tycoon which we will return to later.

4.2 Learning Outcomes Associated

With Each Genre

Based on our review we assigned a 3-point Likert

scale variable (low, medium, high) for each of the

identified genres on how well a certain positive

outcome was present in the games of that sub-genre

in general. We looked at representative games for

each sub-genre and based on identified factors,

evaluated the positive outcome. This data is presented

in Figure 6. Because games are extremely complex,

the accuracy of the results only depicts what is typical

for the particular sub-genre, not the actual magnitude

of its impact. Our data does not account for the

popularity of the games, meaning the more popular

games will generally be more impactful than

alternatives, as the effects will inevitably be

multiplied by the time spent playing.

5 DISCUSSION

We managed to identify sub-genres for LBGs based

on existing games, which are linked not only to the

gameplay but also to the positive outcomes the games

have. This result is more promising than what

previous studies have come up with (Alavesa et al.,

2016; Söbke et al., 2017) in the sense that the

categorisation reflects actual games like Alavesa et

al., (2016) but can also be used to determine positive

outcomes and affordances for learning (Söbke et al.,

2017).

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623

Interestingly, the sub-genre with most identified

positive outcomes, Location-based MMORPGs, was

found to also be the most popular among players.

Scavenger hunt games, albeit numerous, have

radically smaller player bases and offer short-term

amusement and health benefits. Spatially-aware

games were found to contain on average more

immersive elements than the other games, but were

limited to a small area and hence their player bases

remain small, as does the amount of time spent

playing. The movement-based games which trigger

events based on user movement, like Zombies Run!

are designed for promoting healthy exercise. The

gameplay is designed to motivate the player to run in

an effective way, and these games usually do their

best not to let gameplay interfere with the positive

impact the game has, for example, by forcing the

player to look at their phone instead of running. The

geolocation game category is the odd one out, with

gameplay revolving around real world objects, but

without necessarily any map interface.

Landlord Real Estate Tycoon (Figure 7) was

found to be the fourth most popular LBG with over

5,000,000 installs on Google Play Store and 256,752

and 9600 ratings on Play Store and App Store,

respectively. The game was by far the most

aggressive in its in-game advertisement among all

analysed LBGs, featuring bonuses for sharing the

game to friends as well as reviewing the game online.

This kind of activity undoubtedly has an impact on

the games’ popularity. In comparison the fifth most

popular game The Walking Dead: Our world had only

68,625 ratings on Play Store, however 13,509 ratings

on App Store making it more popular on App Store

than Landlord Real Estate Tycoon. These kinds of

differences in popularity between platforms were not

common in our sample of games. As we noticed no

difference in the quality of the Android and iOS

versions of the two games, we came up with two

explanations for the popularity difference per

platform:

1) Google Play search algorithms give an

advantage to Landlord Real Estate Tycoon,

due to its aggressive in-game advertisement

or other factors, or

2) The average owners of iOS and Android

devices vary so much in their interest

towards games that the impacts on amount

of reviews become observable.

Immersive elements like AR and real-world

linked PoIs seemed to correlate with popularity

directly, with the exception of Monopoly influenced

Landlord Real Estate Tycoon, which in return

included gameplay which we perceived to teach

Figure 7: The main user interface of Landlord Tycoon lacks

location-based aspects.

mathematics and finance (Shanklin and Ehlen 2007).

With regards to popularity, our data relies on the

information from Google Play Store and App Store,

and we were therefore unable to find data on the

actual number of players or the hours spent playing

weekly. This fact might have resulted in minor

inaccuracies in our study.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

In this study, we found 184 LBGs of which 56

matched our selection criteria. Six subgenres were

identified for LBGs based on our analysis. We

estimated the intensity with which the positive

outcomes were present in those categories based on

observed indicators. To answer our initial research

question we conclude that exercise, cartographical

training and social interaction are characteristic to the

Location-based MMORPG subcategory. Some of the

three positive outcomes were present in other

categories as well, but not all of them. Exercise was

most strongly promoted in movement-based games

and social interaction was present the most in

scavenger hunt/treasure hunt games.

Our findings on the educational potential of LBGs

are very much in line with previous studies (Söbke et

al., 2017; Anastasiadou and Lameras., 2016). As the

technology required for creating effective mixed

reality LBGs is relatively new and still constantly

developing, we expect the popularity and diversity of

solutions to grow at an expanding rate. The currently

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624

(2019) two most popular games Pokémon GO and

Ingress are the only ones that create immersive

experiences for the players by linking PoIs to real

world structures. We wish to see new games on the

market utilizing real world -based PoIs to see how big

of an impact they really have on the success and

popularity of a LBG. A system for automatically

creating a database of real world location -based PoIs

has been proposed, for example, by Tregel et al.,

(2017).

The majority of previous studies on LBGs focus

on individual games and their impact on an individual

sector, for example, exercise (Althoff et al., 2016;

LeBlanc et al., 2017). However, understanding

general trends and genres do not guarantee that an

actual game fosters the predicted positive outcomes

on players, so in the future studies on individual

games and their impact will still be needed. Currently

due to the small quantity of LBGs on the market,

meta-studies on learning outcomes of individual

games might not produce reliable results, but in the

future such a meta study could supplement our

understanding of different types of LBGs and

associated positive outcomes.

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