Course: Design of Location-based Mobile Games – Introduction

A 3-hour course on designing location-based games was delivered in the context of the Interact 2017 conference in Mumbai, India.

The course handouts are available online. 

The objective is to introduce the participants to location-based games and to the challenges relating to designing them. Key characteristics of this new genre are introduced first, followed by a design framework and a set of design guidelines. Examples of location-based games will are presented and typical design patterns as extracted from previous workshops are discussed. Previouse versions of this course have already been ran in the frame of several conferences and summer schools (Sintoris, 2014). Typical course participants include interaction designers, game designers and developers, practitioners and researchers interested in location-based games. Examples of games developed by the course organizers include MuseumScrabble, RebelsVsSpies, Taggling, etc. The course  is structured as following: (a)  key concepts and definitions  (b) examples, (c) positioning technologies, (c) designing location-based games, (d) design guidelines, (e) hands-on experience: design of a game.