AN URBAN ENCOUNTER

Abstract

Computing research has long been interested in location-aware mobile games, such as hybrid reality games, location-based games and urban games. With an increasingly pervasive IT infrastructure and comparatively affordable mobile devices, such games are becoming part of everyday play around the world. A study of an urban night-game called Encounter widely played in the Former Soviet Union and the Russian-speaking Diaspora is presented. The ways in which IT enables a complex interaction between the local experience of play in the urban environment and the geographically distributed nature of the player community are considered. The findings illustrate how this form of location-aware mobile game-play pulled together local engagement and global player communities into socio-technical assemblages, showing the interplay between local attachments, distant connections and the location-based communication in daily experience. The most important outcome of these games then was not the direct individual engagement with the urban environment through technology or the collaboration with strangers in the course of play (although these were the necessary prerequisites), but the social relationships that, while gained in-game, could be leveraged for civic engagement, belonging and mutual support. While the local, physical experience of the everyday and the game was important, the connections to the distributed community resulted in expanded horizons and changed the nature of the local experience as players felt they could belong to something larger than the locales they physically inhabited.

Keywords:

• urban games
• location-awareness
• mobility
• play
• social relationships
• community

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the NSF grant IIS-0917401. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We are indebted to all of our respondents for their generous participation in our study.

Notes

The latest statistics for Encounter games can be located at: http://world.en.cx/Statistics.aspx. The 2011 annual report of the number of games played per type can be located in the following thread on the world.en.cx forum (in Russian): http://world.en.cx/Guestbook/Messages.aspx?topic=150173

For a detailed listing of former and current urban night-games projects in the countries of the Former Soviet Union, please see the Russian Wikipedia page on the topic (in Russian): http://goo.gl/RPd48

For a detailed description of all Encounter game types in English, please refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_(game)

Global Encounter rules include ensuring player safety in game design as well as restrictions on alcohol consumption and exceeding speed limits while driving during game play.

The main site of the network is http://en.cx. The owners of the Encounter project also have an http://world.en.cx sub-domain where they maintain a global forum, post announcements and occasionally run online games available to all players worldwide.

Game designers often use ‘EN’ for ‘Encounter’ to mark objects and markings placed in the urban environment that are part of the game. The same markings can also be spray-painted in abandoned buildings to signal to players that they are in the correct location.