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Student competition in Schladming

"Schladming GeoExplorer" and "Light Miners" - pervasive games in use for tourism.

Student competition in Schladming
"Light Miners" &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Foto: © Jacqueline Forzelius

Last week, partners from the EU-funded <link>EXPERIMEDIA project visited Schladming to play some pervasive games and test new apps that were developed as part of a student competition held in Gothenburg, Sweden. Two teams of competition participants and 2 tutors from The Interactive Institute came from Sweden to use the Schladming environment for testing their games.

A pervasive game is a game that uses the real world as game world and then augments this with technology. In one game called "Schladming GeoExplorer" players could "add locations" by taking a geo-tagged photo at a specific site. Other players would then have to try to locate where the picture was taken and take a new photo at the same place. Apart from being a fun game, this is a way for visitors to discover new places in Schladming. The other team, "Light Miners" had built interactive lanterns that were placed around Schladming and up on the Planai mountain. Two teams played the game and had to locate the lanterns and with their mobile phone, change the colour of a lantern to their team colours. The team with the most lanterns lit in their colours for the longest time got the most points.

With this experiment we wanted to explore how the <link>EXPERIMEDIA platform can be used to create, orchestrate and evaluate pervasive games, as well as how a place like Schladming could offer visitors interactive game experiences as a way to explore the region and enhance their visitors’ experience. The points gathered in pervasive games could also be connected to the summer card and perhaps unlock various special offers to the most active players says Magnus Eriksson from the Interactive Institute, a Swedish research institute in interaction design that is one of the partners of <link>EXPERIMEDIA.