The second issue of the RMIT journal Second Nature is about “Games, Locative & Mobile Media”. I wrote a short article about urban games and their importance for the issues we address with The Mobile City.
In this article I discern five possible ‘levels’ to understand urban games: (1) the city is often used as a model to construct an architecture of computer and video games; (2) the city itself has historically been understood in multiple ways as a game or playground; (3) pervasive games take digital games out to the streets and bridge the digital-physical distinction; (4) (serious) games are used in the process of (re)building actual cities; (5) urban games are a metaphorical lens through which to look at utopian and dystopian futures of cities. For each of these ‘levels’ I raise some relevant questions.
You can read the article here >> or download a PDF of the article (1,6 MB).
There are a number of other interesting contributions. See the journal’s table of contents.
The article in Second Nature journal about The Mobile City project and urban gaming by 'Playful Identities' research blog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands License.
Tags: City, game, hybrid space, Locative Media, mobile media, The Mobile City