Urban Games to Design the Augmented City

Authors

  • Vanessa De Luca SUPSI, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland - Interaction Design Lab - DACD
  • Maresa Bertolo Politecnico di Milano, School of Design, dep. INDACO (Industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/23.6139

Abstract

Seen through the eyes of games, urban environments can appear as museums, storytelling venues, or intense multi-user experiences that could attract people away from their living rooms into the city. Engaging physical, social, and emotional levels, urban games emerge today as powerful resources, able to lead to a playful reading of the augmented city we live in. Observing recent play practices such as hybrid treasure hunts and geo-location games, several “patterns” can be noticed and recognized as new models for negotiating the density of urban landscapes in a physically and digitally mixed reality. Discovering and wandering across cities are dynamic patterns that invite the research and design community to consider the importance of retrieving the human ludic attitude to explore spaces; these can be recognized in “Rhabdomancy” and “Flânerie”, two interesting methods to design the augmented city. They perpetuate a constantly renewed playful relationship between places and human activities, offering to players - as modern citizens - an opportunity for actively participating in contemporary city-life.

Author Biographies

Vanessa De Luca, SUPSI, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland - Interaction Design Lab - DACD

Ph.D. in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication, she is part of Interaction Design Lab (SUPSI - Switzerland) and Around Play and Interaction Design research groups. Her current research and teaching experiences center on non-ordinary game environments and the intertwining of game/play design elements in the daily life. Favourite game: Go.

Maresa Bertolo, Politecnico di Milano, School of Design, dep. INDACO (Industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion)

After her academic degree in Computer Science in the field of Computer Graphics and Animation, the interest for Interaction Design brought her to the Politecnico di Milano, where she is now tenured researcher; her research fields are Game Studies; CG and Animation (2D, 3D, S3D); Stereoscopy; Interaction Design. She plays different kind of games, maybe her favourite today could be Power Grid.

Downloads

Published

2012-05-25

How to Cite

De Luca, V. and Bertolo, M. (2012) “Urban Games to Design the Augmented City”, Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 6(1), pp. 71–83. doi: 10.7557/23.6139.

Issue

Section

Perspectives