DIAC Game Group/
Mobility (Gaming) Links and Studies

- last update, Feb. 11th, 2003

Articles & project descripts: sociology, CSCW, Design Studies, Game Studies etc

Giorgio Da Bormida & Paul Lefrere: User Presence in Mobile Environments, in Being There: Concepts, effects and measurement of user presence in synthetic environments, G. Riva, F. Davide, W.A IJsselsteijn (Eds.) Ios Press, 2003. Part of the Journal "Emerging Communication", this issue also available online at http://www.vepsy.com/communication/volume5.html.

Anne Galloway: Going Anywhere, Being Everywhere: metaphors of mobility for ubiquitous computing (position paper from Ubicomp conference, 2002)

Marcus Matthews: Developing Action-based Mobile Games (Gamasutra, Nov. 25, 2002)

"Technology, work and surveillance: organisational goals, privacy and resistance" project at The Virtual Society Site, UK
http://www.sociology.plymouth.ac.uk/~virtsoc/
http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/projects/mason.htm

The Active Badge Project (Olivettie, Xerox Parc back in 93)
http://www.hcibib.org/gs.cgi?terms=active+badge&highlight=checked

Barry Wellman et al
"Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices to Challenge Surveillance" (with Steve Mann and Jason Nolan).
Wearable Computing Project.

"Towards Design Guidelines for Portable Digital Proxies: A Case Study with Social Net and Social Proximity" (Terry, Mynatt, Ryall, Leigh)
(they mention the Lovegety thing)

Disposable Love: The Rise and Fall of a Virtual Pet (Bloch, Lemish in New Media and Society, 1999)
(On the use of Tamagotchi)

Mobile Gaming: A Framework for Evaluating the Industry 2000-2005. Partanen, Jussi-Pekka (2001)

Resource sites

TheFeature.com - "it's all About the Mobile Internet"
articles of interest:
-- Justin Hall: Multiplayer - the Only Mobile Game
--Coming Soon: Mobile Phone Multi-player Gaming via GPRS

Gamasutras Mobile Game Resource site

mGAIN - a Finnish-Swedish-Norwegian-English collaborative research project on Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture, including Espen Aarseth, Raine Koskimaa, Jason Rutter and Jo Bryce. Oriented towards the 6th framework programme.
"Our approach is inclusive instead of restrictive, including all entertainment delivered through a mobile device, whether it be a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant or a handheld gaming device. This way we can address the foreseeable convergence of the various mobile technologies. Examples of such mobile entertainment include but are not restricted to mobile games, music, video and gambling."
- Site holds project description, link to conferences, upcoming articles etc. Check out their links.

Game Experiments, gadgets, service descriptions

M.A.D. COUNTDOWN (Mobile multi-player hybrid reality gaming, steffen p walz, he describes it "as a testbed for qualitatively researching players' practices of proximate distance and distant proximity-making, -maintenance, and -annulment on the move in trust/risk environments. well, it was also much fun for the players, it seems, when combining live action role playing with elements from electronic art's 'majestic', and 2D adventures/MUD-like hangouts.")

BotFighter (Run around the city. Check (using SMS) whether any unfriendly players are nearby. Shoot them with SMS.) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.11/location_pr.html
http://www.itsalive.com/games/gamedetails.asp?Message=83
- Olli Sotamaa has written a paper on it, "All the world's a Botfighter Stage: Notes on Location-Based Multi-User Gaming", which can be found in the CGDC 2002 Proceedings

Pirates
This is a game that takes place in high physical proximity to other players
http://www.viktoria.informatik.gu.se/groups/play/projects/pirates/pirates.html
And some papers relating to it: http://www.viktoria.informatik.gu.se/groups/play/publications/2001/pirates.interact.pdf

The Nokia Game

The Japanese "Lovegetys" (alternative version of the Tamagotchi or virtual pet, which beeps when you are near a person of opposite sex set in same mode as you)
There is a brief description of it here, plus these articles in Wired:
www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/12342.html ("Bleep at first sight")
http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/12899.html ("Love: Japanese Style")

Ring, Ring! It's Your Soul Mate (article in Wired on mobile phone dating/game services. Lists a number of providers)

Conferences & workshops

NB! Note that the MGain site also has a pretty detailed list of mobile "stuff" related conferences.

GDC MOBILE
San Jose, California, March 4-5, 2003.
Leaders of the mobile communications and game development industries meet at GDC Mobile to share information, explore opportunities and make deals to deliver compelling mobile entertainment to millions of consumers around the world. Register now at http://www.gdcmobile.com to save up to 40% off GDC conference passes. Use priority code INGMOB3 and save an additional $25 on your registration.

Mobile Gaming Workshop, Sagas Project.
Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby 3.4.-9.4.2003, HFF, Munich. Application deadline:10.3.2003
Participants will form teams of three to five members and develop during this intense 5-day workshop fictional concepts for wireless devices considering the challenges, limitations and advantages coming with the choice of designing for mobile technology.

The 5th European Personal Mobile Communications Conference
Glasgow, Scotland. 22 - 25 April, 2003.

Front stage/Back stage: Mobile communication and the renegotiation of the social sphere
Norway, Grimstad, 22 - 24 June, 2003. Deadline for papers Nov 15, 2002.

The Good, the Bad and the Irrelevant
Finland, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, 3-5 September 2003.
"Technology is one of the key elements contributing to rapid global change. Whether we are interested in developing technology, or studying its relationship with people and everyday life, or seeking to benefit from the potential it creates, or worried over its consequences, we can hardly overlook its role in the shaping of our future. But what can we say of the direction and meaning of this development? Through the four themes, - the extended human - users as innovators - dealing with diversity - the reconfiguration of society, the organisers of this conference want to focus the attention of an interdisciplinary community on some of the key arenas where the future relationship of people and new digital technology and its applications are being negotiated."

Alternative Mobility Futures Conference
to be held at Lancaster University, 9-11 January 2004.
Technological, social and cultural developments in transportation, border control, mobile communication, 'intelligent' infrastructure, surveillance and global positioning are rapidly changing the conditions of possibility for all forms of mobility. New ways of dwelling, communicating, and moving (as well as policing, searching, and excluding) are emerging at the interface between corporeal, imaginative, communicative, and virtual forms of travel and habitation. This international Conference seeks to explore the new possibilities for 'dwelling in mobility' and for 'mobilising dwelling' that are the focus of recent work in sociology, geography, science studies, women's studies, and transport, tourism, and travel studies. As mobile connectivity begins to occur in new ways, what hybridisations of the mover and the moved, the dweller and the dwelling, the human and the digital are occurring and what are some of their likely consequences? What effects will these emerging alternative mobility futures have on the constitution of the bodily, the local, the regional, the national, the diasporic and the global?
The Conference will be organized by Dr Mimi Sheller (m.sheller@lancaster.ac.uk) and Prof John Urry (j.urry@lancaster.ac.uk), Sociology Dept, Lancaster University, LA1 4YL, UK. It is expected that there will be no more than 100 delegates. Costs will be kept to a minimum. Abstracts up to 100 words should be sent by email to one of the organizers by March 10th, 2003.