Location-based games (LBGs) provide an incredible opportunity for players to construct and augment real-world and virtual experiences. In prior work on LBGs, researchers have studied how to make the experience of exploring cities playable, and recommended enhancing placemaking, i.e., helping players make meaning in the virtual and real-world during gameplay. The possibilities of exploration and learning have been studied through these digital games that leverage the geographical location for completing tasks in the games [1]. The influence of gaming on health is usually viewed as binary, either "good" (for instance, exergames) or "bad" (e.g., addicting). However, during our interviews across a series of studies related to LBGs, we learned how players of commercialized LBGs used the games to benefit their social, mental, and physical wellbeing. This initial understanding motivated us to focus in-depth on learning about the nuances of what life experiences affect players' motivation for gaming and how and why people play LBGs specifically to manage health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In our work, we considered the use of popular LBGs: Ingress, Pokémon GO, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (HPWU) [2]. All three games are developed by the augmented reality mobile game company Niantic, whose design philosophy is supported by three pillars: exploration in the real world, building community, and exercising. When the pandemic hit in 2020, these pillars were largely disrupted by the need for social distancing, requiring rapid changes in their design and gameplay. This provided us an opportunity to think about the future of designing LBGs, building on literature on playable cities and placemaking as well as games and health. Can we design LBGs that do not support any of those pillars but are still compelling to play for end-users? If so, what would that game look like? These were interesting questions to think about, given that many of the LBGs that came after the massive success of Pokémon GO tended to stick with similar designs. The global pandemic put players in extreme conditions and disrupted their play, which would be very difficult to implement and test under normal circumstances. This, in a sense, offered us an opportunity for re-envisioning these games.

Niantic made rapid adjustments in external social events, such as Pokémon GO Fest and Ingress First Saturday, shifting them to online events. They also made changes and added features within the games to accommodate post-COVID play from home (e.g., remote raid pass in Pokémon GO, Knight Bus in HPWU, drone in Ingress). During this time, we asked players who already used LBGs to manage their well-being to help us rethink and reimagine what gameplay may look like in a post-COVID world. We specifically posed the question on how we might design LBGs when the three pillars previously mentioned are disrupted, as they were experiencing the disruption in their lives.

  Methods

We asked participants about their LBG gaming experience under normal circumstances, their LBG gaming experience during the pandemic, and how it changed during social distancing. Following this discussion, participants brainstormed design ideas with our team to reimagine LBGs. We conducted a diary study with 11 participants for seven days to understand their gameplay. Next, we invited the participants to participate in a 120-minute synchronous virtual co-design session on Zoom and Mural board (a virtual collaborative whiteboard). We had two groups with three participants each. Their co-design ideas are presented in Figure 1 and Figure 2. Scheduling was difficult for others, so we also started an asynchronous Discord group with seven participants (also re-inviting those who participate via Zoom). Players were 20–51 years in age, managed several difficulties with health, and played Pokémon GO, HPWU, or Ingress for three to 30 hours per week.

In this article, we focus on the ideas and experiences that we co-designed with our participants. We also triangulate these co-design ideas with similar findings from our team's prior co-design study before the pandemic, which focused on promoting healthy behaviors through Pokémon GO [3].

  Envisioning a New Normal for Location-Based Games

Having experienced the changes in gaming during the pandemic, our participants envisioned the future design of location-based games in this "new normal." Developing, continuing, and reinforcing a sense of shared identity and connection during the isolated times of social distancing was extremely crucial during the pandemic, which was provided through these games. This social connection is more important than ever in the post-pandemic world where people are not only physically distanced but often find themselves in a very divided society. Participants explained making meaning through sociocultural experiences scaffolded by LBGs can promote exploration, help build and strengthen these connections with the community, and support healthy behaviors beyond physical health. However, they were also able to think about supporting these pillars in a different way than how they have been in previous LBGs, as described in the following sections.

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Community-driven changes are essential to implement for quality-of-life improvement of players with different needs. This is an example of universal design in action.

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Place versus space: preserving and representing what is meaningful to the community. In addition to exploring places and preserving collectible items from specific locations, players wanted to present and represent themselves and their communities through the game. Community is involved in decision-making to a certain extent in LBGs. For example, using the Wayfarer criteria,¹ some players review and moderate the description of the portals that are submitted by players. If the description or submission of a request for a new portal, PokéStop, or Gym meets a certain rating given by several reviewers then it gets approved by Niantic and the new location is added as a point of interest.

A discussion emerged in the co-design sessions about what actually ends up getting represented and preserved in the game, as a digital representation of the world. An interesting example to consider for this discussion is a memorial park bench. A local player community may want to honor a player who passed away. Still, the larger community of reviewers may not approve of it or may question² the scalability of such requests [4]. This makes us wonder what we are trying to preserve here through these landmarks and artifacts and what the player community wants to preserve and represent. Traditionally, we have been focusing on preserving "facts," meaning objective information about the point of interest. A local Pokémon GO player may not be a culturally significant public figure, but to the play community, they are very important. Players naturally would want to remember other players who passed away to commemorate their experience at certain locations and keep them in the memory of the local gaming community. What does this tension mean to these criteria that could make it challenging to preserve certain local contexts that are meaningful for the players?

In our co-design group 2, participants discussed their frustrations in how community moderators reject some requests from the community members without providing appropriate reasoning. They recalled that it was nice to go to places and learn about quirky tailored names added by the local community.

"I wish that they [Niantic] would take a harder look at things, I also wish that when you submit portals that things just work flat out rejected like it could come back to you and say, Please edit your description.[…]I submitted a beautiful statue, I guess, about two years ago and it finally worked its way through, like, what is it wayfarer now.: And it was rejected because it and the reason given was the picture was bad. I sent it to a few people. And I was like, how can I improve this picture the next time I go back. And they were like, oh, looks fine to me. I wouldn't have rejected it."

Integrating health: something to look forward to every day. Participants in our co-design sessions explained that the design of LBGs needs a broader focus on mental health and well-being. Accountability is an integral motivator of behavior change. Participants from our prior co-design work before the pandemic had also requested functionalities within the game for indoor exercising, different physical activities in addition to walking, and challenging and matching peers for exercise and other physical activities [3]. For example, in Session 4 [3], participants suggested a social ranking system similar to Fitbit so players could challenge friends based on healthy behaviors, such as increasing step count. Participants expanded on this idea to incorporate the existing competition among the three teams (Mystic, Instinct, and Valor) in Pokémon GO for health promotion.

The influence of LBGs on physical health is visible such as the numerous Pokémon GO weight loss stories. Additionally, participants explained how they used the game for coping and activation for routine tasks during the pandemic, which largely challenged the routine tasks and routes of participants. A participant explained:

"Honestly, it's been very mentally and emotionally draining for me not [being] able to go out into the community and do anything. [I'm a] very goal-oriented person and not having anything to do has been very hard for me. So, with Harry Potter, the daily challenges, the Knight Bus, the feeling like I can communicate with my community. I can be a part of things. I can reach goals [and that] has been incredibly helpful for me in terms of my mental health."

Designing to integrate overall health beyond physical activity also means making the invisible influence of the game on mental health more intentional and explicit in the design of LBGs than it currently is. For example, upon feeding your cute Pokémon or a pet buddy in the game, it can check in on you saying, "Thank you for feeding me. Have you eaten today?" (see Figure 3). Designers should consider this aspect of supporting health in everyday life by developing daily and regular healthy habits in small increments instead of having one-time large goals through the game, which can make people quit both the game and the habit.

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We asked players who already used LBGs to manage their well-being to help us rethink and reimagine what gameplay may look like in a post-COVID world.

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Expanding social engagement: I want to play with people but I'm shy. People sometimes for various reasons, want to play with others or enjoy the social aspect of the game, but they may not like to interact by coordinating with others, raiding together, and having conversations during the raid. As LBGs influence real-world interactions, it is important to think about and scaffold varied ways of socialization and social play for those people. An example of such an interaction could include a scavenger hunt incorporating specific player roles and local community knowledge. Remote interactions can also involve sending their buddy to check on others. As an example, a participant in our prior co-design study [3] suggested introducing a Tamagotchi type of feature for taking care of the buddy Pokémon in Pokémon GO:

"I mean, like Tamagotchi2 thing, imagine you had a buddy Pokémon and you had fed it to be healthy every day. […] 'cause we're conscious of the fact that like, 'Yeah, I fed my Eevee good food and now he's healthier. When I fed him an ice cream bar, he didn't feel good.' They could even add a social aspect to it. You can feed your friend's Pokémon but only good things."

To support proximity-based interactions, LBGs can incorporate geo-caching options according to participants, wherein players can leave items and gifts for other friends to pick up when they visit a particular location (see Figure 4).

"Geocaching? Leave digital marks on portals so other players can do something with it."—Co-design Group 2

Rolling back accommodations during the pandemic. During the pandemic, Niantic relaxed rules and distance-based constraints in the game to continue facilitating social interactions and access to game portals so people could play and restock game resources remotely. It provided an inexpensive and accessible outlet for socializing for many at the time of the global health and economic crisis. However as some parts of the world had access to vaccines, many started transitioning to a new normal of laxing or removing laws around social distancing, Niantic announced they would roll back the accommodation made during the pandemic, which went into effect on August 1. Consequently, 196,518 people signed an online petition to Niantic, urging them to retain the feature that allowed for "increased interaction distance" for continued accessibility and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic [5]. Responding to the community's feedback, on August 25, 2021, Niantic officially announced to reinstate these features allowing players to interact with PokéStops and Gyms within a radius of 80 meters, thus allowing players to access the game from their home [6]. In this case, a vast majority of players helped bring Niantic's attention to the issue of accessibility. Such community-driven changes are essential to implement for quality-of-life improvement of players with different needs. This is an example of universal design in action as it not only helped players with access issues such as wheelchair users or those experiencing social anxiety, but also the player base in general. However, removing it caused distress and anxiety in the community and to players wanting the game experience to be less stressful overall in an already very stressful time during the pandemic. This experience also demonstrates how once the rules are relaxed, resulting in improving the gaming experience for many, it becomes very difficult for developers to reinstate the rules that not only hinder the gameplay but potentially very negatively impact the overall engagement and motivation to play the game.

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Developing, continuing, and reinforcing a sense of shared identity and connection during the isolated times of social distancing was crucial during the pandemic.

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  Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated issues with equity in the society, allowing some people to be safe while making some others vulnerable to a life-threatening illness amid uncertainty. At the same time, it heavily impacted the key pillars of LBGs, providing us with an opportunity to understand the limitations of LBGs and envision multiple modalities of access for social participation through the game. We just scratched the surface of how virtual and physical space in location-based games can be leveraged to enhance meaning-making to form places that support socialization beyond direct, in real-life, close-proximity interactions and broader conceptualization of health, including mental health and well-being. We hope game designers and researchers can continue to explore inclusive ways in which the needs of players can be supported as we transition to a new normal.

  References

[1] Yip, J. C., Windleharth. T. W., and Lee, J. H. Collaborative scientizing in Pokémon GO online communities. In Smith, B. K., Borge, M., Mercier, E., and Lim, K. Y. (Eds.). Making a Difference: Prioritizing Equity and Access in CSCL, 12^th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) 2017, Volume 1. International Society of the Learning Sciences, Philadelphia, 2017.

[2] Bhattacharya, A., Windleharth, T. W., Lee, C., Paramasivam, A., Kientz, J. A., Yip, J. C., and Lee, J. H. The pandemic as a catalyst for reimagining the foundations of location-based games. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CHI PLAY (2021); DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3474707

[3] Kim, Y., Bhattacharya, A., Kientz, J. A., and Lee, J. H. "It should be a game for fun, not exercise": Tensions in designing health-related features for Pokémon GO. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). ACM, New York, 2020, 1–13.

[4] u/Xander113. A memorial for a Pokémon Player. Reddit. April 10, 2020; https://www.reddit.com/r/NianticWayfarer/comments/fys087/a_memorial_for_a_Pokemon_player

[5] Petition on Change.org: Keep increased PokéStop and Gym interaction distance. 2021; https://www.change.org/p/niantic-keep-increased-pokestop-and-gym-interaction-distance

[6] Silberling, A. After community backlash, Pokémon GO reinstates a COVID Safety and Accessibility Feature. TechCrunch. August 26, 2021; https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/26/after-community-backlash-pokemon-go-reinstates-a-covid-safety-and-accessibility-feature

  Authors

Arpita Bhattacharya is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of Informatics. Her primary research is in the human centered design of technologies for health, specifically focusing on mental health.

Jin Ha Lee is an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School and the director of the GAMER Group. Her research explores how to organize, preserve, and provide access to popular cultural media from a user-centered approach. She is at level 50 in Pokémon GO.

Jason C. Yip is an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. He is also a senior research fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. His research focuses on technologies for new collaborations and examining how current technological trends influence family collaborations around learning.

Julie A. Kientz is a professor and chair in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering, University of Washington. She directs the Computing for Healthy Living and Learning Lab. Her research focuses on understanding and reducing the user burdens of interactive technologies for health, education, and families through the design of future applications.

  Footnotes

1. https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/wayfarer/?s=wayspot-eligibility&f=eligibility-criteria&l=en&p=web

2. Take this example of a subreddit discussion on requesting the approval of naming memorial bench after a Pokémon GO player [4].

  Figures

Figure 1. Co-design ideas from group 1 on Zoom.

Figure 2. Co-design ideas from group 2 on Zoom.

Figure 3. An example of a buddy pet character (author Jason Yip's pet dog named Foofoo) as a customized example of checking in on the player's well-being after the player feeds the buddy.

Figure 4. As the player approaches a landmark they can interact with, they get a notification that their friend with username, Tonberry, left a gift box for them.

 

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