Abstract
This chapter consists of in-depth case studies of two location-based games played in Melbourne: Urban Codemakers (2010–11) and Wayfinder Live (2017), both designed by Troy Innocent. These games were directly funded by government bodies in Melbourne to promote the city’s cultural and artistic life to residents and tourists. But its creator was given a broad remit to fulfil these agendas and used them to reflect on the city’s history, architecture, and future development. Through auto-ethnographic observation and interviews with the designer and several players of the games, I reflect on the broader relationship between location-based games, their players, and the institutions and authorities that fund and enable them.
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Notes
- 1.
The Laneway Commissions process involved an open tender, whereby artists could submit their proposed project and apply for up to AU$50,000 in funding (equivalent to US$40,000 or €32,300). The proposals were then assessed according to a set of selection criteria and a number of projects were shortlisted. Shortlisted projects then participated in workshops to develop their ideas in conjunction with the City of Melbourne, with several projects eventually granted funding based on the selection criteria. The ‘essential criteria’ included ‘innovation in approach to the art form’; ‘innovation in interpreting specific sites and/or the public domain as a whole’; and ‘capacity to engage a selected audience’; among others (see City of Melbourne, 2010c: 12).
- 2.
This concentration of very active players also has implications for the competition between guilds. Because players can freely choose their guild at the beginning of the game, there is no mechanism to ensure each guild has a balanced number of players. This meant that whichever guild had the higher number of active players would have a competitive advantage. I am only speculating, but this might have also affected the motivation of players in the lowest-scoring guild (the Ecologists, with less than half the layers of the other two guilds). Seeing the scores swayed by the small number of heavily active players in the game, other players may have felt less inclined to invest their time and energy collecting tags if their contribution would have little impact on the final outcome of the game. Allocating players evenly across the guilds is one possible solution I raised with Innocent , but this would also negate the players’ attachment to and investment in their chosen guild.
- 3.
These took the form of face-to-face, semi-structured discussions, ranging from 30–90 minutes each. Participants were recruited through flyers handed out to people that attended the walking tours and via posts on the game’s Twitter account. Innocent also directly emailed some players of his previous games—including Urban Codemakers and the 2016 version of Wayfinder—intending to play Wayfinder Live , asking them to contact me if they were interested to discuss their experiences. Three participants were recruited this way. No incentives were offered to any participants for their time.
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Leorke, D. (2019). Wayfinding and Codemaking in the City of Melbourne. In: Location-Based Gaming. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0683-9_7
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