Pervasive gaming: Status, trends and design principles

Pervasive games represent a radically new game form that transfers gaming experiences out into the physical world, weaving ICTs into the fabric of players׳ real environments. This emerging gaming mindset is rather challenging for developers exploring technologies and methods to achieve a high quality interactive experience for users, and designing novel and compelling forms of content. This paper follows a systematic approach in exploring the landscape of pervasive gaming. First, we present 18 representative pervasive game projects, following a generations-based classification. Then, we present a comparative view of those projects with respect to several design aspects. Lastly, we shed light on technological status and trends, design principles, developer guidelines, and research challenges for pervasive games development.