Tribal Knowledge War: A Location-based Pervasive Knowledge War Game

Abstract

In this thesis, we aim to examine the relationship between a game's pervasiveness and its entertainment value, and try to use this relationship to create a game that is both educational and fun to play. It is our hope that a game that is both fun and educational will motivate players actively learn and try to find new knowledge on their own in order to become better at the game.To examine this relationship, we will develop a prototype of a game that aims to be both fun and educational. This game is called Tribal Knowledge War.We will first conduct a prestudy, where we will find and present information about the Android platform and pervasive games. We will look at what possibilities the Android platform offers for making a pervasive game, and possible ways to implement these. During the prestudy, we will also find and discuss ways to create a good educational game by pursuing some core aesthetics in the game: providing a decent challenge, presenting a compelling fantasy, and appealing to the player's curiosity.After the prestudy we will design and develop a prototype of a game, where the focus will be on competitiveness and winning quiz-duels against close players. A user experiment will then be conducted, where players are invited to play the game against other players, and afterwords fill out a survey where they will explain their feelings and opinions of the game.In the end of this thesis, the result of the survey will be used to examine to what degree the game was successful as a fun and educational game. These results will show that the game scores high in general usability and is relatively easy to learn how to play. It will also show that the participants found it fun to play, and enjoyed the format of the game. However, while players enjoyed the game, the results suggest that the game does not do enough to stimulate curiosity and motivate further learning. We will use the results and the opinions expressed by players to suggest improvements tothe game to fix shortcomings.