REAL: Reality-Enhanced Applied Games

Pervasive games are an emerging genre combining reality and computing. This article presents a suite of simple pervasive serious games we have developed to explore the concept of “reality-enhanced gaming,” a pattern to tie game play mechanics to the outcomes/measurements of real-world activities. The prototype games were realized in the context of TEAM, an industrial research project aimed at developing apps for flexible and collaborative mobility. The proposed games are examples of different user interfaces we considered useful to meet various significant scenarios, goals and user typologies, especially for improving car driving styles. Given the variety of information sources, contexts of use, and target users, we abstracted a game-oriented framework [Reality-Enhanced AppLied (REAL) games], in order to support reuse and scalability. Through a set of RESTful application programming interfaces (APIs), the REAL framework separates sensor data from actual game implementations, so as to provide different experiences to users, according to their specific needs and preferences. This concept—which allows serious game developers to focus on their specific game logic while seamlessly exploiting a variety of field sensors—is general and may be applied to a variety of domains. We validated REAL developing and field testing five typologies of serious games. Subjective evaluation results show a good level of satisfaction and perceived usefulness. More tests are needed, especially in terms of different application contexts, impact on developers, number and variety of users, and exposure time. However, outcomes confirm the significant potential of reality-enhanced game design and the importance of tools for supporting their development.