Them and Us: An indoor pervasive gaming experience

Abstract The emergence of pervasive technologies has led to an increased interest in both the design and the development of pervasive games. This paper presents “Them and Us”, an indoor pervasive game which uses theatrical processes to encourage social interaction within the confines of the game. The “Them and Us” game play places a group of people together in a single space to interact with one another, whilst location-based technology informs us about the locative-nature (who, where and when) of the social interactions formed while in that space, in order to score points based on this interaction. “Them and Us” adopts a narrative-based approach in which a script informs the way that participants play the game and the way their social behaviour, in regard to this becomes part of the game mechanism. This new genre of interactive game-based artwork intertwines the physical and virtual contexts of the players in order to create new and exciting player experiences. The design of “Them and Us” emphasizes the use of tracking the audience and performers as a way to encourage interaction within the game-space.