Casual Mobile Gameplay: On Integrated Practices of Research, Design and Play

The document argues that casual mobile games such as cubodo blur the boundary between play and everyday life, and that studying and designing them therefore requires research, design, and play to be integrated rather than separated. It makes the case for a "Mobile Game Lab" (MGL), a collaborative initiative within the German "Landmarks of Mobile Entertainment" project, which aims to develop dynamic landmark maps through casual play. The authors contend that mobile and casual games should be playtested within players' everyday contexts rather than in stationary laboratories, proposing a "Living Lab" model that unites research, development, and play.

The empirical basis rests on playtests of cubodo conducted in Bremen. A December 2010 study with 12 players, combining log-file data with pre- and post-play interviews, found that play was spatially and temporally dispersed through daily routines, with 88% of sessions consisting of brief "situation checks." Virtual packages altered players' perceptions of real places and generated indirect social encounters, and clustering play actions could identify personal and social landmarks with reasonable accuracy, a result the authors suggest could support pedestrian navigation beyond the game. A subsequent 18-day playtest yielded a first working model of landmark identification and showed that data collection did not impair playability.

The authors are candid about the limits of their progress. As of Summer 2011, the Mobile Game Lab had not yet achieved its criteria for a successful start, namely a growing and engaged player community, and small developers have been reluctant to join. The landmark identification model is therefore presented as an early, work-in-progress contribution to a broader methodology for living-lab research in mobile entertainment.