Mobile Augmented Reality Game

– Bridging the Real and the Virtual

Digital Design (Hons)

Reagan Qiu
0812240
 Abstract

This project investigates the development of an online mobile game which uses Augmented
1
Reality technology to create a multi-user digital interactive environment within the physical world. My
research and final project outcome aims to shift the diegetic space of traditional massively multiplayer
online role-playing game worlds (MMORPGs) into the real world. This is achieved by first studying the
similar characteristics found between the real world and game worlds (e.g. shops, different terrains and
specific landmarks used to initiate quests or jobs) and then bridging them together through the use of
the GPS data determined by mobile devices. The confluence of the digital and the physical allows
players to engage with traditional gameplay elements in a new format and give them relevance to their
direct surroundings.

The research undertaken in this project is not only relevant to the development of location-
based social gaming but also the development of the Augmented Reality (AR) application industry.
Robert Rice (2009), the chairman of the AR Consortium, identifies many of the current applications
available in the market as “level 1” Augmented Reality where it is “mostly about superimposing graphics
on a video stream” through the use of fiducial or graphic markers to track 3D objects. Recently, there
has also been a huge development in Augmented Reality location-aware search applications on smart
phones such as Layar and Wikitude which take into account “where you are and what is around you”
(Rice, 2009). These mobile applications are defined by Rice (2009) as the beginning of “level 2”
Augmented Reality which “gives us the sensation of looking through and seeing the world around us
layered with information, data and visualisations”. My project takes Augmented Reality one step further
and explores the “massively multi-user, persistent, shared dynamic” attributes of “level 3” Augmented
Reality (Rice, 2009).

This paper examines the use of various design methodologies implemented during the
development of the project including experimental research, case studies of currently available pseudo
AR games and the use of an iterative design process to balance gameplay. The game itself will be
developed inside the popular Unity game engine and will be programmed in Javascript and C++. A
finished prototype of the project will be deployed on compatible Apple iOS devices such as the iPhone 4
and the iPad 2.
 Footnotes

1. Augmented Reality is a term used to describe the overlaying of computer-generated digital

material on top of the real world.
 References

Rice, R. (2009, March 20). Augmented vision and the decade of ubiquity. Retrieved October 25, 2010,
from http://curiousraven.squarespace.com/future-vision/