Leveraging Pervasive Games for Tourism: An Augmented Reality Perspective

Creating an augmented reality (AR) urban tourism application presents several interactivity challenges on how to convey an engaging multimedia experience on-site. This article describes a methodology for fast prototyping of multimedia mobile applications dedicated to urban tourism storytelling with special focus on AR techniques. Following the lessons learned in previous applications the systematic creation of location-based augmented reality (LBAR) applications is explored in this article. The goal is to create serious games for tourism that follow a main narrative but where the story can automatically adapt itself to the current location of the player, assimilate possible detours and allow posterior out-of-location playback. Adaptable stories can use dynamic information from map sources such as points of interest (POI), elevation or virtual buildings. The article discusses and presents solutions for media acquisition, interactive storytelling, game-design interface and multi-disciplinary coordination for mobile app development.