Civic engagement meets pervasive gaming: towards long-term mobile participation

Abstract

An increasing number of smartphone applications to engage and involve citizens in themes of urban government is available and enables mobile participation on-the-go. However, the current functionality of so-called "m-participation apps" is often restricted to one-way reporting of issues by citizens, and thus more strategic long-term participation is not supported. To enhance traditional m-participation approaches and encourage continuous engagement, we investigate their fusion with location-based games in a user-centered research process. In this paper, we present the results of a web survey among 33 gamers which uncover the main motivators for playing location-based games. Based upon these findings, we derive a new long-term m-participation concept named Community Circles and introduce a first functional prototype to be used in future focus group studies.