Walking with Geo-Zombie: A pervasive game to engage people in urban crowdsourcing

Abstract

In this paper we present results gathered from field trials while using a pervasive game, called Geo-Zombie. It intermixes reality with virtual zombies, providing a game experience to be lived in the urban environment. Geo-Zombie is designed for a specific goal: engaging people in collecting geo-referenced data about urban accessibility. The game has been designed with the aim to involve a large number of players/volunteers in the activity of signaling urban barriers while walking. To get ammo to react to a zombie attack, in fact, players can sense/map (crowdsensing) urban barriers and facilities and transmit those information back to an operative center (crowdsourcing). With the aim to assess the efficacy of Geo-Zombie, we conducted real experiments contrasting three different mobile apps, specifically designed to: i) simply collect urban information without providing any gaming experience (Basic), ii) reward volunteers that participate in the crowdsourcing activity (Reward), and iii) provide fun and entertainment to players who contribute (Geo-Zombie). We here provide results along two different perspectives: a quantitative one (e.g., number of collected data and similar) and a qualitative one (i.e., the players' experience). These results confirm the feasibility and suitability of our approach and stimulate interesting discussions.