13-05-2014, 03:46 PM
Turning life into a game: Foursquare, gamification, and personal mobility
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Abstract
Location-based mobile games (LBMGs) are games that people play while moving through
physical spaces. Research has shown that they can impact individuals’ experience of their
surrounding space and their mobility decisions. Extending that research, this article
looks at the gaming elements of the location-based social network (LBSN) Foursquare,
analyzing how Foursquare’s gaming elements can impact people’s mobility decisions.
Through an analysis of qualitative interviews, the goal of this study is to draw from the
concepts of hybrid space, spatial legibility, and gamification to show how Foursquare’s
gaming elements can add a playful layer to physical spaces and discuss the impacts of the
application designers’ goal of turning “life into a game.
Introduction
In March, 2009 the mobile application Foursquare was released at the annual South by
Southwest festival. Foursquare is an example of a location-based social network (LBSN).
LBSNs are mobile applications that enable people to form social networks and share
their location with friends. Unlike other LBSNs like Latitude and Loopt, however,
Foursquare also features gaming elements that have played a role in the application’s
success. Foursquare’s user base continues to grow, and the application now has over 25
million users (“About Foursquare,” 2012).
Location-based mobile games (LBMGs)
LBMGs are games that take place in public spaces and are typically accessed through
location-aware mobile devices. Likely the first LBMG was Botfighters, which worked
through SMS (Sotamaa, 2002), but most later LBMGs combined GPS capabilities and
mobile internet connections. Research on LBMGs is fairly extensive, containing analy-
ses of specific games like Mogi (Licoppe & Guillot, 2006; Licoppe & Inada, 2006, 2009)
and Alien Revolt (de Souza e Silva, 2008), educational uses of LBMGs (de Souza e Silva
& Sutko, 2009), and theoretical and historical approaches to understanding LBMGs
(de Souza e Silva, 2009; de Souza e Silva & Hjorth, 2009; de Souza e Silva & Sutko,
2008; Gazzard, 2011; Hjorth, 2011a; Richardson, 2010).
Much of this research suggests that the gaming elements of LBMGs can affect how
people relate to physical space. Writing about LBMGs, de Souza e Silva and Hjorth
(2009) argue that they impart a digital ludic layer over physical space, turning physical
spaces into playful spaces. Gazzard (2011) argues that LBMGs and augmented reality
are “reworking our understanding of the spaces and places around us” through the ways
they encourage players to map information and engage with maps of physical spaces
(p. 417), and Hjorth (2011b) discusses “the possibilities for mobile gaming to teach us
new ways of experiencing place upon various levels” (p. 357). Finally, in an analysis that
closely echoes de Souza e Silva’s (2006) discussion of hybrid spaces, Richardson (2011)
argues that the ontology of LBMGs complicates the physical/virtual dichotomy in the
ways they merge the digital with the physical.
Digital ownership
Every venue that has had someone check in at least twice has a Foursquare mayor. People
earn mayorships by being the Foursquare user who has checked in the most times at a
venue in the last 60 days. Because mayorships are awarded to whoever has the most
check-ins, they often switch hands frequently as more people check in to that venue and
Foursquare becomes more popular. Most of my participants were competitive about
earning and maintaining certain mayorships. While there is often no actual reward for
these mayorships besides prestige, the reward of winning the mayorship affected where
my participants chose to go and how frequently they would check in.
Conclusion
This article drew from a conceptual framework that involved hybrid spaces, spatial leg-
ibility, and location-based mobile gaming to analyze the usage practices of people who
interact with Foursquare’s gamification elements. I showed through an analysis of 36
interviews with frequent Foursquare users that the decision to pursue mayorships and
badges can impact how individuals relate to their surrounding spaces and make decisions
about where to go. The pursuit of these elements can turn everyday activities into a play-
ful experience.
While this analysis focused on a specific mobile application, my findings may also
apply outside of the context of Foursquare. With the increasing adoption of smartphone
technology, there is a growing number of mobile applications that use mobile gaming
elements. Many of these applications, such as MyTown and Shadow Cities, are LBMGs
that are somewhat similar to LBMGs like Mogi. Other mobile applications, such as
Joulebug, instead add gaming elements to various non-gaming contexts. Future research
should explore how the gaming elements of a variety of mobile applications can be used
to influence behaviors, and research should also examine how mobile gaming may be
used differently by different populations. As research has shown (Massey, 1994), per-
sonal mobility often implicates issues of gender.