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Abstract
Augmented reality technology involves the layering of dynamic, context-aware computer-generated input over the user s field of vision. The adoption of augmented reality in game design has resulted in the creation of playful experiences that explicitly link the game world to everyday reality. These experiences have been under theorised. Instead, researchers and designers have focused on the technical aspects of augmented reality, which has created a spatial dualism where augmented realty is conceptualised within a binary of the real or the virtual. This thesis examines the spatial experiences associated with mobile augmented reality games; conceptualising augmented reality as a process of spatial layering. Engaging with mobile augmented reality games both theoretically and empirically, this thesis extends scholarship and implications of future design.
This thesis re-evaluates the spatial metaphors used to understand augmented reality as a multi-layered spatial experience that directly engages the player. Over-emphasis on the technical aspects of mobile augmented reality leads to conceptualisations of it as primarily a see through screen allowing for easy adoption of the screen-as-a-window metaphor. Similarly, an over emphasis on the boundary that separates play from everyday reality sidetracks player agency in negotiating and establishing such contractual boundaries. The result is a construction of a spatial dualism, where play is conducted either inside or outside of a fixed boundary. Such metaphors are re-evaluated as conceptual tools for the analysis of mobile augmented reality, arguing for a conceptualisation of mobile augmented reality games as multi-spatial layers.
Case studies of a selection of mobile augmented reality games are analysed utilising mixed methodologies to create a triangulation of data. Four mobile augmented reality games are analysed as a series of elements, focusing on boundary maintenance, prescription of roles, and the integration of the everyday. The fluidity of the roles is re-examined via the direct observation of research participants, who expressed their experience in interviews post-play. The result is a holistic understanding of a select type of mobile augmented reality games. What emerges is a view of augmented reality not just as a process of layering computer-generated input over the real environment, but as a series of spatial negotiations performed by the player.