Spatial Structure as an Element of Motivation in Location-Based Games

Location-based games have emerged with the ubiquitous deployment of GPS-enabled devices. These games allow players to blend over the digital sphere with real-world whereabouts, implying that design choices made may affect the way players approach non-digital geographical spaces. This paper addresses scoring systems used to reward players for solving in-game tasks. We investigate how spatially structured scoring systems influence playing behaviours. The game we focus on is StreetComplete, an app that allows to collect and complement the OpenStreetMap database. We investigate indicators like walking speed, distance walked, and the game duration. Our results identify interesting effects spatial structure has on the game duration as well as the extent to which players are willing to explore an area geographically, hinting on interesting motivational elements of location-based games.