I’ve used this blog so far to organise my thoughts, and I now need that more than ever.

As part of our Honours submission, which for me is next week’s Tuesday, we must write a “project report”, which in other years would be known as the dissertation. I have a first draft, which I forced out in order to get some feedback. The feedback was amazing, my first draft not so much. I want to be much clearer with the points I’m making. So I’ll just ramble about it’s a little more clear to me.

For introduction, my supervisor suggested I add justification to the project, gap in the market, discuss locative gaming and benefits to Dundee as an University city, why my project is important, who might benefit from it. I should also talk about limitations of locative gaming and ways that narrative techniques can mitigate these (to answer the question of why I’m combining the two).

In general, I had advice that I should first write my points and then find research to support my points.

My reasons for doing the project are a bit muddy/oversaturated, but they exist, so I’ll write them out in here before worrying about writing the introduction.

The purposes for doing the project

• To help new students in Dundee find the places that they might not otherwise/might take longer time to find/help new students get familiar with the city
• To make a game that is played walking/mirrors the values of exploration but also exercise
• To encourage people to go outside
• (To help people talk to each other)
• To tell a story around Dundee
• To investigate bringing narrative into locative gaming and mitigating technical limitations through narrative

I still find this a little muddy in my brain, mainly with how to wrap this as an introduction.

I was also recommended this paper: Full article: Ghosts in the Garden: locative gameplay and historical interpretation from below# (tandfonline.com) to help me write justification. I’ll return to the paper soon. But first…

Structure

I was told to investigate this paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-50109-3_9 to see how the introduction is structured. It is structured the following way:

1. Introduce definitions of the terms locative game, alternative reality game and locative alternative reality game
2. Introduce theory of locative games in terms of three types of expansion: Spatial, temporal and social
3. Explain player POV of how the LARG game changes the way they relate to the city