Addressing openness and portability in outdoor pervasive role-playing games

This article introduces Barbarossa, an outdoor pervasive role-playing game. Existing pervasive game prototypes do not enable relocation of the game space as they heavily rely in orchestration actions. They also overlook several aspects which critically affect user acceptance and game experience such as scenario design, usability of employed technologies, game duration and intensity. Barbarossa addresses the abovementioned issues featuring portable game modes through moderating or seamlessly embedding any orchestration actions needed within the game process. It also takes into account concrete technology usage requirements for each game mode according to the game session duration and player effort required. Game experience is enhanced through incorporating several contextual parameters, while game rules may be personalized based on players´ profile data retrieved from social networks.