Mapping the city, playing the city: Location- based apps as navigational interfaces.

摘要

In this paper we will examine how maps in location- based mobile games are used as surfaces on which players can inscribe their whereabouts and other local information while being on the move. We will look at three different location-based games to which maps are central as a playing surface: RunZombieRun, Paranormal Activity Sanctuary and Own This World. Our main argument will be that such cartographical location- based games foreground the fluidity of mapping and emphasise the performative aspects of playing with maps. As such they are not representations used by players for consultation, but they produce new social spaces (Lefebvre 1991). It the refore does not suffice to conceive maps in such games as "mimetic interfaces" (Juul 2009). Instead they should be approached as what we will call navigational interfaces. To understand them as such we will combine perspectives from game - studies with understandings of maps as technological and spatial practices as developed in Human Geography and Science and Technology Studies (STS).