Generative Programming and Component Engineering Second Internationa
This volume constitutes the proceedings of the second International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE 2003), held September 22–25, 2003, in Erfurt, Germany, sponsored by the NetObjectDays German industrial software devel
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Abstract. In this article we focus on online games and serious games in urban planning. At the beginning we provide some definitions of games and serious games and discuss the potential of serious games. We overview the urban planning games available online and give some examples of the game stories and concepts. The main goal of the article is to explore the potential of serious games in public participatory planning. To this end, a group of students at HafenCity University Hamburg designed and implemented a serious game. The game was entitled B3 Game and applied on the case of a market place in Billstedt, one of the city districts in Hamburg. The game enables the players to design their marketplace and discuss their suggestions with other citizens and urban planners. It aims at supporting playful public participation in urban planning. We conclude the paper with a discussion and further research directions. Keywords: online games, urban planning, public participation, serious online games, study cases.
1 Introduction Online games and especially serious online games are a novel research field in urban and regional planning. Game industry has for many years concentrated on play and fun and produced games which served these goals. In several cases, the game designers used urban planning as one of the main topics of the game. One of the most famous examples of such a game is SimCity. This game, first published in 1989, immediately turned into a success. It was successful commercially, but also won several awards including Best Entertainment-, Educational-, and Simulation Program, Best Consumer Program awarded by the Software Publisher's Association, Most Innovative Publisher awarded at Computer Game Developer's Conference, and Best PC Game, to mention only some of the accolades. Many game players were attracted by the exciting game story, which included possible dangers and disasters like fires, volcanos, earthquakes, etc. The concept of urban planning as the main topic has been used in various other games such as PlastiCity, Super City, The Grepolis game, and others. All these games were designed for entertainment purposes. *
Alenka Poplin published earlier under her maiden name Alenka Krek.
B. Murgante et al. (Eds.): ICCSA 2011, Part II, LNCS 6783, pp. 1–14, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
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A. Poplin
Serious games have a different goal; they are designed for other purposes than solely play and entertainment [1]. In recent years serious games became a growing field in the game industry. Researchers and developers investigate a variety of possibilities for their implementation in several areas: in organisation management, education, health care and the military. Game-based learning became a challenging research field in education. Development of serious online games in urban planning is in its initial stages. Thus, there is a very limited amount of literature available in this field. We are interested in gaining a more profound knowledge about the possibilities of serious games in urban plannin
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