Gaming/Programming Location Based Games

[HenryD]

Are you familiar with ARIS? It's an open source effort at producing
location based games, lessons, and tours that you can access while on
location. http://arisgames.org/ . You might like to watch their demo
video at http://arisgames.org/demo/ .

They have an iPhone app client for playing the game in the field.
Their editor is web based.

I saw them using ARIS in a documentary on the Smithsonian Channel.
They had kids using it to create games for other kids. In order to
create their game, they had to design it and build it. That meant,
besides learning how to design and build the game, they had to learn
about objects in the Smithsonian and figure out activities for the
game that would send other kids to find objects, learn about them, and
then use that knowledge to proceed in the game.

Here is a link to the manual that describes how things work in
building a game:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wW5Zo_bdH2JYD6GlXBTBPfFra_ciiq8EcepH8Y7fr7Q/edit?hl=en#

It's an interesting read. They give directions for optimizing image
and video files.

You could have students build their own game. Everything you need is
free and it is online. And, it does not take very long to read
through the manual and you can see that it is very intuitive.
Everything is in English. You don't have to know any programming
code.

There are a lot of links that you may find interesting as you look
through the http://arisgames.org website.

This link takes you to a webpage dedicated to moving learning games
forward.

http://www.educationarcade.org/

Be sure to look at the Guides at the bottom of this page:

http://arisgames.org/global-game-jam-2011/