LBMGs and Boundary Objects. Negotiation of Meaning between Real and Unreal

The paper reports on a study grounded on higher education didactic experiences involving around 180 BSc students in the design of Location Based Mobile Games that mix digital contents and physical artefacts. By means of data gleaned from a three-year didactic experience, we challenge the extant assumption that LBMGs should exclusively rely on the digital/mobile component. Looking at LBMGs as situated experiences, we investigate the relevant role and agency of physical elements: How do they interact with the space? With players? How do they affect players’ in-game behaviours? And players’ sociality? We focus on the agency of the above mentioned physical objects, and their ability to trigger players’ actions and to persuade them to behave according to designers’ expectancies. We analyse how these objects translate the fictional world into a space intertwined with the real one, rather than simply overlapped, and how they foster meaning making and context awareness acting as boundary objects that activate negotiations of meaning between real and “unreal”.