Doing Mobile Media – Assignment 1 – Misadventure in Little Lon

The combination of digital artwork displayed in real life locations is no longer a sci-fi dream due to the continuing advancements made to both portable computing and image capturing devices such as smartphones.
With smartphones comes an exciting digital opportunity in augmented reality, where digitally created content can be seamlessly merged into your surroundings before your very eyes.

Game Developers “True Crime Games” have used this AR technology to bring the historically accurate murder mystery “Misadventure in Little Lon” to life, sending the user through the streets of 1910 Melbourne to explore its heritage sites where these real events occurred.

 

In a post Covid-19 world, this app can be enjoyed both without a human guide or tour groups and can be enjoyed from the comfort of your own home, with even the streets of Melbourne being able to be digitally recreated. As discussed in the reading “Playful Urban Spaces, A Historical Approach to Mobile Games” this type of game is known as a Location-Based Mobile Game due to the linking of information provided from the smartphone to the static physical location of Melbourne.

The game uses digital models voiced by real people to retell the story, but is made in a way that forces you to interact with the characters as well as actually investigate the clues you have received in order to make decisions on what to do next. As discussed in “The Art of Tacit Learning in Serious Location-Based Games” the combination of wayfaring and placemaking brings the opportunity for tacit learning due to the requirement to not only be in the correct location, but also by providing the correct items to the relevant models in order to gain more clues

The developers have also added a comedic element to the game to keep you entertained and immersed in the content, which I discovered by trialling the game, as I was instructed to “keep my grubby mits to myself” upon trying to click on the newspaper this boy was trying to give me.

Along with a non-abrasive backing music, the game is complete with sound effects of bells, swishing newspapers and even the sound of horse shoes on gravel as you travel around the streets, which while I admit, I am no expert on the sounds of 1910 Melbourne, as far as I’m aware make me feel like I’m authentically experiencing 1910 Melbourne.

Games such as this take ideas such as city crime tours which are often popular with tourists and puts the exciting spin of being able to explore at your own pace as well as actually including you in the activities with their digital retelling of the story.

To play on site, you can line up the characters to the appropriate Melbourne landmarks to get the most out of the immersive AR experience, however, if playing at home, you can scan your surroundings and select a flat surface for the models to appear for you to interact with.

However, it may be worth noting that the game is best experienced standing up, as there were some scenarios that didn’t play out ideally due to being on an odd angle to the flat surfaces by sitting down.

  

 

The game is accessible on both the Apple App store and the Google Play store for between $3.49 and $4.99 AUD depending on your platform.
Those using Apple devices can receive a free trial of the first two scenes with the option of paying to receive the full game.

Along with the popularity of their other similarly designed game “Eastern Market Murder” this shows that this is an exciting production opportunity for those interested in Art, Gaming, History and even Tourism to get involved not just locally but even internationally, with a plethora of possible historic tales and locations just waiting to be retold in an easily accessible and attention grabbing way.

 

References

de Souza e Silva, Adriana, and Larissa Hjorth. 2009. “Playful Urban Spaces”. Simulation & Gaming 40 (5): 602-625. doi:10.1177/1046878109333723.

Sheahan, Jacob, Hugh Davies, and Larissa Hjorth. 2021. “The Art Of Tacit Learning In Serious Location-Based Games”. Frontiers In Education 6. doi:10.3389/feduc.2021.686633.

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