Location-based Game

The English term location-based game (LBG ) refers to a (computer) game in which the gameplay is in any way affected by the change in player's geographical position. In German location-based game means " position-related game."

A location-based game therefore always requires a technology for localization, such as the use of satellite-based navigation systems such as GPS. Additionally, there are the English terms Urban Gaming and street games, which typically Multiplayer Location-based Games designate which take place in an urban environment.

A prominent example with a large following, the game is geocaching, a sort of treasure hunt, which is usually played with special GPS receivers.

Pac- Manhattan, which started in 2004, uses the area in and around the Washington Square Park to play a real live version of Pacman. In Pac- Manhattan players inform each other about their position on mobile phones. About Pac- Manhattan was reported among others in the New York Times.

Gbanga, which in 2007 launched award-winning gaming platform combines video games and GPS games. In various stories and side quests, the terrain is used in different ways. In 2009, for example, in the edutainment Quest Gbanga Zooh virtual threatened species that were distributed in the city, collected with the mobile phone and physically returned to the zoo and released.

Parallel Kingdom is the first GPS-based MMORP ( massively multi-player online role-playing game ) for iPhone and Android phones. The game uses the GPS capabilities of smartphones to map the playing card on the current player position. The player has about a movement radius of half a kilometer, which can be explored by Anlicken of the device of the screen. The player can further distances to travel in real life and the "Location" button use to move around in the game at the current GPS position. True country characteristics such as parks, airports and mountains have an impact on the gameplay, since other objects appear in the game there than elsewhere. Parallel Kingdom is available worldwide, free of charge and has loudly online discussion forum of the game currently over 500,000 players.

The proliferation of location- based games has also increased strongly with the rapidly increasing number of smart phones as a technology platform. Meanwhile, the term diffenziert into various sub-groups such as pervasive games, augmented reality games or geosocial games, location- based games to enhance the respective specific elements.