The Avebury adventures anthology: Locative play for cultural heritage.

Abstract

Playful mixed reality (MR) and locative games are increasingly used as immersive technologies for engaging visitors at cultural heritage sites. Consequently, it has become important to understand the range of creative approaches that contribute to locative play in the context of heritage spaces, and the design opportunities and constraints these present. In this work we present the Avebury Adventures Anthology, a collection of 20 locative games for the Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire, UK. We share our approach to commissioning and building the anthology, and present works in three different categories (historic, ludic, creative). Finally, we describe key design issues that arose, and offer lessons learned from deployment such as the difference between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ location anchoring, observational mechanics, on-boarding and headsets, and players’ educational expectations.