Abstract:

The paper analyses information on users experiences about the Lights On! - mobile game and make conclusions about the factors which have to be taken into consideration when developing the game.

The mobile game was developed by Humak University of Applied Sciences together with Turku Game LAB and KSAO. It was part of the Lights On! -project which was a Finnish-Estonian project which was active in 2015-2018 and received its funding from the Central Baltic Interreg 2014–2020 programme of the European Union. The overall aim of the project was to improve visitors experience and turn eight fairly unknown historical sights into true tourist attractions. The development of the augmented reality mobile game to facilitate new kind of experience based learning was one of the major actions executed during the project. The final mobile game was awarded with the best Applied Game Award in 2018 (http://www.neogames.fi/FGA19WINNERS/).

The theoretical section of this paper explores augmented reality, gamification, experience based learning, storification and place attachment. All these dimensions have been part of the process during the development of the mobile game. The quantitative data was gathered by conducting a questionnaire among the players. The questionnaire has been available in the application and every player could answer it, if wanted. Most of the data was gathered during three organized excursions for 5th grade school children as part of their history lessons: one to Rapola hill fort and two excursions to Kuusisto castle ruins. In addition, qualitative data consisted of learning diaries written by cultural management students in Humak University of Applied Sciences and several in-depth inverviews conducted for the development team. These results suggest that mobilegame with augmented reality is a useful tool to improve visitors’ experience at historical sites and it enhances the new kind of experience based learning and works as a tool to raise interest towards history even during those pupils who were originally that interested about the subject. This paper concludes the lessons learned during this development process: an augmented reality mobile game can be attractive when implementation is carefully prepared and there are resources enough for the production. It reminds is also the importance of focusing on the specific target group to achieve a succesfull outcome.

Keywords:

Heritage sites, augmented reality, mobile game, participatory action, experience based learning, gamification, narratisation, place attacment.