A Game for the Backseat Experience

Abstract

The Backseat Game consists of five geographical game locations along a predesigned road stretch, where local stories are told and manipulative challenges are provided. It uses the changing scenery and sense of motion created during car travel to generate a compelling game experience for children sitting in the back seat of cars. We discuss what roadside objects could be of use to create an understandable and fun mobile game, with reference to emerging game research as well as theories in highway design. We also present initial user feedback on the gaming experience. The first attempt to produce such a game proved to be rather successful, and we learned that the appreciation of it draws more on the explorative experiences, generated by the combination of story features and the road setting, than on challenging manipulative tasks or game play.