Nuclear Mayhem Learning and Dynamic Pervasive Storytelling

Pervasive gaming is a reality‐based gaming genre originating from alternative theatrical forms in which the performance becomes a part of the players’ everyday life. In recent years much research has been done on pervasive gaming (Benford et al. 2005, Cheok et al. 2006, Jegers and Wiberg 2006) and its potential applications towards specific domains. Pervasive games have been effective with regards to advertising (VG 2009), education (Pløhn 2013) and social relationship building (Pløhn and Aalberg 2013). However, given the nature of pervasive games, they also pose challenges when compared to more traditional gaming approaches, namely; 1) How can one make the game pervasive according to the players’ everyday life? and 2) How can one support in‐game awareness?. This paper presents a Dynamic Pervasive Storytelling (DPS) approach and describes the design of the pervasive game Nuclear Mayhem (NM), a pervasive game designed to support a Web‐games development course at the Nord‐Trøndelag University College, Norway. NM ran parallel with the course and lasted for nine weeks and needed specific features both to become a part of the players’ everyday life and to remind the players about the game. DPS, as a model, is oriented towards increasing the pervasiveness of the game and supporting a continuous level of player in‐game awareness through the use of real life events (RLE). DPS uses RLE as building blocks both to create the overall game story prior to the start of the game by incorporating elements of current affairs in its design and during the unfolding of the game as a mean to increase the pervasiveness and in‐game awareness of the experience. The paper concludes that DPS is a promising approach for creating a game story which increases the pervasiveness of the game and supports in‐game awareness.