Towards Ethical Guidelines of Location-Based Games: Challenges in the Urban Gaming World

Towards Ethical Guidelines of Location-Based Games: Challenges in the Urban Gaming World

Towards Ethical Guidelines of Location-Based Games: Challenges in the Urban Gaming World

Sonja M. Hyrynsalmi, Minna M. Rantanen, and Sami Hyrynsalmi

Abstract

“Location-based games—urban games which are played in real life locations—are growing their share in the mobile gaming markets. While these kinds of games have been present since the growing popularity of so-called feature phones, they gained remarkable momentum through the popularity of Niantic Inc.’s Pokémon Go, Ingress and later Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. As modern location-based games are gathering hundred of millions dollars monthly revenue, also related social, economical, and even juridical questions have raised; however, the ethical questions embodied into the location-based games or augmented reality games have not been completely unveiled. As the mobile game industry is growing its importance in the software industry, also business ethics questions should be taken into account during the design and development of game products and services. This paper seeks to understand the relevant ethical concerns of location-based games by using the the viewpoints of individual, community and business”.

Reference

Hyrynsalmi, S. M., Rantanen, M. M., & Hyrynsalmi, S. (2020, November). Towards Ethical Guidelines of Location-Based Games: Challenges in the Urban Gaming World. In International Conference on Software Business (pp. 134-142). Springer, Cham. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sonja-Hyrynsalmi/publication/348000192_Towards_Ethical_Guidelines_of_Location-Based_Games_Challenges_in_the_Urban_Gaming_World/links/5fec647b299bf140885a5e8c/Towards-Ethical-Guidelines-of-Location-Based-Games-Challenges-in-the-Urban-Gaming-World.pdf

Keywords

Location-based Games , Business Ethics, Mobile Gaming, Pervasive Games, Ethical Guidelines