In our location-based game CatchBob!, there seems to be 3 different strategies, when participants spread over the campus: the first one is the most common, the last one is 2 exceptions:
Then there are 2 possibilities with regard to how the strategy evolves:
As I said yesterday, players without an automatic display of others position are more reconfiguring their strategy. There are 3 reasons to reconfigure or not the strategy:
- How easy is to go from one point to the other (mostly from the position of player A when player B asks the other to join him): the campus structure and its topology matters here: it depends upon the distance AND the easiness to move (if there are stairs, going outside...). In this case, the environment might be an important factor for the task. This factor relies on the way people figure out the distance or the effort.
- When the player who calls the others (because he sees that he is close to Bob thorugh his proximity sensor) has 4, 5, 6 as a signal strength, he communicates it to the others, so they knows the zone where Bob might be located. The others then infer that it could be efficient to check other areas and not joining him by taking the same path. Here it's a mutual modeling act.
- How the player who calls the other communicate it: "come here, I know it's there" or "it's in this area". Here it's an explicit act of communication.
How to move forward: check those 3 categories, use a chi-square to see if there are differences among the 2 groups:
- no reconfiguration
- just one player reconfigure his/her strategy
- 2 players reconfigure his/her strategy
And check how players reconfigure their strategies:
- no messages
- messages like "I join you"
- messages like "I join you by going in the upper area"