Movement patterns in educational games: Comparing a-priori and post-hoc analyses

Abstract

Although movement is essential in location-based games to get from one point of interest to the next, it is seldom taken into account for the game design and the selection of locations. Instead, player movement is usually analyzed after the fact, i.e. when the game is ready to play. In this paper we compare this post-hoc movement analysis with an approach that utilizes the methods for movement analysis to inform the game design itself. We show that both approaches have their merits and solve different tasks, but that there is a benefit of taking movement more serious in designing location-based educational games.