My photos are my bullets - Using camera as the primary means of player-to-player interaction in a mobile multiplayer game

Abstract

Camera is becoming more common in mobile phones and it is commonly used for exchanging photos between people. The photos could be used for other purposes as well, such as gaming. This paper presents Assassin, a mobile multiplayer game using camera and photos as the main form of player-to-player interaction. The goal in the game is to catch other players in the game without them noticing this. The game is meant to be running in the background of the people's main activity, such as a working day, and not be played intensively all the time. The game was evaluated with 29 persons in four games organized during the participants' working days. The results suggest the camera is a very suitable game mechanics for gaming, and the participants in general did not find the game to be a violation of their privacy. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2006.