Campus Explorer: Facilitating Student Communities through Gaming

University students are often highly focused on their current lectures and imminent exams and thus neglect to interact with students across departments and to engage in campus life. To facilitate a more closely-knit community of university students, we evaluate a set of suitable core game mechanics, social features, and reward systems to motivate students to explore their university and to meet other students. Our prototype mobile application implements a location-based approach and includes game mechanics such as building check-ins, meeting other students, campus expeditions, and campus events. We evaluate the potential of our approach using both qualitative and quantitative data collected during an initial playtesting phase. Our analysis has shown that our location-based mechanics and a focus on social features were well received by students. Players engaged in exploring the campus and see potential in location-sharing and future collaboration features