Abstract
With the exception of Pokémon Go, relatively little is known about other Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) games, and the attitudes of middle-aged and elderly adults towards them are hitherto poorly examined. The aim of this research is to examine the opinions of young, middle-aged, and elderly adults about the location-based MAR game Ingress. The responses to questions related to Ingress were collected from 24 adult players aged 20–60 from Greece and subsequently were analyzed by means of content analysis, both qualitatively and quantitatively, using the Jaccard index of similarity. Our findings showed that opinions of young people (20–35) agree more with those of elderly adults (>52) than with those of the intermediate age group of 36–51. It was also revealed that knowledge of geography facilitates the ability to play the game better, the game’s scenario is very interesting to adults, and the feeling of playing locally in a global game is also appreciated by all age groups. Along with these findings, with this research, it was shown that (a) content analysis is a valuable method for exploring opinions and attitudes of adult users towards MAR games and (b) Jaccard indices can be used to quantitatively explore themes emerging from content analysis.
Highlights
Innovations using mobile technologies have expanded into all market categories over the past few years [1,2], and augmented reality (AR) applications for mobile devices have dynamically entered the consumer market [3]
The thematic “knowing the geography facilitates you to play the game better” was found to be related to 13 subthemes, as follows: it is decidedly a game based on geography, it gives motivation to continue playing, unknown areas are associated with more difficulty, knowledge of the area helps to gain time, the game has suspense, there are texts with information about the local area, the game can be enjoyable, it gives a sense of safety, requires concentration, can be indifferent, is based on walking, experiential knowledge of geography helps the user play it better, and it motivates the user to know other areas (Figure 1)
This study reveals that, so long as the scenario of an Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) may appeal to adult users, the game can very well be approached and played by adults of various ages and educational backgrounds
Summary
Innovations using mobile technologies have expanded into all market categories over the past few years [1,2], and augmented reality (AR) applications for mobile devices have dynamically entered the consumer market [3]. In the past five years, research interest in AR has increased, with researchers focusing on user adoption behaviour [7], marketing potential [8], and user requirements [8,9]. These studies suggest that new and diverse factors drive consumer behaviour (e.g., wearability and perceived increase), so that user behaviour cannot be explained by single hypotheses, since different factors drive different patterns of usage
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