Location-Based Narrative and Spatial Memory

01 — Project Overview

How can physical locations become active participants in game storytelling, rather than simply serving as points of interaction?

Location-based games connect digital gameplay with real-world movement, encouraging players to explore the environments around them. However, physical exploration does not necessarily lead to meaningful engagement with a place.

In this research project, I examine how location-based games represent physical space and explore how cultural memory, personal experience, and environmental storytelling could create deeper narrative experiences.

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02 — The Problem: Movement Without Meaning

Many location-based games successfully transform physical locations into gameplay opportunities, but the significance of those locations often remains underdeveloped.

Using Pokémon GO as a primary case study, I examine how real-world landmarks can become functional nodes for collecting resources and triggering interactions. Although players move through different environments, their experiences are not always meaningfully connected to the identity or history of those places.

This raises a broader design question: What would change if a location were more than a coordinate on a map?

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03 — Research Approach

To investigate this question, I bring together three theoretical perspectives:

Spatial Practice — Michel de Certeau

Space is shaped through movement and everyday practices. This perspective helps explain how players experience and produce meaning through navigating physical environments.

Hybrid Space — Adriana de Souza e Silva

Digital and physical environments interact to create hybrid spaces. This framework explains how mobile technologies connect gameplay with real-world locations.

Narrative Architecture — Henry Jenkins

Game environments can function as spaces where players discover and assemble narrative elements through exploration, rather than receiving stories only through linear sequences.

By examining these perspectives alongside Pokémon GO and environmental storytelling in Ghostwire: Tokyo, I identify a gap between spatial interaction and meaningful narrative engagement.

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04 — Key Findings

Interaction does not automatically create attachment.

My analysis identifies three important limitations in conventional location-based game design.

* Functionalized space: Physical locations are often assigned gameplay functions, making otherwise distinct places feel interchangeable.
* Disconnected memory: Repeated visits may generate rewards and progression without meaningfully developing the player’s relationship with a particular location.
* Fragmented storytelling: Encounters and narrative elements do not necessarily accumulate into a coherent sense of place.

These limitations suggest that designing for movement is not the same as designing for meaning. A game can encourage exploration while leaving the cultural and emotional dimensions of its environment largely untouched.

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05 — Design Implications: Narrative Through Accumulation

Rather than treating space as a neutral platform for gameplay, I propose a design approach in which narrative meaning accumulates through repeated, place-specific encounters.

This approach has three potential components:

01. Place-Specific Encounters

Events, characters, and environmental changes respond to the distinctive identity or context of a location, rather than appearing as interchangeable interactions.

02. Evolving Spatial Memory

Returning to a location reveals new traces or altered conditions, allowing players to recognize how their experience of that place develops over time.

03. Shared Narrative Traces

Players contribute fragments of their experiences to specific locations. Over time, these traces form a collective narrative that other players can discover, interpret, and build upon.

Together, these ideas suggest a different relationship between gameplay and physical space: locations become evolving narrative environments shaped by both designed systems and player experiences.

This is a proposed design framework developed through theoretical analysis, rather than a tested game implementation.

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06 — Reflection

This project challenged me to reconsider what exploration means in game design. Encouraging players to move through an environment is only one part of creating an engaging experience; the more difficult challenge is giving that movement significance.

By connecting spatial theory with game studies, I developed a framework for thinking about how narrative, memory, and physical environments can interact. This research also informs my broader interest in narrative design and the ways game systems shape how players interpret and experience the world around them.