Spatial Storytelling for Emotional Engage ment in Location-Based Games for Young People

Abstract

Location-based games and augmented reality (AR) experiences integrate physical movement and real-world environments into interactive narratives. This thesis investigates how spatial story telling narrative communicated through the arrangement and discovery of story elements in space can enhance young people’s emotional engagement. The study is situated within a cultural collaboration at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, connected to an AR interactive documentary about the village of Jörn in northern Sweden. Using research through design, the thesis combines theoretical synthesis, prototype development in Unity, and a formative qualitative evaluation with contextual in formants. Attention capture and sustained engagement are treated as enabling conditions for emotional involvement. Rather than claiming that young people lack attention spans, the thesis argues that attention is situated and shaped by design. Drawing on literature from location-based games, interactive documentary, interaction design, cognitive psychology, and youth media studies, the thesis develops a framework of attention-sensitive spatial storytelling. This framework is translated into provisional design principles such as attentional handshake, spatial episodes, lightweight agency, and support for interruption and re-entry for location-based interactive media for teenagers. Since the final prototype was tested with young adults rather than teenagers, the principles are presented as research-grounded and formative, not as statistically generalisable claims.