Pervasive Games Ten Years Later - A Roundtable Discussion with Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper

A recorded and edited roundtable discussion revisits the 2009 book Pervasive Games: Theory and Design by Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. The conversation evaluates how the term “pervasive games” and its concepts have fared as scholarship and practice shifted toward location-based and mixed-reality framings. It also reflects on which earlier design claims endured, which proved inaccurate, and how pervasive play connects to urban spaces, commercial viability, and evolving social contexts.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Roundtable context and purpose

Value and relevance of the term “pervasive games”

Technology-agnostic analysis vs technology-based labels

Shifts in terminology and research focus

Ten-year changes in games, cities, and technology

Pervasive Games Ten Years Later A Roundtable Discussion with Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern In 2009, Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern published Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, based on research conducted during the Integrated Project on Pervasive Games (IPerG) and funded by the European Union (E.U.) from 2005 to 2008. They wrote it—the first book-length treatise on the topic—before the widespread use of smartphones and the ubiquitous impact of gaming on mobile devices. The work documented an era that a number of scholars came to identify as the first wave (or generation) of pervasive games. In 2019 a full decade after the book’s publication, the authors were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion as part of the Urban Play Spring Seminar event in Tampere, Finland, to reflect on the evolution of pervasive games and on the recent scholarship about them. Many of the claims Pervasive Games made, especially in relation to the design space of these kinds of games, have endured—even when such games are considered in technological and medium-specific frameworks. However, the book also featured claims and characterizations that to the authors themselves appear, in hindsight, optimistic, irrelevant, or simply inaccurate. The emerging genres of pervasive games the authors observed charted paths that later games simply did not follow, and their bold claim that commercially viable pervasive games would not compete with other games, but instead with pastimes, proved inaccurate. Even the delimitation they gave the phenomenon itself remains in flux a decade later—both the umbrella term they used for it and the types of games they included as part ofit are still being negotiated. The following is a recorded and transcribed version of the roundtable discussion (including questions from the moderator Dale Leorke and the attending audience) edited for publication. It examines the validity of the term “pervasive games” in an era when games and playfulness have seemingly become ubiquitous, looks at the commercial potential of pervasive play and games, and investigates how these games can meaningfully be connected with the spaces of the cities, towns, and other environments where they are performed. Keywords: alternative-reality games (ARG); Integrated Project on Pervasive Games; live-action role-playing games (LARPs); location-based games; pervasive games; urban play 259 American Journal of Play, volume 12, number 3 © The Strong [Contact Dale Leorke at dale.leorke@tuni.fi](Contact Dale Leorke at dale.leorke@tuni.fi) Leorke: I wanted to start by asking you about the term “pervasive games” itself. This term was quite common in academic discourse leading up to your book’s publication in 2009. But since then it seems to have been supplanted by more common phrases like “location-based games” or “mixed-reality games.” So how valuable do you think the term pervasive games is now? Is it still relevant to describe games as pervasive or has play already succeeded in pervading the everyday environment, making this term less necessary? Montola: When we were working on Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, I think back then already there were about two dozen competing terms, from “location-based games” to “ubiquitous games” to “big games” and others. We actually settled on pervasive games for the worst possible reason: basically, it was a field that could get funded by the E.U. [laughter] . And since our subsequent project name was Integrated Project on Pervasive Games (IPerG), that’s the term we chose for the book title. But the others would also have been fine, and it became a small struggle to predict which of them would become established in academia. I recently Googled the term, and I saw that, indeed, the number of hits begin decreasing after 2010 as academic use dropped through 2013. But I think the term, or at least the concept, remains valuable. As long as we live in societies where play is segr

FAQs

What prompted the authors to revisit pervasive games in the decade after the 2009 book?

They were invited to a roundtable in 2019 as part of the Urban Play Spring Seminar event to reflect on the evolution of pervasive games and recent scholarship.

Why do the panelists consider the term “pervasive games” still valuable?

One panelist argues it remains a useful analytical concept because it is technology agnostic and connected to ideas like segregated play and the magic circle.

What shortcomings in the book’s original claims are discussed?

The discussion notes that some later genres did not follow the paths charted in the book, and that the bold commercial claim—that pervasive games would compete with pastimes rather than other games—proved inaccurate.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper