Match Our Cities: Cross-Location-Based Games to Enable Simultaneous Multiplayer

Location-based games have become a worldwide phenomenon, but their multiplayer options typically are either superficial or force players to play together only locally. We introduce a system that compares game areas around the globe and matches points of interest onto each other, allowing for simultaneous gameplay across cities and countries. Thereby, we achieve game areas with an equal representation of their point of interest structure, allowing for fair and equal starting conditions. Our approach procedurally generates content for multiple players based on factors such as spatial relation and cultural relevance. Each generated game area can be adapted in size, orientation, and cultural location selection criteria to provide a level playing field for players with different mobility patterns or within areas with different sociocultural conditions. The content creation process utilizes publicly available OpenStreetMap data and achieves comparable results of high quality even in suburban or rural areas, where today’s location-based games usually have a lower content density.