Digital Games and The City: About Reality, Commuting and Gamification

This paper is part of a research on gaming and reality carried out by the Laboratório de Poéticas Fronteiriças, a research group rolled on the CNPq’s directory and certified by the UEMG (Brazil). Growing number of phone programs that provide ride-share services, transportation, or product delivery, primarily food, remind us of old games that use similar mechanisms. Our aim is to analyze the games series Crazy Taxi and Grand Theft Auto, their narrative and aesthetic elements as well as similarities to the Uber app in order to better understand ways the gamification of such types of apps can allow a re-signification of the city spaces, its users as players and of its socio-economic impact.