Google Glass and serious games: wearable augmented reality

Google began distributing Glass in April 2013. The device is eyewear connected to the Internet. It answers natural-language voice commands and shows information in the wearer's line of sight as an augmented reality overlay, so a spoken question such as the length of the Brooklyn Bridge gets an answer in the lens.

Google framed the project as relationship technology: present when wanted, out of the way when not. The wearer keeps access to online services without being pulled out of the moment. Google also suggested the idea could grow into a mass-market, everywhere computer and shape how people and machines interact.

Augmented reality layers drawn from Google's knowledge base can attach facts to whatever the wearer is looking at. Commentators saw in that capability a way to blur the line between learning and gameplay, which is the central promise of serious games.

The 2013 coverage named no specific Glass game or training title. It treated the device as a platform that might host them, a prospect that depended on developers building for it. Glass was seen at the time as a possible breakthrough in mobile computing and in video games, at the front of wearable computing,.

Google's Glass Enterprise Edition help center carries a notice that, as of March 15, 2023, Google no longer sells Glass Enterprise Edition. Support continued until September 15, 2023. Google writes that owners can keep using the device and existing software after that date, that no software updates from Google are planned, and that the latest system images stay available until at least April 1, 2024. The pre-installed Meet on Glass app is not supported after the support date and may stop working at any time.

Google's developer site for Glass Enterprise Edition 2 repeats the notice and adds that its documentation is kept as a historical reference for developers who maintain apps built for the device. It describes the product as an assisted reality wearable that gives hands-on workers voice-activated, glanceable help. That notice covers the enterprise line only. Google's pages checked for this entry do not address the original Explorer edition distributed in 2013, so its status is not stated here.