Design-in-play: improving the variability of indoor
pervasive games
Bin Guo & Ryota Fujimura & Daqing Zhang &
Michita Imai
#
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract Treasure is a pervasive game playing in the context of people’s daily living
environments. Unlike previous pervasive games that are based on the predefined contents
and proprietary devices, Treasure exploits the “design-in-play” concept to enhance the
variability of a game in mixed-reality environments. Dynamic and personalized role design
and allocation by players is enabled by exploring local smart objects as game props. The
variability of the game is also enhanced by several other aspects, such as user-oriented
context-aware action setting and playing environment redeployment. The effectiveness of
the “design-in-play” concept is validated through a user study, where 15 subjects were
recruited to play and author the trial game.
Keywords Multimedia entertainment
.
Pervasive gaming
.
Context-aware computing
.
Smart
homes
.
Smart objects
.
Human-computer interaction
Multimed Tools Appl
DOI 10.1007/s11042-010-0711-z
B. Guo (*)
School of Computer Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China
e-mail: guobin.keio@gmail.com
B. Guo
:
D. Zhang
Institut TELECOM SudParis, 9, rue Charles Fourier, 91011 Evry, France
B. Guo
e-mail: bin.guo@it-sudparis.eu
D. Zhang
e-mail: daqing.zhang@it-sudparis.eu
R. Fujimura
:
M. Imai
Department of Information & Computer Science, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
R. Fujimura
e-mail: fujimura@ayu.ics.keio.ac.jp
M. Imai
e-mail: michita@ayu.ics.keio.ac.jp
1 Introduction
The development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has propelled various innovative
applications in smart environments. Pervasive gaming, a new genre in the field of
entertainment, is one of its productions. By blending of real and virtual elements and
enabling users to physically interact with their surroundings during the play, people can
become fully involved in pervasive games and attain better gaming experience [15].
A number of projects or prototypes on pervasive games have been built [2–8, 16] (see
Section 2 for details). Existing systems have greatly contributed to pervasive gaming
research by emphasizing different natures of ubiquitous interaction. However, as the
contents and game settings in these games are all predesigned by game developers (we call
it the “design-before-play” paradigm), the variability of them is quite low, which may lead
negative user experience to players during repeated plays. Broadly speaking, a typical
pervasive game consists of five key elements: the playing field, physical props (roles acted
by physical objects, like a magic wand), roles acted by players, game rules, and multimedia
contents. Benefiting from the pervasive nature of pervasive games, the playing field can be
changed from different places (e.g., from one room to another [3, 6, 16], from one street to
another [2, 4, 7]). Nevertheless, because the physical props used in these games are
proprietary (particular designed flags [5], cottage and hand icons [16], etc.), they should be
deployed into the new environment when the playing field changes. In addition, as the
props are proprietarily offered and limited on numbers, players are not allowed to add new
prop-based roles. The unchangeable props reduce the variability of the games. The latter
three elements, on the other hand, are logical or virtual contents pre-specified or provided
by game developers, which are also unalterable to players.
The system presented in this paper, called Treasure, makes an attempt to address the
issues mentioned above. Treasure is a treasure-hunting game playing in the context of
people’s daily life. Different from the previous “design-before-play” paradigm enabled
games, it seeks to improve the pervasive game’s variability by introducing the “design-in-
play” concept, which allows people to generate variations of a meta-game before playing it.
The following attempts were made to achieve a big variability:
& Dynamic role design and allocation by employing local everyday objects. According to
Weiser’s vision on ubiquitous computing [19], homes in the near future will be filled with
sensor-augmented everyday objects, called smart objects. By analyzing the data from the
attached sensors (e.g., location sensors [11], acceleration sensors [1], pressure sensors
[18], RFID tags [20]), smart objects can provide various assistance to people’s life, such
as helping people quickly locate them [11, 20], or identifying indoor human behaviors [1,
18]. Unlike providing particularly-designed game props, we exploit the prospect of using
smart objects in pervasive games. Leveraging local smart objects as game props provides
the following merits: (1) The normal, plentiful nature of smart objects allows users to
dynamically add new prop-based roles into the game and select interested objects to play
the new roles (e.g., choosing a smart pen to play the ‘magic wand’ role); (2) it enhances
the variability of the game by letting different objects to play the same role (replacing the
smart pen by a smart phone to play the ‘magic wand’ role).
& Player configurable context-aware action setting. Players play the game by physically
interacting with prop-based roles distributed in the house, such as moving a ‘magic
wand’ or opening a drawer. For each detected human-prop interaction context, a player
can specify a preferred multimedia action to respond (e.g., playing a narrative or
displaying an adventure animation).
Multimed Tools Appl
& Reconfigurable game environment setting. The game environment consists of a playing
field and physical props. As the whole smart house is used as the playing field, players
can reconfigure the game environment by rearranging the object-based props in the
house, for example, placing a prop to a particular place (e.g., hiding the ‘magic wand’
in a drawer), etc.
To the best of our knowledge, research on playing and player-authoring of smart-object
based games has not been explored by previous studies. In the following sections, we firstly
review related work on pervasive gaming. The Treasure game will then be described,
followed by the technical support for the implementation of this game. The effectiveness of
our system is evaluated through a user study, with users to perceive and test different
support to enhance game variability.
2 Related work
Different approaches and varied forms have been explored in developing pervasive games.
One approach is to augment traditional, real-world games with computing functionality. The
enabled games include smart toys [8], storytelling games [3, 16], and augmented outdoor
games [5]. Another approach, on the contrary, attempted to map computer games onto real-
world settings, as demonstrated by Touch Space [6] and Human Pacman [7]. There are also a
few location-aware games [2, 4], where a building, a street, or even a city becomes a game
board and the players become playing pieces. Treasure follows the first approach, which
aims at augmenting traditional treasure hunt game with computing functionalities.
There are several types of treasure hunt games which can have one or more players who
try to find hidden articles or places by using a series of clues. Gold Miner (http://www.
goldminergame.net/) is a video-based treasure hunt game designed for children. The location-
aware game presented in Chalmers et al. [4] allows players to collect virtual coins that are
hidden in the game area based on GPS information. Compared with these systems, the
Treasure game provides better user experience by allowing them to hunt physical ‘treasures’.
There have been several studies that examine pervasive gaming in normal, daily settings.
SupaFly [13] is a mobile-phone based virtual community game, where players can create
characters and interact through them by sending SMS commands. The player’s goal is to
reach the highest level of status in the community by socially interacting with others (e.g.,
meeting nearby players, making new friends). NEAT [21] is a pervasive game that seeks to
encourage physical activity in the daily routing of players. Data from player-equipped
sensors is logged to the cell phone and control the animation of an avatar that represents the
player in a virtual race game with other players over the cellular network. These systems
demonstrate well how pervasive games affect our daily livings. Treasure is also a game
playing in daily settings. Different from the prior two systems, we particularly concern how
plentiful everyday resources and user participation can extend the variability of game
experiences in smart homes.
User content creation is not new to video games, which has been used in commercial
games like Tank 1990 (developed by Nintendo), Counterstrike (a first-person shooter
game), and academic game studies like Storytelling Alice [14]. Users are either allowed to
create game maps or author stories in them. Treasure extends the user creation concept used
in these video games by enabling users to handle a number of gaming elements in mixed-
reality environments, such as everyday-object based role design and real-world game
environment setting. Due to the nascent of the field, there are quite few studies about user
Multimed Tools Appl
creation in pervasive games. StoryRoom [16] is a storytelling game that allows children to
create simple If-Then rules that facilitates story telling. The game is played in a particular
designed storytelling corner and limited proprietary props are provided. The context-aware
rules are created through a physical programming method, which can build connections
between a prop-touch event and an actuator-based action. The EU-IP iPerg project [12]
explores a text-messaging method that allows players to remotely control the activities of
their “avatars” (e.g., changing locations/destinations, communicating with other players) on
a physical game board in the “Day of the Figurines” game. There are also on-the-spot
operators (co-producers) that can modify the game state, give response to messages from
players. Comparing with StoryRoom and iPerg, Treasure opens up a wider space to increase
game variability. First, it extends the game field from particular-designed game board to the
whole end users’ living environments (i.e., smart houses). Second, considering that
different houses have different layout and physical/virtual resources (smart objects,
multimedia contents, etc.), exploring smart objects as props and allowing multimedia-
action settings enhances the diversity of enabled games. Third, the scope of participants on
game authoring is much wider in our system. StoryRoom is designed for children for
storytelling. iPerg, however, explores fixed operators (staffs, game designers) while not
normal players to co-produce the game. Finally, our system allows users to freely add new
roles (by exploring various smart objects in smart houses). The two prior systems only
allow children to alter the behaviors of existing roles.
3 The treasure game
The logic of this game is simple: At the beginning of the game, objects are hidden in
different places of the house. Different objects play different roles in the game, and when
the players find a hidden-object, the relevant multimedia action is presented to transmit
information to the players. Players need to hunt the ‘treasure’ to win the game.
The whole gaming process consists of two stages: game authoring stage, and game play
stage. “Design-in-play”—the concept that allows end users (not developers) to create or
modify the game contents when playing it—is reflected in the two stages:
& In the game authoring stage, a group of end users, called game authors, are allowed to
reconfigure the settings of the game according to their imagination and preferences,
such as deciding which objects are to be hidden, where to hide, and define their actions
in response to human interaction events;
& In the game play stage, another group of end users, called players, play the game
configured by game authors, whose goal is to “hunt” the treasure designated in the
game authoring stage.
3.1 Game authoring
In this stage, the game author configures the game setting through the following three
authoring tasks.
(1) Role design and allocation. The game author selects a few objects to play different
prop-based roles in the game. There are two types of prop-based roles: target roles
and supporting roles.
Multimed Tools Appl
& Target roles. There are two target roles in the game, including the ‘treasure-box’
and the ‘treasure-box-key ’ . As the name suggests, if the player finds the target
roles, he wins the game. Though the two target roles are fixed, the game author can
choose different objects to act the two roles. As the example shown in Fig. 1,aCD-
Box and a Bicycle-Key are used to act as the ‘treasure-box’ and ‘treasure-box-key’,
respectively. From this example we can see that the relationship between the two
selected objects is just a weak, imagined relation, that’s to say, they do not have to
have the real “key-to-lock” relation as existing between the target roles.
& Supporting roles. Different from target roles, the supporting roles are designed by
game authors, whose responsibility is to (1) assist players to find target objects (i.e.,
a ‘guide’ role), or (2) provide funny or risky gaming experiences to players. One or
more supporting roles can be added. For example, for the prior case, a doll can be
used to act as a ‘guide’ that cues the player about the hidden place of the ‘treasure-
box’; while for the latter case, a toolbox can be imagined to be the ‘shelter of a
monster’ and when it is opened, a monster residing in it will come out to frighten
the player. The two examples are illustrated in Fig. 1.
(2) Context-aware action setting. The game author specifies diverse multimedia actions
in response to the different human-prop interaction events (e.g., when an object is
found by a play er) occurred in a game play. In Treasure, the actions can be
defined in different for ms, such as an audio clip, a video clip, an image , or a
combination of them. Taking the two supporting roles shown in Fig. 1 for
example, for the Player-Doll interaction event, an video-action can be added, which
cues the player to search around the cup for a target object; for the Player-Toolbox
interaction event, a combination of an image-action and audio-action is added,
which displays an image about a monster on the wall, accompanying with a voice
like “Don’t touch me, I am sleeping now”.AsshowninFig.2(1), a rotatable
presentation device, called Prot, is used for displaying the multimedia contents to
proper places (see Section 4.1 for details).
(3) Game environment setting. Before starting a game, the game author resets the game
environment through the following ways:
& They hide the selected props in the “hidden places” of the house. As shown in
Fig. 2(2), objects can be hidden in different places, such as on a shelf, inside a box,
Fig. 1 An authored treasure game
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