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_________________________________________________________________________________________ Crossmedia games employ a wide variety of gaming interfaces based on stationary and mobile devices to facilitate different game experiences within a single game. This article presents the crossmedia game Epidemic Menace, introduces the game concept, and describes experiences from two Epidemic Menace game events. We also explain the technical realization of Epidemic Menace, the evaluation methodologies we used, and some evaluation results.

Abstract-Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are rapidly expanding into new application areas. However, the development of AR user interfaces and appropriate interaction techniques remains a complex and time-consuming task. Starting from scratch is more common than building upon existing solutions. Furthermore, adaptation is difficult, often resulting in poor quality and limited flexibility with regard to user requirements. In order to overcome these problems, we introduce an infrastructure for supporting the development of specific AR interaction techniques and their adaptation to individual user needs. Our approach is threefold: a flexible AR framework providing independence from particular input devices and rendering platforms, an interaction prototyping mechanism allowing for fast prototyping of new interaction techniques, and a high-level user interface description, extending user interface descriptions into the domain of AR. The general usability and applicability of the approach is demonstrated by means of three example AR projects.

This paper presents the multiple gaming interfaces of the crossmedia game Epidemic Menace, including a game board station, a mobile assistant and a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) system. Each gaming interface offers different functionality within the game play. We explain the interfaces and describe early results of an ethnographic observation showing how the different gaming interfaces were used by the players to observe, collaborate and interact within the game.