More Than a Gimmick - Digital Tools for Boardgame Play

Abstract

Despite increasing interest in the use of digital tools in boardgames for both commercial and research purposes, little research has to date explored how and why these tools are used. We interviewed 18 professionals working in the boardgame industry to explore the combination of digital tools and tabletop play, which affords new experiences and opportunities for both players and designers. We generated five key themes from the interview data. Participants engaged with ontological questions about the fundamental nature of games; they showed strong opinions about the use of digital tools; they discussed the impacts of digital tools for game design as well as in their design practice; they raised concerns about the costs to develop and maintain such tools; and they considered how they affect the in-game player experience. From these themes, we generate five design principles for digital tools for boardgame play: traceability, completeness, integration, privacy, and materiality. Grounded in empirical data, these design principles guide game designers and researchers seeking to explore this novel design space. Our research focuses attention on the role of digital components in play and on the need for thoughtful implementation that considers the entire lifecycle of the game, from development through publication and, ultimately, archival access.

DungeonMaker: Embedding Tangible Creation and Destruction in Hybrid Board Games through Personal Fabrication Technology

“…We situate Dungeon-Maker as a step beyond disjoint digital and physical game spaces in hybrid games, by coupling them further through creation and destruction processes. Rogerson et al identified roles of digital tools in hybrid board games (e.g., calculation, storytelling, randomization) [73], attitudes towards digital augmentations [78], and analyzed existing commercial hybrid board games [77]. Mandryk et al [55] and Kankainen et al [46] further explored social components [64] of hybrid board games, as they mediate social interactions in addition to interactions with the game itself [35].…”

“…With both the hardware setup of DungeonMaker, and the implemented game, we aimed to cover an extensive range of design components within the space of combining hybrid board games and (personal) fabrication technologies. To do so, we initially outlined a design space, which combined fundamental actions in (hybrid) board games [47,73,78] (e.g., motion, calculations, narration) and fundamental actions enabled by fabrication devices [12,96,106] (e.g., motion, material addition, material removal). Each resulting cell can then be used to generate (inter)actions between players and machines.…”

“…They provide a playful, social, and tangible experience that usually engages multiple, co-located people in an informal setting [84,116]. To further this analog concept, so-called hybrid board games have emerged as a more recent phenomenon [23,77,78]. Hybrid board games combine physical, tangible elements with digital elements (e.g., support tools) to augment the experience, for instance, by helping players learn rules, providing calculations, or storytelling elements [73].…”

“…This constrains the design space for hybrid board games in different ways: (1) Digital-physical synchronization: State changes created via the digital part (e.g., a figure's position) have to be "enacted" by players to keep digital and physical representations in sync. This constrains the influence of the digital part of a hybrid board game to simpler, digital-only aspects, like keeping track of statistics [78]. In turn, this leaves an untapped potential for novel, hybrid board game experiences that connect and unify digital and physical elements.…”

HybridGamePX: Uma Proposta de Modelo para a Avaliação da Experiência do Jogador no Uso de Jogos Híbridos

“…Como fazer o jogo híbrido durar décadas quando a parte digital pode se tornar obsoleta antes da parte analógica? Essas são perguntas que outros pesquisadores na área já tentaram responder [Rogerson et al 2016, Rogerson et al 2021a, Rogerson et al 2021b, Kankainen and Paavilainen 2019.…”