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Combiform: a combinable social gaming platform

Published: 05 August 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Combiform [see Fig. 1 center, video: 4-1] is a novel digital gaming console featuring four combinable handheld controllers. In particular, multiple players may freely combine and lock together their handheld game controllers, thereby creating a very flexible collective and transformable tangible interface. It can be understood as an emerging gaming system attempting to expand the co-located (the same confined physical space) social play experiences introduced by platforms such as Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Kinect and Hasbro Bop-it. Most co-located video games direct players' attention to the screen but not to the other players. This arrangement counter-acts the natural affordances required for social interaction [1]. Combiform is especially designed to drastically improve co-attentiveness during co-located play. The system and its 10 games emphasize tangible body-to-body interaction via a flexible combining and decombining mechanism. This new interactive technique affords an exceptionally strong re-enforcement for player to pay close attention to other players. In addition to significantly improving focus attention, players could now feel and direct each other's movements and gestures via these tangible links between controllers [video: 4-2].

References

[1]
de Kort, Y. et al., 2007. People, places and play: A research framework for digital game experience in a socio-spatial context. DiGRA 2007 Proceedings "Situated Play"
[2]
Gajadhar, B. et al., 2008. Shared fun is doubled fun: player enjoyment as a function of social setting. In P. Markopoulos, B. de Ruyter, W. IJsselsteijn, & D. Rowland, Fun and Games (pp. 106--117). New York: Springer.
[3]
Vanden Abeele, V. et al., 2009. Gaming Naturally is more Fun Together: the Influence of Controller Type on Player Experience. ACE 2009
[4]
Video Links
[5]
Promotional Video http://youtu.be/r92cDygrDiM?hd=1
[6]
Blow-it up http://youtu.be/aGZG5hGJuDw?hd=1
[7]
Switch http://youtu.be/L94odcsVWHI?hd=1
[8]
Match! http://youtu.be/U5QS-e2G50M?hd=1
[9]
T.A.I http://youtu.be/I2BNBu7aMYI
[10]
Pop Quiz http://youtu.be/tV_HWMqIenI

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGGRAPH '12: ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Emerging Technologies
August 2012
26 pages
ISBN:9781450316804
DOI:10.1145/2343456
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 05 August 2012

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