Tangible Interfaces for Pervasive Gaming

With pervasive gaming, novel types of games have recently emerged. The idea is to apply pervasive computing technology which embeds computers in real-world, everyday environments to games. By bringing gaming back to natural, social interaction spaces, pervasive gaming aims to overcome some restrictions of conventional computer games: Players are no longer tied to computer screens and human-human interaction is not constrained by graphical user interfaces (GUIs), which is a crucial aspect of traditional non-computer games. Our approach to pervasive gaming also builds on tangible user interfaces (TUIs) where players interact with the game environment by physically grasping and moving real-world objects. In this paper, we propose a simple and cost-effective, but efficient and powerful approach to tangible and pervasive gaming based on Phidgets. The framework, as well as two example games, have been developed as part of a Game Design course at the ISNM.