Experiencing ‘Touch’ in Mobile Mixed Reality Games

In this paper, we discuss player experiences relating to the interaction with objects included as part of mobile mixed reality games. In particular we focus on the player experience of a touch based reality interface using mobile phones equipped with RFID/NFC reader/writers for interaction with the RFID tagged objects used in three different mobile mixed reality games. The player experience highlights that the simple interface of touching the phone to the tag on an object is both readily understandable and very simple to use for game players, and enhances rather that detracts from the game experience. Further, the use of objects in mobile mixed reality games can speed up the game play and reduce the presence of ‘the mixed reality stoop’ where players have to concentrate so intently on the virtual world on their mobile screen they become almost oblivious to the real world setting.