Computing and Information Systems - Research Publications
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ItemCooperating to compete: The mutuality of cooperation and competition in boardgame play(Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2018-04-20)This paper examines the complex relationship between competition and cooperation in boardgame play. We understand boardgaming as distributed cognition, where people work together in a shared activity to accomplish the game. Although players typically compete against each other, this competition is only possible through ongoing cooperation to negotiate, enact and maintain the rules of play. In this paper, we report on a study of people playing modern boardgames. We analyse how knowledge of the game's state is distributed amongst the players and the game components, and examine the different forms of cooperation and collaboration that occur during play. Further, we show how players use the material elements of the game to support articulation work and to improve their awareness and understanding of the game's state. Our goal is to examine the coordinative practices that the players use during play and explicate the ways in which these enable competition.
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ItemNo Preview Available"I love all the bits": The Materiality of Boardgames(ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY, 2016-01-01)This paper presents findings from a study of boardgamers which stress the importance of the materiality of modern boardgames. It demonstrates that materiality is one of four significant factors in the player experience of tabletop gaming and describes four domains of materiality in boardgaming settings. Further, building on understanding of non-use in HCI, it presents boardgames as a unique situation of parallel use, in which users simultaneously engage with a single game in both digital and material, non-digital environments.
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ItemFrame analysis of voice interaction gameplay(ACM, 2019-05-02)Voice control is an increasingly common feature of digital games, but the experience of playing with voice control is often hampered by feelings of embarrassment and dissonance. Past research has recognised these tensions, but has not offered a general model of how they arise and how players respond to them. In this study, we use Erving Goffman’s frame analysis [16], as adapted to the study of games by Conway and Trevillian [9], to understand the social experience of playing games by voice. Based on 24 interviews with participants who played voice-controlled games in a social setting, we put forward a frame analytic model of gameplay as a social event, along with seven themes that describe how voice interaction enhances or disrupts the player experience. Our results demonstrate the utility of frame analysis for understanding social dissonance in voice interaction gameplay, and point to practical considerations for designers to improve engagement with voice-controlled games.
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ItemDesign Patterns for Voice Interaction in Games(ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY, 2018)Voice interaction is increasingly common in digital games, but it remains a notoriously difficult modality to design a satisfying experience for. This is partly due to limitations of speech recognition technology, and partly due to the inherent awkwardness we feel when performing some voice actions. We present a pattern language for voice interaction elements in games, to help game makers explore and describe common approaches to this design challenge. We define 25 design patterns, based on a survey of 449 videogames and 22 audiogames that use the player’s voice as an input to affect the game state. The patterns express how games frame and structure voice input, and how voice input is used for selection, navigation, control and performance actions. Finally, we argue that academic research has been overly concentrated on a single one of these design patterns, due to an instrumental research focus and a lack of interest in the fictive dimension of videogames.
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ItemWhat can We Learn from Eye Tracking Boardgame Play?(ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY, 2017)
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ItemDigitising Boardgames: Issues and Tensions(Digtal Games Research Association, 2015)