Playtest

In my thesis chapter on Tangible Interface Videogames, I make the point that one of the main uses for tangible computing systems seems to be to bring computation process into board games. In this video, a table-top role playing game becomes a game-table-top role playing videogame:

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Surfacescapes on Vimeo.

While there sounds like some interesting papers at the International Conference for Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) which was held last month in the Canary Islands, i’m particularly interested in the Tangible Play Workshop from last years conference in Honolulu (what is it with HCI conferences and island paradises?).

I’ve only had a brief look through the proceedings thus far, but there seems to be a strong emphasis on collaborative games, often based around interactive tables such as Philip’s Entertaible. Lots of good examples of, and articles about tangible games that for some reason have not found much prominence the more general game studies literature.