Evaluating a distributed physical leisure game for three players

  • Authors:

  • Florian 'Floyd' Mueller;Martin R. Gibbs

  • Affiliations:

  • The University of Melbourne, Australia;The University of Melbourne, Australia

  • Venue:
  • OZCHI '07 Proceedings of the 19th Australasian conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Entertaining User Interfaces
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Physical leisure activities such as table tennis provide healthy exercise and can offer a means to connect with others socially; however, players have to be in the same physical location to play. We have developed a networked table tennis-like game that is played with a real paddle and ball, augmented with a large-scale videoconference. Unlike existing commercial console games that encourage physical activity, our system supports social interaction through an audio and video communication channel, offers a familiar gaming interface comparable to a traditional leisure game, provides non-virtual force feedback and can be enjoyed by players in three geographically separate locations simultaneously. We are presenting results from an empirical evaluation of "Table Tennis for Three" with 41 participants. The players reported that they had fun, used the game to build social rapport and experienced a sense of playing "together". Some participants did not enjoy the game, and we present informed opinions to explain their reactions. With our work, we provide other HCI researchers with a further example of an evaluation of a novel type of experience that lies in the realms of physical activity, fun and social interactions. We hope we can inspire designers to consider our results in their future game designs by looking at the characteristics of traditional physical leisure games to promote similar benefits such as exercise, enjoyment and bringing people together to socialize.