Abstract

Hybrid board games (HBGs) augment their analog origins digitally (e.g., through apps) and are an increasingly popular pastime activity. Continuous world and character development and customization, known to facilitate engagement in video games, remain rare in HBGs. If present, they happen digitally or imaginarily, often leaving physical aspects generic. We developed DungeonMaker, a fabrication-augmented HBG bridging physical and digital game elements: 1) the setup narrates a story and projects a digital game board onto a laser cutter; 2) DungeonMaker assesses player-crafted artifacts; 3) DungeonMaker’s modified laser head senses and moves player- and non-player figures, and 4) can physically damage figures. An evaluation (n=4x3) indicated that DungeonMaker provides an engaging experience, may support players’ connection to their figures, and potentially spark novices’ interest in fabrication. DungeonMaker provides a rich constellation to play HBGs by blending aspects of craft and automation to couple the physical and digital elements of an HBG tightly.

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A preprint is available from this webpage.

The final version will be available in the ACM Digital Library: 10.1145/3613904.3642243

BibTeX

@inproceedings{stemasov-dungeonmaker-2024,
    title = {DungeonMaker: Embedding Tangible Creation and Destruction in Hybrid Board Games through Personal Fabrication Technology},
    author = {Stemasov, Evgeny and Wagner, Tobias and Askari, Ali and Janek, Jessica and Rajabi, Omid and Schikorr, Anja and Frommel, Julian and Gugenheimer, Jan and Rukzio, Enrico},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    doi = {10.1145/3613904.3642243},
    pages = {1--20},
    year = {2024}
}

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