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A Game Based Communication Device

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CHI 2008, April 5 – April 10, 2008, Florence, Italy

ACM 1-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Abstract

Games provide a means for entertainment, social interaction, and learning in a fun environment. As such, many people of all ages play games on a regular basis. However, coordinating times to play games can be challenging due to limited free time and distance. Digital interfaces provide a reasonable solution, as they allow gamers to start, pause, and continue a game at any time and to engage in play with gamers in any remote location. Despite these capabilities, some players prefer board games because of its physicality, sentimental value, and more flexible nature for rule improvisation or story incorporation.

In this work, we combine the digital and physical world to create a way to play a tangible game with remote players. We chose to work with the Milton Bradley classic game of Connect Four. Our Connect Four Extension consists of a robotic set up that is controlled by an Internet connected computer and the standard game set. This robotic contraption transmits each move to each remote player’s machine and then executes the remote player’s moves on their set, allowing people to play with their own Connect Four sets in separate locations.

Keywords

Games, connect four, remote, robot

ACM Classification Keywords

C3. Special-Purpose and Application-Based Systems - Process control systems. J7. Computers in Other Systems - Consumer Products

Introduction

Board games are unique because they are tangible and socially interactive. However, playing games with multiple players can be difficult due to time and proximity constraints. Board games that have been ported to the internet to enable remote playing lose this physical activity and social aspect. With emerging technologies, the tangibility of game pieces can be used to gather digital information about the game through tracking or sensing. The system we are developing eliminates this disconnect by merging the physicality of a board game with the remoteness of a digital game on the Internet. We chose to work with the Milton Bradley classic game of Connect Four, and created the Connect Four Extension, which allows players to engage in a game at their leisure from distant locations.

Connect Four is a two-person board game in which players must “connect four” pieces on a seven-column, six-row, vertically-suspended grid. The connection can be horizontal, vertical or diagonal. Each player has pieces of one color and alternates turns. To win, the player must achieve the quad-connection before his opponent.

In our Connect Four Extension, we record each move with force sensors that sense the impact of the dropped piece. Information about this move is then transferred by digital means to the opponent’s set, where the Connect Four Extension robot contraption then mimics that move onto their set. This interaction is repeated across the two players' sets. This system allows people to play with real game pieces on the real game set, and therefore maintains a realistic representation of the game. As such, players can engage in a real game, across remote locations.

Related Work

Much work has been done on interaction between multiple users in remote spaces, particularly for gaming experiences. Physical interfaces are desirable because they allow more natural collaboration between users while manipulating digital information [1].

An example of an augmented reality game is TJass [2], which enhances a card game with digital applications. This system assists the players by automatically updating the score and providing “decision assistance” for each move, while preserving the traditional cards and board setup. Research on tangible interaction in digital board games has been done with Weathergods [3], False Prophets [4], and the TViews Table Role-Playing Game project [5].

PlayTogether pushes further by allowing people to play board games in separate locations via a PlayAnywhere tabletop system [6]. This system projects videos of the opponent’s hands and game pieces onto each player’s tabletop, to mimic players sitting around a table.

The Connect Four Extension differs from these systems in that it uses the actual game set with small changes and minimal digital projections or applications. The player engages in the game solely with the physical game set.

Interaction Loop

The interaction loop is derived from the game play. The interaction may be described in terms of both the progress of the game, and in terms of communication between the two participants. The term game play as used in this article refers to the actual playing of the game. A remote player is the player at a remote location with whom one is playing.

[pic]

figure 1. The interaction loop.

The game play loop is depicted in figure 1. It broadly follows six steps. The first player makes a move on his Connect Four set, which is read by the computer. The computer transmits this move to the remote player's machine, where the remote player's robot completes the first player's move on the remote player's game set. In doing so, the computer maintains an internal "state of the game" on both machines (and on a web server). In response, the remote player makes his move on his game set, which is similarly completed by the first player's robot on the first player’s machine.

Anticipated Interactions

Traditionally, internet-based communication tools have been in the form of text or voice messaging, email, message boards and discussion forums, or virtual computer games. This project proposes the combination of the virtues of traditional board games as devices fostering interpersonal communication with the power of the computer mediated communication. The two players are effectively communicating with each other across the Internet. Along with every move, a player can also send across a voice message which complements the game play experience. The augmented game set, which includes the Connect Four board and the robot device would also function as a trigger for memory about the person with whom one is playing the game. Since the computer screen is not necessary in order to play the game, the use of the computer is limited to the transmission of moves and messages to the remote user's game set via the Internet.

Use Case

Jack and Jill are cousins who have been playing Connect Four with each other for years.  They now live on the opposite sides of the continent and are busy with their own lives.  However they would like to stay in contact in a way that does not distract from their daily lives and yet is meaningful to them.  They take out their old sets of Connect Four and set them up with the remote robot. 

Jack drops in the first chip.  As he presses the "submit move" button, he records a brief audio greeting for Jill - "Hey Jill, just like the old times!"  As he releases the button, a light on the Connect Four set up in Jill's family room begins to slowly fade in and out.  Jill, busy with her regular activities, does not notice it until she walks by that evening.  She presses the "make the move" button - Jack's black chip drops in and she hears his audio remark.  Smiling, she makes her move and, when pressing the "submit move" button, says "Jack, some things don't change!"  It takes Jack a few hours before he notices the fading light on his set.  He walks over, asks the machine to make Jill's move, and then makes his. Because they are both busy that week, the game takes four days to complete - Jill wins. 

Implementation

Our experience of playing traditional Connect Four was an important starting point for our implementation of the Extension. The "robot" (see fig.2,3,4) took the place of the other player in our implementation. We used a junior erector set for constructing the robot to retain the colorful, plastic aesthetic of the Connect Four set.

[pic]

figure 2. The operating.set up.

In our current implementation, of the six stages of the interaction loop described in fig.1, stages one, three, four and six have been substantially implemented, Stages two and six have not been implemented. The implementation of these four stages involved the development of the robot device so that it could transfer a Connect Four chip to the appropriate column of the game set. This is accomplished by using two servo motors. The first servo motor enables the chip to be aligned with the appropriate column (see fig.3), while the second servo motor (see fig.4) controls the actual transfer of the chip to the to the game set.

[pic]

figure 3. Front view of the set design. A servo motor drives the large gear which in turns spins a roller and moves a plank with the game piece on it.

The state of the game is detected by using force sensors in each of the columns. These force sensors are programmed to read the impact of the falling chip and to keep count of how many chips for in a particular column. Thus, the position of each chip (column, row) is determined and the state of the game is recorded.

Conclusion and Future Work

Because of the chosen materials and set up, the implementation succeeded in minimal alterations to the aesthetic of the game. The construction proved that the chip placement and game move detection can be relatively easily controlled by Arduino. Although we did not implement the TCP/IP communication with the remote robot, there is at least one group that has made such code available [7]. Once the robot is fully calibrated and seamlessly communicates with its pair, it will be ready for an in-context evaluation.

[pic]

figure 4. Side view of the set. A servo motor uses a crane like set up to tilt the platform holding the game piece and so drop it into the game set.

Once several devices are ready, a study should be set up to evaluate what the users' response to the device will be. One question is how people will respond to the game set as a communication device where up to now they treated it as merely a game set. Another is whether the elaborate set up alters the aesthetic of the game enough to turn people away. These and other questions can be investigated with a study of several pairs of individuals employing the game sets over a number of weeks. The study would be qualitative, though it could also correlate people's statements with logs of frequency, duration, and degree of communication during each game. Because the apparatus is not meant to be a substitute for another style of gaming, it would not be appropriate to run a parallel control group.

Citations

Y. Rogers, Y. Lim, and W. Hazlewood, "Extending Tabletops to Support Flexible Collaborative Interactions", In Proceedings of the First IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems, 2006

D. Lalanne, F. Evéquoz, H. Chiquet, M. Muller, M. Radgohar, and R. Ingold, "Going through digital versus physical augmented gaming",Intelligent User Interfaces conference, 2007

S. Bakker, D. Vorstenbosch, E. Hoven, G. Hollemans and T. Bergman, "Weathergods: tangible interaction in a digital tabletop game", TEI 2007

R. Mandryk, D. Maranan, K. Inkpen, "False Prophets: Exploring Hybrid Board/Video Games", CHI 2002

A. Mazalek and M. Nitsche, "Tangible Interfaces for Real-Time 3D Virtual Environments", ACE 2007

A. Wilson and D. Robbins, "PlayTogether: Playing Games across Multiple Interactive Tabletops", Intelligent User Interfaces conference, 2007



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Kimberly Lau

MS Candidate

Mechanical Engineering

UC Berkeley

lauk@berkeley.edu

Kartikeya Date

PhD Student

Architecture

UC Berkeley

kartikeya@berkeley.edu

Igor Pesenson

MS Candidate

School of Information

UC Berkeley

ipesenson@berkeley.edu

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