Tangible and Casual NFC-Enabled Mobile Games

Luis F.G. Sarmenta Nokia Research Center 955 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA, USA�(2012)

NFC

NFC (Near Field Communication) is form of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)� - provides point-to-point wireless communication over a short distance (few cm)

been available for several years

NFC capabilities were at that time newly included in mobile phones�(Google, Nokia, RIM (now BlackBerry), Samsung)

use in mobile gaming is not new

but mostly used in� - payment applications� - information lookup� - service or action initialization� - local peer-to-peer data exchange

Use of NFC in games

• location based games - geocaching, treasure hunts, chasing games, etc
• collection card games - Mattel’s Hyperscan
• dynamic projector-based games (by DOCOMO Euro-Labs)
• establishing Bluetooth connection for 2-player games
• passing virtual objects by tapping phones (hot potato)

Hyperscan

geocaching

NFC Matching Game

NFC Drum Repeat

(pexeso with NFC)

pattern: MAGIC WINDOW� - game reveals unseen virtual object after tapping the physical game pieces

pattern: MIXED HUMAN-DIGITAL GAMEPLAY� - part of the gameplay is enforced by the human players

tags represents drums and the player is asked to play them in particular order

pattern: SEQUENCE MATCH

pattern: TAG-AS-BUTTON

NFC Word Shuffle

NFC Gem Shuffle

NFC Shakespeare Shuffle

tags represents letters and players are trying to make words out of them

pattern: PARALLEL PLAY

battleships

pattern: HIDE-AND-SEEK� - players places gems and then they exchange phones to find them

players are trying to combine phrases to make Shakespeare quotes

(using MAGIC WINDOW and SEQUENCE MATCH)

Enabling Casual NFC Gaming

read-only non-application-specific tags using unique id (UID)� - globally unique and readable in a wide variety of NFC� - (transit cards, hotel keys, credit cards, …)

technique: MAP-BY-PROMPT� - the device prompts player to map tag ID to a virtual object (letter, card, …)

technique: MAP-BY-ORDER� - newly read tag gets added to the list (Game shuffle (pexeso))

technique: VIRTUAL SHUFFLE� - shuffles the MAP-BY-ORDER list

Evaluation

players were encouraged to join Beta Labs to provide feedback

47 respondents and 16 out of them were able to play� - issues were� - not enough working NFC tags� - not having NFC capable phones� (people seemed to ignore the list of supported devices)

players experience was mostly positive� general sense was “I was pretty amazed by the NFC functionality but overall the gameplay is not very interesting,” and “They're creative but too simple.”

Evaluation

Evaluation

Summary

the paper� - introduced the idea of tangible and casual NFC games� - showed several novel examples� - identified reusable design patterns� - showed how, by using UID mapping, it is possible to create NFC-based games

further research� - explore adding a social dimension to this gamification of everyday NFC cards� - creating more games, with intuitive, tangible, “magical”, and face-to-face kind of gameplay that NFC enables

fin