Traditional games meet ICT: a case study on go game augmentation

Reviewer: John M. Artz

When playing a traditional game, such a Go, Chess, Checkers, or even Poker, one has a sense of presence in the game space. The player can see his or her opponent, and can read visual clues such as facial expressions and body language. And, if the game ends badly, players can even assault each other! So when one plays these games remotely over the Internet, the social aspects and presence in the game space are lost. The purpose of this study is to augment the remote playing experience. The authors use personal computer (PC) cameras and displays to enhance the sense of presence in the game space. Although the paper suggests an interesting idea, the study is poorly conceived, poorly executed, and poorly explained. It is poorly conceived because there is virtually no theoretical context to support the difference between remote playing and local playing. Iwata et al. introduce the Japanese word "Ma," which is defined as "distances among objects in a space." "Ma" is the central construct in the study, but, beyond this short definition, it is not explained. Furthermore, the study is poorly executed because it is unclear whether it was intended to be an experiment or a prototyping effort. For example, the authors state that an "OpenCV library is used for visual analysis," but it is unclear what this is and why it is relevant. Finally, the paper is poorly explained because it rambles from experiment, to prototyping, to some in-depth explanation of the Go game. This lack of cohesion leaves the reader questioning the paper's purpose. Online Computing Reviews Service