skip to main content
10.1145/2468356.2468557acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
poster

Understanding handicapping for balancing exertion games

Published: 27 April 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Balancing play can be important for engaging people in games since it allows players with different skills to play together and still feel challenged. Balancing play in exertion games has previously been explored by altering the physical effort. To further our understanding of how to design more balanced experiences, we extend this prior work by studying the affect on play of using a score handicap, which gives the less skilled player an initial score advantage. A performance handicap was also studied by asking the most skilled player to play with the non-dominant hand. We studied digital and non-digital table tennis games, which provide different game interactions, as examples of non-parallel, competitive games. Our results show that these different game interactions influenced the impact that the different handicaps had on player's scores. Therefore, we suggest that the game interaction is a key element to understand the suitability of score and performance balancing methods.

References

[1]
Adams, E. Fundamentals of game design. New Riders, 2010.
[2]
Boyle, E.A., Connolly, T.M., Hainey, T. and Boyle, J.M. Engagement in digital entertainment games: A systematic review. Computers in Human Behavior, 28 (3). (2012), 771--780.
[3]
Francis, K. Physical Activity in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease. Physical Therapy, 76 (5). (1996), 456--468.
[4]
Hunicke, R. The case for dynamic difficulty adjustment in games. In Proc. ACE 2005, ACM (2005), 429--433.
[5]
Jackson, S.A. and Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow in sports. Human Kinetics, 1999.
[6]
Koster, R. A Theory Of Fun In Game Design. Paraglyph press, 2005.
[7]
Lazzaro, N. Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story. In GDC, 2004.
[8]
Malone, T.W. Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games. In Proc. CHI 1982, ACM (1982), 63--68.
[9]
Malone, T.W. What makes things fun to learn? heuristics for designing instructional computer games. In Proc. of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL symposium and the first SIGPC symposium on Small systems, ACM (1980), 162--169.
[10]
Mueller, F.F., Gibbs, M.R. and Vetere, F. Taxonomy of exertion games. In Proc. OZCHI 2008, ACM (2008), 263--266.
[11]
Mueller, F.F., O'Brien, S. and Thorogood, A. Jogging over a distance: supporting a "jogging together" experience although being apart. In Ext. Abstracts CHI '07, ACM (2007), 1989--1994.
[12]
Mueller, F.F., Vetere, F., Gibbs, M.R., Edge, D., Agamanolis, S., Sheridan, J.G. and Heer, J. Balancing exertion experiences. In Proc. CHI 2012, ACM (2012), 1853--1862.
[13]
Organization, W.H. Obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic. Report of a WHO consultation. World Health Organ Tech Rep Ser, 894. (2000), i-xii, 1--253.
[14]
Pate, R.R., Pratt M., Blair S.N., et.al. Physical activity and public health: A recommendation from the centers for disease control and prevention and the american college of sports medicine. JAMA, 273 (5). (1995), 402--407.
[15]
Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press (2003).
[16]
Sherry, J.L., Lucas, K., Greenberg, B. and Lachlan, K. Video game uses and gratifications as predictors of use and game preference. Playing video games: Motives, responses, and consequences. (2006), 213--224.
[17]
Stach, T., Graham, T.C.N., Yim, J. and Rhodes, R.E. Heart rate control of exercise video games. In Proc. GI 2009, 125--132.
[18]
Weinberg, R.S. and Gould, D. Foundations of sport and exercise psychology. Human Kinetics, 2007.
[19]
Wii Sports Resort. http://www.wiisportsresort.com/ - /home.
[20]
Yannakakis, G., Hallam, J. and Lund, H.H. Comparative fun analysis in the innovative playware game platform. In Proc. FnG 2006, ACM (2006).

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '13: CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2013
3360 pages
ISBN:9781450319522
DOI:10.1145/2468356
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 April 2013

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. challenging
  2. engagement
  3. exertion interfaces
  4. handicapping
  5. play balancing
  6. social interaction
  7. sports

Qualifiers

  • Poster

Conference

CHI '13
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

CHI EA '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 630 of 1,963 submissions, 32%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 26 - May 1, 2025
Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)7
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
Reflects downloads up to 24 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media