Towards Next Generation Mixed Reality Games: A Research Through Design Approach (Preprint)

Abstract

Mixed reality (MR) game is a general terms to describe games that integrate physical entities with digitally mediated contents. This kind of highly interactive and immersive experience is believed to be the essence of metaverse, and by democratizing the game building, we will approach the future metaverse applications. However, it entails relatively high development efforts and technical threshold to incorporate multiple virtual and physical building blocks. Moreover, the absence of a coherent technology stack renders the design and development process even more challenging than conventional digital games.

The objective of this research is to propose an MR game technology stack that affords a wide spectrum of virtual and physical modules with flexibility to adapt to specific application domains and on-cite needs. It is supposed to enable end users to rapid prototype and playtest their own MR games with lower development cost and smoother learning curve, thus ultimately contributing to the public engagement in co-designing and co-innovating mixed reality gameful experience.

This research has adopted a Research-through-Design (RtD) approach. We first surveyed 24 state-of-the-art studies, and results were synergized into three different spectra of technological affordances, respectively activity range, user interface and feedback control. Based on the initial insights, we then went through two iterations and resulted in a technology stack consisting of three major modules, i.e. a cardboard virtual reality (VR) module, an outdoor positioning module and an RFID-based interactive module. A participatory design workshop was further conducted, where 15 participants with different game making experiences were invited to try the proposed technology stack, and 4 conceptual game designs were generated after hands-on tutorial and group co-ideation sessions. We also collected participant feedback via user survey and semi-structured interview.

According to the user survey results, user perceived learning difficulty, innovativeness, motivation and willingness of future use were respectively rated 3.2, 4.4, 4.5 and 4.5 on a 5-point (1-5) Likert scale. From the semi-structured interview, 3 major design insights emerged, namely: 1) seamful design, seamless experience; 2) think outside the screen; 3) play with virtuality and reality.

The proposed technology stack received an overall positive feedback, particularly the innovative in-game interactions and the motivation for game creation it brought to the users. The diversity we witnessed in the user-generated speculative designs also indicates great potentials in a wide range of future application domains. From our design-driven, user-centered practice, we believe some generalizable outcome, including the technological affordance spectra and the major design insights, can contribute to the next-generation mixed-reality games and gamified applications.