Designing brutal multiplayer video games

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Date
2016-05-07
Authors
Marshall, Joe
Linehan, Conor
Hazzard, Adrian
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Association for Computing Machinery
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Abstract
Non-digital forms of play that allow players to direct brute force directly upon each other, such as martial arts, boxing and full contact team sports, are very popular. However, inter-player brutality has largely been unexplored as a feature of digital gaming. In this paper, we describe the design and study of 2 multi-player games that encourage players to use brute force directly against other players. Balance of Power is a tug-of-war style game implemented with Xbox Kinect, while Bundle is a playground-inspired chasing game implemented with smartphones. Two groups of five participants (n=10) played both games while being filmed, and were subsequently interviewed. A thematic analysis identified five key components of the brutal multiplayer video game experience, which informs a set of seven design considerations. This work aims to inspire the design of engaging game experiences based on awareness and enjoyment of our own and others' physicality.
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Keywords
Brutal , Physical , Games , Game design
Citation
Marshall, J., Linehan, C. and Hazzard, A. (2016) 'Designing brutal multiplayer video games', in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), Santa Clara, California, USA, 7-12 May. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 2669-2680. doi: 10.1145/2858036.2858080
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© 2016 ACM. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16) http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858080