Tangible and casual NFC-enabled mobile games

Abstract

As Near-Field Communication (NFC) becomes a mainstream feature in today's smartphones, it opens up a new range of applications and games. In this paper, we introduce and explore the idea of tangible and casual NFC games. First, we show how we can use NFC not just for its conventional use cases of information lookup and exchange, but in novel interaction techniques that offer players the fun of manipulating physical objects as part of the gameplay. Further, we show how using the unique ID present in most NFC tags and cards enables us to create games that can be downloaded and played by users "on impulse"-anytime, anywhere, without the need to distribute application-specific tags or install any infrastructure. To demonstrate these techniques, we present several NFC games we have implemented, including novel variations of popular traditional games and toys. We also present results from a public beta trial showing that users around the world are able to successfully play and enjoy our games using transit cards, ID cards, and other cards they already have. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.