Social comics: A casual authoring game

Abstract

We present Social Comics, a casual video game that allows players to act in short comic strips that they create. We designed Social Comics to be a fast paced game that engages the audience and players equally, in an effort to adapt it for parties and social gatherings. We motivate Social Comics with a design framework for video games that combines three gameplay elements: sociability, physicality, and authoring. We believe that the combination of these three gameplay elements in video games will allow collocated players to enjoy game experiences that are socially rich, inclusive and creatively empowering. Our paper describes the design and implementation of Social Comics as well as the results of a user study evaluating the game.