How to make tangible games and not die in the attempt

Abstract

Tabletop devices offer an attractive environment to create tangible games that seamlessly integrate physical and digital game interaction. However, the prototyping of Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) challenges designers, preventing the rapid exploration of richer physical interactions with the game. In spite of the toolkits that are emerging in the TUI domain the development of an application is not easy, since it usually implies to "hardcode" complex algorithms to process raw data from tabletop in order to detect and track each playing piece manipulated on the active surface. This situation brings a gap between designers and developers. The aim of the workshop is to give attendants an opportunity of gathering experiences from both the designing and the implementation perspectives, making community and discussing current challenges and future perspectives. © Springer International Publishing 2013.