Augmentation of board games using smartphones

Abstract

This paper contains details about research into the effect of digital augmentation on social presence in board games. A case study of the board game Tobago was performed during the project and a prototype application for smartphones was developed in order to compare the players’ social presence in traditional and augmented versions. A repeated measures experiment was carried out with 15 subjects, during which both quantitative and qualitative data was collected. The results of the experiment show that while digital augmentation did not increase social presence in this board game, transferring some of the physical elements to digital medium is a viable game design choice.