Designing Mobile Augmented Reality Board Games - Exploring the Design Space With Regard to Player Engagement

Abstract

Augmented reality board games is a relatively new concept. Designing these types of games can be challenging for designers as there are no well established guidelines to consider. The combination of board games and augmented reality creates a large new design space for designers to explore. This thesis is concerned with exploring how to create player engagement in this new design space, as player engagement is a fundamental element of game design. Augmented reality can take many forms such as headwear or mobile devices. However, headwear is rather inaccessible to the general consumer, meanwhile mobile augmented reality is highly accessible via smartphone devices. In this thesis we explore player engagement regarding mobile augmented reality board games. We took a look at industrial practices and concerns, as well as current literature. We have built a board game using mobile augmented reality technology, which a set of experts evaluated. The results are a set of considerations for developers to keep in mind when developing mobile augmented reality board games.