Pac-Many: Movement Behavior when Playing Collaborative and Competitive Games on Large Displays

Authors. Sven Mayer, Lars Lischke, Jens Emil Grønbæk, Zhanna Sarsenbayeva, Jonas Vogelsang, Paweł W. Woźniak, Niels Henze, Giulio Jacucci

Venue. CHI (2018) Full Paper

Type. Full Paper

Materials. DOI ACM PDF supplemental

Abstract. Previous work has shown that large high resolution displays (LHRDs) can enhance collaboration between users. As LHRDs allow free movement in front of the screen, an understanding of movement behavior is required to build successful interfaces for these devices. This paper presents Pac-Many; a multiplayer version of the classical computer game Pac-Man to study group dynamics when using LHRDs. We utilized smartphones as game controllers to enable free movement while playing the game. In a lab study, using a 4m × 1m LHRD, 24 participants (12 pairs) played Pac-Many in collaborative and competitive conditions. The results show that players in the collaborative condition divided screen space evenly. In contrast, competing players stood closer together to avoid benefits for the other player. We discuss how the nature of the task is important when designing and analyzing collaborative interfaces for LHRDs. Our work shows how to account for the spatial aspects of interaction with LHRDs to build immersive experiences.

@inproceedings{10.1145/3173574.3174113,
    title        = {Pac-Many: Movement Behavior When Playing Collaborative and Competitive Games on Large Displays},
    author       = {Mayer, Sven and Lischke, Lars and Gr\o{}nb\ae{}k, Jens Emil and Sarsenbayeva, Zhanna and Vogelsang, Jonas and Wo\'{z}niak, Pawe\l{} W. and Henze, Niels and Jacucci, Giulio},
    year         = {2018},
    booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
    publisher    = {ACM},
    series       = {CHI '18},
    pages        = {1–10},
    doi          = {10.1145/3173574.3174113},
    url          = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174113},
    abstract     = {Previous work has shown that large high resolution displays (LHRDs) can enhance collaboration between users. As LHRDs allow free movement in front of the screen, an understanding of movement behavior is required to build successful interfaces for these devices. This paper presents Pac-Many; a multiplayer version of the classical computer game Pac-Man to study group dynamics when using LHRDs. We utilized smartphones as game controllers to enable free movement while playing the game. In a lab study, using a 4m \texttimes{} 1m LHRD, 24 participants (12 pairs) played Pac-Many in collaborative and competitive conditions. The results show that players in the collaborative condition divided screen space evenly. In contrast, competing players stood closer together to avoid benefits for the other player. We discuss how the nature of the task is important when designing and analyzing collaborative interfaces for LHRDs. Our work shows how to account for the spatial aspects of interaction with LHRDs to build immersive experiences.},
    numpages     = {10},
    keywords     = {large high resolution displays, gaming, co-located, multiplayer, large tiled display, collaborative}
}