As modern tabletop play becomes more hybrid through the integration of digital tools, hybrid digital boardgames (HDBs) – games which mix physical and digital components – can be seen as ”gimmicky”. Previous work has explored the use of technology in hybrid play settings, but relatively little work exists on what makes hybridity meaningful in HDBs. In this paper, we present a model for understanding how meaningful hybridity is constructed through the relationship between the technology, game, and player. Over twelve months, we convened a monthly Critical Play Reference Group of 21 local players to play and discuss a curated selection of HDBs. We analysed 37 semi-structured group interviews for qualities of meaningful hybridity across 25 unique published HDBs. This model identifies what players assess in their HDB experience and how that maps to their overall perception of hybridity, informing the design and evaluation of meaningful hybrid game experiences.

Despite increasing interest in Hybrid Digital Boardgames (HDBs) that necessarily combine smart technology with a physical boardgame, little is known about how the design of hybrid functions impacts player experience (PX). Additionally, it is unclear whether existing, videogame-centric, PX measures apply to tabletop settings. We designed a mixed-methods study to examine the PX of a boardgame in both its published form and as a custom HDB. We learned that players’ expectations of the “core” gameplay influence their perceptions of technology, highlighting a balance between the values and drawbacks of hybridity in relation to its impact on their sense of autonomy, fairness, and challenge in play. Our results also highlight methodological considerations for future tabletop PX studies, and suggest the existence of a Goldilocks Factor where the game offers “just right’’ hybridity that satisfies players without impacting core gameplay.

As Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs) are increasingly common in society, it is imperative to support the public in understanding and critiquing their use.We used an existing FRT application to generate characters for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), a tabletop Role-Playing Game, based solely on an uploaded photograph of a player's face.Results from over 30,000 generated characters demonstrate that an FRT dataset is sufficient to generate simple D&D characters.However, it is essential to interrogate the underlying assumptions that feed into the generated characters and the value that this provides to player groups.This work highlights the biases that are embedded in FRT datasets, particularly in relation to assumptions relating to players' inferred gender.

Tabletop gaming spaces are becoming increasingly hybrid, necessitating further study into the effects of hybridity on player experiences.Hybrid digital boardgames provide an opportunity to examine the relationship between technology and player experience in an atomic way.We present an exploratory mixed-methods A/B study (N = 16) comparing the player experience of Spy Guy: Fantasy, a published, non-hybrid boardgame, and a custom hybrid version which replaces the original game's deck of cards and sand timer with an app.The study contributes insights into player experience of hybrid games as well as into study of hybrid player experience.We found no statistical difference in player experience between the non-hybrid and hybrid versions.However, comparing responses based on play-order shows preference for the hybrid version, which is further supported by rich interview data.This reveals players' expectations about the "core" and "chore" elements of a game, and the role of technology in facilitating the "core" by handling the "chores".Future work examining the effects of hybridity on player experience should consider study design, the selection or development of appropriate measures of player experience, and participants' prior exposure to and literacy in boardgames.

• Older gardeners participated in co-creating, sharing, and viewing narrated VR garden tours. • VR garden tours fostered a sense of connection and community through shared passions. • The tours enabled gardeners to showcase creativity and be inspired by others. • Viewers experienced a strong sense of presence, feeling as if they were “in the garden.” • A participatory VR storytelling framework outlines key roles and elements in the process. Virtual reality (VR) technology is being used in diverse ways to enable older adults to reminisce and connect. An underexplored area is the use of VR for creating and sharing personally meaningful stories. This paper examines the use of VR technology to help nine older adults share and experience others’ stories about their gardens. Through a co-design approach involving home visits, interviews, and a workshop, we examined older gardeners’ perceptions and experiences of co-creating, sharing, and viewing narrated 3D garden tours captured with a VR camera. Our findings demonstrate that participants showcased the meaning, creativity, and expertise associated with their gardens and gardening practices through the VR garden tours. Viewing the garden tours created by others fostered a sense of connection among participants through shared passions and interests. Participants valued the authenticity and individuality of the tours, perceiving them as avenues for learning, inspiration, and motivation. Viewers experienced a strong sense of presence in the garden tours, particularly due to the spatial immersion, holistic perspectives, the first-person view, and the ability to exert control in the VR system. The study reveals opportunities to enhance the VR garden tour experience, including increasing sociality, improving usability and guidance, and building communities around the tours. Drawing from these insights, we develop a framework to guide future practices of conducting participatory VR storytelling with older adults. The framework outlines three critical roles involved in the process: Storyteller, Facilitator, and Audience. It also discusses five key elements that need to be considered: Intention, Narrative, Medium, Context, and Engagement.

Community-based social programs, such as interest groups and outings, provide valuable ways for older adults to maintain social connectedness. To understand how technology can be designed to support older adults in such programs, we conducted a four-month field study with a local community centre, involving: (1) observations of social program sessions, (2) interviews with staff, and (3) co-design workshops with staff and program participants. We found that staff used technologies in a situated way to make social programs more inclusive for older adults. Technology promoted incidental social interactions and group learning, but also excluded participants from some activities. Participants believed that future technologies to support community-based social programs should be designed to enable efficient communication, promote flexible interactions, and maintain the flow of social activities. We argue that technology interventions in this setting should not become the focus of an activity but instead support social interactions triggered by existing activities.

Recent innovations in digital technology offer significant opportunities for older adults to engage in meaningful activities. To investigate older adults’ perceptions of using existing and emerging technologies for meaningful activities, we conducted three participatory design workshops and follow-up interviews with adults aged over 65. The workshops encompassed discussions on existing technologies for meaningful activities, demonstrations of emerging technologies such as VR, AR, and AI, and design activities including prototyping and storyboarding. Our findings show that while participants had diverse interpretations of meaningful activities, they sought to use technologies to support continuity in the pursuit of these activities. Specifically, participants highlighted the importance of safe aging at home, which provides a pathway for meaningful activities in later life. We further discuss participants’ discerning attitudes when assessing the use of different technologies for meaningful activities and several values and attributes they desire when envisioning future technologies, including simplicity, positivity, proactivity, and integration.

Playing partial information, restricted communication, cooperative (PIRCC) games with humans have proven challenging for AI, due to our reliance on social dynamics and sophisticated cognitive techniques. Yet, recent advances in generative AI may change this situation through new forms of human-AI collaboration. This paper investigates how teams of players interact with an AI assistant in the PIRCC game Codenames and the impact this has on cognition, social dynamics, and player experience. We observed gameplay and conducted post-game focus groups with 54 participants across ten groups. Each group played three rounds of Codenames, with an AI assistant supporting Cluegivers. We found the AI assistant enhanced players' convergent and divergent thinking, but interfered with formation of team mental models, highlighting a tension in the use of AI in creative team scenarios. The presence of the AI challenged many players' understanding of the 'spirit of the game'. Furthermore, the presence of the AI assistants weakened social connections between human teammates, but strengthened connections across teams. This paper provides an empirical account of an AI assistant's effect on cognition, social dynamics, and player experience in Codenames. We highlight the opportunities and challenges that arise when designing hybrid digital boardgames that include AI assistants.

Games that feature multiple players, limited communication, and partial information are particularly challenging for AI agents. In the cooperative card game Hanabi, which possesses all of these attributes, AI agents fail to achieve scores comparable to even first-time human players. Through an observational study of three mixed-skill Hanabi play groups, we identify the techniques used by humans that help to explain their superior performance compared to AI. These concern physical artefact manipulation, coordination play, role establishment, and continual rule negotiation. Our findings extend previous accounts of human performance in Hanabi, which are purely in terms of theory-of-mind reasoning, by revealing more precisely how this form of collective decision-making is enacted in skilled human play. Our interpretation points to a gap in the current capabilities of AI agents to perform cooperative tasks.

Restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected people's opportunities to engage in activities that are meaningful to their lives. In response to these constraints, many people, including older adults, turned to digital technologies as alternative ways to pursue meaningful activities. These technology-mediated activities, however, presented new challenges for older adults’ everyday use of technology. In this paper, we investigate how older adults used digital technologies for meaningful activities during COVID-19 restrictions. We conducted in-depth interviews with 40 older adults and analyzed the interview data through the lens of self-determination theory (SDT). Our analysis shows that using digital technologies for meaningful activities can both support and undermine older people's three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We argue that future technologies should be designed to empower older adults’ content creation, engagement in personal interests, exploration of technology, effortful communication, and participation in beneficent activities.

In 2020–2021, under the restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, boardgame players around the world sought out ways to play physical boardgames with each other despite being physically apart. Their creative appropriations of digital technologies and physical tools to allow for hybrid distanced play demonstrate not only the resilience of boardgaming as a hobby, but also provide important insights into the design of novel distanced hybrid digital boardgames (DHDBs). Through a survey of over 1300 respondents, this paper explores the ways distanced players engaged in homebrew practices to make physical boardgame play possible. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we identify three themes that reflect the practical issues players grappled with, including game choice, game mode or setup, and technical implementation. Reflecting on the challenges and opportunities associated with these issues, we consider their implications for DHDB design more generally. In doing so, we present the DHYE (Distanced Hybrid plaY Experience) framework, a practical set of design considerations that emphasises an understanding of distance not simply as an obstacle to enjoyable boardgame play but as an inspiration for novel and meaningful design.

Social programs run by community organizations provide an important outlet for social connectedness among older adults. However, these programs were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. In this study, we aimed to understand how community organizations used digital technologies to continue running social programs online for older adults during COVID-19. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 staff members from local councils, libraries, community groups and care providers. We found that the use of technology benefited organizations by revealing new program delivery opportunities, and by strengthening their social bonds with older adults. However, organizations experienced challenges when transitioning social programs online. Some organizations lacked financial and human resources to support online programs; staff needed to upskill themselves and put significant effort into transferring older adults online; and it was difficult to replicate in-person experiences in online settings. Staff developed ad-hoc strategies to help older adults participate by providing extra guidance and training to increase digital literacy, and by offering accessible technical support. We discuss the significance of continuing online social programs beyond the pandemic and the importance of scaffolding to enable the online participation of older people in social programs. We outline design considerations for technology-mediated social programs run by community organizations.

Restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have limited opportunities for older people to participate in face-to-face organised social activities. Many organisations moved these activities online, but little is known about older adults' experiences of participating in those activities. This paper reports an investigation of older adults' experiences of participating in social activities that they used to attend in-person, but which were moved online because of strict lockdown restrictions. We conducted in-depth interviews with 40 older adults living independently (alone or with others). Findings from a reflexive thematic analysis show that online social activities were important during the pandemic for not only staying connected to other people but also helping older adults stay engaged in meaningful activities, including arts, sports, cultural, and civic events. Online activities provided older adults with opportunities to connect with like-minded people; share care, encouragement, and support; participate in civic agendas; learn knowledge and develop new skills; and experience entertainment, distraction, and mental stimulation. Our participants had diverse perceptions of the transition from in-person to online social activities. Based on the findings, we present a taxonomy of multi-layered meaningful activities for older adults' digital social participation and highlight implications for future technology design.

Increasingly, modern boardgames incorporate digital apps and tools to deliver content in novel ways. Despite disparate approaches to incorporating digital tools in otherwise non-digital boardgames, there has to date been no detailed classification of the different roles that these tools play in supporting gameplay. In this paper, we present a model for understanding hybrid boardgame play as performing a set of discrete functions. Through a mixed-methods approach incorporating critical play sessions, a survey of 237 boardgame players, and interviews with 18 boardgame designers and publishers, we identified the key functions performed by the digital tools in these games. Using affinity mapping, we grouped these functions into eight core categories, which were tested and refined using a survey of 44 boardgame players and designers. This model defines and classifies the diverse functions that digital tools perform in hybrid digital boardgames, demonstrating their range and potential application for researchers and game designers.

Despite increasing interest in the use of digital tools in boardgames for both commercial and research purposes, little research has to date explored how and why these tools are used. We interviewed 18 professionals working in the boardgame industry to explore the combination of digital tools and tabletop play, which affords new experiences and opportunities for both players and designers. We generated five key themes from the interview data. Participants engaged with ontological questions about the fundamental nature of games; they showed strong opinions about the use of digital tools; they discussed the impacts of digital tools for game design as well as in their design practice; they raised concerns about the costs to develop and maintain such tools; and they considered how they affect the in-game player experience. From these themes, we generate five design principles for digital tools for boardgame play: traceability, completeness, integration, privacy, and materiality. Grounded in empirical data, these design principles guide game designers and researchers seeking to explore this novel design space. Our research focuses attention on the role of digital components in play and on the need for thoughtful implementation that considers the entire lifecycle of the game, from development through publication and, ultimately, archival access.

In this paper, we present a foundation for understanding the elements that enable people with visual impairment to engage with digital games. This is defined by the gamer's relation- ships with information and with elements of control provided by the game, and is mediated through in-game metaphors and affordances when gamers interact as users or creators. This work complements previous research exploring the points of view of gamers with visual impairment by focusing on the games they play and prioritising the relationships between the key enablers of access to digital games. Using the framework to examine existing and missing components will enable de- signers to consider broader aspects of accessibility in game design.

Previous research on games for people with visual impairment (PVI) has focused on co-designing or evaluating specific games - mostly under controlled conditions. In this research, we follow a game-agnostic, "in-the-wild" approach, investigating the habits, opinions and concerns of PVI regarding digital games. To explore these issues, we conducted an online survey and follow-up interviews with gamers with VI (GVI). Dominant themes from our analysis include the particular appeal of digital games to GVI, the importance of social trajectories and histories of gameplay, the need to balance complexity and accessibility in both games targeted to PVI and mainstream games, opinions about the state of the gaming industry, and accessibility concerns around new and emerging technologies such as VR and AR. Our study gives voice to an underrepresented group in the gaming community. Understanding the practices, experiences and motivations of GVI provides a valuable foundation for informing development of more inclusive games.

This paper examines the complex relationship between competition and cooperation in boardgame play. We understand boardgaming as distributed cognition, where people work together in a shared activity to accomplish the game. Although players typically compete against each other, this competition is only possible through ongoing cooperation to negotiate, enact and maintain the rules of play. In this paper, we report on a study of people playing modern boardgames. We analyse how knowledge of the game's state is distributed amongst the players and the game components, and examine the different forms of cooperation and collaboration that occur during play. Further, we show how players use the material elements of the game to support articulation work and to improve their awareness and understanding of the game's state. Our goal is to examine the coordinative practices that the players use during play and explicate the ways in which these enable competition.

This paper presents findings from a study of boardgamers which stress the importance of the materiality of modern boardgames. It demonstrates that materiality is one of four significant factors in the player experience of tabletop gaming and describes four domains of materiality in boardgaming settings. Further, building on understanding of non-use in HCI, it presents boardgames as a unique situation of parallel use, in which users simultaneously engage with a single game in both digital and material, non-digital environments.