Curball is a prototype of a "ubi-game" for older people that can support social relationships with distant family members. It is a kind of a distributed bowling game which is playable especially with the grandchildren over the internet. Tangible objects are used as input devices. The older people play with a ball and the grandchildren have objects to move on a game field. The game scenario and the system architecture of the game are presented.
Introduction
Most applications in ubiquitous computing for older people have the aim of supporting aging in place, e.g., [
1 ]. But older people are ludic and lucid, too. So they also could use the same technologies to have fun and stay in contact with other people. The presented prototype gives them a possibility to make creative, playful and social use of their leisure time.
Initial Ideas and User Feedback
A recent study about older people and gaming showed that the aspect of being able to play with the grandchildren is an important incentive to play a computer game [
4 ]. Based on the findings that came out of this work (beyond the scope of this paper to spell out), we held two brainstorm meetings in the lab where we explored ideas for a game idea for older people. The main goal was to concentrate on a game which is exciting for both a child and an older person. Using the ideas of the brainstorm meetings and further internet research (Which games are interesting for older people?), we decided to make a portfolio with five ideas description. These ideas were presented to two potential players (a couple in their mid 50's) to get their feedback. The main thing that they mentioned a few times is that the game isn't so important, it is more important to be in contact with the grandchildren or other people so that the game is really only the vehicle for doing this and is therefore only a secondary part. So a game with a high social aspect is in demand. The idea that the couple most liked was a distributed bowling game. Based on this feedback, the "CurBall" was developed.
The Prototype
Game Scenario
The CurBall game is based on an assumption of there being a junior and a senior player. They are connected over the internet and they have a permanent audio connection to stay in contact. The senior player has a physical ball as an input device. The Junior player has a game field with a starting area and a finish area (like a bowling alley) and physical obstacles, which he distributes over the field. The goal of the game is to let the ball virtually roll from the start to the finish area without touching one of the obstacles.
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The senior player sees the game field and the obstacles on his screen. The junior player has only the game field with the obstacles. He is reliant on the other's commands, which tell him the obstacle he has to move so that the ball doesn't touch it. But thereby the obstacles have to stay on the field. The senior player starts the game by performing a throw gesture with his input device -the ball- wherewith he decides how fast and in which direction the ball should roll over the field. The ball is bounced by the side walls, so that it always stays in the game. If the ball touches an obstacle the round is over and the both players get points for the covered distance. If the ball reaches the target area they get the full points.
System Architecture
The system is composed of 3 main components: the game, the ball and the objects component.
The Game Component
The game UI are developed with Flash MX 2004 (Actionscript 2.0). For the communication between the two game parts CurBallJunior, CurBallSenior the Elektroserver from Elektrotank [
6 ] is used. CurBallSenior gets the speed, the direction and the start angle form the ball component and the positions of the objects from CurBallJunior. Due to this information it can simulate the rolling of the ball. The CurBallJunior part is more a control instance. It gets the positions of the objects from the Object Component, displays the objects corresponding to the real position (to control them) and sends this information to CurBallSenior.
The Ball Component
The original idea of the ball is based on the rolling of a bowling ball. To make the rolling easier for the senior player, a roll/throw gesture is made. Thereby the ball stays always in the player's hand. In this way he can control the speed and the direction. If he throws the ball hard to the left the ball on the screen will roll fast to the left. If he throws the ball soft to the right the ball on the screen will roll slowly to the right.
As hardware for the ball a TecO Smart-Its Particle [
2 ] is used. The particle senses the acceleration along the x- and y-axis and forwards that to the ballInput. This component calculates from the row data a direction (left or right), the speed and the angle a send this results to CurBallSenior and starts the rolling of the ball on the screen with it.
The Object Component
The object component consists of game field and the eight colored objects. To show the objects on the screen it is necessary to know their positions. An easy possibility to achieve that is given by the ARToolKit [
3,
5 ]. There are AR-markers on the objects but these are not important from the players' perspective to play the game. In each corner of the game field there is also a marker, to calibrate it and so the height and the width of the field are definite. The camera pictures are analyzed by ObjectInput. Each movement on the field is recognized and sent to the game component. To achieve a relative positioning the distance from each object to one specific corner is determined in percent. CurBallJunior convert the received position values to his coordination system and the corresponding object can be updated.
Further Work
Through the design process, various people around the department who are in an older age bracket, e.g. a cleaner and a porter, were asked to test the prototype at different stages. With the current prototype now at a stable stage, we have conducted an initial in-lab trial with two people. Ongoing plans are to develop this further into a prototype that we can take into people's homes for an in-home study.
References
[1] Concolvo, S., Roessler, P and Shelton, B. (2004) The CareNet Display: Lessons Learned from an In Home Evaluation of an Ambient Display. In Proceedings Ubicomp2004, Nottingham, Sept 2004
[2] Decker, C., Krohn, A., Beigl., Zimmer, T., The Particle Computer System In: IPSN Track on Sensor Platform, Tools and Design Methods for Networked Embedded Systems (SPOTS), Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Fourth International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks. (2005)
[3] Hornecker E., Psik T., Using ARToolKit Markers to Build Tangible Prototypes and Simulate Other Technologies. In Proceedings INTERACT in Rome. (2005)
[4] Tarling, A. Older People's social and leisure time, habbies and games. Masters Thesis. Uni of Sussex, 2005.
[5] ARToolKit: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/
[6] Elektroserver: http://www.electrotank.com/electroserver/
Publications :
People
Dagmar Kern (University of Munich), Mark Stringer (University of Sussex), Geraldine Fitzpatrick (Univeristy of Sussex) and Albrecht Schmidt (University of Munich).
