A JavaScript Library for Hybrid Physical/Digital Board Games by Drew Tisdelle A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Interactive Media and Game Development April 13, 2020 Approved by: ____________________________________ Brian Moriarty, Thesis Advisor ____________________________________ Gillian Smith, Committee ____________________________________ Ralph Sutter, Committee Abstract Throughout the last decade handheld tablet devices have become a common part of the lives of many people. While these tablets have been widely used for games, they have been rarely used as a medium for board games in which the tablet is the game board and players interact with it using physical game tokens. The main topic of this thesis is to research past attempts at creating tablet-based board games and to use the knowledge gained from this research to develop a new, more accessible way to develop games for this medium. The Minotauros JavaScript Library, which was created to allow developers to make tablet-based board games for most tablets. The library’s functionality was tested through users playing a simple game, Roll, that implemented the library. Through thorough testing, it was found that the library is fully functional and has been made publicly available. The research behind the functionality, testing, and results of the creation of this library are detailed in this thesis. PAGE | i Acknowledgements Many people supported me while working on this thesis. I would not have been able to complete the project without them. I would first like to thank my advisor, Brian Moriarty, who has supported not only throughout this thesis, but throughout my time at WPI. I am extremely grateful for his support and will use what I have learned for the rest of my life. I would next like to thank my readers, Ralph Sutter, and Gillian Smith, who supported my thesis through their timely feedback and who were integral in making this thesis the best it could be. I would also like to thank my family and friends who continually provided me with emotional support and helped me to pursue my dreams. Without their continual support, I would not have been able to accomplish all that I have. I would like to specifically thank my parents for their everlasting love and support for my pursuit of my Master’s. I would also like to specifically thank my friend, Bailey Sostek, who provided a great deal of support and helped me work through many of the roadblocks that I encountered throughout this thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my dog, Ace, who kept me company throughout the entirety of the time that I wrote this thesis and whose presence helped keep me calm when my stress levels were high. Thank you to everyone who supported me and I hope, through this thesis, I’m able to make you all proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish with the support you all have provided. PAGE | ii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... ii Table of Figures .......................................................................................................................... iv 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 2. Background Information .....................................................................................................2 2.1. The History of Blending of Digital and Physical Media ............................................ 2 2.2. Attempts at Tablet-Based Board Games .................................................................... 6 3. Developing a Proof of Concept ......................................................................................... 10 3.1. Introducing a New Approach .................................................................................... 10 3.2. Creating a Game Concept .......................................................................................... 15 3.3. Creating A Paper Prototype ....................................................................................... 18 3.4. Iterative Design And Testing ................................................................................... 20 4. Designing the Library ....................................................................................................... 26 4.1. Designing Game Tokens ........................................................................................... 26 4.2. Needs Of The Users ................................................................................................... 30 4.3. How It Works ............................................................................................................. 32 5. Testing the Library .............................................................................................................36 5.1. The Test Game ...........................................................................................................36 5.2. Conducting The Tests ................................................................................................39 5.3. The Results and Analysis .......................................................................................... 40 6. Conclusion and Future Work .......................................................................................... 44 Works Cited .............................................................................................................................. 46 Appendix A: IRB Purpose of Study & Protocol ........................................................................ 51 Appendix B: IRB Informed Consent Agreement ..................................................................... 52 Appendix C: Survey questions and results ...............................................................................54 Appendix D: Minotauros JavaScript Library JSDoc ................................................................. 57 Appendix E: GitHub Repository .............................................................................................. 59 PAGE | iii Table of Figures Figure 1. One Night Ultimate Werewolf and its companion app [Source].............................. 3 Figure 2. R2-D2 App Enabled Droid and the companion app that controls it [Source]. ...... 4 Figure 3. Jumanji VR: Reverse The Curse experience offered by The VOID [Source]. ........... 5 Figure 4. The Lenovo Horizon 2 Multimode Table PC [Source]. ............................................. 7 Figure 5. The PlayTable using Nintendo's Amiibos as player tokens [Source]. ..................... 8 Figure 6. The PlayTable becomes inaccurate as more game pieces are used [Source]. ........ 9 Figure 7. Average tablets need at least 1cm between separate touches [Source: Author]. .... 11 Figure 8. The Chromebook doesn't register the 11th touch event [Source: Author]. ............. 13 Figure 9. Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite e-reader has a web browser [Source: Author]. ....... 14 Figure 10. Theseus battles the Minotaur within the Labyrinth [Source]. .............................. 17 Figure 11. The paper prototype of The Minotaur's Labyrinth. [Source: Author]. .................. 19 Figure 12. Agile is an iterative development process uses feedback loops [Source]. ........... 20 Figure 13. Meeting to test the prototype game and divide up tasks [Source: Author]. ........ 21 Figure 14. The first successful prototype still had many flaws. [Source: Author] ................. 23 Figure 15. The pewter figure is easily sensed while the steel one is not [Source: Author]. .. 27 Figure 16. Paul Ferragut's diagram showing how his C++ application functions [Source]. 29 Figure 17. Paul Ferragut's C++ application provides immediate visual feedback [Source]. 31 Figure 18. The gameboard as it appears in the test game Roll [Source: Author]. ................. 36 Figure 19. A Chess pawn covered with conductive ink used during Roll [Source: Author]. 38 Figure 20. A scale of 1 being easy to use and 4 being difficult was used [Source: Author]. 40 Figure 21. A scale of 1 being never and 4 being often was used [Source: Author]. ................ 41 Figure 22. Most users did not even try sliding the token to move it [Source: Author]. ...... 42 Figure 23. All users preferred lifting the game token to sliding it [Source: Author]. .......... 42 Figure 24. A scale of 1 being too small and 4 being too large was used [Source: Author]. ... 43 PAGE | iv 1. Introduction This report describes Minotauros, a JavaScript library that allows developers to easily create tablet-based board games on a wide variety of standard Android or iOS tablets. Currently, the only available method for implementing tablet-based board games is to create a specialized tablet, thereby limiting the number of people who can develop or play games in this format. The Minotauros library started with the idea of creating a board game playable on standard mass-market tablets that would demonstrate that specialized hardware is not needed to create hybrid physical/digital games. The prototype game, The Minotaur’s Labyrinth, underwent a rigorous prototyping phase which helped to flesh out the details of what became the Minotauros library. The library is named after