Exploring Opponent Formats - Game Mechanics for Computer-Supported Physical Games

The recent growth in development and research in computer-supported physical games has sprouted a wide variety of games merging qualities from both computer games and sports. Despite the increasing interest in this type of games, exploration of their specific game mechanics and the understanding of how the opponent format and relationships impact a game are almost absent in current research. Thus, this paper aims to elucidate how the perception of a competition differs, depending on the opponent format, by presenting a game mechanic framework. The paper furthermore presents an interactive football-training platform, as well as games designed to explore the different opponent formats. The games are qualitatively evaluated to illuminate the qualities of and distinctions between different types of opponent formats, proposed by the framework terminology.

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