What tabletop players think about augmented tabletop games: a content analysis

In recent years, multiple tabletop games have been released which harness the power of smart phones and tablets to enhance their gameplay. We call these games "augmented tabletop games." Such games have met with a variety of reactions from traditional tabletop gamers, ranging from highly negative to highly positive. The main purpose of this study is to understand the opinions and attitudes of players on the emerging augmented tabletop games. The study also aims to come up with suggestions for game developers by revealing player expectations. A qualitative content analysis was carried out on prevalent tabletop gaming forums. In total, 928 posts on 15 threads were analyzed. From these we derived typologies of negative and positive attitudes towards augmented tabletop games. The overall findings are summarized in a conceptual model. We use this model to discuss design implications for developers of augmented tabletop games.

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