Adaptivity to Age, Gender, and Gaming Platform Topology in Physical Multi-Player Games

In games where players are competing against each other, it can be of interest to ensure that all players are challenged according to their individual skills. In order to investigate such adaptivity to the individual player in physical multi-player games, we developed a game on modular interactive tiles which can be used in both single-player and multi-player mode. We implemented simple adaptivity methods and tested these with different user groups including children and adults of both genders. The results show statistically significant differences in the game interactions between children and adults, and between male and female players. Also, results show statistically significant differences in the game interactions between different physical set-ups of the modular interactive tiles, i.e. the interaction depended on the topology of the modular tiles set-up. Changing the physical set-up of the physical game platform changes the interaction and performance of the players.