Augmenting playspaces to enhance the game experience: A tag game case study

•Kinects, projectors and two PCs are used to build an interactive playground.•Interactive technology can be used to enhance traditional playground games.•Interactive installations can facilitate the player behavior analysis process.•In-game measurements can be used to balance differences in skills between players.

Introducing technology into games can improve players’ game experience. However, it can also reduce the amount of physical activity and social interaction. In this article, we discuss how we enhance the game of tag with technology such that physical and social characteristics of the game are retained. We first present an analysis of the behavior of children playing traditional tag games. Based on these observations, we designed the Interactive Tag Playground (ITP), an interactive installation that uses tracking and floor projections to enhance the game of tag. We evaluate the ITP in one user study with adults and one with children. We compare players’ reported experiences when playing both traditional and interactive tag. Players report significantly higher engagement and immersion when playing interactive tag. We also use tracking data collected automatically to quantitatively analyze player behavior in both tag games. Players exhibit similar patterns of physical activity and interactions in both game types. We can therefore conclude that interactive technology can be used to make traditional games more engaging, without losing social and physical character of the game.