(via)Tangible Play: Research and Design for Tangible and Tabletop Games is a workshop at the 2007 Intelligent User Interfaces Conference organized by Elise van den Hoven and Ali Mazalek.

Many people of all ages play games, such as board games, PC games or console games. They like game play for a variety of reasons: as a pastime, as a personal challenge, to build skills, to interact with others, or simply for fun.

Some gamers prefer board games over newer genres, because it allows them to socialize with other players face-to-face, or because the game play can be very improvisational as players rework the rules or weave stories around an unfolding game. Conversely, other gamers prefer the benefits of digital games on PCs or consoles. These include high quality 3D graphics, the adaptive nature of game engines (e.g. increasing levels of difficulty based on player experience) and an abundance of digital game content to explore and experience.

With the increasing digitization of our everyday lives, the benefits of these separate worlds can be combined in the form of tangible games. For example, tangible games can be played on digital tabletops that provide both an embedded display and a computer to drive player interactions. Several people can thus sit around the table and play digital games together.

Some examples described on the workshop page: Weathergods (Philips Entertaible), Pente (TViews Table), Yellow Cab (Philips Entertaible), Digital Dialogues (TViews Table).

Why do I blog this? how digital world and physical artifacts knit together is an important trend in the future of computing, especially in the context of gaming; that's a dimension I am interested in, especially from the interaction viewpoint: how these new input/output systems would allow playful activities (in context)?