Prototyping tools for highly immersive computer games

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The popularity of computer games has soared in recent years, with annual sales now exceeding the receipts from Hollywood's box office. Game development has become a significant industry in Canada, which now is home to dozens of game development studios, including the two largest studios in the world.  Game design has stagnated over recent years, however, as soaring development costs foster a conservative attitude amongst development studios. Most games currently sold are remakes of earlier games rather than attempts to bring innovation to the market.Underlying this conservatism is the difficulty of assessing whether a game will be successful before it is built. To address this problem, we will build tools for rapidly prototyping games. These tools will make it easy for game designers to collaboratively create and test game prototypes. Our tools will be based around an electronic tabletop, a table-shaped display device with touch-sensitive input. Designers will be able to use the table to "act out" gameplay on the table, allowing players to experience in real-time the game as it is developed. Since development teams are often distributed around the globe, our tools will link tables in different locations, allowing collaborative design and demonstration of games at a distance.Tabletop surfaces are an ideal platform for collaborative prototyping tools. A group of people seated around the table can simultaneously interact with the design. Physical props can be placed on the table and easily manipulated. The touch-sensitive surface allows high level gestures to quickly direct the flow of the game.We will use this tool to experiment with game prototypes in two emerging styles of highly immersive games: exercise games and mobile games.