Designing interactive tangible games for diverse forms of play

This chapter examines how various properties of play have inspired and can inspire new design directions for digital games and intelligent play objects. Play theories from a child development perspective are described and related to concepts from game design, such as game mechanics and dynamics. Furthermore, a discussion is provided of how different properties of play relate to children practicing social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills in a playful and fun context. An adapted version of the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics (MDA) model is presented as a tool that supports considering the richness of play design opportunities when creating dynamics, mechanics, and aesthetics for diverse forms of play from a designer and a player's perspective. The exploration is extended by describing four design case studies of tangible intelligent play concepts for different contexts of use related to different properties of play.