The Internet of Things Game: Revealing the Complexity of the IoT

"The Internet of Things Game" is a collaborative board game developed as a Research through Design artefact to make the hidden, interdependent relationships among human and non-human actants in Internet of Things systems legible, particularly around security and privacy. Grounded in Object-Oriented Ontology and the "constellation" metaphor, the project frames IoT as a more-than-human challenge in which a single user action, such as unlocking a smart lock, conceals many interacting parties. The game uses procedural rhetoric, persuading players through the rules and structure of play rather than through explicit instruction.

The design evolved through fourteen iterations and ten playtest sessions involving twenty-two players. Its mechanics combine a hexagonal board of forty tiles, dice-based skill checks adapted from Eldritch Horror, and decks of item, risk, privacy, and daemon cards that model vulnerability and hidden digital linkages. Early versions were judged dull, and the authors found that a fictional backstory, character avatars, and more conventional board game materials substantially improved engagement. The shift from a competitive to a collaborative format also better reflected the interdependence the game aims to portray.

Playtest results indicate that players most readily grasped the fragility of IoT systems and their vulnerabilities, while conveying the urgency of threats proved harder. Informed players praised the game's accuracy, whereas others regarded it more as a strategy game than a realistic model, and many engaged with its mechanics without absorbing the underlying object-oriented philosophy. The authors conclude that progressive simplification of information improved responses and embedded the rhetoric more subtly, though they acknowledge that its persuasive effect is difficult to measure and may have been constrained by the limits of the board-game format.