Utilizing Displayless Space in Collocated Games

Kauko and Arrasvuori's paper examines how the empty, displayless gap between two touchscreen handhelds can be incorporated into a single game world rather than treated as a dead zone. The authors develop two collocated two-player games, Tennis and Maze, and evaluate them through a qualitative study involving fourteen participants arranged in seven pairs. The work sits within the Digital Games Research Association's 2009 proceedings and addresses a narrow but emerging question in portable and mobile multiplayer design: how players can share a coherent game space across physically separated screens.

The central finding is that the displayless space supports social interaction and engagement when it is handled well. In the Tennis game, most respondents judged the experience socially engaging, with players discussing unseen areas, sharing commentary, and coordinating their play. A larger gap between devices made ball trajectories harder to predict but gave players more reaction time, producing mixed reactions. Hidden obstacles and occasional surprises were reported to heighten engagement, while excessive concealed detail, or a gap that broke the illusion of a cohesive space, frustrated players and reduced their interaction. Most respondents found Tennis appropriately challenging.

The Maze game performed less well. Participants tended to focus on their own display, found the game insufficiently challenging, and experienced a fragmented sense of space at greater device distances. The authors respond by proposing a revised Maze that requires players to follow one another's steps and incorporates feedback and reward mechanisms, though they leave evaluation of this redesign to future work. The study's scope is limited to two prototype games, a small sample, and a single session format, and its conclusions are accordingly exploratory, demonstrating feasibility and identifying design tensions rather than establishing generalizable effects.