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Age invaders: social and physical inter-generational mixed reality family entertainment

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Abstract

Age invaders (AI), is a novel interactive intergeneration social-physical game which allows the elderly to play harmoniously together with children in the physical space, while parents can participate in the game play in real time remotely in the virtual world through the internet. Traditional digital games are designed for the young where normally the player sits in front of a computer or game console. Unlike standard computer games, age invaders brings the game play to a physical platform, and requires and encourages physical body movements rather than constraining the user in front of a computer for many hours. Age invaders is an interactive social-physical family digital game designed specially for a harmonious game play between the elderly and young. Adjusting game properties automatically compensates for potential elderly disadvantages, for example slower reaction time and slow movement.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to extend our gratitude to Dr Theng Yin Leng from the School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University for her time and effort in providing useful insights and advice on the user study part of this paper. We would also like to thank Yong Soon Choi and Yating Yang for the design of the graphics in this paper. The work is partially supported Singapore Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Creative Community Singapore (CCS) and also is partially supported by the grants of last author (NSFC project: 60533080, 863 project: 2006AA01Z303; pre-973 project: 2005CCA04400).

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Correspondence to Adrian David Cheok.

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Khoo, E.T., Cheok, A.D., Nguyen, T.H.D. et al. Age invaders: social and physical inter-generational mixed reality family entertainment. Virtual Reality 12, 3–16 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-008-0083-0

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