Designing concurrent full-body gestures for intense gameplay

Full body gestures provide alternative input to video games that are more natural and intuitive. However, full-body game gestures designed by developers may not always be the most suitable gestures available. A key challenge in full-body game gestural interfaces lies in how to design gestures such that they accommodate the intensive, dynamic nature of video games, e.g., several gestures may need to be executed simultaneously using different body parts. This paper investigates suitable simultaneous full-body game gestures, with the aim of accommodating high interactivity during intense gameplay. Three user studies were conducted: first, to determine user preferences, a user-elicitation study was conducted where participants were asked to define gestures for common game actions/commands; second, to identify suitable and alternative body parts, participants were asked to rate the suitability of each body part (one and two hands, one and two legs, head, eyes, and torso) for common game actions/commands; third, to explore the consensus of suitable simultaneous gestures, we proposed a novel choice-based elicitation approach where participants were asked to mix and match gestures from a predefined list to produce their preferred simultaneous gestures. Our key findings include (i) user preferences of game gestures, (ii) a set of suitable and alternative body parts for common game actions/commands, (iii) a consensus set of simultaneous full-body game gestures that assist interaction in different interactive game situations, and (iv) generalized design guidelines for future full-body game interfaces. These results can assist designers and practitioners to develop more effective full-body game gestural interfaces or other highly interactive full-body gestural interfaces. HighlightsWe examine suitable simultaneous full-body game gestures.We found a difference between gamers and non-gamers in their performed gestures.We provide a set of suitable and alternative body parts for common game actions/commands.We provide a set of user-defined simultaneous gestures.We propose a novel choice-based elicitation approach for assisting users in defining simultaneous full-body gestures.