CanTouchThis: Examining the Effect of Physical Contact in a Mobile Multiplayer Game.

Smartphones have become ubiquitous and smartphone users have been called anti social because of the high amount of usage they frequently show. In this paper we want to examine if smartphones on the other hand might even be used to bring people. We present CanTouchThis, a smartphone game designed around two players physically sharing one smartphone to increase social interaction. We conducted a user study (n=12) examining the effects of physical contact on player experience and emotional benefits of communication. The preliminary analysis shows that playing on a shared device leads to higher valence scores compared to playing on separate devices.