Tangible interface for controlling toys-to-life characters emotions

The emerging games-to-life genre is gaining popularity in the computer games market. This type of games makes use of physical figurines that represent in-game characters, and permits the control of certain aspects of the game. This makes it possible for designers to create new types of game play that blend physical and virtual space. Play can be classified as intervention or performative [2]. In existing gamesto-life games, the interactions that entail both spaces are performed only during intervention play. In contrast, interactions during performative play are still performed with standard controllers. This work presents a novel interface to be used in performative play. This interface is composed by a physical toy with an attached sensor device, and enables users to control the emotions of a virtual character. The interface has been evaluated with a user test. Results shows that it performs at least as well as a standard touch interface in several usability aspects.