The Impact of Tangible Props on Gaming Performance and Experience in Gestural Interaction

There is a widely-held belief in the TEI and games communities that using tangible props enhances the player performance and gaming experience. Building on prior research in gaming, we studied people playing a video game using a gestural interface without props, with an incomplete or a complete tangible prop. The interaction with the tangibles was judged to be more natural, led to higher flow experience and was preferred, but there were no differences regarding performance, enjoyment, autonomy, presence and mental effort. There was a tendency that especially the incomplete tangible prop was judged as less intuitive and people felt less competent in gameplay. In contrast to prior research, the results show that tangible interaction is not always more beneficial than gestural interaction and that, especially for incomplete tangibles, any beneficial effects may be domain-dependent.