1. – comparing the digital and
tabletop gaming experience
Ville Kankainen
School of Information Sciences
University of Tampere
ville.e.kankainen@uta.fi

2. Starting Point
• Personal gaming and design history
• No previous research on these games
• Little research on
board games in general
• Hybrid experience?

3. TheGames
• Blood Bowl (BB)
– Tabletop fantasy football
miniature game
– 1987 (1st ed.)
– Jervis Johnson
– Games Workshop
• Fumbbl
– Java-based online Blood Bowl
– 2002
– Christer & SkiJunkie (javabbclient)
– Fan-based
– http://fumbbl.com/

4. Pre-research
• Open discussions with experienced players
• Own experiences
– playing both games
– game design
• Previous study
– mm. deBoer & Lamers (2004), Evan et al. (2011),
Krzywinski et al. (2011), Toivonen & Sotamaa (2011)

5. TheThemes1
• Social aspects
• Motivation
• Lifestyle/ materiality
• Visual appearance
• Rules and interaction
• Game fiction

6. TheThemes2
• Social aspects
– Who to play with, meaning for the enjoyment, social
circles, differences...
• Motivation
– Why one, the other or both; differences, how often...
• Lifestyle/ materiality
– Daily life, home decoration, identity, wargaming,
collecting...

7. TheThemes3
• Visual appearance
– painting the miniatures (BB), the ease of play, game
graphics (fumbbl)...
• Rules and interaction
– Game session, typical game actions, house rules,
digital interface (fumbbl), playing styles, cheating,
luck/strategy...
• Game fiction
– Meaning for the experience, cohesiveness, bridging
the games...

8. TheStudy
• Pre-researched themes
– autoethnography, open discussion, previous research
• Around 10 semi-structured interviews
– players as co-researchers?
• Jørgensen (2012)
• (auto-) Ethnography
– playing the game, analyzing the forums
• Grounded theory or frame analysis?

9. Thanksfor your
interest!Questions or suggestions?
ville.e.kankainen@uta.fi

10. Bibliography
De Boer, C., J. & H., L., Maarten, 2004. Electronic Augmentation of Traditional Board
Games. Available at: http://www.maartenlamers.com/docs/deboer-catan-icec2004.pdf
[Accessed October 1, 2012].
Evan, B. et al., 2011. Chores Are Fun: Understanding Social Play in Board Games for
Digital Tabletop Game Design. Available at: http://www.digra.org/wp-
content/uploads/digital-library/11307.16031.pdf.
Jørgensen, K., 2012. Players as Coresearchers Expert Player Perspective as an Aid to
Understanding Games. Simulation & Gaming, 43(3), pp.374–390.
Krzywinski, A., Chen, W. & Røsjø, E., 2011. Digital board games: peripheral activity
eludes ennui. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive
Tabletops and Surfaces. pp. 280–281. Available at: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?
id=2076415 [Accessed May 7, 2013].
Toivonen, S. & Sotamaa, O., 2011. Of discs, boxes and cartridges: the material life of
digital games. Available at: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/11312.23263.pdf [Accessed
April 26, 2013].