Augmenting video game interactions using force input/output on a gamepad thumbstick

Abstract

collecting new video game interaction, structuring the design space, and discovering characteristics of the structured space. Also, discussion on merging the force input/output space is provided lastly. As a conclusion, design space exploration with the two devices showed that the force modality could effectively augment the video game interaction.

Gamepad is a representative input interface in various video game environments, due to its mobility and versatility. However, it is hard to expand a novel video game interaction space with the gamepad because of its form factor, which is packed with various I/O components, and requirement for its back-compatibility on existing games. In this work, I pursued to augment a gamepad’s thumbstick with force modality while satisfying such requirements. Two proof-of-concept devices that employ force input and output respectively—ExpanStick, an interface that senses and utilizes the force that occurs when the user tilt the thumbstick up to the boundary and pushes it, and FS-Pad, a gamepad that uses its thumbstick as a force feedback end-effector—were implemented during this process. As two novel devices generated new design spaces, I explored these by conducting a series of experiments