Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. Patrick Baudisch
 

Destructive Games

Figure 1: Destructive games are games that result in valuable physical objects being damaged or destroyed. To play destructive Tug-of-War, each player places a money bill into the laser cutter, and then tries to direct the laser into the other player’s bill. Surprisingly, we found that 8 out of 12 players would play again.

While personal fabrication tools, such as laser cutters and milling machines, are intended for construction, we are exploring their use for destruction. We present a series of games that result in valuable physical objects being destroyed—objects owned by the players. Interestingly, we found that we can design these games to be desirable to play, despite the loss of the object, by instead producing social value. As part of a user study, twelve students played a destructive game in which a laser cutter cut up their own money bills. Surprisingly, 8 out of 12 participants would play again. They shared their post-game stories with us.

Video

Eickhoff, D., Mueller, S.,Baudisch, P.
Destructive Games: Creating Value by Destroying Valuable Physical Objects..
Proceedings of CHI 2016, pp. 3970-3974.
 PDF (7MB) |  Slides (90MB)  | Video