Digital Sound De-Localisation as a Game Mechanic for Novel Bodily Play

Aug 26, 2026

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This paper presents an exertion-game mechanic that gives players partial control over an opponent’s sound-localisation abilities. The concept is developed and evaluated through the design and testing of “The Boy and The Wolf,” combining reduced vision with a spatial mismatch between where players move and where sound is perceived. The approach supports intense gameplay while enhancing creativity and audience engagement. Observations and analysis yield design lessons for engaging bodily play using sound-movement disparity, and outline planned future explorations.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

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University of Southern Denmark Digital Sound De-Localisation as a Game Mechanic for Novel Bodily Play Tiab, John; Rantakari, Juho; Halse, Mads Laurberg; Mitchell, Robb Published in: Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction DOI: 10.1145/2971485.2996744 Publication date: 2016 Document version: Submitted manuscript Citation for pulished version (APA): Tiab, J. , Rantakari, J. , Halse, M. L. , & Mitchell, R. (2016) . Digital Sound De-Localisation as a Game Mechanic for Novel Bodily Play. In Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction Article 109 Association for Computing Machinery. [https://doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2996744](https://doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2996744) Go to publication entry in University of Southern Denmark's Research Portal Terms of use This work is brought to you by the University of Southern Denmark. Unless otherwise specified it has been shared according to the terms for self-archiving. If no other license is stated, these terms apply: • You may download this work for personal use only. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying this open access version If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details and we will investigate your claim. Please direct all enquiries to [puresupport@bib.sdu.dk](puresupport@bib.sdu.dk) Download date: 25. Aug. 2026 Digital Sound De-Localisation as a Game Mechanic for Novel Bodily Play John Tiab Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen Njalsgade 128 Copenhagen, DK 2300 [john.tiab@di.ku.dk](john.tiab@di.ku.dk) Juho Rantakari University of Lapland Yliopistokatu 8 96400 Rovaniemi, Finland [jrantakari@ulapland.fi](jrantakari@ulapland.fi) Mads Laurberg Halse University of Southern Denmark, Universitetparken 1, Kolding, DK 6000 [madshalse@gmail.com](madshalse@gmail.com) Robb Mitchell Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Universitetparken 1, Kolding, DK 6000 [robb@sdu.dk](robb@sdu.dk) Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page . Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee . Request permissions from [Permissions@acm.org](Permissions@acm.org). NordiCHI '16, October 23-27, 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden Copyright is held by the owner/author(s) . Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-4763-1/16/10…$15 .00 DOI: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2996744](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2971485.2996744) Abstract This paper describes an exertion gameplay mechanic involving player’s partial control of their opponent’s sound localization abilities . We developed this concept through designing and testing “The Boy and The Wolf”game . In this game, we combined deprivation of sight with a positional disparity between player bodily movement and sound. This facilitated intense gameplay supporting player creativity and spectator engagement. We use our observations and analysis of our game to offer a set of lessons learnt for designing engaging bodily play using disparity between sound and movement. Moreover, we describe our intended future explorations of this area . Author Keywords Exertion games; bodily play; sound-mapping; spatial hearing; sensory deprivation, embodied interactions . ACM Classification Keywords H.5. m . Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous Introduction Spatial hearing enables peop

FAQs

What game mechanic does the paper propose?

The paper proposes an exertion gameplay mechanic that enables a player’s partial control over an opponent’s sound localisation abilities through digital-audio decoupling.

How is the concept implemented and tested?

The authors develop and test the idea through a game called “The Boy and The Wolf,” combining sight deprivation with a positional disparity between player bodily movement and perceived sound.

What design lessons and future work does the paper offer?

Based on observations and analysis, the paper provides lessons for designing engaging bodily play using disparity between sound and movement, and it describes intended future explorations in this area.

Aug 26, 2026

Upload by Mason