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While online games have become increasingly popular in recent years, there has been very little overlap between games research and virtual environments researchers. Indeed, one could argue that for a number of years, the design of video games have been ahead of virtual environment research, not only in technical aspects such as graphics or networking, but also in how game designers have managed their online worlds as social environments. Designers of online games have had to take seriously both the details of social interaction between individuals, but also how these interactions play out in the broader socio-economic balance of their online worlds [1]. In this chapter, we explore the lessons which collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) could derive from online gaming environments, focusing on mundane interaction. Our activities and experiences in the real world depend in many ways upon mundane interaction for their operation [2]. Organisations whatever their size, in meetings and elsewhere, rely on talk [3]. Even the market transactions of currency traders depend upon chat for their coherence and reproducibility [4]. In a similar way in virtual environments it is in avatar-to-avatar interaction that experiences are configured. For virtual environments to be successful, we need to be able to interact with others around objects, refer to objects in our talk and share our awareness of other players and their movements [5]. This chapter focuses on these interactions, exploring how in the seemingly simple building blocks of talk and interaction around objects, enjoyable experiences are formed. We focus on the study of one game in detail, the social environment There, examining how its flat displays of colour come to form

Outdoor multi-player games are an increasingly popular application area for ubiquitous computing, supporting experimentation both with new technologies and new user experiences. This paper presents an outdoor ubicomp game that exploits the gaps or seams that exist in complex computer systems. Treasure is designed so that players move in and out of areas of wireless network coverage, taking advantage not only of the connectivity within a wireless ‘hotspot’ but of the lack of connectivity outside it. More broadly, this paper discusses how the notion of seamful design can be a source of design ideas for ubicomp games.

This paper presents Treasure, an outdoor mobile multiplayer game inspired by Weiser's notion of seams, gaps and breaks in different media. Playing Treasure involves movement in and out of a wi-fi network, using PDAs to pick up virtual 'coins' that may be scattered outside network coverage. Coins have to be uploaded to a server to gain game points, and players can collaborate with teammates to double the points given for an upload. Players can also steal coins from opponents. As they move around, players' PDAs sample network signal strength and update coverage maps. Reporting on a study of players taking part in multiple games, we discuss how their tactics and strategies developed as their experience grew with successive games. We suggest that meaningful play arises in just this way, and that repeated play is vital when evaluating such games.

Persistent online environments, such as multi-player games, exhibit a complex social organisation. These environments often feature large social groupings and elaborate cooperative behaviours. This paper discusses 'There', one such environment, focusing on how users interact online. Resources such as overlapping chat and emotional gestures create a compelling social experience, although not one without its problems. We draw three lessons from There for the design of games and virtual environments: that text chat can be better integrated into the virtual environment, that gestures are valuable as communication topics as well as resources, and that social interactions can improve the social presence felt in virtual environments.

Mobile and wearable computers present input/output prob-lems due to limited screen space and interaction techniques. When mobile, users typically focus their visual attention on navigating their environment - making visually demanding interface designs hard to operate. This paper presents two multimodal interaction techniques designed to overcome these problems and allow truly mobile, 'eyes-free' device use. The first is a 3D audio radial pie menu that uses head gestures for selecting items. An evaluation of a range of different audio designs showed that egocentric sounds re-duced task completion time, perceived annoyance, and al-lowed users to walk closer to their preferred walking speed. The second is a sonically enhanced 2D gesture recognition system for use on a belt-mounted PDA. An evaluation of the system with and without audio feedback showed users' ges-tures were more accurate when dynamically guided by au-dio-feedback. These novel interaction techniques demon-strate effective alternatives to visual-centric interface de-signs on mobile devices.