Introducing Shared Character Control to Existing Video Games

Many people enjoy the social aspects of gaming, but most video games are designed to be played by only one person at a time. We introduce WeGame, a system that increases the sociability of single-player video games by allowing joint co-located play. The WeGame mediation framework flexibly merges the inputs of multiple players into a single control stream before forwarding it to the gaming system in real-time, and supports visual overlays to give players feedback on the newly-injected social dimensions of the game. Studies with more than 50 participants explore the new space enabled by WeGame, showing the social and preferential effects of several archetype mediation strategies. The WeGame approach has the potential to improve the social aspects of existing single-player games, allow novices to learn from experts while playing together simultaneously, and improve gaming performance.