Hybrid Digital Boardgames

News from our projects

February 2026: We are delighted that we have had some work (conditionally) accepted for upcoming conferences:
- CHI 2026 (2 full papers) – Barcelona, Spain, April 2026
- Board Game Studies Colloquium – Alicante, Spain, April 2026
- DiGRA International Conference – Maynooth, Republic of Ireland, June 2026
February 2026: Sasha Soraine and Melissa J. Rogerson, Exploring Hybridised Storytelling in Story-Driven Boardgames
April 2025: We presented two papers and a poster at the annual Foundations of Digital Games Conference in Graz, Austria (the one with no kangaroos).
Sasha Soraine and Melissa J. Rogerson, Core or Chore? How Hybridity Impacts Player Experience
Sasha Soraine and Jacques Carette, The Many Views of Game-Related Experiences with the Experiential Tetrad (this work was based on Sasha’s PhD research rather than on our hybrid play work)
Melissa J. Rogerson, Sasha Soraine, and Niels Wouters, A Surfeit of Barbarians: Using Facial Recognition Technology to Generate a Dungeons and Dragons Character
April 2025: Dr Melissa Rogerson presented on Electric Quizzers at the annual Board Game Studies Colloquium in Tampere, Finland
March 2025: Dr Melissa Rogerson presented a Keynote address at the International Conference on Games and Narrative
February 2025: New publication! Melissa J. Rogerson and Sasha Soraine, Playing with Players: On the Criticality of Critical Play – at the DiGRA Australia conference in Adelaide, Australia
December 2024: New publication! Matthew Sidji, Wally Smith, and Melissa J. Rogerson, Adopting the Theory of Distributed Cognition for Human-AI Cooperation – at the OzCHI conference in Brisbane, Australia
October 2024: New paper! Matthew Sidji, Wally Smith, and Melissa J. Rogerson, Human-AI Collaboration in Co-operative Games: A Study of Playing Codenames with an LLM Assistant was presented at the CHI Play conference in Tampere, Finland, and published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.
September 2024: Dr Melissa Rogerson gave an invited talk about her research at the University of Plymouth in the UK
April 2024: Dr Melissa Rogerson presented the Keynote address at the annual Board Game Studies Colloquium in Tampere, Finland.
April 2024: Dr Melissa Rogerson presented her research on Hybrid Boardgames to the team at Asmodée Research in Paris.
October 2023: Dr Melissa Rogerson spoke about her research to game design students at Wilfried Laurier University in Brantford, Canada.
October 2023: ‘Lessons from Homebrewed Hybridity: Designing Hybrid Digital Boardgames for Distanced Play‘ (LA Sparrow & MJ Rogerson) – in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction & the CHI Play conference
October 2023: We’ve added some guidelines on How to Use the SMeFT Decks to ideate and design games for hybrid distanced play.
September 2023: We are recruiting! Join Melissa’s DECRA team as a three-year Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
August 2023: Dr Melissa Rogerson was awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council. This prestigious award will support her research into Hybrid Digital Boardgames over the next three years (2024-2026).
July 2023: ‘Exploring the Mechanisms of Hybrid Digital Play‘ (MJ Rogerson, D Flicker, LA Sparrow) – Presented at Generation Analog 2023. Watch the panel session here (Melissa presents about 43 minutes in, with questions at the end).
July 2023: ‘Extending Wingspan with Digital Tools: A Case Study‘ (Noah Stammbach, with supervisors Melissa Rogerson and Martin Gibbs) – Presented at Generation Analog 2023. Watch the panel session here (Noah presents about 15 minutes in, with questions at the end).
February 2023: ‘Escaping the Laboratorium of Dr Moustache: Learning About Distanced Play Through Game Design‘ (MJ Rogerson, LA Sparrow, SO Freeman) – Proceedings of DiGRA Australia 2023
November 2022: ‘The SMeFT Decks: A Card-Based Ideation Tool for Designing Hybrid Digital Boardgames for Distanced Play‘ (MJ Rogerson, LA Sparrow, SO Freeman)- Proceedings of OzCHI22, the Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (OzCHI22) Canberra, Australia 2022 (Open Access)
November 2022: ‘Shoeboxes, chandeliers, and screenshares: How players appropriated material and digital technologies for distanced boardgame play during the COVID-19 pandemic.’ (LA Sparrow & MJ Rogerson) will be presented at ANZCA 2022, Communicating through Chaos: Connection, Disruption, Community The University of Wollongong, Australia Nov 22-25, 2022 (Link to follow)
July 2022: Panel discussion on Hybrid Tabletop Games at the 2022 DiGRA Digital Games Research Association international conference – Aaron Trammell, Melissa Rogerson, Tom Apperley, and Ville Kankainen.
September 2021: ‘More than a Gimmick – Digital Tools for Boardgame Play‘ published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol 5, CHI PLAY, Article 261. (DOI: 10.1145/3474688)
July 2021: Making Sense of Digital Tools in Modern Board Games – presentation at the GDC Board Game Design Summit. (Membership required to access link).
May 2021: ‘Unpacking “Boardgames with Apps”: The Hybrid Digital Boardgame Model‘ published at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (DOI: 10.1145/3411764.3445077)
2021: “Analoge Spiele: Zwei Worte, Viele Probleme” published in Null Ouvert magazine, issue 0. Download Null Ouvert here (in German)
February 2021: ‘Capturing hybridity: a comparative analysis of three hybrid digital boardgames‘ presented at the DiGRAA Digital Games Research Association (Australia) National Conference
February 2020: ‘The Precursors to Modern Hybrid Boardgames‘ paper presented at the Digital Games Research Association (Australia) annual conference in Brisbane, Australia.
January 2020: Lightning talk: ‘Towards a functional classification of digital tools in hybrid digital boardgames‘ presented at Australasian Computer Science Week in Melbourne, Australia.
(6 Sep 2019) Interview with Game-in-Lab, introducing the project (in English)
(30 Aug 2019) Introduction to the project (in French)

About the Project

Project Goals

Every year, more and more games are published that combine digital elements with the physical components of a boardgame. Our research explores these “hybrid digital boardgames” and extends this to explore the notion of “distanced play”.

Our Steering Group

Our steering group is comprised of game industry experts.

Researchers

Meet the researchers responsible for this project.

This work is supported by two research grants through Game-in-Lab
and a grant from The University of Melbourne

Contact

To contact the project, email melissa.rogerson -at- unimelb.edu.au

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