In 2007, MOTO developed a prototype of a Multi-Touch Table– a large-scale, resisitive-touch system that enables multiple users to  conduct simultaneous touch-based interactions in a unified content environment. Since then, we’ve been eager to develop applications that exploit the unique capabilities of the Multi-Touch Table, and recently created a new one: casino-style Blackjack.

Gaming is an ideal application for multi-touch screen technology. Replacing physical tokens, chips, cards, or game pieces with virtual items eliminates tedious setup, distribution, and cleanup tasks while increasing the efficiency and accuracy of gameplay.

And unlike many other real-world computing tasks, games have well-established norms and behaviors that are straightforward to translate into multi-touch gestures and interactions; players still feel that they “own” their cards, pieces, or money. Meanwhile, team-oriented play is actually easier in a virtual gamespace, because players can collaborate and share cards without having to physically pass them back-and-forth.

Showing Our Hand

With all that in mind, MOTO developed a full-scale version of Blackjack for this multi-touch screen. Written in Java, using an open source graphics library called Processing (for images of playing cards, chips, card rotations, and animation), Multi-Touch Blackjack recreates a casino-style game experience on a touch-screen tabletop, giving a familiar game new verve. Watch our video to see what we mean:

Multi-Touch Blackjack from MOTO Development Group.

From a design perspective, the key challenge was to develop gestures that feel natural and intuitive. Fortunately, Multi-Touch Blackjack also knows what players may want to do based on where they are in the action, so it automates some aspects of the game that might otherwise require non-intuitive actions.

When you have a hand of cards, for example, it assumes you probably want to hide them.

In the multi-touch environment, the basic elements of blackjack gameplay are re-created using familiar gestures and interactions:

Dealing: The dealer simply slides virtual cards across the table (or the task can be automated).

Private viewing: Players can shield their cards from other players by creating a cupped barrier with one hand. This gesture hides the face of the cards behind an opaque “curtain.” To view cards privately, the player slides their cupped hand slowly down the virtual cards. As the hand moves, the opaque curtain rises to reveal a small portion of the cards.

Betting: Bets are placed by dragging virtual chips into the center of the table.

Showing: Players reveal their cards by raising the cupped hand that shields them. (This behavior can be restricted so users cannot show their cards accidentally.)

Next Stop, Vegas

Transforming slot machines into social tables that can transition from individual games to social interactions and back to group games likely holds too much promise for Vegas not to innovate in this direction.  How could Vegas resist the potential for more decorative and flexible gaming surfaces?

It’s easy to go one simple step further and envision casinos adding RFID readers to these tables, enabling loyalty card usage and a bevy of targeted marketing opportunities.  Users could place drink orders, pay for food, buy tickets to the show their neighbor just talked up.

There may be human learning curves and security concerns to wrestle, but our experience with forthcoming larger-scale, high quality touch sensing technologies suggests that fun, social, multi-touch casino gaming is around the bend.

Links

A New York Times article summarizes the state of multi- touch.