POIROT: Investigating Direct Tangible vs. Digitally Mediated Interaction and Attitude Moderation in Multi-party Murder Mystery Games

TL;DR

Qualitative findings further illuminate this divergence: tangibility provides novelty and engagement for some but imposes excessive proxemic friction for anxious users, for whom the digital interface acts as a protective social buffer.

Abstract

As social robots take on increasingly complex roles like game masters (GMs) in multi-party games, the expectation that physicality universally enhances user experience remains debated. This study challenges the "one-size-fits-all" view of tangible interaction by identifying a critical boundary condition: users' Negative Attitudes towards Robots (NARS). In a between-subjects experiment (N = 67), a custom-built robot GM facilitated a multi-party murder mystery game (MMG) by delivering clues either through direct tangible interaction or a digitally mediated interface. Baseline multivariate analysis (MANOVA) showed no significant main effect of delivery modality, confirming that tangibility alone does not guarantee superior engagement. However, primary analysis using multilevel linear models (MLM) revealed a reliable moderation: participants high in NARS experienced markedly lower narrative immersion under tangible delivery, whereas those with low NARS scores showed no such decrement. Qualitative findings further illuminate this divergence: tangibility provides novelty and engagement for some but imposes excessive proxemic friction for anxious users, for whom the digital interface acts as a protective social buffer. These results advance a conditional model of HRI and emphasize the necessity for adaptive systems that can tailor interaction modalities to user predispositions.

Figures (12)

• Figure 1: A gameplay session with POIROT.
• Figure 2: The interaction effect of experimental condition (Physical-Card vs. In-App) and participants’ Negative Attitudes towards Robots Scale (NARS) on: (a) Narrative Immersion, (b) Game Experience. Shaded areas represent 95% confidence intervals.
• Figure 3: Companion app setup inter face in sequence: (a) room creation interface, (b) room joining interface, (c) role selection interface, and (d) example of a script reading interface (see Section 3.2.3 for details). Note: In the Physical-Card condition, the "Clues" button was also present in the script reading interface but inactive, since all clues were provided via physical delivery.
• Figure 4: Examples of physical clue cards (6.3 cm $\times$ 8.8 cm, laminated): (a) front side showing clue content, and (b) reverse side with neutral labeling. Private clues were dispensed individually to players, while public cards (eight per session) were dispensed at the table center before script reading started.
• Figure 5: Digital clues panel: (a) overview of multiple digital clues, and (b) detail view of a single clue, opened by tapping the corresponding item from (a).