Musical embrace: exploring social awkwardness in digital games

Socially awkward experiences are often looked upon as something to be avoided. However, examples from the non-digital entertainment domain suggest that social awkwardness can also facilitate engaging experiences. Yet there has been little research into exploring social awkwardness in digital games. In response, we present Musical Embrace, a digital game that promotes close physical proximity through the use of a novel pillow-like controller to facilitate socially awkward play between strangers. Through our observations from demonstrating Musical Embrace at a number of events, we have derived a set of strategies to engage players by "facilitating social awkwardness", allowing players to "transform social awkwardness" while also letting players "take control of social awkwardness". With our work we hope to inspire game designers to consider the potential of social awkwardness in digital games and guide them when using it to facilitate engaging play experiences.