the nontrivial pursuit table


You walk up to your coffee table, and with the placement of the die, the table flashes, music begins to play, and this colorful board appears on the table surface - your coffee table becomes alive for your next round of Nontrivial Pursuit.

What's nontrivial here? The game is like traditional "trivial pursuit," but the content is retrieved through the internet and delivered through the furniture. Your own dice are the key -- they contain RF (radio frequency) tags that tell the table who you are, and how the dice have rolled. Your whole gaming history -- favorite topics, favorite color, partners, native language -- is logged. Those preferences are stored in your personal "bit bag." By looking in the "bit bag" the game can fully customize itself to you. You will be sure never to asked the same question twice and your game piece will always be your favorite color. Also, by reading the position of the die, the table can tell where you are sitting and rotate the board to your location.

The game is built into a coffee table which is powered off a Pentium 166 and has speakers, a projector, a touchscreen, and a few tag readers embedded into it. The touchscreen acts as the mouse for the computer whose image is projected right onto the surface of the coffee table. Eventually, the die will be incorporated into the game, but right now it is part of Steve Gray's World Automation project.

Nontrivial Pursuit was designed by Raffi Krikorian using the concept of Bit Bags as designed by Steve Gray. This game is being designed to demonstrate the concept that Gray's Bit Bags can constantly be used to store and lookup information about the players.