Broadcast Games and Digital Television

Digital television (DTV) allows simultaneous transmission of data along with traditional AV content. It provides an inexpensive and high bandwidth data pipe that enables new forms of interactive television and also new types of games, and other applications, for game consoles. This paper explores the potential role of DTV in future game titles and addresses how to merge television viewing with game play. The paper introduces broadcast games, a new form of viewer experience, enabled by DTV, that combines elements from both television and gaming by using real-time data within the DTV signal to update game state. As an example, we focus on an auto-racing scenario and describe a prototype we have developed in this new genre. Auto racing has always been a sport where many leading edge technologies are tested and is a good candidate for combining AV content, real-time data and a 3D game engine. Features such as CG visualization of races and racing live against the real drivers are described.