Brute force interactions: leveraging intense physical actions in gaming

People use a wide range of intensity when interacting with computers, spanning from subtle to brute force. However, computer interfaces so far have mainly focused on interactions restrained to limited force and do not consider extreme physical and brutal interactions, such as those encountered in contact sports. We present an exploration on the topic of "Brute Force" that aims to support researchers and designers who want to leverage the benefits of such forceful interactions. We present the results of a survey on this topic and describe how the salient themes could be used to inspire design work, in particular in a mediated environment, augmented with computing technology. We describe how the themes inspired certain features, and how technological limitations were overcome during this process. We hope with our work we can encourage designers to expand their range of supported interactions to include these physically intense behaviors we call Brute Force that are exhibited in many activities in people's lives.