RFID for Toy and game

RFID and NFC technology is the bridge between physical and digital games. You can equip game elements - figures andcards with additional digital features, connect computer game features toreal-world objects. Just let your imagination run free - Toys with RFID chip sinside, secure gaming tokens, intelligent high-tech playing cards, etc.

RFID is a contactless automatic identification technology. Compared with other identification methods, RFID technology has the advantages of fast response speed, high recognition rate, contactless and simple to operate. Each RFID chip have a unique UID number, never repeat, so it is very suitable for applications to Toy and game.

1. For manufacturer and supplier, RFID technology provide the accurate and fast inventory management.

2. For users, RFID technology provide the online solution, strengthen game's practicability, and serve to identification and authenticating.

Nowadays, More and more toys and games company, Casino, amusement park have started to use the RFID technology.

1. Twinsprit, a Spanish application company, has started providing software development kits (SDKs) to game application developers to bring near-field communication (NFC) to the mobile game world. Twinsprite provides unique and digitally signed Twinsprite Codes stored within Smartrac NFC inlays to be included with every toy, as well as with related accessories. When a child scans the toy thanks to NFC’s seamless user experience, the device quickly retrieves the toy’s unique information from Twinsprite’s cloud, letting the child play with the toy’s “digital twin” withease. Twinsprite’s cloud then, stores real-time attributes associated with thetoy, capturing insights about game play and usage.

2. Skylanders was created by a small development studio called Toys for Bob, they came up with an RFID-based solution for recognizing the toy, transferring it to the game world, and saving the character’s progress on the RFID chip in the toy so that it could be usedeven on other machines running the same game. A whole new category of games andtoys was born.

Toys-to-life refers to a relatively new category of games and related toys that was born as recently as 2011 with there lease of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. It has been a spectacularly successful category, with the Skylanders franchise alone surpassing $3 billionin sales.

Skylanders took the market by storm on 11 October 2011. A console platformer game with a peripheral called a Portal of Power (technically, an RFID reader), on which you can place related action figures to have them appear in the game (thanks to built-in RFID chips), it really makes toys come to life on the TV screen! Children can play the game, and carry on with the action figures in their play. Furthermore, the figures store their progress in the game, so you can also take the figure with you anduse it at a friend’s house in the same game.

3. LEGO House is a 12,000-square metrebuilding which opened in 2017 close to the LEGO head quarters in Billund, Denmark, described by the LEGO Group as ‘an experience house’ with the slogan ‘Home of the Brick’. Whilst positioning LEGO House as a playful experience forall ages, a pedagogical ethos underpins its design. This reflects the company’sstrong philosophy of learning through play:

When children play they are having fun, experimenting, tinkering, messing around and making mistakes. In other words, they are learning.

LEGO House conceptualises children’s playand learning as ‘a holistic balance of five overlapping competences’, includin gcreativity, cognitive abilities, emotions, social play and physical play. These‘competences’ inform the spatial design of LEGO House, arranged as fiveseparate zones of different colours. In each zone are a number of ‘experiences’offering opportunities to play with LEGO. The experiences are usually presented without explicit instructions or directions. Amos Blanton, who supported the development of LEGO House, explained that the concept of ‘low floors and high ceilings’ had informed the design of the play experiences, meaning they were intended to be as easily accessible but as open-ended as possible. In additionto the experience zones, LEGO House features outdoor play terraces, a gallery showcasing LEGO creations, a small library, a history collection, restaurants and a shop. Visitors are free to explore as many of the play experiences as they would like, and to spend as much time as they wish at each experience, with LEGO staff on-hand to facilitate.

Upon arrival at LEGO House each visitor isgiven a wristband containing a small RFID tag that can be scanned at ‘capturestations’ situated throughout the experience zones. This system enables visitors to save photographs and digital creations to an individual online profile that can be accessed through the LEGO House app after the visit. In this way, multimodal technology is embedded throughout the entire visit as ameans of capturing aspects of the experiences. Technology also features in manyof the experiences themselves, bringing together play with physical materials such as LEGO bricks and adding digital dimensions through use of cameras, scanners, sensors, projectors, stop-motion software and programmable robots.