Expanding exertion gaming

Abstract

While exertion games -digital games where the outcome is determined by physical exertion -are of growing interest in HCI, we believe the current health and fitness focus in the research of exertion games limits the opportunities this field has to offer. In order to broaden the agenda on exertion games, we link the existing fields of sports and interactive entertainment (arguing these fields have much to offer) by presenting four of our own designs as case studies. Using our experiences with these designs we highlight three key strategies to guide designers in the creation of richer exertion game experiences: designing a temporal trajectory through games with reference to the way exertion changes over time, designing for the inevitable and not necessarily negative effects of pain in exertion games, and designing for the highly socially situated nature of exertion gaming.

Misrepresentation of Health Research in Exertion Games Literature

“…In previous work [41], we argue that an excessive focus on obesity is likely to lead to poor game designs. The lack of focus in many exergames projects on designing interesting experiences means that those games also likely to be ineffective, since people will not choose to play uninteresting games.…”

“…b) We critique the excessive and unjustified focus on obesity as an outcome in research on the design and evaluation of exergames. Following Marshall & Mueller's argument in [41], we argue that this focus is likely to lead to poor game designs that people will not choose to play. c) More generally, this paper demonstrates that in HCI research, and interdisciplinary research more generally, misunderstanding and misrepresentation can commonly occur when referring to literature outside the expertise of the authors, highlighting a problem that we must address as a field.…”

A Survey of the Trajectories Conceptual Framework

“…These suggestions are offered in the late stages of papers, generally in the "discussion" section, and follow either user-centered studies (10 papers [34,41,43,54,55,57,60,79,82,86]), surveys of existing systems [40] or theoretical works [30,49,67,73]. Arguments leading to such suggestions include:…”

Savouring our mistakes: Learning from the FitQuest project

“…Specifically related to exergames, Marshall and colleagues recently proposed that design strategies which emphasise the richness of experience from sports participation and interactive entertainment would be helpful, and that exergames need not be limited to simply promoting healthy outcomes like increased energy expenditure. They detail strategies by which exergames could take into account how exertion changes of time, consider the pain of exercise, and embrace highly social interactions [52]. This work may be of interest to future designers of games for children where the focus is on the sheer physical enjoyment of sport and activity for its own sake.…”