Designing a Safe Auditory-Cued Archery Exertion Game for the Visually Impaired and Sighted to Enjoy Together

Advances in human-computer interaction HCI technologies have led to emerging computer game systems that foster physical exertion as part of the interaction; we call them exertion games. These games highlight a body-centric perspective on our interactions with computers, in contrast to traditional mouse, keyboard and gamepad interactions, not just in terms of their physical interface, but also in terms of the experiences that they support. As a result, exertion games show great promise in facilitating not only health benefits, but also novel play experiences. However, to realize this promise, exertion games need to be well designed, not only in terms of technical aspects involving the sensing of the active body, but also in relation to the experiential perspective of an active human body. This article provides an overview of existing work on exertion games, outlines a spectrum of exertion games, and presents an analysis of key enabling technologies. We also position exertion games within a broader HCI context by reviewing and examining different design approaches and frameworks for building exertion games. Finally, the article concludes with directions for future work.

Expanding exertion gaming

While exertion games facilitate, and benefit from, social play, most exertion games merely support players acting independently. To help designers explore the richness of social play in exertion games, we present the design dimension “bodily interplay” that gives critical focus to how players’ bodies interact with one another. We offer two broad categories of bodily interplay— parallel and interdependent play —to explain how exertion games can facilitate independent and offensive/defensive-type experiences. These categories can be applied to both the physical and virtual space, and by looking at all permutations of these categories, we articulate four ways of coupling the spaces: comparative, actuated, derived, and projected coupling. This article illustrates the inspirational power of the dimensions by applying them to the analysis of four exertion games. Altogether, we articulate a vocabulary that can guide designers in the creation of social exertion games, helping players profit from the many benefits of exertion.

Players invest significant physical effort when playing exertion games. In addition to improving physical health, exertion games are also believed to facilitate social play amongst players. Despite these advantages, our understanding of how to design these games to successfully support social play is limited. In this paper, we present a qualitative analysis of player data from "Table Tennis for Three", a mediated exertion game for three players, that contributes to our understanding of how the design of an exertion game facilitates social play. We use the concept of "space" to frame our findings in order to create themes that can be used to analyze existing and to design future exertion games. We hope our work can support researchers gain an understanding of this exciting new field, while also help designers utilize the many benefits of exertion games.

Exertion games are an emerging form of interactive games that require players to invest significant physical effort as part of the gameplay, rather than just pressing buttons. These exertion games have potential health benefits by promoting exercise. It is also believed that they can facilitate social play between players and that social play can improve participation in exertion games. However, there is currently a lack of understanding of how to design games to support these effects. In this paper, we present a qualitative case study that illustrates how networked environments support social play in exertion games and how this can help to gain an understanding of existing games and support the design of future games. This work offers a preliminary analytical and descriptive account of the relationship between exertion and social play in such a game and highlights the influence of design with the aim of utilizing the attributed benefits of exertion and social play.

Physical leisure games can be beneficial to physical as well as mental health and offer a means to connect with others socially. However, players have to be in the same physical location to play. Recent trends in the gaming industry and research labs have started to embrace exertion games: physical games that are expected to be exhausting because they require intense physical effort. However, there is still a lack of a design space that can guide in evaluating such exertion games, help designers in creating future games by maximizing their potential, and inspire new directions in this domain. We present such a design space for exertion games, based on the characteristics of traditional physical games but extended to support distributed interactions. Our motivation is based on the belief that the physicality found in traditional leisure games contributes to facilitating social bonds. We used this design space to develop a networked table tennis-like game called “Table Tennis for Three.” It is played with a real paddle and ball and augmented with a large-scale video-conference. Our prototype shows how the application of the design space can leverage the potential for novel exertion gaming experiences such as supporting three players in three geographically distant locations. An evaluation with 41 participants indicated a successful application of some of the ingredients of the networked exertion games “cocktail”; however, some participants did not enjoy the game, and we present informed interpretations to explain their reactions. With this work we aim to provide other researchers and designers with a practical design space of the main components that can create a networked exertion game, and hence inspire and guide them in designing and evaluating future networked exertion games.

Playing exertion games with others can be engaging. However, players with different physical skill levels competing against each other can experience reduced engagement because they are either not challenged enough, or challenged too much. Balancing methods can address this; however, there is only limited understanding of balancing in exertion games. In this paper, we identify two distinct dimensional balancing techniques: internal adjustment and external adjustment. We report results from a study where we measured player engagement after applying these adjustments to a digital table tennis game and the traditional table tennis game, finding two disengagement factors: unexpected physical challenges and unacceptable competitive advantage. Based on these factors we derived a set of exertion game design considerations. We conclude that applying digital technology to a physical game can change the required skill level to play the game, and this can affect the impact of these adjustments on player engagement. These results enhances our understanding of balancing in exertion games, supporting the benefits of playing exertion games with others.

Grand Push Auto is an exertion game in which players aim to push a full sized car to ever increasing speeds. The re-appropriation of a car as essentially a large weight allows us to create a highly portable and distributable exertion game in which the main game element has a weight of over 1000 kilograms. In this paper we discuss initial experiences with GPA, and present 3 questions for ongoing study which have been identified from our early testing: How might we appropriate existing objects in exertion game design, and does appropriation change how we think about these objects in different contexts, for example environmental awareness? How does this relate to more traditional sled based weight training? How can we create exertion games that allow truly brutal levels of force?

Exertion games, digital games involving physical effort, are becoming more popular. Although some exertion games support social experiences, they rarely consider or support body contact. We believe overlooking body contact as part of social play experiences limits opportunities to design engaging exertion games. To explore this opportunity, we present Bubble Popper, an exertion game that considers and facilitates body contact. Bubble Popper, which uses very simple technology, also demonstrates that considering and facilitating body contact can be achieved without the need to sense body contact. Through reflecting on our design and analyzing observations of play, we are able to articulate what impact physical space layout in relation to digital game elements, and physical disparity between input and digital display can have on body contact. Our results aid game designers in creating engaging exertion games by guiding them when considering body contact, ultimately helping players benefit more from engaging exertion games.

A new set of computationally-augmented games have emerged recently that require the user to move their body. These exertion games are believed to contribute to social, mental and in particular, physical benefits, marking a change in how we perceive computer gaming. However, although these games are a commercial success, research is lacking a theoretical understanding how to analyse existing and guide future designs. We present initial investigations towards a taxonomy of such exertion games with a focus on social aspects, based on work on traditional play and sports. Our contribution lays the foundation for the creation of a theoretical framework on exertion games, expanding our understanding of this exciting new area.

In sports, if players' physical and technical abilities are mismatched, the competition is often uninteresting for them. With the emergence of exertion games, this could be changing. Player balancing, known from video games, allows players with different skill levels to compete, however, it is unclear how balancing mechanisms should be applied in exertion games, where physical and digital elements are fused. In this paper, we present an exertion game and three approaches for balancing it; a physical, an explicit-digital and an implicit-digital balancing approach. A user study that compares these three approaches is used to investigate the qualities and challenges within each approach and explore how the player experience is affected by them. Based on these findings, we suggest four design strategies for balancing exertion games, so that players will stay engaged in the game and contain the feeling of a fair competition, even if they have mismatched skills.

Games that demand exertion of the players through bodily movements are experiencing increasing commercial success and have been attributed with many physical, mental and social benefits, thus changing the way we play computer games. However, there is a lack of understanding of how to evaluate such exertion games, mainly because the games’ facilitated bodily movements are believed to be responsible for these novel experiences, but are not considered in traditional evaluation methods that primarily assume keyboard- and gamepad-style input devices. We do not believe there is a generic approach to evaluating exertion games, and therefore offer an overview of our mixed experiences in using various methods to guide the reader for future evaluations in this domain. We support the presented methods with data from case studies we undertook in order to illustrate their use and what kinds of results to expect. Methods that we have not had experience with, but which also have the potential to address the contribution of bodily involvement to the user experience, are also outlined. By identifying remaining issues in regards to evaluation methods for exertion games, we aim to provide an informed way forward for research in this area. With our work, we hope to contribute towards the advancement of such games, fostering their many benefits towards a more positive user experience.

Games that demand exertion of the players through bodily movements are experiencing increasing commercial success and have been attributed with many physical, mental and social benefits, thus changing the way we play computer games. However, there is a lack of understanding of how to evaluate such exertion games, mainly because the games’ facilitated bodily movements are believed to be responsible for these novel experiences, but are not considered in traditional evaluation methods that primarily assume keyboard- and gamepad-style input devices. We do not believe there is a generic approach to evaluating exertion games, and therefore offer an overview of our mixed experiences in using various methods to guide the reader for future evaluations in this domain. We support the presented methods with data from case studies we undertook in order to illustrate their use and what kinds of results to expect. Methods that we have not had experience with, but which also have the potential to address the contribution of bodily involvement to the user experience, are also outlined. By identifying remaining issues in regards to evaluation methods for exertion games, we aim to provide an informed way forward for research in this area. With our work, we hope to contribute towards the advancement of such games, fostering their many benefits towards a more positive user experience.

Modeling and accurately analyzing human activities plays an important role, considering the rise of modern applications in human-computer interaction and, more recently, exertion games. Especially in serious exergames aimed at tutoring (e.g. sports) or rehabilitation and physiotherapy, the need for accurate detection of the human body and its motion is uncompromising. However, modern human skeleton tracking techniques suffer from a variety of issues, such as jittering and sensitivity to original conditions. In this study we show how a simple yet effective fairing pipeline on an inherently noisy dataset can produce data capable for precise experimentation with state-of-the-art human action modeling algorithms.

Exertion games (exergames) pose interesting challenges in terms of user interaction techniques. Players are commonly unable to use traditional input devices such as mouse and keyboard, given the body movement requirements of this type of videogames. In this work we propose a hand gesture interface to direct actions in a target-shooting exertion game that is played while exercising on an ergo-bike. A vision-based hand gesture interface for interacting with objects in a 3D videogame is designed and implemented. The system is capable to issue game commands to any computer game that normally responds to mouse and keyboard without modifying the underlying source code of the game. The vision system combines Bag-of-features and Support Vector Machine (SVM) to achieve user-independent and real-time hand gesture recognition. In particular, a Finite State Machine (FSM) is used to build the grammar that generates gesture commands for the game. We carried out a user study to gather feedback from participants, and our preliminary results show the high level of interest from users use this multimedia system that implements a natural way of interaction. Albeit some concerns in terms of comfort, users had a positive experience using our exertion game and they expressed their positive intention to use a system like this in their daily lives.