Based on this conclusion, exergame designers began to market products as solutions to the Western problem of child obesity, taking advantage of the obesity culprit to make exercise a requirement for gaming enjoyment. In a study conducted by Jeff Sinclair and his associates, the relative success and failure of exergame design within the realm of child obesity is analyzed in order to inform future design efforts.

Factors Determining Success and Consumer Attraction

Based on a review of exergaming research, Sinclair worked to isolate the factors that make exergames effective in adhering to aerobic exercise recommendations and in catching and holding consumer attention.

1. In terms of exercise, games should follow basic aerobic session requirements: a warm-up period of 5-10 minutes of low-intensity exercise, a stimulus period of at least 20 minutes at 77%-90% of the maximal heart rate, and a cool-down period of 5 minutes.
2. Sinclair also notes that this should be repeated three days per week in order to successfully emulate an exercise program. One difficult implication of these parameters is that individuals have different levels of fitness, so maximal heart rate varies from one person to the next.
3. Exergames must also hold players’ attention for at least 30 minutes at a time while motivating them to play at least 3 times a week.

These three exergame requirements determine success in terms of effectiveness and attractiveness.

Consumer Attraction and the Gameflow Model

In 2005, research conducted by Sweetser and Wyeth applied the “flow” construct, or nine components determining total engagement in an activity, to video gaming. They found that, in order for players to be totally engaged in video games, they had to experience the following:

• Required and enabled concentration,
• Challenges that are neither too easy nor too difficult,
• Development of individual skills and mastery,
• A sense of control over personal actions within the game,
• Clear goals for succeeding at the game,
• Reception of specific feedback on individual success,
• Effortless immersion within the game, to the exclusion of time awareness, and
• Social interaction opportunities.

The above components determine a typical video game’s attractiveness to consumers and apply to exergames as well.

To maximize the success of an exergame, attractiveness and effectiveness should bridge the gap between the psychological gameplay and physiological exercise components of exergaming. Achieving a balance between skill and challenge, as well as between fitness and intensity, determines the success of an exergame. The difficulty of creating these two perfect balances can help explain the wide variety of successful and unsuccessful exergames in today’s market.

About the author.

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She often can be found blogging about education and scholarships for college. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Game creators, both heath-related and mainstream, always hope that their game will have that gotta-play-again feeling.  What’s the point if someone plays it once and that’s it.  A game has to have good re-playability.  Great Game Tenet #4 is a no-brainer: great health games must have a hook.

Using addictive characteristics to elicit health change.

This great health game necessity brings us back to our old friend Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his Flow Theory. The player must be so involved in their activity that they lose all sense of time, i.e. “time flies when you’re having fun.”  This is the essence of a hook.  Grab the player, keep them playing and have them begging for more.  The techie term for this is “sticky” or the ability to retain participants and/or players.  The need for stickiness is one reason why games make a great modality for delivering health information.  Games in themselves are sticky.

Health games that do it well.

I think casual health games are a perfect example of health games that have a hook.  Short spurts of gameplay with addictive game mechanics give casual health games like Food Fury and Lunch Crunch a competitive advantage over epic health games.  There’s also something to be said for a lot of the pain management games out there which are designed to keep the player immersed in a world that is outside of reality.  Wild Divine is a perfect example.  I’m not sure about the stickiness of these types of games, though, since I’ve never actually played one myself.

Anyone have thoughts on pain/stress management health games?

I’m a member of the Casual Games Association which helps me stay up with the industry for our casual games for health site Playnormous. I get a magazine from them four times a year, and sometimes I run across an amazing article that must be shared. This quarter, “What Makes a Great Game Great” by Vinny Carrella and Kevin Richardson. This article refers to mainstream casual games, but maybe this could be applied to health games as well. Maybe these tenets should be applied to health games.

Nothing short of magical.

The first thing a great game needs is magic. This is what reels the player in…and what keeps them coming back for more. It’s a feeling of leaving the anxieties of the world behind you and emerging yourself in a new time and place; achieving that feeling of “flow” (as the Theory of Flow’s originator Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would say). It’s joy, it’s mojo, it’s just plain magic.

I would say that Great Game Tenet #1 is the biggest struggle health game developers face when asked to take relatively unexciting content and make it into something people want to play. It’s much easier to take a compelling story, like a forbidden romance during World War II or a magical land where you must kill the monster to save the princess, to achieve a feeling of Flow. But what about for health games? How does one make a health game magical?  Here are my first thoughts:

• Put fun first.
• Add a compelling storyline.
• Challenge the player.
• Meet the player’s skill level.
• Give the player variety.

Health games that do it well.

There are a couple of health games that I think have that magical touch.  Not surprisingly, these are a few of the more “successful” health games and are often mentioned in national press whenever a story on serious games is written.  The first, Dance Dance Revolution by Konami.  This is one of the first widely used physical games and requires the player to tap on pads to a particular beat.  The user gets the sensation of dancing at a club while performing a physical dance-like activity.  First an arcade sensation, now available at home on multiple platforms including Wii and Xbox.  Why is it so successful?  DDR puts fun first, concentration and focus are required for success, and each play offers a different experience.

However, one could argue that DDR isn’t a health game at all since it wasn’t originally created to make players healthier.  So, I submit to you, are there any other health games you can think of that have that coveted touch of magic?

Recommended readings.

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975)  Beyond Boredom and Anxiety
• Koster, R. (2004) A Theory of Fun for Game Design