Exergame-project doing co-operation with MoFun @Heureka

The Finnish Science Center Heureka has put up MoFun Circus installation. Exergame-project does co-operation with MoFun team by providing user study method and analyzing user survey. First survey was done on 25. - 26. October 2006. 60 persons (9-14 years of age) answered the survey. The results were very promising. Most of the respondents liked Circus game a lot and though of it as a sort of a sport. For most of the respondents, playing a game by movement, playing a game together with friends and surprisement were the best things in the game. Youngest children considered the game to be a bit too difficult and that it demands a large space which would make it impossible to play at home.

We will continue the user studies and also consider what type of sport Circus game could be? Would it fit to health promotion in some way? Could it be used to study children's joint action and taking roles? More detailed results will be ready at the end of 2006.

Video games as sport

Orlando Sentinel reported:
The researchers (Univ. of Miami) have studied the metabolic and physiologic responses of 21 boys, ages 7-10, as they played an action video game called Tekken 3 for 15 minutes. As the boys punched and kicked their way through the game's mock martial-arts battles, their heart rates went up, on average, by 19 percent, their systolic blood pressure rose by a similar amount; and their breathing rates increased by 55 percent. The levels of glucose and lactate in their blood didn't change as they would during real physical activity. Nonetheless, the researchers estimated from the boys' breathing and oxygen consumption that the energy they expended in playing the video game was roughly equivalent to what they would use in walking at a 2 mph pace. They reported their results in the April 2006 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

At the Tekes funded Virtahepo-project, related study is underway. Lahti AMK is carrying out analysis on Megazone laser tagging. They try to figure out what type of sport active Megazone gaming is. The results will be ready at the beginning of 2007.

Video games for health behaviour management

Exergames are getting more are more

Futurelab just published their book: Teaching with games. The book 'offers an overview of teachers’ and students’ use of computer games and attitudes towards computer games in schools, identifies factors which impact upon the incorporation of computer games into existing school practices, describes the processes by which teachers plan and implement games-based learning in existing curricular contexts.'

There are several lessons to be learned from edugames. Even though edugames have not been too popular, edutainment/-games have a long history behind them. There are certain similarities with exergames -- ways to support communication, education and co-operation to begin with.

I have got a lot of inspiration from Dr Lieberman's articles and experiments. Another great source of exergame-related studies is Pennsylvania State University. Physical Fitness in Virtual Worlds study and Exergame - a moving video game experience overviews give many clues and inspiring results from the tests.

A virtual gym in Redlands lets kids burn calories the fun way

The best part about "exertainment" is that it can motivate even the most hard-core exercise haters -- from children to adults."

An interesting article of exergaming. RE.COM HEALTH: A virtual gym in Redlands lets kids burn calories the fun way.

Wired NextFest '06

Wired NextFest presented "WIRED's vision of a new world" within four days. NextFest provided a possibility to experience the future of exploration, entertainment, transportation, health, communication, design, security, and green living.

There were at least three categories which had some congruity with Exergame projects' focus: Future of Health, Future of Entertainment and Future of Play. Most of the Future of Health solutions focused on hospital/health care solutions and instruments. Hopefully there will be more examples of preventive health care next year. My pick from Health solutions is CosmoBot: a robotic toolkit designed for clinical rehabilitation and special education.

Future of Entertainment as well as Future of Play categories had few innovations that are interesting also from the viewpoint of our project. My pick from that category is Full Body Games by FeedTank. Virtual Canoe could also be lots of fun. The list of exhibitors and pieces can be found from NextFest webste.