“Exergame Effectiveness: What the Numbers Can Tell Us” by Whitehead, Johnston, Welch and Nixon
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Exergame Effectiveness: What the Numbers Can Tell Us
Developer(s):
Description:
A sedentary lifestyle is linked to many diseases such as diabetes and ailments such as obesity that are increasingly becoming major contributors to early death in most industrial countries. Exergaming (video games that encourage exercise) can promote a more active and healthy lifestyle among people who devote many sedentary hours to television, computer activities, and video games, and may be reluctant to engage in more traditional forms of exercise.
This paper surveys a number of quantitative studies of exergames in order to define a general set of elements that make an exergame effective from a physical standpoint. It also examines the intended audience, the incentives that an exergame should provide, and the authors’ own exergaming system to learn how well it performs vs. commercial systems.
