Defining Exergames & Exergaming

Editor's Notes

1. Hi, Welcome to exergaming session. I am yoonsin and a ph.d. student from UW-Madison. I am also a member of games+learning+society. The coauthor, stephen yang is not here today, but he’s an assistant professor at SUNY-Cortland. In this presentation, we looked at what terms been used and what definitions been used in the literatures.
2. Obesity is big problem in U.S. graph is from cdc website based on Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. It’s a prevalence of adult obesity - which BMI>30 Let’s look at michigan. Just recently, (Cornell University John Cawley) found that Nearly 17% of U.S. Medical cost - related to obesity. $168 billion Educator, healthy life. As an educator, we wante people to have a good healthy life. BMI>30, or ~30 lbs. overweight for 5’ 4” person Underweight = <18.5 Normal weight = 18.5–24.9 Overweight = 25–29.9 Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater BMI (kg/m2)
3. one way to prevent it is increasing physical activity levels in both intensity and durations.
4. And Playing video games has been blamed for increasing sedentary times For example, Robinson, 1999 ‘s intervention children were challenged to watch no television or videotapes and play no video games for 10 days. but, they ignore these kinds of video games.
5. Possibly, the first exergame using power pad for NES - Nintendo Entertainment System.
6. Powerpad->DDR , Wii Fit yoga, Pokémon Heartgold & Soulsilver (Pokéwalker) Eye Toy (Kinetic), Virtual trainer- Maya from YourSelf!Fitness -> My Fitness Coach Especially DDR was the game that attracted players, media, and researchers. Take a look at this video.
7. Sue Brian in Jeopardy lost 50lbs playing DDR. From these kinds of story, DDR attracted people to use for their weight loss program. and Ian Bogost mentioned in his book persuasive games that Media named it as an exergame.
8. Persuasive Games - Exercise chapter He actually referred to an news article
9. in 2005 Terms: Exergaming, active video games, exertainment Definition: videogame with Exercise, or video game with body movement. There have quiet different terms and meaning. then, I started to search for other literature to see what terms and definitions have been used in this research area.
10. From limited literature review articles with 23 first authors, I found a very interesting pattern among non-health related researcher vs health-related researcher. What I meant by health-related researcher affiliated or have background from kinesiology, nutrition science, medical science. or published in International journal of sports medicine, Pediatrics, Pediatric exercise science. In this presentation, I excluded terms used less than 3 authors. You can read in the paper. Physical activity-change games, Kinaestetic of video gaming, physical gaming
11. The most term used by non-health related researchers is Exergame. only 2 from health related researchers. Let’s go one by one what other terms meant by health-related to researcher to get a sense of what they meant by.
12. The most frequently used term by health-related researchers is active video game. Not popular term as much as exergame. “Active”word possibly excludes those quite sedentary movements that are healthy : yoga, isometric activities, stretch. balancing
13. All video games are interactive because one distinguishing element for video games is “immediate and interactive feedback” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, p.87). Since this term potentially includes most of video games whether they are sedentary or not, the term “interactive video game” may fail to specify this particular kind of video game.
14. it’s similar to active video game’s definition.
15. Dance simulation : Britney’s Dance Beat. Britney’s Dance Beat only uses a hand-held game controller, which makes the game play sedentary. The term “dance simulation” may therefore not be able to distinguish between playing videogames that are sedentary from more active play. Now we looked at terms used, let’s take a look at what they meant by in their definition.
16. These are main elements in the definition. Again, in this presentation, I excluded ones that are not supported by 3 or more than 3 authors.
17. They all agreed that it requires something to do with playing video games.
18. and health related researchers wanted to used the term physical activity in their definition while non-health related researchers used the exercise therm. As we looked at the terms used before, health related researchers seem to avoid the word “exergame” and “exercise” What’s the problem here? Are they different? In fact, yes they have different meanings. Let’s take a look at the definition.
19. Casperson et al, mentioned that people use these terms interchangeably while they are distinct. He put importance of distinguish one another in his paper that grounded those two words in epidemiology and kinesiology to reduce confusion. PA: Any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure (Caspterson et al. , 1985) including sleeping and sitting.... Exercise: A subset of physical activity“Intentionally to improve or maintain physical fitness with a planned, repetitive, and structured format” (Casperson, et al., 1985) Health-related : Cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular endurance, strength, body composition, and flexibilitySkill-related : Agility, balance, coordination, speed, power, and reaction time
20. playing video games are in physical activity that some could overlap with exercise, but not all the time. Health-related : Cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular endurance, strength, body composition, and flexibilitySkill-related : Agility, balance, coordination, speed, power, and reaction time
21. Based on Ian Bogost’s definition from his book, exergame is in fact, the inter-section between exercise and playing video games. Since Sue from Jeopardy did not really plan “the duration” of exercise in a structured format, we can’t really say that was an exercise. On the other hand, if someone was playing TF2 (or any first person shooter games) with intention of improving hand eye coordination with reaction time, also planning, and doing it again and again in a structured format. Can you call the game as exergame? With using traditional definition of exergame, it seems to fail to include the activities we want to capture (like sue’s case), but also include the activities that are not healthy for physical standpoint (like the sitting and practicing first person shooter).
22. Let’s take a look again definitions and terms used in literature. We think this gap may have came from the different view of those two terms. Health related researchers might have aware of these differences and try to avoid to use exercise or even exergame term much. Non-health related researchers might have not aware of these differences and meant by more broad meaning of being physically active.
23. Although not supported by much of health-related researchers, exergame is the term most frequently used. Of course, the media using this catchy word also helps spreading the word. After looking these gap, I now understand both sides, and look for “A potential solution” (not the only solution) to make agreements among them.
24. Those types of video games are called an exergame. An exergame is a video game that promotes (either via using or requiring) players’ physical movements (exertion) that is generally more than sedentary but also including some sedentary acitivty such as strength training, balance, and flexibility activities. Previously released commercially available games are such as...(next slide)PA: Any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure (Caspterson et al. , 1985) including sleeping and sitting.... Exercise: A subset of physical activity“Intentionally to improve or maintain physical fitness with a planned, repetitive, and structured format” (Casperson, et al., 1985) Health-related : Cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular endurance, strength, body composition, and flexibilitySkill-related : Agility, balance, coordination, speed, power, and reaction time Stephen and I came up with keeping the most frequently used term and also very catchy word, exergame, but not limiting definition to the traditional definition of exercise by using exertion. Exertion is the expenditure of energy by skeletal muscles. (More like Physical Activity) We propose the new definitions of exergame and exergaming: Exergaming is an experiential activity where playing exergames, videogames, or computer-based is used to promote physical activity that is more than sedentary activities and also includes strength, balance, and flexibility activities. This new definition of exergame will hopefully clear the confusion on the terms we use, how to define exergames and reduce the inconsistency of its use in future studies.