I have been very busy of late writing up the results of some of my experiments into energy expenditure whilst playing active video games (ExerGames). I am glad to report that I made the submission deadline yesterday. The paper was more of a magazine type article than a pure research paper so it was quite hard going. Writing it made me think hard about how I communicate to readers both my research findings and my enthusiasm in a clear and concise manner.
It occurred to me that, “If the levels of physical exertion required to play active video games were actually quite modest, would they still be worth getting excited about?” My response was that even if all that playing the games achieved was that the player learned to become comfortable with the bodily sensations associated with physical exertion and it gave them confidence to try out new activities then that would be worth it. So whilst they might seem like two small steps for a Gamer, lack of body awareness and low self-efficacy are known barriers to exercise. Now if active video games were to succeed in moving large numbers of people closer to a habitually active lifestyle, then that would be two giant steps for Gamerkind.
It is that time of year again when I need to start thinking about projects for the forthcoming academic year. I am currently investigating a possible project involving a snowboarding game. I managed (via the web of course) track down a Playstation 2 compatible “sportsboard” and a snowboarding game (SSX3). I plugged in the sportsboard controller and away I went – well not quite… In fact not at all! A few jerky moves were all I could muster. The on/off light didn’t seem to be very bright and on closer inspection appeared to flicker on and off in a random manner.
I was beginning to despair as I came across a number of stories on the web of various controller problems deemed to be due to faulty hardware. I had enough difficulty tracking down the board so I wasn’t going to give up that easily. A couple of reports of dim lights on some controllers pointed me towards the voltage being supplied to the controller. What on earth could be wrong? To cut a long story short, I had the idea to test the sportsboard with another PS2. I plugged it in, the on/off light positively glowed and away I went down the slope at high speed…
So why does one PS2 supply enough power and the other PS2 doesn’t? Well I guess there are tolerance limits in all these various pieces of electronic circuitry. As more and more controllers become available for different forms of “ExerGames”, it looks like we need some form of connectivity standard to ensure compatibility.
I have recently managed to get my hands on (and paid for) an iPhone. The user interface is a bit of a step change, but things are starting to fall into place. The fact that the phone incorporates motion sensors (accelerometers) and location awareness (assisted gps) should get you thinking as to new possibilities for “ExerGaming”.
Well, somewhat reluctantly, I have had a go at a virtual “axe throwing” game on the phone. It is rather like archery, except that instead of shooting arrows, the Viking character on the phone throws axes at targets in response to your arm motion. It is not like a Wiimote where you have a safety cord, so it wouldn’t do to let the phone slip…
…I can safely report you don’t just need to “throw” as hard as possible, but rather timing is everything. Still, I only managed to hit a couple of targets. If you do decide to try it for yourself, then you proceed very much at your own risk. In the interest of me getting a good night’s sleep, I will keep my conscience clear by exercising some caution and not making the url available here.
It certainly opens plenty of possibilities for a future branch “ExerGame” developments, where everybody has there own personal “interaction device”. Post me a comment with any thoughts or suggestions.
The theme of this post is about “transforming” the energy of physical movement. The picture below is from an award winning art installation/sculpture called ”Volume“ that was running at the same time as the Hide and Seek Festival a couple of weeks ago at Southbank, London. As people moved around the pillars of the installation, they responded with multi-colored light patterns and waves of ethereal sounds. Exactly how each pillar sensed movement and translated this into sound and light wasn’t clear, but it certainly made people curious. As people tended to move to a particular area, the sounds and lights became focused in that area. However, if everybody stood still for too long, then the effects began to die down. This would prompt people to move and explore a new area which would then dynamically spring into life.
Interestingly, I just heard a news item about the opening of Britain’s first so called “eco-night club”. In addition to having solar panels and a wind turbine, the high-tech dance floor generates electricity by the piezoelectric effect in response to movement. – I guess if nobody gets up to dance, then the music stops and the lights go out!
The electronic nature of “ExerGames” means that they require electricity for their operation. But, as in any activity, you have to look at the total energy balance of the activity. There is the potential for “ExerGames” to reduce travel related energy costs compared to conventional activities. But then there is energy cost of manufacture! Clearly it is a complex equation and deserves consideration.
Finally, before reaching any definite conclusion, the equation msut be balanced by the excess energy costs of future health care treatment arising due to the effects of a sedentary lifestyle. I guess this is something we will hear a lot more about in the future.
Last Friday evening I was able to round off my time in Vienna and take in a hardware exhibition and and a display of creative computer graphics on a big screen – so called “Demos”. The Demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in the production of Demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations run in real-time on a computer. The main goal of a Demo is to show off programming, artistic, and musical skills.
The hardware exhibition featured many different types of early home computers that I remember from the eighties and brought back a few memories. The graphics and the accompanying soundtracks produced on the assorted hardware were pretty amazing given the limited computing power available at the time.
The demos shown in the outdoor cinema were all amazing in their own right from the very recent all the back to the 1980’s – along with their “eighties sounding” music (hence the reference to Ultravox’s hit single “Vienna” in the post title).
Having not known anything about the “Demoscene” before, it was perhaps a fortunate oversight on my part as to the contextual meaning of “live” that caught my eye on the exhibition poster. In the context of “Demos” it means computed in “real time”, hence the challenge of pushing the hardware to the limits.
But in researching this post, I had a few thoughts and came across this video clip in the context of interactive video jockying (iVJing?) - (takes a minute to really get going). I am sure there is the potential for an ExerGame in there somewhere…..
Could ExerGaming improve your short-term memory capacity? That is an interesting question posed by Paul Pivec in his poster presented at Ed-Media 2008 last week in Vienna. His preliminary results of testing DDR players with short-term memory tests found that expert DDR players tended to have a higher than average short-term memory capacity. Whilst this is only a statistical association and not cause and effect, it is plausible that playing DDR may have helped develop this enhanced capacity.
So how might playing DDR potentially enhance short-term memory? Consider that in order to play DDR at a high level you need to be able to rapidly process the visual arrow cues and translate these into a sequence of moves. The only way that you can achieve a high step rate is by anticipating the moves a number of steps in advance. That’s where the short term memory comes in. It follows that the greater a player’s short-term memory capacity, the higher number of steps they can anticipate in advance.
You might well ask why this work was being presented at an educational conference? Well, since there is some evidence that short-term memory capacity plays a role in learning, then there may be some scope to improve or even enhance the ability to learn by means of training using an “ExerGame” that relies heavily on short-term memory, as in the case of Dance Dance Revolution.
I am currently in a rather hot Vienna at the Educational Media 2008 conference. I have been getting some ideas on how to improve the efficiency of my teaching so that I will have more time for ExerGaming research!
At the same time I have been getting a good few ideas to try and apply to ExerGaming too. One really inspirational session yesterday was based on developing interactive story telling by a research group from a couple universities in Taiwan. Whilst they saw it as creating a richer educational experience, they action in the video clip they showed appeared to me as a series of linked mini ExerGames!
Obviously there are huge hardware and software platform issues, but it is an interesting start in a new area…
If you happened to be in the vicinity of the London Eye on Sunday last, then you may have seen a guy wandering around in a seemingly random manner wearing some earphones and holding a gadget out in front.
Let me fill you in. As part of a game, the grassy area to the south of the London Eye had been transformed into my garden and I had developed a serious problem with moles digging up and spoiling it. With the aid of GPS in the PDA that I was holding, my reality was augmented with “virtual” moles popping up around me at random intervals. In order to play the “Game” I had to dart about to various locations and “stamp” on these moles to stop them ruining my garden. It was good fun, although more of a brisk walk rather than a sprint, but the game could be developed much further.
I also took part in an “Eye Spy” game based on SMS texts. Everybody in the game wore a sticker with a number on it and once you spotted a fellow player or a location with a number you texted it in. It was great fun to meet so many different people along the south bank in London.
There were lots of other interesting games going on and I am currently in a virtual village moving around interacting by texting, but I am not really sure what is going on. I will let you know if I manage to work it out.
