The Quest for the Perfect ExerGame

Today I woke up early and in attempt to try and kick-start my body clock, I went for a workout in the hotel gym. Of course I couldn’t resist the opportunity to check out the competition (i.e. what ExerGaming is up against). Having had a go it virtual reality yesterday, it was time for some actually reality today with a twist…

“Aktuelle” is the german word for news or current affairs and there is a TV news program of the same title. So the challenge I set my self was to workout whilst watching the news on a large screen TV (it was that or the weather channel!).

I set the exercise back at level 14/25 and held a steady 92 rpm for 10 minutes which resulted in a heart rate of around 148 bpm. In all honesty I have to say it was one of the longest 10 minutes of exercise of my life. Whether it was the dulcet tones of the presenters or the down beat stories they were reporting I will never know, but it was not a pleasant experience. Not much competition there then, give me an ExerGame any day.

I don’t have any plans to conduct a larger study, but I the title of the paper would be something like “Watching TV News whilst Exercising Impacts Negatively on Ratings of Perceived Exertion.” No chance of a Noble prize, but more than likely a mention in the Annals of Improbable Research.

I was able to call in yesterday to the 3D lab at University of Michigan and meet with the staff there. I jumped at the chance to experience their Virtual Reality “Cave” and get immersed in a spooky wooden room with a stairway in the corner. Stereo images project on 3 walls and the floor are combined with polarized glasses to give me a very realistic experience. Calibrated position trackers attached to the glasses I was wearing were used to change the perspective of the projections as I moved around so the system responded to my movements and where I was directing my gaze as I moved around the room.

This first shot shows the stairs with the lights off. It is a bit blurred as my camera obviously couldn’t pick up the stereo images properly.

This second shot is with the lights on and the stairs have almost disappeared from sight.

The whole experience was very realistic and I became fully immersed in the room as I moved things around and also knocking a few things over. Climbing the stairs was okay on the way up, but on the way down it got interesting. Towards the bottom I peered over the broken hand rail and sized up a jump to the floor. It was only a small drop but as I tried to move, my legs froze. Part of my brain seemed to be telling me that I was already on the ground yet it didn’t certainly didn’t look like it!

As a highly visual thinker I can sometimes struggle to verbally articulate some of my more abstract (eccentric?) ideas. I would much prefer a diagram any day. However, today I added a new word to my vocabulary

Propinquity

It refers to nearness or proximity and embodies the likelihood of some form of interaction occurring. It would generally be used to refer to physical or psychological nearness. Interestingly it was way back in 1977 that Felipe Korzenny proposed a Theory of Electronic Propinquity just as electronic forms of communication were beginning to become more commonplace. I guess the author would never have envisaged the communication revolution that occurred some 25 years later with the advent of social media (i.e. Web 2.0) technologies.

So no matter where you are on the planet, if you have an internet connection, you can experience electronic propinquity. Over the next week or so I will be covering the Games for Health Conference 2009 (11-12th June, Baltimore, US) using a variety of social media tools and hope to provide an interactive and engaging experience. I am not alone in this venture having been drafted into a team put together by a good colleague of mine Biray Alsac.

 
Biray and her uber-geeky, super-awesome, digitally-healthy, fun-and-fit exergaming colleagues get together to share their collective experiences and thoughts from the Games for Health Conference 2009 via text, photos, podcasts, videos and more!

See what all the fuss is about (i.e. utilize Electronic Propinquity) here at: http://befitwithbiray.com/games4health/

Early last month I was passing close to the location of Distance Lab in the north-east of Scotland and was able to take up an outstanding invitation. The lab has arisen phoenix like from the ashes of a previous MIT Europe Lab venture in Dublin. They have a wide and varied selection of projects in development with a focus on overcoming barriers of distance, particular in remote areas.

The have a novel ExerGame called “Remote Impact” that they have developed that enables players to “box at a distance” except that it is in fact a carefully concealed mattress that you get stuck into. Your opponents image is projected onto the screen and you have to duck and dive at the same time as trying to score hits.

Quite a large set-up that needs a good bit of space.

Great fun and has tremendous potential as a platform to develop a new genre of games.

Looks like I am going to need some more practice….

Thanks to everybody at Distance Lab for being so welcoming and I will be keeping a close eye on future project developments.

Please note that no humans were harmed in the making of this post.

This post has been a long time in coming and has been written several times in my head. The end of March saw my teaching commitments for the current academic year come to an end. Last summer was a shortened affair due to change in the academic calendar and it has been a long haul through the winter. The upshot of this all is that I have spent the last couple of months taking some time out to pause and reflect on my progress in the “Quest for the Perfect ExerGame”. It has given me some time to think more deeply about what exactly is so special about “ExerGaming” / Active Video Game and the potential of them.

Spring came earlier this year in the form of some uncharacteristically warm weather in April which coincided with a trip to Fort William in the west of Scotland. The town happens to be located at the bottom of the highest mountain in Scotland (and the UK). The mountain is often shrouded in cloud, but as the weather was perfect I managed to get a good, clear photo.

On reflection, there is still a large mountain to climb in my quest, but at least I can see the direction that I am headed in now. There will be many challenges to face, but I am in it for the long haul. Hey, as the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. However an exercise revolution has well and truly been declared. Now on to drawing up a constitution….