The Quest for the Perfect ExerGame

At this point I have to apologize for the lack of updates from the Games from Health conference. A severe network connectivity problem was an obstacle that I just could not overcome. Furthermore, a lack of sleep on my return journey coupled with jet-lag resulted in a lack of clarity of thought for several days. Having said that, I am now beginning to feel somewhat more normal now. Just one small issue – I am off to Lisbon, Portugal tomorrow morning to see if health promotion researchers have anything to say about smart applications of technology to promote positive behavior change – I will keep you posted.

Overall, I found the Games for Health conference quietly reassuring. There was not the excitement and novelty that I experienced last year, but instead a real willingness to ask questions and to seek answers. In addition, there was a real sense that whatever “ExerGaming” is and for that matter whatever “Games for Health” are, they are much bigger phenomena than they first seemed. In fact it appears that we know even less about them than was first apparent, but at least now people are beginning to ask searching questions and are beginning to undertake significant exploration. To me this would suggest a growing maturity of the field and bodes well for the future.

Yesterday’s Games Accessibility was a truly inspiring workshop yesterday and it is encouraging to hear that an ever increasing range of tools (software and hardware) are now available to help make games accessible. The benefits of making games accessible are far ranging from improving motor coordination through to socialization.

I was rather nervous about my own session and it was both somewhat “techie” and I was worried that I might be out of my depth and also that it included several live demos. I am happy (and relieved) to report that it went without a hitch. I will post a few pictures from the event as soon as I receive them.

Early start this morning in order to keep a date for some exercise. The warm up was a conventional 2 mile run with a short sharp hill at the end with a few puddles to avoid along the way. The gym at Sunny, Cortland had just taken delivery of a couple of Virtual Reality (VR) Cycling bikes (Espresso) so I just had to give one a try out. Indeed it was rather a fitting warm up to the Games for Health 2009 conference as I was about to catch a plane to Boston later in the morning.

After adjusting the bike to fit my frame, it was time to choose a course. A 5 mile mountain climb was selected on which to challenge my (real) training partner.

Off we went. It took a short while to get used to the gear changes (one button press to go up a gear another to go down). As the course was a mountain climb it was important to anticipate the changes in gradient and adjust the gears accordingly. The graphical rendering of the road wasn’t perhaps as good as it could be therefore you had to keep an eye on the course profile in order to clearly see the gradient changes coming.

I managed to keep a steady 95-100 rpm going in order to maximize my efficiency. My power output averaged 200-210 W and my heart rate was between 150-160 bpm. Only when it got really steep did I my legs start to burn. Rarely was I aware of my breathing. I completed the course in 20 minutes and I can honestly say that the engaging and immersive nature (including the steering to avoid other races and the precipitous edge of the road) of the game meant that I was almost completely distracted from the stress that was being placed on my body.

Overall it was a great ExerGaming experience and one I look forward to repeating soon.

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….

“The only winning strategy is to play!”
I had a bit of a nostalgic time watching the film “WarGames” last night. It seems an age ago when you had to hunch over a tacky keyboard and type in commands to have them displaced on a monochrome CRT monitor. Now we are spoilt for choice in terms of input methods and displays.
Brief synopsis of the film: Boy connects/hacks into a computer to play what he thinks are soon to be released computer games. Innocently challenging the computer to a game he in fact sets off a countdown to World War 3. Aided by a girl and the eccentric inventor, he manages to ” teach” the computer the futility of its intended course of action via a simple game of Tic Tac Toe (Noughts & Crosses) which neither player can win. The computer then simulates every possible WW3 strategy with neither side ever winning. The film ends with the computer stating that “The only winning strategy is not to play”.
What if you were to test out every strategy for the “Global War on Obesity”? Would the conclusion be:
“The only winning strategy is to play an ExerGame”??

Citizen Journalism has gone mainstream with a few recent high profile cases where individual’s on the spot have been ahead of professional reporters. The utility of mobile phones is such that is now easy to capture video, audio, photos and text as events are unfolding and immediately put them online.

In thinking about the use of social media in a health context, I would like to develop the concept of “Citizen Narration” as a narrative approach that makes use of social media to document and reflect on an individual’s or groups own particular health and/or social circumstances and experiences. Storytelling has long been an important part of human culture and is recognized as providing engaging learning experiences and reflective practice is increasingly being used in personal and professional development.

Obviously there are privacy concerns in terms of the degree and extent of personal disclosure, issues of ownership that need to be addressed and also the need to develop social media literacy. I have no doubt that these issues can be overcome and see “Citizen Narration” utilizing social media as have the potential to become a real grass-roots approach to health promotion and empowerment.