Anticipation in motion-based games for health

Abstract

Digital motion-based games with affordable tracking methods for full body tracking allow users to play computer games controlled with body movements. They can be used as so called exergames, combining exercises and games. Exergames have three major benefits: (1) they can raise motivation for doing exercises through immersive interactive game play; (2) they can give users feedback regarding physiologically beneficial movements and aggregate performance over time; (3) they can be adapted to the individual user. This is a great chance, but also a great challenge in the development of exergames. When employing exergames as games for health, e.g. in physiotherapy, many patients (players) display individual predispositions and abilities with temporal variations. Anticipating and adapting to physical ability and individual training goals on various timescales require subtle mechanisms that capture differences for individual users. We discuss and analyze adaptivity requirements and implementation approaches for anticipatory techniques in this context.