JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Many studies have shown a direct relation between physical activity and health. It has also been shown that the average fitness level in western societies is lower than recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). One tool that can be used to increase physical activity for individual people is exergaming, i.e., serious games that motivate players to do sports exercises.

Objective:

This paper provides a review of recent studies regarding exergame efficacy to evaluate which sensing modalities are used to assess exergame efficacy as well as movement quality. We also analyze how the collected movement sensing data is being leveraged with respect to exergame efficacy and movement quality assessment.

Methods:

We conducted two extensive and systematic searches of the ACM Digital Library as well as the PubMed database according to the PRISMA statement.

Results:

The results of the analysis show that the sensors used in the exergames and the sensors used in the evaluation are in most cases mutually exclusive. While there is a wide range of sensors and methods to assess either game performance or exergame efficacy, movement quality is rarely considered as a metric.

Conclusions:

The lack of movement quality assessment is identified as a problem both for the studies and the exergames themselves, since a lack of quality assessment can lead to undetected and unwanted influences on the results as well as inefficient or even harmful player behavior. The paper then also provides a proposal on how to use the same sensors both as input for the exergame and to assess movement quality by presenting recent developments in motion recognition and sensing.