Boosting Personal Workout Engagement through Integrated Game Features Triggering Various Emotions
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A recent case study involving 25 participants has evaluated the enhancing exercise experience by introducing multi-emotion provoking game elements in exergaming systems. The study, which utilised a physical cycling exergaming system, aimed to deepen engagement and motivation in these systems by promoting multi-emotional responses.
The new affective game design method, an extension of the previously designed single emotion game scene approach, includes continuous game elements and multi-emotion provoking elements. These elements are derived from components of the eudaimonic gaming experience, designed to evoke a range of meaningful emotional responses beyond simple pleasure or fun.
The multi-emotion provoking game elements introduced in the new design include:
- Appreciation: Providing broad media gratification.
- Sense of meaning: Connecting game elements to meaningful life aspects beyond the game.
- Emotionally moved or challenged: Confronting players with emotionally salient material leading to strong and mixed affective responses.
- Self-reflection: Encouraging players to gain better understanding of themselves.
- Deep social bonds with other players: Strengthening relationships or making new friends.
- Deep social bonds with characters: Identification and empathy with in-game characters.
- Nostalgia: Evoking sentimental or wistful feelings associated with happiness from game experience.
- Awe: Eliciting amazement and wonder through vast and unusual stimuli.
- Elevation: Inducing uplifting and heartwarming feelings in response to moral virtue and altruism depicted in the game.
These elements were coded and operationalized to promote multi-emotional responses, aiming to deepen engagement and motivation in exergaming systems. The new design also allows the system to adapt the gameplay dynamically based on near real-time emotion evaluation, providing an exciting but not taxing exercise experience.
The new content in the game includes elements to provoke both physical and mental stress, aiming to provoke emotions with a controlled intensity. The previously developed analysis method for facial expressions and physiological data has been enhanced for near real-time emotion evaluation in the new game.
The incorporation of these elements into exergaming aims to enhance motivation, affective richness, and meaningful play, which combat the typical monotony and enhance adherence to exercise routines in such systems. This new approach to exergaming could potentially revolutionise the way people approach and engage with exercise, making it a more enjoyable, meaningful, and enduring experience.
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Science can benefit health-and-wellness by exploring the use of multi-emotion provoking game elements in fitness-and-exercise systems, like exergaming, to enhance motivation and create a more enjoyable, meaningful, and enduring exercise experience. This approach could potentially revolutionize the way people approach and engage with exercise, based on findings from recent studies in science [1-5].
