Games for health journal
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This article is based on an invited presentation for the Exergame Preconference Symposium held in Houston, TX, May 19-20, 2014 that was hosted by Tom Baranowski, PhD, and the U. S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine. Its purpose is to provide insight into the ways in which theory can be used to guide exergame research.
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Games for health journal · Feb 2015
ReviewNarrative in Exergames: Thoughts on Procedure, Mechanism, and Others.
Narratives are stories with a beginning, middle, and end that provide information about the characters and plot. Exergames are videogames that require players to move or exercise. Narratives and exergames have seldom been examined together. ⋯ However, the rewards offered by these possibilities may be offset by the challenges they pose. These challenges include the difficulty in fully integrating narratives into the gameplay, the players' limited information processing capacity, difficulty in measurement, the lack of full understanding of the player-character identification process, and the narrative saturation effects. Innovative research is needed to bridge the two potentially important domains.
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Games for health journal · Feb 2015
ReviewBetter Together: Outcomes of Cooperation Versus Competition in Social Exergaming.
Children and adolescents most often play active videogames, or exergames, in a social environment. Social play may enhance the potential benefits of an exergaming experience, much like group exercise and team sports are observed to improve physical activity-related outcomes above those of solitary exercise. Two ubiquitous elements of exergames are cooperation and competition. ⋯ Although the current volume of literature on competition and cooperation in exergaming is small, social exergames hold promise as an engaging alternative to traditional physical activity interventions and may promote a broad range of positive outcomes for children and adolescents. Principles of cooperation and competition are applicable for developers of health-promoting games. Future research is needed to further understand the mechanisms of how competition and cooperation in social exergaming impact physiological and psychosocial outcomes.
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Games for health journal · Feb 2015
ReviewCultivating Engagement and Enjoyment in Exergames Using Feedback, Challenge, and Rewards.
This article reviews theoretical and empirical evidence related to three mechanisms for encouraging enjoyment during exergame play: Feedback, challenge, and rewards. ⋯ Feedback, challenge, and rewards are promising mechanisms by which exergames could become more enjoyable. How these concepts are operationalized can affect physical and psychological reactions to exergames. Attention to these concepts in future exergame development and implementation would benefit theory, research, and practice.