Enhancing social exergames through idle game design

Abstract

This paper recognizes idle games as a promising direction for exergames and other games designed for behavioral change. Based on a survey of 11 popular idle games, we extend existing literature by identifying the common core gameplay loop (active participation, inactive progress, and return reward) as well as the design patters used to support the loop. Furthermore, we propose an initial approach to extending idle game patterns to social exergames, focusing on improving player adherence.

Selection of and Response to Physical Activity–Based Social Comparisons in a Digital Environment: Series of Daily Assessment Studies

“…As part of a larger series of studies to investigate the potential for personalizing social comparison opportunities in the context of a social exergame [34][35][36][37], participants in each study completed 7 to 28 total days of data collection. In studies 2 and 3, the first 9 days constituted an exploratory period during which all participants selected from various sets of comparison options; the following days introduced a personalized experimental manipulation for half of the participants based on random assignment.…”

Player Matching using Personal Characteristics for Asynchronous Multiplayer Exergames

“…2. Based on research showing the success of a gamified approach for designing mobile fitness applications for increasing retention (Altmeyer et al, 2018;Tu et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2017a), the integration of social features can increase social closeness (Depping & Mandryk, 2017), and social patterns that improve player retention in social exergames (Villareale et al, 2019), would a game design applying such patterns, as illustrated in the storyboards (Figure 6.4), elicit feelings of social connectedness between groups of players and the same long-term effects?…”

“…Perhaps some kind of incentive can be offered, such as bonus points, as a reward for players who return to the game. Researchers are examining the effectiveness of idle game patterns for improving player retention in social exergames (Villareale et al, 2019). In addition to rewarding a player for returning to the game, other pattens such as timed actions was proposed to increase long-term engagement, while player-driven auto-play, and system automation was proposed to mitigate the snowball effect (when player become inactive and deter the other players' experience) (Villareale et al, 2019).…”

“…Researchers are examining the effectiveness of idle game patterns for improving player retention in social exergames (Villareale et al, 2019). In addition to rewarding a player for returning to the game, other pattens such as timed actions was proposed to increase long-term engagement, while player-driven auto-play, and system automation was proposed to mitigate the snowball effect (when player become inactive and deter the other players' experience) (Villareale et al, 2019). It would be interesting to offer software-generated (SG) (Samendinger et al, 2021) or non-player characters (NPCs) (Ochs et al, 2008;Tomlinson & Blumberg, 2003) that perform in-game actions that are similar or complementary to the player's personality or player type and explore whether that might influence exergame retention.…”