One of the common criticisms of video games is that they encourage laziness and lead to obesity among their players. However, a newly-unveiled patent from Sony is apparently taking steps to gamify fitness, promising in-game rewards for maintaining healthy habits. The patent also apparently intends to make interactive exercise games more prominent.
Health and wellness considerations may not only serve as a benefit for individual players, but also has the potential to change the landscape of gaming and how gaming can be further used to integrate healthier practices and activities into daily life.
There are a number of exercise games available on the market right now, such as Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch and a few others. However, even games that require players to get up and move often don’t pay any regard to how players exercise during it, which the patent thinks of as a flaw in the genre.
Thus, while players may engage in some level of physical activity, such activity is not evaluated or assessed in accordance with health and wellness goals.
Promising rewards has often been used in order to incentivize certain behavior in video games. The patent believes that by doing the same in regards to health and wellness, they can incentivize more gamers into exercising more often than they did before.
If presented in a compelling format, digital gaming and accompanying gamification components may serve as a motivating factor in improving health and wellness of players.
Despite the niche market of exercise games, there are a number of games that include getting up and moving that remain popular. Ubisoft’s Just Dance series, for instance, has proven to be a smash hit, allowing the company to put out fourteen games in the franchise. The patent believes that adding gamification to games of similar popularity could help with wellness overall.
There is therefore a need in the art for improved systems and methods for providing a gamification hub that integrates and uses biometrics biometric data to adjust and reward gameplay in online gaming systems.
Only time will tell if this patent system turns out to be successful, or if it will even be implemented at all, but in the meantime hopefully Sony can come out with games that will end up being used as good exercise aids in the future. To read more about this patent, you can follow this link to the full thing.
