Leveraging personalised feedback as a motivation tool in active games

Obesity and specifically childhood obesity is already a major health issue especially in developed countries. One contributing factor which also poses a health risk in itself, is physical inactivity. The emerging area of Serious Games has the potential to help combat these issues by introducing activity into an otherwise sedentary lifestyle. This research aims to explore the effect of a number of factors on children playing an exergame (a game which aims to provide exercise through fun). Our overall results indicate that players found our developed exergame enjoyable. In addition, they reported a positive motivational effect from trying to achieve higher scores with repeated play in order to beat their own and their fellow classmates' scores.