Exertion, Health DIS 2016, June 4–8, 2016, Brisbane, Australia Developing Compelling Repetitive-Motion Exergames by Balancing Player Agency with the Constraints of Exercise Chad Richards, T.C. Nicholas Graham School of Computing Queen’s University Kingston, ON, Canada [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT balance [73] or range of motion [28, 73]. Despite important Participation rates in repetitive-motion exercise programs, benefits to health and daily living [13, 25, 66, 73], such as programs for muscle-strengthening and physical participation rates in strength training and compliance to rehabilitation, are low. Exergames show promise in rehabilitation programs are woefully low [11, 29, 55, 68]. encouraging people to exercise, but it is challenging to build For instance, Carlson et al. found that only 21.9% of U.S. compelling games around repetitive exercises. Games adults met the muscle-strengthening requirements of the involve players making meaningful choices, but repetitive- 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans [11]. motion workout programs are rigidly structured, making it difficult to find opportunities for such choices. As such, there Exergames have been proposed as a way of motivating is a struggle between providing players with meaningful people to perform physical exercise. There has been choices and meeting the constraints of the exercise program. considerable success in the design of exergames for meeting We discuss methods for enhancing agency in repetitive- cardiorespiratory guidelines and for promoting anti- motion exergames while still meeting these rigid constraints. sedentary behavior [9, 27, 37, 38, 41, 57]. Developing We illustrate these methods through Brains & Brawn, a exergames for repetitive-motion exercises has proven more novel strategy card game for muscle-strengthening. challenging. Repetitive-motion exercises offer little choice Playtesting with eight participants demonstrated that players in how or at what pace they are performed – a workout plan experienced agency during gameplay, were incented to might specify that a person perform three sets of 8-12 squat exercise with correct form, and showed favorable attitude exercises at a slow and controlled pace. Because the toward the game. exercises must be performed in a specific manner, there is little opportunity to introduce agency in gameplay, allowing Author Keywords players to choose between different meaningful courses of Game design; agency; repetitive exercises; exergames; action. Consequently, designers of repetitive-motion physical rehabilitation; muscle-strengthening; strength exergames have had to choose between providing players training; resistance training; exercise prescription. with opportunities to make meaningful choices and ACM Classification Keywords providing players with high quality exercise. H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): In this paper, we show how it is possible to address this lack Miscellaneous; K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: Games. of agency in repetitive-motion exergames. In order for INTRODUCTION players to be able to make meaningful choices in these Repetitive-motion exercise programs are characterized by games, we propose three game design techniques that many repetitions of the same movement, typically following balance agency with the constraints of repetitive-motion a workout plan [9] or exercise prescription [34]. Examples exercises. Specifically, agency can be enhanced by providing include strength training, where participants perform a rich gameplay during rest breaks, by using player form as a planned workout involving exercises such as deadlifts, game mechanic, and by judiciously providing illusion of shoulder presses, and squats [49], and rehabilitation agency when real agency is not possible. exercises where people repeat movements to improve We illustrate these methods through Brains & Brawn, a novel card game in the style of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft [8] and Pokémon [45] developed for people with Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal little or no experience with muscle-strengthening exercises. or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or Results of playtesting with eight participants lend confidence distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice that these methods provide an engaging game while meeting and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is the constraints of repetitive-motion exercise programs. permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute Participants used a variety of strategies, demonstrating the to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions agency provided in the game. Players’ exercise form from [email protected]. DIS 2016, June 4–8, 2016, Brisbane, Australia. improved over the game, indicating the success of using Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. exercise form as a game mechanic. All participants reported ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-4031-1/16/06…$15.00. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901824 911 Exertion, Health DIS 2016, June 4–8, 2016, Brisbane, Australia having enjoyed the game, and the majority stated that they But what makes a choice meaningful? Mateas argues that would participate in a muscle-strengthening program using agency is experienced when actions that cry out to be taken Brains & Brawn. in a game (formal affordances) are balanced with the raw materials to perform these actions (material affordances), The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. We first and a decrease in agency occurs when these properties are review the importance of agency in games, highlighting imbalanced [39, 70]. Thompson et al. describe four elements challenges of introducing agency into both traditional games of perceived agency: foreseeability, ability, desirability, and and repetitive-motion exergames. We further show how connection [19, 60, 61]. Then, meaningful choices are illusion of agency can be leveraged to hide a lack of agency. compelled by the design of the game and enabled by actions We then discuss how Brains & Brawn balances agency with made possible for the player. They are choices with an the constraints of repetitive-motion exercises. Finally, we outcome that is desirable, foreseeable, and perceived to be detail the results of our exploratory user study and conclude connected to the choice the player made. with takeaways for designers and a summary of our findings. Different game genres provide agency in different ways. AGENCY Repetitive-motion exercises, such as for muscle- Agency exists as the choices and consequences of the strengthening and physical rehabilitation, require the same player’s tactics in strategy games. It is what allows the player movements to be performed over and over again in a precise to choose which enemy to target with what weapon in manner. Workouts involving repetitive exercises are shooter games. It provides the option to choose which typically prescribed by a specialist, such as a personal trainer character abilities to enhance in role-playing games. or physical rehabilitation therapist [9, 34]. These include Agency Challenges in Games physical rehabilitation programs for calf rehabilitation [50], Providing agency can compete with other game design goals. for shoulder rehabilitation [22, 28], and for post-stroke For instance, game designers often face a struggle between rehabilitation [3, 4, 10]. These also include workouts for giving players agency and providing a cohesive story. A strength training programs [9, 32]. Unfortunately, adherence linear story provides a singular view of events, but “[t]he to these exercise programs is low [11, 29, 55, 68]. desire for agency in digital environments makes us impatient Preliminary evidence has shown that games can help with when our options are so limited” [43]. On the other hand, the enjoyment of programs involving repetitive exercises [1, 3, high cost of development means that branching games must 4, 6, 10, 20, 21, 22, 28, 33, 53, 63]. Participants perform these at some point constrict players to one of only a few paths, exercises at a specific pace, with a specific exercise form, perhaps rendering the choices that the player has made up to and following a rigid prescription consisting of x sets of y that point meaningless. repetitions of z exercises. This limits players’ physical This is exemplified in Deus Ex: Human Revolution [18]. The actions, making it difficult to provide players with agency in game provides many options for completing quests, such as games developed for these exercises. choosing between violent and non-violent solutions, but Agency and Its Importance to Games eventually forces players to face enemies using only one, Agency is the ability to act in a given environment; in its violent, option. This is “highly jarring with the freedom that simplest form, agency comprises the choices players can the rest of the game allows and that has been a constant focus make in a game world. However, in games we expect more of criticism in the initial reviews” [15]. of agency than simply providing players with choices. For instance, Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, Game designers can also face a struggle to provide agency believes that “agency is the satisfying power to take while adhering