VideoGames: Brain Gain or Drain? – Exergaming

Tad Stach is a computer science doctoral student at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Tad’s current research is in the field of human-computer interaction. I interviewed him during the Game Developers conference. Tad is exploring how exercise can be improved through computer-mediated physical activity. More specifically, he is interested in facilitating more effective group or exergames. In this show you’ll discover an entirely new way to approach exercise. As mentioned in my last show it’s more enjoyable to exercise if you do it with your friends. However, it can be hard to find a suitable partner to do exercise games with because sedentary people already have low self efficacy. That is, they do not believe that they can exercise and enjoy it. This can be demoralizing as they cannot keep up with the people who are exercising around them. Thus Tad is looking at multiplayer exergames. Here the exercise is computer mediated and thus you can balance for any differences in physical abilities and you can exercise with friends online.