Runner: A 2D platform game for physical health promotion

Abstract

Runner is a 2D platform game designed to be used for conducting research studies on health promotion. This paper presents basic features of the game and describes how contents are procedurally generated. Physical health promotion when the game is played as a motion game is focused. We provide guidelines for future studies with two illustrative examples. The first example is on procedural content generation for promoting balancedness in use of body segments and increasing movement variability. The second example is dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) for helping the player achieve their expected amount of calories burned. This paper also presents a pilot study demonstrating a DDA method that can significantly increase the amount of calories burned and positive affects of motion game players. Keywords: Video games, Physical health promotion, Procedural content generation, Motion gaming