In addition to scales, what else can motivate you to
exercise and have a healthier lifestyle? If you ever have a Nintendo Wii, you
must have realized that the Wii Sports game is not only enjoyable, but also
invite you to keep moving.
Google seems to agree that a game should be able to give a
motivation for the players to exercise. This giant web search company has just
released a sample game entitled 'Games in Motion' to show how this game can motivate
the Android Wear users to do physical activity.
Simply put, rather than display a notification "You
have reached 70% of the target calorie burning, keep on moving!" or the
like, Games in Motion will provide fictitious contexts that are designed to
make you more excited in doing physical activity. A number of 'missions' are
inserted while your physical activity data is synchronized in the cloud.
There are various scenarios that have been prepared by Games in Motion, ranging from being a secret agent or being chased by zombies,
everything depends on the physical activity data processed by Google Fit APIs.
In the picture above, for example, you are instructed to
drop a smoke grenade to the enemy that appears. Perhaps it can be interpreted
that you are asked to run as fast as possible to the other direction to avoid
the 'enemy' and without realized you will meet your daily exercise target.
In another scenario, when you are jogging in the park,
suddenly your Android Wear smartwatch gives voice notification which says that
soon the zombies will come and chasing you! As you run fast to escape from the
zombies, another notification will appear and say that you have two options: 1)
act like zombies or 2) throws an ax to the zombies. These interesting contexts
that are expected to burn your calories and spirit.
Games in Motion is designed with open-source system, and
relying on a variety of Google Fit APIs and Android Wear. Hopefully, the third-party application
developers can get an idea of how to combine fiction games and real activities
in a fun context.