Pushing without breaking: Nudging exergame players while maintaining immersion

Abstract

In exergames, players sometimes over-exert themselves, risking adverse health effects. Informing such players to slow down is necessary, but might distract from gameplay and damage the drive to continue exercising. We used the concept of nudges to create a set of design principles that can be incorporated into a game, to influence player behaviour without breaking their immersion. We created a game that uses these principles, testing them against no feedback at all, and against a precise text-based interface. We found that nudging techniques worked as well as textual feedback to keep players from over-exerting. We saw no significant difference in immersion between nudge and textual feedback, but players considered the nudge feedback to be more natural.