PhysiKart : A 2D racing game controlled by physical activity through face-tracking software

Background: A sedentary lifestyle is becoming more common as our society is shift-ing away from physical labour. Many workplaces offer work from home arrangements,schools offer tutoring over the internet and children’s playgrounds, once full of life, aremostly empty. The availability of gaming devices, smartphones and social media havemade a big impact on the way we choose to live. With that comes the challenges of neg-ative health effects on a population level. Gaming has traditionally been thought of as asedentary activity in front of a desk and screen, but the development of exergames andthe rise of gamification has changed our perception of gaming and in some cases beenshown to be directly beneficial for our health. Objectives: A gamification project led byErik Berglund at the department of Computer and Information Sciences at Linköping Uni-versity is investigating if exergames can be enjoyed, give users a feeling of control, andlead to heightened exertion levels. With this in mind, we set out to develop a 2D racingexergame, PhysiKart, controlled by a face-tracking machine algorithm from Google’s Me-diaPipe library. Method: 14 participants tested the game 3-5 times where each sessionlasted 2 minutes. The participants filled out the Exergame Enjoyment Questionnaire andrated their exertion levels on the RPE scale. Results: Most participants found the gameresponsive to the control system and that the scoring system motivated them to continueplaying. However, the users perceived the immersion of the game to be lower than desiredand is believed to be a consequence of the slow pacing and the short rounds of the game. Conclusions: Through the survey it was confirmed that using face-tracking software foran exergame is suitable to achieve low levels of exertion. By changing the control motionsof the game it would be possible to increase the exertion while still utilizing face-tracking.