Game As Life - Life As Game

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Game As Life / Life As Game (GALLAG) is a research agenda exploring the boundary of physical and virtual lives. Gaming is becoming an increasing popular phenomenon that is having a profound effect on individuals and society. The GALLAG system will use sensors as the interface between digital and physical life. These sensors will detect the everyday physical activities that a person engages in. These activities will then be linked to games and game scenarios. Sensing aspects of individuals'' emotions and their interactions will be used, first, as a way to measure the impact of the GALLAG system and its scenarios on participants and, second, as an information channel to create a real-time feedback that enables the system to attend to and tailor itself to how participants'' emotional states. GALLAG will use ubiquitous computing and personally tailored game scenarios to integrate activities across the virtual and physical domains, holistically throughout everyday life, focusing on: meditation, sleep, and exercise. Influences and activities in the game scenarios will affect real life and vice versa influences and activities in life will affect the game. It is not known how people will respond to the GALLAG experience, if these synergies will be sufficiently engaging to users or if there are more fundamental barriers to the creation of long-term hybrid virtual/physical experience that must be addressed to make them compelling and beneficial. To address these unknowns, several methods of experience and behavioral assessment, and environmental, contextual and physiological sensors will be used in conjunction with participatory design approaches that include end-user-programming, and iterative design and testing. The GALLAG approach can be used to become quickly aware of other people''s lives, as well. The status of another game player (perhaps a family member) can be observed through their profile and information. For example, elderly parent''s activities - even if the parents are not involved in the gaming activities - might be represented in a readily interpretable manner so that their children can better understand their wellbeing. This elderly parent might not know how to explain tell her doctor that she has been feeling fatigued or ill. GALLAG may enable her physician to better understand her condition by reviewing with her brief game-clips of her activities. It is not known how people will respond to the GALLAG experience, if these synergies will be sufficiently engaging to participants or if there are more fundamental barriers to the creation of long-term hybrid virtual/physical experience that must be addressed to make them compelling and beneficial. As gaming becomes more of an important part of life, new opportunities arise to use emerging technologies to benefit individuals in their daily activities and life long aspirations. This agenda seeks to empower users to create their own synergies between their on-line activities and to help them achieve their personal real world aspirations. Gaming is becoming an increasing popular phenomenon that is having a profound effect on individuals and society. Further, online role-playing games and interactive gaming interfaces are becoming more social and starting to engage participants in physical activity. This exploratory research has the potential to further extend the emerging avant garde ''real life games'' that are coordinated by digital means to further blur digital-physical-social barriers. Specifically, GALLAG seeks to study the coordination of digital life with real life to link real life behaviors with no immediate tangible reward with more immediate intrinsic reward in the virtual environments. An example of the potential of this strategy is the diabetics support software called DiaBetNet (http://www.dimagi.com/case-studies-diabetnet.php). The game leads the child to a better understanding of diabetes and thereby increases his or her ownership of long-term health. As gaming becomes more of an important part of life, fantastic opportunities arise to use emerging technologies to benefit individuals in their daily activities and life long aspirations. This agenda seeks to empower users to create their own synergies between their on-line activities and to help them achieve their personal real world aspirations. Ultimately work from this GALLAG project may lead to ''Life Long Games'' that provide persistent, supportive, and actualizing experiences.