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Play In Your World

Obviously, I’m a big supporter of exergames (exercise + video games = interactive game play). After all, I spent my years in grad school studying the cardiovascular responses to PS2’s EyeToy: Kinetic. And while I believe exergaming will continue to push the boundaries of traditional game play AND fitness, I’m also curious to see if gaming will have any reverse effects on how people play games in the real-world.

Three years ago, a group of scientists at the University of Singapore developed the Human PacMan game - (no, I’m not talking about Pacman going ‘live‘), but a version of the game immersed in the real-world!

“The new game, called Human PacMan, superimposes a 3D PacMan world on top of the city’s streets and architecture. Players enter the game by donning a wearable computer, headset and goggles before choosing to play the role of PacMan or one of the Ghosts. Players’ movements are tracked using GPS receivers and motion sensors and they are linked back to a central computer system by wireless Local Area Network.”

How COOL is this?! To those who still believe exergames limit the player’s interactions outside (which at times, it does), this type of integration seems genius! Let’s spend less time bring realism to games. And more time bringing gaming to the real world, literally! Anyone know why we aren’t seeing more of these games on the market?

This whole concept challenges PlayStation’s “Live in Your World, Play in Ours” slogan. Maybe they should consider changing it: “Live in Your World, and Play in it, too!”

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