An Exergame for Encouraging Martial Arts

In this paper, we developed a game-based learning system for martial arts with the aid of Kinect sensor, stressing the importance of providing the player with immediate feedback, clear goals and challenges that are matched to his/her skill level. Inevitably, games have unique opportunity to motivate, to inspire and to create appealing experiences. Why not we have them kill two birds with one stone? Game-based learning system often involved the process of gamify an existing knowledge learning system, which is a very difficult task due to the complexity of game concepts itself in addition to the on-going debate, yet to be determined underlying values that contribute to flow acquirement. Our idea is to get player to have fun with physical game, if possible, learn some real martial art skillsets from the gameplay. Hence, we have posited another plausible way, which is to edify an existing exergame system by add-on physical skillsets as part of the game challenges without obstruction to the game harmony. We have compared both wearable sensor (TSND121) and Kinect sensor for its suitability for body area network device. We found that Kinect sensor outperformed TSND121 with the features of no latency, high accuracy, affordability, ease of programming, on top of it’s controller-less and unobtrusive feature over wearable sensors. Hence, we are convinced that Kinect sensor is a more suitable sensor for body area network device in an exergame. As well, we discussed about punching gloves that possess influence on player’s psychological processes that was evident in our experiment result, exhibit the potential to govern game-based learning process. We posit that reality tool is essential in the future exergame learning system due to it’s virtual reality impact on player’s feeling. The game-based learning model discussed in this paper can be extended to other sports, especially those required sports equipment such as racquet, golf club, baseball bat and etc for high excitement, fun and interactive learning achievement.