Abstract

This study specifically examines a computer video game designed for therapeutic exercise. Platforms of such computer video game for exercising are designed to track body motion or body reactions for the use as game interfaces and provide both fun and exercise for game players. However, it is difficult for patients with different physical or athletic abilities to play a game on an equal footing. Several studies have proposed player assistance methods that enable players with different abilities to join games on even ground. Unfortunately, in the field of competitive games for therapeutic exercising with avatars that depict the movements of players precisely, no proposal of ones with player-adaptive assist has been made to date. Because movement of an avatar directly reflects that of players precisely, it can be inferred that artificiality is outstanding when the exercise result performance is shown as higher by effects of the computer. To overcome the problem, we developed a player-adaptive assist system in which we provide each player with a personal monitor image, adjusted to a specific level of athletic ability, which does not make them feel funny. We named this game image a tailor-made video-game image. Thereby, anyone playing the game can participate equally. The video game to have been developed is a variant of a popular balloon volleyball, in which players hit a virtual balloon with their hands before it falls to the floor. In this paper, we describe a two-player balloon volleyball video-game system based on that idea, the method to generate a tailor-made video-game image and experiment result having been conducted to evaluate the assistance with the tailor-made video-game image.